“Well…” March smirked. “The trope originated somewhere. It’s a perk of my kind.”
“You’re telling me that Florence Nightingale was a fallen?” That I did not believe for a moment, so I gave him a dry stare.
“No,” he admitted. “But she was a celestial. I don’t know how she snuck out of The Golden City to do what she did, but she did get recalled rapidly once she got caught.” He gave me a cheeky wink. “To answer for her actions.”
“Oh, come on.” I shook my head with a chuckle. There wasn’t a way for me to disprove what he’d told me, but there was no reason for him to make it up either. The truth was my ankle was healed and that happened after March and I had been intimate.
“You know what that means, right?” March asked.
“That sex with you is literally magical?” I grinned in return.
He gave a quiet huff of amusement as he picked up my hand. “It means I care about you.” His eyes locked with mine as he brought my hand to his lips.
The smile that came to my face had nothing to do with amusement this time. I knew what he was saying, and yet I found myself asking the obvious.
“Really?” I asked, excitement instead of panic filling my chest.
March chuckled again with his lips against the back of my hand. He kept hold of it and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“Yes, really.” He seemed frozen, as if he were afraid of how I would react. “Is that okay?”
I felt my smile light up my face as I touched my hand to his cheek.
“Yes, it’s fine,” I said. My voice contained a happy chuckle, then I leaned in to kiss him.
It was a gentle touch of our lips, and I could feel the difference in it from those that we exchanged when we were physical. This kiss held more of our emotions rather than an attempt to trigger desire. If I had been asked, theoretically, if a creature like a fallen angel was capable of a delicate emotion like love, I would have said no, based on what little I knew of the mythology.
Apparently, I would have been wrong.
I liked being wrong.
March broke the kiss first, but only so he could look into my eyes with a soft smile on his face. I knew how fierce his expressions could be. His actions could match them. I had seen him kill without mercy or hesitation. All of that was impressive, confident, and independent, which I respected since I valued those qualities in myself. But, it was this tenderness that he showed me that earned him back my loyalty along with my trust. I didn’t need to know that it was his emotions that healed my ankle to know that he cared. I saw it now in his eyes and in his smile. I hoped it never went away.
But the moment passed because it had to. Time continued to be against us, so March cleared his throat then looked back to the laptop.
“Show me how to pick through all these things, and we’ll place an order.”
“Sure,” I said. My voice was thick with my own emotions. I had to swallow hard to help get my focus back. “I don’t know how to tell who is real and who isn’t.”
I ticked off filters to help narrow down our search. Handmade and ready to ship brought our results down to hundreds instead of thousands. It was still a lot, but there wasn’t an option for real thing.
“I’ll know,” he said. “There will be keywords or symbols that will identify them.” I looked at him with my brows lifted. He smiled at me. “Some things never change. I may not know anyone currently working, but that’s because I didn’t need to. That doesn’t mean they don’t connect with each other. After the inquisitions they created a network with a covert way of communicating. I don’t see why that would have changed.”
I was skeptical, but it wasn’t as if I could dispute what he said. “You’ll have to tell me when you see something.” I shook my head.
“Maybe you could let me opera—”
“Not a chance.” I interrupted his suggestion with my hand over his mouth. “My laptop. I run it.” I laughed, took my hand away, then kissed him before we got back to work.
Once March had pointed out some of the symbols or words the real mystics and workers used it was easier to narrow our search. There weren’t any filters to apply, but what we needed to look for was there in the item descriptions.
Then he had to decide what would work best. Not many people used Sumerian cuneiform anymore, but he felt that Enochian, the language of the angels, would work just as well. We found a box made of live oak with containment spells in Enochian carved onto the lid that March felt confident would do the job.
He wanted one more thing like he had used with the embroidered silk. Strangely enough, there were plenty of altar clothes available with bind runes made from the Norse Elder Futhark. We thought it would fit nicely with the location we had chosen to stash The Ingress.
