Chapter Seventeen
… I’m here… Angel love….
Angel came awake with a start. Again. It marked the hundredth time that night.
She lay breathless a moment, trying to remember the words that had just moved through her mind, but they were muffled and faded and eluded her grasp.
So she stayed on her back and allowed her eyes to adjust until she could make out the shape of the exposed piping on the loft ceiling above her. Her apartment building had once been a cannery. And her room was on the third floor, where the meat used to be. The holes where chains for meat hooks once hung were still there. For some reason, she always searched for them, even though they made her feel eel-like and wriggly inside.
Eventually she rolled over onto her side and closed her eyes in that familiar but useless attempt to slide back into sleep. But a general and strong feeling of unease had by now settled fully over her, and this time it was too much.
She finally kicked impatiently at her covers, trying to get them to straighten back out around her feet. But that only pulled them down around her elbows so her shoulders were too cold. She lifted the sheet and quilt, eyed them maliciously in the dark, and noticed they were rotated ninety degrees. That tended to happen with the amount of wrestling she was doing in her bed.
With a cry of frustration, she tore them both completely off the bed and let them crumple into a white pile on the floor. Then she sat up. Her hair feathered all around her face, and her heart hammered in her chest.
Suddenly flashes of her dreams played in the darkness. The white wolf. The trees. The moon. The crow.
Most of all, she saw light green eyes that branded her as they penetrated her mind. She shivered violently, trying to shake their hold over her, but failed. She was well and truly haunted.
Angel gritted her teeth in frustration. “Stupid covers,” she mumbled, kicking her legs over the side of the bed to stand. “Stupid dreams!”
Dressed only in underwear and a white tank, she made her way out of her bedroom and down the hall, running an exasperated hand through her long dark hair. It tangled around her fingers toward the ends, and she swore again as she yanked her hand free. Her hair was too long; she needed a trim. She was already starting to get it caught in things like hoodie zippers and her Jeep door. But she’d been so busy.
Angel stopped in front of the fridge, opened the door, and then froze, shutting her eyes tight and muttering another curse. Speaking of Jeeps, she’d left her Jeep at the gym! Gabriel had dropped her off at her apartment after their drinks at the Gasoline, and now she was without transportation!
She needed her Jeep!
“Damn!” she hissed vehemently.
Tomorrow was supposed to have been her day off, hence her decision to have drinks with Gabriel. She would never have agreed had she known she would be called in to work. Angel made a sound of exasperation that ended in a kind of groan. She ran a hand over her face and the refrigerator light illuminated her world.
“I’m so tired.” It was a sigh and a moan and a whisper. It was also very true. Gabriel had hit the nail on the head.
She and the other four wardens charged with tracking Vicium Mehemii had worked two weeks of eighteen to twenty-hour days to find him. They’d used every resource available, and the damn job had been draining in every possible way for Angel. They’d only finished a few days ago.
Once it was closed, Angel caught up on training sessions with new recruits and trainees because the kids relied on her. She never talked about it or brought it up; she didn’t want to seem conceited. But she naturally enjoyed teaching, and she was good at it. Trainees never failed to score better on warden tests when she’d been the one to teach them.
Gabriel hadn’t been happy about her returning to work so quickly, but when one of the younger children ran up to hug her right in front of him, he’d acquiesced with a small but sincere smile.
She’d also had to join her friends for Cass’s birthday. Though she loved them dearly, she had to admit it took more of Angel’s time and energy. Especially when he’d shown up at the coffee shop…. The man who was frankly driving her to distraction. Seriously, what were the chances that Jacob Crow would walk into that same café while she was there?
Then there was that Terror job. She had the bruises and sore muscles to show for that one.
Angel pinched the bridge of her nose as pain shot from the base of her skull, through her head, and threatened her right eye. Great. A migraine. The beer probably had something to do with that.
Then there were the dreams. They were strange, dismantled, and disturbing. Actually, they weren’t dreams. It was one recurring dream. It came to her every night, and it was always the same. She saw a white wolf watching her from the shelter of tall trees and shadows. Then she heard the distinctive rumble of a cruiser motorcycle. And then she saw the crow. It took wing as she watched, alighting against the full moon with spread wings, blue-black and magnificent.
And last came the eyes. Always those eyes. His eyes.
Light green irises, vivid and stark against the tanned skin of his face, pierced her spirit and pinned her to helplessness like an insect on a collector’s board. She was immobile in that gaze. She couldn’t run away. She couldn’t flee.
