I ride without purpose.

The wind whips down my back, knotting my hair into a mass of snarls I’ll be untangling for hours, but I can’t bring myself to care. My helmet’s somewhere back in the house, abandoned in the entryway, kicked aside and forgotten when I saw the rubble of the living room.

Usually I’m not this careless. Immortality for me isn’t quite the same beast as for the angels. I don’t age, and I’m immune to human sickness, but I can still be killed.

The odometer creeps upward as I tear through the wards, weaving in and out of traffic, ignoring the honking horns and yells of mortals trying to beat me at the road rage game.

Not tonight.

Two thousand years.

Two thousand years since the last time I saw him.

I shut down my mind, shoving those memories back into the impenetrable box they threaten to escape from. Opening up locked boxes didn’t go so well for Pandora, and while evil already coats the world without my assistance I don’t feel like revisiting that particular history lesson.

Instead I roll on the throttle a bit more and try to forget everything but the engine purring.

The city flies by in a blur of streetlamps and headlights. It’s full dark now, and I’ve long since left the tourist areas. The streets of the Lower 9^th Ward are mostly barren of other cars. I narrowly miss a pothole deep enough for its own zip code, and I feel my front tire wobble just a bit as the pebbles and broken pavement catch under my wheel.

I don’t know if a crash at 90 miles an hour would be enough to end me, but I’m not eager to test the theory tonight.

I slow down, the roar of the engine fading to a murmur as I slide to a stop in the middle of the overgrown street.

The floodwall looms in front of me, thirty feet of concrete and steel waiting as a silent sentry to hold back the next hurricane. A billion dollars worth of human persistence rose this marvel on the back of the failed levee while the bones of the Lower 9^th Ward still rot around us.

I always seem to end up here.

I cut the engine of my bike, the sudden quiet jarring. The water of the canals laps against the floodwalls, bringing with it the muddy brine of the Mississippi, the smells of decaying vegetation washed in from the bayous overpowering the hint of jasmine riding the breeze.

I always run to places like this, the harbors and waterfronts, the dirty forgotten piers that stink of dead fish and moldering dreams. The witch Elissa was birthed on the cliffs, high above the stench of the dye huts and the choking poverty that came with them, but the human girl Elissa?

She was born here.

The houses in New Orleans might not look the same as what I was raised in, but I see a thousand faces that could have been my family, barely eking out a living on crumbs.

And when all you have are crumbs, someone’s bound to go hungry.

Michael.

I choke down the sob that threatens to escape my throat.

Why is he here? Why now?

I heard all the rumors. He was in the thick of it down here, actually working side by side with Lucifer to stop Uriel, but once the dust settled he was back knocking on the Pearly Gates, leaving the rest of us to clean up after Heaven’s mistakes again.

Or so I thought.

I want the years to show on his face. I want the time that has passed to have left some kind of mark, some scar on his soul glowing like a beacon and reminding me that what we had wasn’t just something I dreamed up during a balmy summer night.

I loved him once. Loved him so much that for the first time in my life I’d been able to bury my past and ignore my future. I wasn’t the witch or the mistress.

I was Elissa. Just Elissa.

But I wasn’t enough.

And now Michael is here.

God’s battering ram is still wrapped up in the same appealing package, as though his almighty Father was just setting out a lure to lead the weak humans into ruin.

The robes are gone, traded in for worn jeans and a grey t-shirt. The hair that hung in the soft blond waves I spent nights tangling my fingers through is shorn close to his head, making his blue eyes even brighter, the deep indigo of the sea at dusk. Two thousand years, and I see his arms, see those thick muscles that could tear down city walls, and all I remember is the sensation of them coiled around me, holding me close enough that his scent still surrounds me, that clean ozone smell that always says angel.

I’ve always been immensely thankful that Caila’s infatuation with everything we humans create extends to expensive floral perfumes. The heady scents of jasmine and magnolia that waft around her make her appear even more like a debutante slumming it with a bad influence like me, but they’re just enough to hide that essence of Heaven that clings to every angel.

But Caila isn’t here to listen to my burdens and offer the best friend duty of hating my ex with a vitriol exceeding even mine, and for all that I’d been willing to share the dirty details of my mortal life with Grace, I can’t share this with the woman that Lucifer chose and fought for.

Not when I was the one left behind.

My foot brushes a broken chunk of pavement, and I crouch down and grab it. The jagged piece of asphalt and cement digs into my fingers, leaving dirty streaks across my palm, and I lob it against the floodwall with all my strength. It disintegrates into dust and pebbles on impact, and I drop to my knees next to my bike, the momentary pleasure of destruction fading as the realization that I have to go back sets in.

