CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Austin glanced up from the couch as the song on the radio flickered. Brown out? The day had been hotter than blue blazes, maybe the communal demand on AC was shorting things out. She lifted her feet from the floor and shifted the popcorn bowl in her lap. She giggled at herself when her heart pounded.
Who in their right mind got jittery over bad reception? Being mugged had left her feeling off kilter. Stetson growled and a chill shot down her spine. Someone was in the room.
“Who’s there?”
“Austin, don’t freak out.”
Popcorn flew as she jumped off the couch and bolted for the kitchen door. She ran smack into a brick wall. Strong hands steadied her and she staggered back.
No, not a wall. A man. A huge man.
The room spun as he grabbed her. Rough fingers held her chin as her mind and body grew heavy. Fight. She wanted to fight, but couldn’t bring herself to move.
Stetson’s barking was drowned out by thuds of fist to flesh and crunching glass across the room. A muscled arm came around her back, supporting her as her mind slipped, relaxed, unlocked—
The pain that shot behind her eyes buckled her knees.
“Zander?”
The man grabbed her wrist and placed her hand to his throat. The studded, leather collar set her world back on its axis. “Phoenix?”
A thunderous crash brought footsteps and a sprawling tangle of men. Knocked to the ground, she scrambled to get up. Stetson was losing his mind. Austin cursed, not knowing which way to turn.
With her hand on the wall, she hurried toward the side door. Someone grabbed her around the waist and lifted her feet from the ground. She flailed and flung her fists, connecting in throbbing blows.
“Now, now,” a man said, his voice exploding in swipes of white claws and fangs. She grappled at the walls of the foyer. Tried to grab hold of the doorframe. “Settle down, little sheep, or Devious will do something unpleasant to you.”
“Seth!” Night air filled her lungs. “Phoenix!”
Something hard struck her head and the world tilted. Bruising fingers forced her into the car. She pushed off the seat, her trembling hands scrabbling for the door. The car lurched. A heavy arm slammed her in the chest, knocking her against the seat. After another attempt at yanking the door handle, a sickening scent filled the air and her nightmare faded.
Zander’s eyes opened slow and lazy, staring at the panicked faces of his men. So, he hadn’t died after all. Huh, waking up in a fog was becoming a habit he’d rather not form. Three times in one week seemed a bit ridiculous. Before he moved he took a mental inventory of all his parts and pieces. The pain had receded like a cool evening tide. It left him void of sound and sense. What the hell hap—
“Austin.” He lurched up. The alley spun at such a tilt he fell back to the asphalt. Screw that. He didn’t have time to play amusement park inside his own head. Had he survived what the scriptures foretold? He took another run at getting vertical.
Brennus grabbed his elbow and helped him to his feet. “Give yerself a moment, lad. Ye’ll be no good to anyone if ye fall on yer face. The twins have gone to secure yer female. Danel’s bringing the truck.”
“Welcome back, Adelphos.” Kyrian said. “You scared the shit out of us.”
“It was no picnic on my end either.”
“No one will ever argue.” Sliced and bleeding, the Greek looked like hell. They all did.
Zander forced his legs to hold his weight and drew a stabilizing breath. “How’d we do?”
“The suits turned the tide but I wouldn’t expect them to help twice. They no sooner collected the Cherub’s remains and they were vapor.”
There was more Kyrian wasn’t saying. His gaze was weary and anxious. “Tell me.”
The Greek’s mouth moved like he wanted to speak but nothing came out. There seemed to be a traffic jam on the guy’s cognitive highway.
“Kyrian, spit it out.”
“Wings. My man, you’ve sprouted feathers.”
Wings? He shrugged off the hold of those steadying him. Once the seas stopped rolling beneath his shitkickers, he flexed his back and what do you know, new appendages opened like an oriental fan. Well, that explained a lot.
Sleek, black, and heavy as fuck, the things were wicked cool. Heavy footsteps thundered behind him and Zander turned. “What happened?”
“Austin—” Danel growled. “They took her.”