Her heart would begin to race and she would become frantic. She would try to move over and over as the sound of the bike drew closer. And closer. When she knew it was right there, and she could no longer hide, she would wake up sweating and tangled and exhausted.
So for her day off, she had planned to sleep, take an extra long hot shower, work out a little, and sleep some more. But that was thrown to the wind when D’Angelo had called Gabriel with that special job. Apparently the sovereigns were pleased with her performance with the Victor Maze assignment and wanted her on this new case. Now she had to be back at the safe house later this morning.
Angel looked up at the clock on the microwave, squinting when her migraine blurred the numbers. She was hoping the time would tell her she could take some medicine and crash a good four or five more hours. But it didn’t. Time hated her.
“Crap.”
The sun was going to be up any second now. She sighed. She needed to get ready. And she would have to take an Uber to work. She hated taking an Uber, she didn’t care what people told her about wasting gas. She recycled and reused; driving was her freedom. It was her control over her own life and she needed it.
Now she didn’t have it. What’s more, she had to face Gabriel again after what had turned out to be a somewhat trying night together at the club. Angel sighed, leaning her head on her arm against the fridge. Her forehead burned the skin on her arm. She closed her eyes. She really didn’t want to meet up with Gabe again just yet.
She was pretty pissed at the sovereigns for requesting her on this case. Yes, it showed they respected her. But did they not know humans needed sleep? Had they been inhuman for so long they’d forgotten what it felt like to be exhausted?
She shivered again. This one was stronger than the last, and felt like a flu chill. “Ugh,” she muttered. “I don’t feel good.” It was just after four in the morning, and her skin was covered in goosebumps. Her mouth was dry, her head hurt, and she was stuck between being hungry and being too anxious, nauseated, and tired to eat.
The beeping inside the fridge alerted her to the still-open door. The sound brought Angel back to herself and into the moment. She swore in absolute misery at last, slamming the door shut so hard the fridge shook.
“A shower. That’s what I need.” A long, hot shower would help.
Darkness engulfed her in the sudden absence of the fridge light.
And piercing green eyes sought her out in that darkness. She felt like a deer in headlights; they would hypnotize her, she was sure. Then they would strip her down to her soul.
She gritted her teeth. “Maybe a long, cold shower.”
Thirty minutes later, she finally stepped out of the shower and into a fog-filled bathroom. She loved it when it was like this, cocooning and secretive. She loved fog in general, actually, which was why she’d chosen to live in San Francisco. Plus it made it easier for work. Many supernaturals lived in the Pacific Northwest. The Redwood Forest was where one of Roman D’Angelo’s safe houses was located. It was where she’d met up with the other clan members and the sovereigns for the Victor Maze case.
Angel dried off, brushed her teeth, and gargled with mouthwash, then hung her towel on the hook and shook out her hair. She didn’t feel like blow-drying it. She felt like letting the wind dry it for her.
She smiled to herself as she dressed in her regular outfit of jeans, tee-shirt, boots, and jacket and made sure her weapon was loaded before she holstered it at her back. Then she grabbed her phone and ordered an Uber.
The Uber driver dropped her off in the parking lot of the Gasoline bar. Her Jeep was still here. Thank goodness for that at least.
The dark army green 2005 Special Edition “Willys Project” was a treasure to her, despite its simplicity. She especially loved the army white star on its hood. The Jeep was a six-speed standard and had no electronic locks, no automatic windows, nothing but the basics. It was what she considered to be the automobile’s equivalent to the motorcycle’s hooligan: built rudimentary but strong, ideal for what it was made for.
Angel checked it over for damage or hiding creeps, then unlocked the door and got behind the wheel. The smell of leather engulfed her, making her feel safe and warm. She inhaled deeply. Originally, the Jeep had come with cloth seats, camouflage and black to match the “army” feel of the vehicle. But as a warden, she knew she would have to change that at once. All too often, her kind tended to climb into their vehicles covered in blood. Cloth seats wouldn’t clean easily. And leather reminded her of –
“Damn it,” she hissed, closing her eyes and shaking her head. Her eyes stung.
If it wasn’t a biker bad boy here in the present, it was one from her past who haunted her. Men on motorcycles wouldn’t leave her sanity alone, it seemed.
Angel leaned over and rolled down the passenger-side window, then rolled down her own. She turned the key in the ignition and chose a song from the thumb drive lodged in the stereo. That, too, had been switched out in place of the original.
She took a moment to let the guitar riffs roll over her, smiled when the drums kicked in, and pulled out of the lot. As she stepped on the gas, the wind hit her the way it used to on her own bike, long ago, in another lifetime.