Caila’s still missing, trapped by someone with enough power to bind an angel and blind my spells. My feelings, my memories, twenty centuries of hating him. . . none of it matters as much as freeing her. Michael owes me this, and if I have to dredge up that buried pain for his help, I will.

Caila’s out there, and I might not be able to find her on my own, but a witch, the Devil, the Last, and an Archangel searching for her? Whoever took my friend doesn’t stand a chance.

The house is dark when I pull up, and I’m not surprised. I don’t doubt that Michael is lurking nearby, mentally scourging himself while he tries to figure out what to say to me, but he keeps himself well hidden.

I can’t blame him for wanting to delay the inevitable confrontation. After two thousand years, “How’ve you been?” falls pretty flat.

I push open the unlocked door and flick on a light. The rubble of our house is unchanged, and I wrinkle my nose in annoyance as I grab a broom and start sweeping up the worst of the damage, all the while scanning the house for any microscopic clue I might have missed.

Nothing. Broken glass and scorched furniture aside, whoever was here covered their tracks well.

For the sake of thoroughness, I enter Caila’s room. At every location, Caila feathers her nest immediately, trying on different aesthetics and discarding them just as easily. Things appeal to her so much that it makes me wonder what sort of drab, beige existence she must have lead in Heaven that causes her to be so utterly fascinated by the world of home décor.

A low platform bed made of artfully aged wood takes up half the room, the mattress covered by a fluffy comforter she dragged home a few weeks ago, all the while crowing over her love of “millennials and their pink.” A console table of sleek gold and glass looks out of place holding up a stack of thick leatherbound books older than this house. The small closet is no match for Caila’s attire so a large wardrobe hugs the back wall, the ornately decorated wood whitewashed into a pale cream.

At first glance the room is untouched, and I nearly flip off the light and leave, but something makes me pause and stare at the wardrobe a bit closer.

Something is off.

I squint, stepping into the room, and then it dawns on me. The wardrobe juts out from the wall an inch or so, making it look off-kilter in the flawless order of the room.

I curl my fingers in between the thick plywood backing and the wall and pull, gritting my teeth at the grating noise as it rubs along the floor.

Hidden behind the wardrobe is a circle painted in blood, the jagged zigzags in the center completing the sigil. I take a step closer, holding my hand over the surface and feel the same echo of power that choked me when I scryed for Caila.

I know this mark. I’ve used it more than once myself. Written in blood, it dampens the powers of any angel in its proximity. Caila would have still been stronger than a human, but the sudden weakness would have left her confused and off-balance, giving her attacker a serious advantage.

It also tells me something else, something far more important.

No angel, fallen or not, could use this sigil without weakening themselves as well.

Her attacker is human.

Blood leaves a trail.

Most magic isn’t picky. Blood is blood, and squeezing it from a willing or unwilling donor is the mystical equivalent of filing the serial number off a gun. If you bother doing it, there’s probably a reason you don’t want to be found.

But some spells are different. Magic isn’t just some passive force that can be harnessed and controlled like electricity. Knowing all the rules and pretty incantations might be enough to heal or kill or even amass a tidy fortune, but real power. . . ancient power demands a tribute. It demands blood and bone and just a bit of your soul.

I press my hand against the sigil, the drying blood still tacky under my palm, even hours later, and I fight back the urge to recoil at the blackness that washes over me when I make contact.

I’m no angel. I can’t read sins and souls with a glance or a touch. For all my abilities, the secret thoughts and hidden desires of those around me stay shuttered, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind.

It’s like being doused in oil, thick and black, and my lungs close up as some animal part of my brain tries to shield itself from breathing this darkness in. The deep burgundy soaking into the wall looks deceptively normal. . . deceptively human. And while this person might be human on paper anything resembling actual humanity is a ship that sailed long ago.

My burning lungs give up, and I breathe in and almost retch at the putrid smell that fills my nose. I grew up by the ocean long before the advent of indoor plumbing. I’m no stranger to odors that would make most modern humans shudder, but this. . . this is the cloying scent that hung in the air during the plague, the sickly sweet miasma of decomposition, a soul-deep putrescence that has seeped into her very blood.

Her.

I blink, trying ineffectually to clear the haze from my eyes, pushing back into the visions swirling around me even as every part of me cringes back. But I have to be sure.

There are many ways to immortality and none of them are pretty or easy. All of them leave scars, but that’s to be expected. If living forever was easy, no one would ever die.

I made choices and sacrifices for my long life that others might balk at, but nothing like this.

The owner of the blood has carved off chunks of herself in trade for her long life, feeding bits of her soul to whatever creatures wanted a taste until what’s left behind is black as tar. She’s human only on the barest of technicalities, and she has Caila.

My vision swims, and I try to claw my way past the pitch thick curtain veiling my eyes. Every sane part of me rebels against the evil touching me, but deep deep underneath it all, I hear a whisper sweet as poisoned honey beckoning me closer.