Zander wasn’t tracking. He flexed his wings and took a few practice steps. “Activate the GPS on my phone. Gather the men. Those who are able can follow.”
“Wait, Z,” Kyrian said, squaring off with him. “They could be anywhere.”
Oh, he would find her. Making love to her and claiming her had branded their essence as one. He sensed her, scared and alone. Driving to search the city would take far too long. His new mode of transport would be twice as fast. If he could figure out how to steer.
“Zandros, wait!” Kyrian gripped his arm. “Give us ten minutes and we’ll go together.”
“No,” he said, yanking his arm back. He patted his hips and checked his weapons were in place. “Austin needs me.”
“She needs to be rescued, not you barreling into a trap alone and disoriented. You just keeled over and sprouted wings.”
Zander launched into the night sky.
Shielding his presence, he struggled and fought to stay in the air. He’d thought his archangel genes would find flying instinctual somehow. Wrong. With cold wind blasts smacking him in the face, his eyes watered and his limbs flapped around. He felt like an uncoordinated chicken with a broken wing.
Oh, wait, chickens don’t fly. Yep, well, that’s exactly how he felt then.
Ripping at an awkward tumble through the growing darkness, Zander veered east and tried to stay above the Don Valley treetops. When he looked right, wind tunneled into his ear canal and when he scanned the ground below, all that came back to him was a whole lotta nature.
Auurgh—a white-hot agony speared his body. His flight faltered. Was the prophecy taking another run at him? He cursed. The pain was outside himself yet part of him.
Austin. They were hurting her.
The thundering whoosh of his wings cutting through air drowned out the thrumming in his skull. Austin’s pain scored his soul. His animal side reared, pitching him into an absolute rage. The attack about to be unleashed on this motherfucking Shedim would become legend.
Lightning cracked. Zander willed his energy to focus on Austin and a lightning bolt pierced the night sky. It struck the ground below and that’s where he landed. Crashed, but he didn’t give a fuck. Back on his feet, he picked up his weapons and pushed through a stand of trees. The air was rife with hellfire stench.
Their kill lair was close, he just had to find it.
Austin cried out, thrown hard to the damp ground. Her neck ached, torn where her abductor bit her and her right hand was badly sprained or maybe broken from resisting the attack. She patted the ground with her left. She’d landed on a lumpy pile of skins. No. Not skins. Dead animals.
With a shiver, she shoved herself off what seemed to be a half-eaten deer or maybe a large dog. She inhaled and gagged. It reeked like the warehouse but beyond that, the space was dank and smelled of pine and earth.
“A night full of surprises,” a woman said. That drip of disdain rang familiar—the Darkworlder she’d met at Zander’s club, Emma. “My father and his men are pleased to have you.”
Have as in welcome, as in dinner, or as in the biblical sense? Austin wasn’t keen on any choice. “Your father? You mean you’re one of those Shedim killers?”
The kick to her hip set off another round of pain. “My father is Master of Shedim and my mother is Queen of the Dimme. I am Darkworld royalty, bitch.”
Feeling around, Austin searched for some way to defend herself. With decaying animals, maybe she could find a jagged bone jutting from a carcass or something. There was nothing.
Emma’s words circled in her head until she started to giggle. Insane as it was, she couldn’t help herself. “Does that make you a Shedimme or a Dimdim? Either way, that’s funny.”
The strike to her cheek whipped her head so far, so fast, her body twisted to keep up. A starry light show went off in front of her eyes as her cheekbone blossomed with fire.
“You won’t be laughing when my father kills your loverboy and chops him up into bits. The entire Darkworld will watch. We’ll be heroes in the Darkworld and everyone will know that I am the daughter who helped him do it. Me.”
Austin heard the truth in her voice. The girl wasn’t a criminal mastermind or a sociopath, she was a petulant child. “Let me guess, Daddy was too busy killin’ innocent people to love you? Or maybe he just loved the other children more?”
