by Nina Levine
So yeah, if he knew Uriel was in the city, he’d be more than interested in setting a trap.
Sera slipped from the bed, trying to find her dress.
Ruined.
Well, fuck.
She hauled the skirt of it on, hoping the zip held and slipped inside his wardrobe, breathing in the scent of fine suits and silk shirts. Tugging a shirt from its hanger, she slid it over her arms. The scent of him was already on her skin, his teeth imprinted in her flesh. Her heart skipped a beat. To wear his clothes felt like she was drowning in him.
She’d keep it though.
Maybe, after this was all said and done, she’d be able to lift his shirt to her face and smell that scent and think of… maybe.
The buzz was back. “Holy shit. Okay, yeah. I think you’re right. Someone else made a play for the gallery last night. There’s glass everywhere. Blood. One of the newly-made vampires, by the look of it.”
So she was right. Someone else was trying to get the shard.
“Where’s Azazel?”
“Um, let’s just say he won’t be a bother for the moment. You’ve got time to get out.”
“Tay. Give it.”
Tay dumped the entire cam feed in her head.
Blood. Screaming. A knife, trailing down the vamp’s face as Azazel grabbed his chin in his gloved hand and leaned close to whisper something to him.
And then the vision was gone.
Sera slowly released her breath. She knew what he’d become. He’d been a warrior once, honed to war. Endless violence between Lucifer’s agents and the angel host had turned his heart—or what had ever existed of it—to stone.
Clearly, the Fall had done the rest of the damage.
Or maybe that had been her betrayal.
Because there was nothing left of the angel she’d once loved.
Nothing? She was suddenly back in bed, with his lips skimming over her breasts and his dark eyes locked on her as if he could see right through her. There’d been a moment where he’d looked at her, and she saw the angel she’d loved.
Her treacherous heart wanted to defend him. He was there, he was still there. Or parts of him, anyway.
Sera forced herself to take that recalcitrant organ in hand. Even if there’s still a piece of that angel left, he’ll never share it with you. Not after this.
“Earth to Sera?”
She shook the doubts away, buttoning his shirt down her front. “Have you got an escape route for me yet?”
“I’ve got something better.” Tay’s voice vibrated with even more enthusiasm than normal. “Sera. I just found some hidden schematics. There’s a secret room, right on the other side of the wall in front of you. And it’s as big as the gallery.”
A secret room.
Located right in the heart of the club.
It would be layered in so many wards it would feel like wearing cobwebs over her skin if she entered. Azazel was distracted, but he’d feel it. She knew he would.
Sera found her shoes and tugged her skirt down. She was as bare as a newborn beneath it, but her panties had vanished sometime between his desk and the bed. A quick scan located a Glock in the side table. Magazine fully loaded.
“You got a way out, yet?” she asked.
“It’s risky.”
“We always knew that. Set up the car. Get the others into position.” She took a deep breath as Tay dumped the new schematics, including her escape route, into her head. Great. Right out of a window on the top floor. “And then give me five before you kick off the Big Palooza.”
Getting into the secret vault was harder than the gallery had been.
The lock on the vault was first grade, and blowing it would only bring the entire house down on her head. He’d thought of everything.
In the end, it was Tay who came up with the answer.
“I think I can get us through the retinal scanner,” the little witch said. Her words were coming thick and fast now, as if she was dialed in so deep into the internal hardware of the building that she was mentally miles away.
“How?”
“Think back. You were looking intp his eyes at one stage, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Then gimme. I need to tweak the computer’s recognition sequence so that yours matches, but to do that, I need his eyes to work with.”
Tay was asking for her heart, her soul. There was no one else she’d trust with that, but still….
Sera closed her eyes and plunged herself deep. She could see him again, pinning her to the bed, fucking her with hard, sharp thrusts…. It had been the one time he’d had her on her back, and he’d kept his fist in her hair, his face buried in her throat for all but one moment….
She’d captured his face in her hands, desperate to connect on some level. Desperate to see if he was still him.
Their eyes met.
“That’s it. Freezeframe.”
Sera drowned in those eyes. She fell into them, and it was like that moment she’d stood on the edge of Heaven as he reached a hand toward her and asked her to jump. For a moment she’d seen his soul.
“Please,” he’d said. “I love you. I want to be free to love you. And this entire fucking war is going to be our downfall.”
Yeah. Memories. Good times.
“You done yet?” Sera didn’t think she could hold it much longer.
“Done.”
The image dissolved.
“Sera, you want to talk about it?” Sympathy flooded through her. “I’m getting an enormous read of emotional energy from you right now.”
“No. I don’t want to talk.” She cut the image. There was a single tear sliding down her cheek. “Old boyfriend, okay? Bad breakup.”
Silence blossomed as Tay chewed on that. “Okay. We’re going to go out dancing when you get back. Tequila is on me. You want to spill, then you can spill. But I’m about to upload your eye scan and override his. You ready?”
Sera took a steady breath.
The shard was all that mattered.
Preventing a new war was all that mattered.