“You wanted this. You wished for this. You dreamed of watching Heaven burn. What is one more dead angel?”

My knees buckle and my hand slips off the wall, breaking contact just enough to throw me out of the vision. When my eyesight clears, I’m on my hands and knees next to Caila’s wardrobe, coughing and retching, trying not to throw up at what I saw, what I felt. My skin crawls. I feel filthy, like I touched something so vile, so deeply tainted that nothing can scour me clean again. I squint at my hands, trembling as they barely hold me up, and I’m almost surprised that they’re not coated in blacked blood.

Shakily, I get to my feet, grabbing the edge of the wardrobe to steady myself. I feel drunk, and not in a pleasant way. Everything spins in and out of focus, and the sickness in the pit of my stomach shows no signs of fading. I feel wrong, and I want to crawl into the shower and scrub myself down to my bones, even though I know nothing but time will ease this.

Caila’s bed beckons like a soft cloud of dusty pink and white, and it takes every ounce of resolve I can muster to put one foot in front of the other and stagger out the door. Every step gets a bit easier, and by the time I reach the front door, I can at least feign normalcy.

I don’t have much time. The tenuous link between Caila’s abductor and myself is already starting to unravel, thread after thread snapping as my body purges itself from her twisted magic. If I’m going to find her, I need to follow the bond before it breaks entirely because I can’t go back in there.

If we stay in this house, I’ll rip out that wall before I touch that blood again.

I climb onto my bike, and I bite back a laugh as I send out a silent prayer to whatever might be listening that I don’t crash before I find Caila.

If seeing Michael drove me to reckless riding earlier, what I just witnessed increases that tenfold. Heedless, I barrel through the streets, cutting in and out of traffic, blowing through red lights, and narrowly missing a stretch Hummer double-parked outside a club.

My focus is pinpoint tight, following the tug of magic, and I know I’m more than likely sprinting headlong into a trap. None of that matters though. Nothing matters but finding Caila.

I slam on the rear brake, gripping the handlebars tightly as my rear wheel fishtails out before sliding to a stop. I blink, true awareness coming back to me for the first time since I touched that wall.

The last tenuous link that drew me here snaps, and I let go of a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach hasn’t entirely disappeared, but with every exhale the sensation of being unclean fades a bit more.

Looming in front of me is no dilapidated Victorian, no Stephen King dream that might as well advertise “creepy things inside” with a neon sign. And we’re a long way from my side of town where the long, low houses give way to decaying warehouses and abandoned storefronts.

Instead a stately mansion rises up from behind a ten-foot high iron fence. Thick columns support the porch, connected by an ornate iron railing, the whorls and twists of the metal tangled with jasmine creeping up the side of the house. Two large crepe myrtle trees flank the pathway to the front door, the branches so heavy with deep pink flowers that the tree looks like it’s burning in the dim light.

It looks like every other impeccably manicured mansion on this street. To anyone else it would look like another bed and breakfast catering to the tourists that have outgrown Bourbon Street or a monument to old money and antebellum decadence.

The heady scent of jasmine is thick in the air, and it reminds me of the delicate bouquets the wealthy waved beneath their noses during the black plague. But a perfumed corpse is still a corpse and this house with its pampered flowerbeds and neatly trimmed lawn stinks of corruption to anyone with perception.

Layer upon layer of wards and spells surround the house. Spells to hide its location from angels and demons alike, spells to weaken any unlucky enough to cross the threshold, spells to sound an alert when an unwelcome visitor treads on the doorstep – they wind and tangle together, part of one sigil forming another and another, encircling every square inch inside the fence with an impenetrable snarl of dark magic.

This is bad.

This is so fucking bad.

“Elissa.”

I tense. It shows just how off balance I am that I didn’t even register Michael’s presence until he spoke. I know I need all the backup I can muster to even consider breaking Caila out of this mystical prison, but I feel the remnants of the toxic magic still flowing through my veins, loosening the tightly reined anger I spend so much effort containing.

I turn on Michael, and at the first sight of him my traitorous, weak heart threatens to soften. Two thousand years and everything about him is different, but he’s still so beautiful, and I nearly falter as it all rushes back to me. The centuries of missing my hands in the blond locks of hair, the soft linen of his robes against my bare skin, the taste of honeyed wine on his lush lips.

The strong line of his back as he walked away.

“He left you. You weren’t enough. You were never enough.”

I want to blame that whisper on the spell, on some scrap of dark magic still clinging to my soul, but I know those words are nothing but my own insecurities and regrets.

It always was so much easier to be angry than hurt.

“Why are you here?” My voice is even. Cold. I lift my chin, staring upward at those sad eyes. Michael flinches ever so slightly at my tone, and I almost smile at his discomfort.