“Shut your mouth.” Emma’s next blow smashed her into the cave’s rock wall. With her head sagging forward and her body trembling, Austin closed her fist around—
“How stupid do you think I am, bitch?” A boot crushed her bad hand and then came more kicks. Blow after blow. Austin curled in on herself and prayed Zander would come.
Male voices rumbled. Lost in the pain, she barely registered being dragged further into the cave. Hands grabbed her. Fangs and claws slashed the air.
Zander would come. She knew that to the depths of her soul.
Zander’s beast had seized control by the time he spotted the cave mouth. A human didn’t have the vision to spot it, but there was no mistake. He tucked his wings in tight to his back, drew his Crystalline dagger and—
Footsteps approached.
The Shedim had to be running low on men after the battle at the docks, but evil attracted evil and where a job opening occurred, a never-ending supply of inductees would queue up to fill it. The last thing he wanted was to tip off the enemy that death was knocking.
Plan B. He ducked behind the wide trunk of an oak and disappeared into the shadows. He’d take care of the guards coming his way and go in quiet. Flattening a palm on the rough tree bark, he listened. He slowed his heart rate, regained control, focused on the task at hand. Tilting his head, he closed his eyes—two approached, a third not far behind.
He tightened his grip on his dagger and coiled to launch.
Brennus and Seth erupted into the clearing. His second in command came next. They nodded to him and Zander inclined his head toward the entrance.
Kyrian fell in and hand signaled. Danel’s bringing the truck for transport. Five minutes.
Four of them would have to do. Zander met their gazes and held up the count.
Three. Two. One. . .
The antechamber stank like a slaughterhouse in a heat-wave. His eyes watered as he approached the kill pile and panned all the way back around to the entrance. Austin wasn’t there. They continued further into the cave. Passing a carcass pile, he willed the energy snapping through his cells to settle the fuck down.
With his brothers tight on his ass, he headed into the lair at a run. The air crackled in the corridor, lanterns flaring into a steady stream of flame. Icy air shot through the cavern the moment he met her faint, glossy hazels.
Fucking bastards.
Stripped to the waist and bound by slit wrists, she hung from the cave ceiling like a felled deer. A scarlet stream ran down her bare arms and chest, her silky flesh marred by crescents of overlapping bite marks. A whispered moan strangled behind the gag tied in her mouth.
Zander roared, trembling with fury. His wings unfurled.
Shedim scuttled for weapons, their fear polluting the air.
Behind the red veil screening his vision he watched Austin’s stunning aura snuff out.
Kyrian heard the wail that escaped Zander’s throat and stepped out from behind his broad, winged back. The image from the cave would be forever seared into his brain. Oh, sweetheart, no. They’d fucking bled her. Deep gouges opened Austin’s wrists, her blood pooled black on the soil beneath her dangling toes.
Austin, their amazing Texas wildflower, was dead.
“Sumerian, I’m glad you could join us.” A tall, well-built, warrior stepped around Austin’s body. His yellow gaze reflected the lantern light and locked on Zander. With a cruel smirk curving his mouth, he leaned close to their cowgirl and dragged his tongue up her bloody ribs.
Everything went to shit from there.
Zander’s scream was so haunting and alien Kyrian spun to see what—Holy fuck. Zander’s eyes glowed white. Two beams of light shot from his sockets and lit the cave like Moonstones on steroids. His mark busted out the lumens too.
Shedim oozed from every direction. Game on.
He and Z met the wave and keyed up with hand-to-hand. Seth and Brennus covered their backs. Fast on their feet, quick and lethal with their daggers, the four of them carved and slashed their way through Shedim hunters. Close confines and many bodies meant no guns, no quick endings.
Not that it mattered. They were too late. No matter how fast they worked, it wouldn’t save Austin. Zander culled through the half-dozen Shedim who—by the stains on their faces and clothes—had feasted on his beloved. Normally, the Quickening stung like a son-of-a-bitch. When the dark essence seeped into his eyes, ears, and nostrils it hurt every goddamned time.