“Ready.”
“Let’s blow the vault then.”
Get in. Get the shard. Get out.
She had a minute, at best, before he came for her.
Sera blew through the vault doors, the Glock up and covering the room just in case there was another nasty surprise coming at her.
“Let there be light.” Tay laughed a little maniacally in her head. Lights flickered through the vault. “Okay, he’s aware. He just looked up and froze. Move, Sera. I’m going to create a little mayhem downstairs.”
There were no glass cases here, but the treasures were intense.
A sword, suspended on an elegant display stand. A set of wings, nailed to the wall. Jewels beyond compare.
“Ooh, hello. Someone’s just realized I’m in the mainframe.” Tay laughed her ass off. “Too late, bitch boy. I own your ass. Pew. Pew. Kicking firewalls down like I’m Godzilla….”
“You’re having way too much fun with this!”
Music throbbed from down below. Sera caught just a hint of the little witch’s intensions—sprinklers deployed, music raging, lights cut. There were sparks everywhere as the water got into the electrics.
“Just call me DJ Tay!”
Sera ignored it all, opening her senses up.
Power hummed through her veins. There. Right at the back. Sera ran toward it. She could feel the vibration of that power through her skin even from here, like something radioactive. It had to be the shard. She’d prostrated herself in Michael’s presence, barely able to lift her head to look at him. She could feel the same radiance now.
“There it is!”
There was a single glass case back here, warded nine ways to Hell. But the wards were inverted—meant to try and contain the raw power inside the case. A shattered length of steel lay flat on a nap of black velvet. Golden angelmarks imprinted the steel. Glory. Power. Strength. Truth.
“Heaven’s glory,” she whis
pered. “This is it. This is a piece of Michael’s sword. It’s real.”
“Sera, I’ve lost him! He just fucking vanished. You need to get out now.”
But something else had caught her eye.
Right beside the glass case was another broken sword, set onto a little altar as if it were precious. It was just the hilt, and the first two inches of a shattered angel blade, but she could feel the hum coming off it as if it recognized her.
Sera froze.
Her own blade, broken in that last storming of Heaven.
She’d lost it in the melee, and when she’d been torn from Heaven, she hadn’t been able to find it on earth. Her heart began rabbiting in her chest so fast, she felt like Tay was mainlining sugar directly into her.
It was right there.
Her blade.
Her angel blade.
Why the hell had he kept it? How had he found it?
Had he… had he come for her that day in Heaven, when Lucifer’s forces breached the city? Had he been looking for her? Had he desired revenge?
She looked at her blade, nestled so carefully in it’s display. Pride of place. Even the shard was shunted off to the side as if it were of the lesser importance.
“It all starts to make sense,” said a dangerous voice behind her. “How desperate you were to have me.”
Sera’s heart kicked into her throat and she spun around.
Damn it. She’d hesitated. She’d let herself get distracted, and now she was caught.
Azazel stood in the doorway, one arm resting against the frame as he watched her with those merciless eyes.
There was no sign of the angel she’d loved now. No sign of the demon who’d branded himself on her skin last night. Not even a hint of the softness that he’d shown her. Blood dripped from his gloved fingers.
“Sera?” Tay whispered.
“Get out,” she told her friend. “Get out, right now.”
Because if he sought to crush her mind, then he’d take Tay with her.
7
“Who’s your master?” Azazel looked down, and began tugging his gloves off, one finger at a time. “I couldn’t get it out of your little friend downstairs, not before his brain melted out of his ears, but I’ll have the truth out of you. Don’t doubt me.”
He wasn’t even making a move toward her, so certain in his victory.
“We weren’t working together.”
“How’d you know he existed then? Tsk, tsk, sloppy of you, little angel.”
Sera licked her lips. “I’ve got a technowitch inside my head. She’s… she was pulling info for me.”
Dark eyes flickered up. “Ah.” A dangerous smile. “Even more interesting. But that doesn’t answer my question.”
“You don’t have to do this,” she blurted, inching back against the wall as he started toward her.
At every step, the lights in his section cut out. It looked like a wall of shadow at his back, like black wings flaring behind him. His eyes were darkening, shadows stealing through his irises.
Gone.
Her lover was gone, and now she was face-to-face with the ruling Prince of Ruin.
“But I want to do this,” he whispered. “You see…. The thing I despise most is betrayal.”
Sera ground her teeth together. “Because of her.”
His expression turned hard. “Don’t mention her. Last night is done. I’m trying not to be violent.”
Maybe she needed to push at him a little. Maybe she needed to break through the hard wall he had locked himself behind. Maybe she needed to confront the fucking monster in the room between them. “Did you ever think that maybe you betrayed her first?”
He froze. “What did you just say?”
“You said she loved you. You said she ruined you. But what did you do to her? What did it cost her?”
His lip curled. “That bitch crawled back to her master, Uriel, and betrayed all the plans I was making for us. She cast me at the feet of a merciless monster—”
“Maybe she was trying to save you.” The words came in a shout. “What you wanted was reckless!”