Good.

“I was sent here.”

I exhale, the noise somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “I don’t know why I expected anything else,” I mutter. Another mission. Of course. What else would bring him back?

He opens his mouth to speak, but I cut him off with a raised hand. His mouth snaps closed so quickly it’s almost comical.

God’s most fearless warrior indeed.

Being this close to Michael throws me back to so many years ago, and I want to wipe that sad puppy look off his face. I want to hate him, and the look of contrition he wears like a shroud makes it difficult.

“Centuries,” I spit, “It’s been centuries, Michael, and you end up here. Now.” I brush against the fence and anger spikes through me like a shot of adrenaline, blotting out everything but the red haze that crests in my soul as I stare at Michael. “I have more important things than you to concern myself with right now.”

“Elissa, just let me explain. Please.” Michael’s hand brushes my arm, and the contact jolts us both. Michael’s hands close around my shoulders and he yanks me away from the fence. The contact breaking is like a bucket of icy water splashing over my head, immediately quelling the rage that smolders like the beginnings of a wildfire.

Michael staggers, leaning heavily against me. “The fence,” he murmurs. He cranes his neck to look over my shoulder, and his eyes widen as he sees the spells and wards covering the grounds. He takes a step backward, keeping a good foot between us and the fence.

I don’t know how I missed it before. What wraps around the fence isn’t a spell. It’s a trapped soul, blackened and evil, bottled inside warded iron until just a touch is enough to corrupt.

Michael sways on his feet, and I know the dark magic surrounding us is sapping his strength.

I almost don’t hear it. If it had been daytime and the endless klaxon of traffic and voices was flowing around us in a tide of unceasing human noise, I would have missed it. But tonight the streets are silent and the quiet ping as a crossbow fires reaches my ears, and I react with milliseconds to spare, shoving Michael to the left.

I’m still not fast enough. The bolt barely misses his heart, burying itself deep into his chest, and Michael drops like a stone.

If he’d been human, tearing the bolt from his body would do nothing but make him bleed out faster, but I don’t have to touch the bolt to know it was forged in Hell. Every second it touches him, it does more damage.

I grip the end of the bolt, the black metal slippery with blood, and yank it out. Michael moans, a low, animal sound of pain that I can’t reconcile with the warrior I knew.

I glance over at the house, expecting another projectile to fly out any moment. Buried somewhere in the briar patch of magic is the same ward on the wall of my house. Maybe more than one. I need distance for Michael to heal.

I hook my arm under Michael’s shoulder and drag him to his feet. He’s barely more than dead weight, and I certainly can’t balance him on the gas tank of my motorcycle like a prized buck.

I drag him across the street, all the while bracing myself for an attack that doesn’t come, the walk of a few short feet taking an agonizingly long time as every cracking branch when the breeze shifts becomes another assault.

Across the street is another mansion, the windows black and silent as the residents rest in the easy sleep of the unaware. I wonder if sharing a street with a murderous witch has any effect on property values.

Luck is on my side for once. A sedate grey sedan sits in front of the house, the automotive equivalent of elevator music, but right now it’s a chariot from the gods because the door to the backseat is unlocked.

Thank goodness for careless rich people.

I maneuver two hundred and fifty pounds of barely conscious angel into the backseat, thankful I don’t have to waste time and risk drawing more attention to myself by breaking a window. Michael slumps down, leaving a red smear on the cream leather.

The wound isn’t healing. Even with a Hell forged blade, the wound should already be starting to knit itself back together. I wrap my hand around his face, cupping his jaw, and forcing his head up. “Michael. Michael, look at me,” I demand, trying to keep my voice steady. He peels his eyes open slowly, squinting as he tries to focus on me.

“Elissa? What?” His brow furrows, and the confusion in his blue eyes is terrifying. Archangels are resolute, as powerful as the seasons, as unyielding as the tides. They don’t stare up at you and ask in a small, slurred voice, “Are we at home?”

I let go of him, easing him back against the seat, and buckle the seatbelt across his chest, telling myself that it’s just adrenaline making my hands shake.

I straighten up and slam the back door before climbing in the front seat, ripping open the front panel and digging through the wires for the two I need. A moment later, the engine is rumbling as I peel down the street.

Home. Even delirious and half-conscious, I know he’s thinking of the villa, and I let the memory of waves crashing against the cliffs and seabirds shrieking in the wind drown out the pained gasps coming from the backseat each time the tires jolt over uneven pavement.

The only place that was ever truly mine, and Michael is calling it home.

It’s just the pain talking.

He doesn’t know what he’s saying.

It’s been too long, and there’s far too much history between us.

I glance back in the mirror and watch him breathe, and I push the gas pedal harder.