Tonight, he didn’t feel a thing.
Kyrian cursed, positioning himself in front of a big boy. The kid’s talent with a blade and the ego he threw out, meant he either had the biggest balls of them all or was the Shedim slayer’s second. “Fucking Shedim.”
“Fucking Watcher assassins,” the guy spit back.
And then it was all about fighting.
The soldier’s attack was like being slammed by the incredible Hulk. Again and again, the bastard pounded on his liver, while he tried to break the hold. Kyrian’s fist caught Hulk’s nose and blood sprayed the air with every follow-up punch. Despite having no way to see what was doing, the asshole kept coming.
The cave interior tilt-a-whirl meant he’d been turtled onto his back. The crack of his head to the dirt floor backed that one up. Fuck, this guy had skills. But he was all muscle and no finesse. Kyrian grappled until he hit the hilt of the guy’s backup blade sheathed at the small of his back.
Bingo. Welcome to stabbytown.
Kyrian knew he was getting somewhere when the guy’s grip grew sloppy. The pop of gunfire had him kicking out from under musclehead mountain and drawing his own gun. Where was the shooter? Shit, Zander was in a till-death-do-we-part with the Shedim mastermind and two minions. Z’s golden complexion gray with asphyxiation.
Three against one wasn’t fair.
Bolting over, he cracked the big shot’s skull with a rock and distracted the other two while Zander pinked up.
Everything happened at once. Another gunshot rang out. It clipped him in the shoulder and spun him. Brennus went down. Hulk swung a red-bladed short sword. Danel screamed. The Persian’s hand fell to the cave floor, his dagger still clenched in the severed fist.
The bullet spray that followed came from the mouth of the cave. “Devious, move.”
The voice had him gopher up from behind cover. It was her. Emma and the Hulk jumped through a Bolt hole in the outer chamber. The mouthy cage bitch from the club was working against them. What the fuck had they missed there?
With only the good guys moving, Kyrian raced to secure Danel’s arm. Cutting off the blood flow with a make-shift tourniquet, he cinched it as tight as he could. After wrapping the gory stump in his muscle shirt, the Persian was good to go.
But where?
Brennus perched on the Master Shedim, pinning the bastard to the floor as he bled from the side and thigh. Seth had his gun poised to the fucker’s head and was about to deliver a ‘Good night, John-boy’.
“No one kills the slayer but me.” The distortion in Zander’s voice had Kyrian pivoting. Z was bad—walking dead bad. “Get him the fuck out of my sight.”
Kyrian wrapped Danel’s severed hand and handed it to him. “Maybe the archangels can do something.” But he knew in his heart of hearts that was bullshit.
When the four vacated the slaughter zone, he moved and stacked the bodies. Beheading the oozing corpses was satisfying but didn’t touch the loss radiating from every cell in his body.
Brennus shot. Danel maimed. Austin dead.
This was their fault. They had dared to think themselves invincible. Dared to let a human into their world and into their hearts. They might as well have strung her up for their enemies themselves.
Death and destruction, blah, blah, blah. Fucking prophecy.
“Help me get her down,” Zander barked. His brother seemed to be coming back online. His eyes were blue again and his mark’s glow had dimmed.
Kyrian’s vision phased in and out as Zander wrapped his arms around Austin’s hips and braced her weight while he freed her blood-slicked hands.
Released from her chains, Z carried her from the cave and laid her on a patch of grass. Under the night sky, he unbuckled the gag, pulled his shirt over her head, and brushed her long, mahogany hair away from her neck. Words fell from his mouth, ancient prayers they’d learned from the Seraph as young men.
Austin didn’t stir. Her aura was gone.
Still, Zander rambled on.
Kyrian couldn’t bear to see her like that. He ripped his own shirt to strips and bound the gaping wounds on her wrists. She was ghost pale except for where she was blue. If the angel of resurrection wasn’t there already, he would be at any moment.