Azazel’s stare locked on her.
There was a certain amount of incredulousness in his face. A slowly dawning sense of horror.
“No,” he whispered. “She died.” There was no emotion on his face—as if he’d just slammed the door shut between himself and his feelings. Something ugly swam through the depths of his eyes—a rage so deep and violent it threatened to consume him. “You think this is a fucking game? Who owns you?”
“No one!”
“Someone fed you those lines.” He stalked toward her. “Someone planted such pretty poison in your head. You want to play, then let’s fucking play.”
Sera took another step back, but there was nowhere to go. Only her hip nudging against that stone altar, rocking the wooden display that held her sword. “I don’t want to have to hurt you. I’ve never wanted to hurt you. I don’t want to play these games. I don’t want to.”
“That’s not what you were saying last night in my bed.”
“So you’re going to throw me in your dungeons and torture the truth out of me?” Her hand was groping, groping, for something to use as a weapon.
His eyes lit up. “No, my lying little angel. Maybe you’ll be in chains, but you won’t be in my dungeon. Maybe it will be torture. Maybe it’ll be punishment. Maybe you’ll beg me for mercy—there’s more than one way to win the truth from someone—but you will break. You will give me the answers I need.” His eyes narrowed. “Now get on your knees and beg.”
There was no way out.
Not past him.
There was no way to convince him she wasn’t here to hurt him. He’d never trust her. He’d never believe her.
“I just wanted to stop a war,” she whispered, “and if I let you keep the shard, then thousands will die.”
“You’re so fucking compassionate,” he mocked. “But you’re just the tool. Give me the one who wields it, and maybe I’ll be a little kind in return.”
He wouldn’t be kind.
She would see it in his eyes.
And maybe there was some part of her that wanted his brutal touch. Maybe a little part of her felt like she deserved it.
But she didn’t want to shatter the memories she had of him.
If he got his hands on her, she would beg, and she would break, and maybe she’d even enjoy it, but it wouldn’t put the shattered remnants of her heart back together.
“I loved you,” she said, as she reached for the hilt of her shattered angel blade. “I want you to know that. Know my truth. See it, if you won’t fucking believe it from my lips.”
Please, please let this work….
An angel blade was forged for one hand and one hand only.
You could break them, but given enough juice, they could be reforged.
Her hand curled around the hilt.
Truth. Hope. Love. They’d been the sigils she’d insisted were etched into the blade. Every angel marked their own blade, to remind them of the mission they’d sworn. Sera forced the tiny little bit of Grace she had left to surge within her.
Truth.
Hope.
Love.
Please….
The blade ignited. White-hot flames licked off the steel, forming into an enormous fiery sword. A small detonation of force exploded outward, blowing out all the glass in the room and sending Azazel sprawling. The walls rumbled. Scorch marks blackened the floor.
And Sera gasped as she whipped her angel blade forward, holding him at bay.
Maybe there was some bit of hope left, after all.
Azazel stared up at her from the floor as part of the door fell on him. “Sariel?”
It was a whisper.
It was a prayer.
It was horror, and anger, and grief, and love, all bound together in one wretched word.
She reached for the shard, feeling the hum of its power envelope her as her fingers curled around it. “You saved
my life once. Now it’s my turn to repay the favor. Raphael is coming for this, but I won’t let him take it from you. Let the arch’s duke it out.” Her lips twisted in a wry smile as she repeated his long-ago words, “They’ll only crush us beneath them.”
And then she leaped over his prone body, and vanished into his bedroom.
8
Sera made the window.
Throwing herself through the glass—she had a demon hot on her heels—she somersaulted in the air and landed in a squat in the alley. Her left heel broke, spilling her onto her knees, but she was still riding high on the power of Grace.
Her muscles flexed, and she lunged into a sprint, pushing off the pads of her toes.
Nothing could stop her now.
She was power and glory and speed, a whip of light moving through a darkened night.
“Tay!”
A car screamed out of nowhere, and Sera lowered the blade as Tay’s wide eyes flashed behind the window. “Get in!” the technowitch screamed, as the back door of the car flung wide open.
Sera wasted no time. She threw herself in the car and yanked the door shut behind her. “Drive!”
Her heart was still hammering. A mixture of adrenaline and shock. Power thrummed through her, but it was no match for the kick of her heart every time she pictured his face when she’d picked up the sword.
I wanted you to see me.
I wanted you to know it was me.
She’d hoped to bury all those long-ago feelings. It had been time to look him in the eye, confront the past and let it die.
She’d wanted this crushing sensation in her chest to wither.
Instead, it felt like she’d struck a match and tossed it into gasoline.
“What happened?” Tay threw over her shoulder as Rodrigo kicked the car into reverse. “Have you got a fucking lightsaber in your hand?”
You need to haul yourself together. They hadn’t escaped, not yet. She had the shard. And Azazel would never let it go so easily. “Long story.”
She absorbed the power in the blade, and it died down, leaving just a hilt in her hand.
“Is he dead?” Tay’s eyes were boggling out of her head.