“Z, you’ll need to let Gabriel—”
Zander’s lips peeled back and his wings unfurled in a thunderous flap. He pulled Austin tight to his chest, his eyes flashing feral like he didn’t know him from a stranger on the street. “Stay away from us.”
Kyrian edged back, hands up.
“Be at ease Zandros,” Gabriel said, materializing over his shoulder. “Austin will be honored as your mate and well taken care of.”
“Un-fucking-believable. Now you honor her as my mate? Now that she’s dead? Fuck you. Give her back to me, Gabriel. Fix this.”
“Alas, I cannot. She is gone.”
Zander screamed and threw out his palm. Gabriel flew back, hit by some invisible blow. The cry peeling from Zander’s throat was like claws down hell’s chalkboard. How the hell did Z knock an archangel on his ass?
Gabriel handled the affront with a grace Kyrian never expected. He simply stood and brushed off his fancy white suit. The pity on the guy’s face made Kyrian want to cleave the archangel with his dagger. “Zandros, let me take her.”
Was the guy nuts? Kyrian got between them. “Bad idea, Angel. The man needs a goddamn minute with his woman.”
Zander glanced over, his eyes glowing. When he saw Kyrian had things covered, he curled himself over her and shook her shoulders. Her head lolled back and her hand slid to the grass with a delicate thunk.
Throwing his head back Zander sobbed and stared at the heavens. “Leave me with my dead.”
Tears stung Kyrian’s eyes as Gabriel cleared out. He wanted to do right by Zander, he did, but his boots were rooted to the earth. He couldn’t leave. There would be time for mourning in private, but right now, he needed to be near Zander.
Near them both.
“I still feel her, Kyrian.” Z eased onto the ground beside her, brushed her hair off her face and settled her into his arms. “So fragile. So delicate.”
Kyrian swiped at his cheeks. Human lives were so finite, their energy so easily discharged. He stared at the starry night above. How could he and Zander live immortal lives as half-humans while someone as precious as Austin died so young?
Zander’s mind fractured, his disjointed thoughts spinning in a thousand directions. Kyrian rambled on about immortals and humans and he could see his brother’s point. Humans and angels were a compilation of energy and soul, bone, and blood.
He pressed his lips to hers, warm to cold.
Stirring the energy around him, he grasped for something to hold on to. Austin’s energy, faint but still with them. How long would it be before Gabriel insisted on taking her spirit away?
Stay with me, darlin’.
He drew on every ounce of current his powers commanded. Energy was neither created nor destroyed. Maybe he could keep her within him. He focused harder and ignored when his skin heated. He carried the life force from every piece of shit Dark One he’d ever killed, why not his beloved. He pushed his limits, reaching, drawing her energy nearer. His insides lit like a bonfire in his intestines.
Bring it. Cold numbness blanketed his body and circulated in his blood. Holding Austin’s energy to him wouldn’t bring her back. Her body was weak, her blood didn’t have the strength—Zander stiffened. “Fuck me.”
Before he had time to think, he laid Austin down and unsheathed his Crystalline dagger. “Don’t you leave me, Austin. Don’t you fucking give up on me yet.”
“Zander? What’s doing?”
He fumbled with the seal, his hands quaking. “Raise her head and open her mouth.”
Kyrian dropped to his knees and followed the order.
Zander let the contents of his weapon drain down her throat. “If the difference between us and them is the Seraph blood running through our veins, maybe Seraph blood will give her enough strength to live.”
“Zander, Seraph blood kills our enemy. What if—”
“What if what?” he shouted. “She’s dead, Kyrian. How much worse can it get?”
Kyrian opened his mouth to argue, but nothing came out.
“This will work.” With new inspiration, Zander tweaked his powers as high as he could. He connected with the energy surrounding them. His body shimmied, organs, tissues—every cell vibrated. His essence split. He didn’t care. If he couldn’t give her his immortality maybe they’d both end up dead. He’d gladly join her. The bonded male in him refused to go back, refused to live without her, his wife—his Ishah.
One way or the other this was their happily ever after.
Either together and dead, or together and not.