March muttered something about those crazy Northmen, chuckled, then instructed me to add one to our shopping cart. After I made certain he didn’t want anything else I placed the order, paid for it with a credit card that March had on hand, then instructed the sellers to ship them to a P.O. box in Indiana. When I asked why Indiana, he said it wasn’t New York.
It like as reasonable an explanation as any so I just shrugged.
“Okay,” I said as I closed my laptop then set it on the coffee table. “Two days then we can go pick up our stuff. If for some reason there’s a delay we’ll be notified by email.”
I returned to my position of leaning back against him, and he put his arms around me once more.
I could feel him brush his mouth against my hair, heard him inhale. He did that a lot now. It made me smile. He seemed to enjoy my scent as much as I liked his. I vowed that I would find the shampoo that was left here to keep the memory of this place and our time here going. Once again, I wondered if there would be a life for March and me after this. I was going to ask that very question when he spoke first.
“We’re going to have to use The Ingress twice more, you realize.” His voice was a quiet growl against my hair. “Once to get the containments and once to get us to Finland.”
“I know,” I said as I lowered my eyes.
“It’ll draw attention.” He moved so he could put his chin on my shoulder.
“I figured.” A sigh escaped me.
“We should expect a fight.”
“I know,” I responded a little too harshly.
March lifted in surprise for my outburst. “Brenna—” he began, but I cut him off.
“Look,” I started as I turned to face him. There was a bit of leg maneuvering to keep me close to him. His expression looked as if I had slapped him. “I know there’s probably going to be some epic final fight to this whole saga, and I know I’m all but useless to you there. And I also know there’s a really good chance I’m going to get seriously hurt or…uh…die.” He opened his mouth to speak, but once again I cut him off. “So I don’t need you rubbing it in, or making promises you can’t keep or—"
“Brenna.” This time he cut me off by cupping my face with his hands to make me look at him. His beautiful golden-brown eyes locked with mine, and I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the affection in them. I felt comforted even though I shouldn’t have. Nothing had changed for the outlook of my future, but those eyes made me believe it would all turn out okay.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said. His voice was gentle, but with a reassurance behind it. “I can handle whatever the fallen bring us. I have for a long time. Now I have more reason to be at my best against them. I will do everything I can to keep you safe. Do you believe me?”
I looked at March’s face, searching for I didn’t know what. Hesitation? Conviction?
I did believe him. I knew he would do everything he could to keep me safe as well as see this through. What I didn’t believe was that everything would go the way we wanted. Murphy’s Law had been a very real thing for us so far. I didn’t see why that would change just because we had been intimate and had grown closer. But because he needed me to assure him that I had faith in him, I nodded.
“I believe you.”
He seemed more reassured than I was. Apparently, he needed my belief in him more than I needed to trust him. Maybe the two combined would be enough to make this work.
Him. Me. And our conviction.
Okay, so three things.
March smiled then leaned in to kiss me. It was just a quick kiss, affectionate not sensual. I liked it more than the prelude to sex. It meant more. Is this moving fast? Probably. But extreme circumstances demanded extreme actions. I wasn’t going to judge it. It felt real. That was the important thing.
Neither of us were lying about our feelings because one of us needed to be with someone or wanted something from the other person. Between my parents, and the lessons I learned about the importance of self-confidence growing up on a ranch, I never felt I needed anyone or anything to give myself value.
I was, however, going to ask about what came after.
“March,” I said as I put my hand on his cheek. “What happens after this is all over?”
I watched sadness form a shadow in his eyes. I didn’t like that. In the next moment it was gone, replaced by that stoic nothing I was used to seeing. I liked that even less. Even though he smiled, I knew it was empty. I had seen the difference. I knew what his real smile looked like. This was not it.
“What do you mean?” he asked evading the question.
My brows came down as I took my hand back. What we shared with each other had taken us far past being able to dodge around uncomfortable topics, and I was not going to let him get away with it.
“You know what I mean, March.”
He sighed as he lowered his eyes. I felt his body tense as if he wanted to get up from the couch. I was not going to move. I was not going to let him escape me. Not this time. We didn’t have much time left, and I wanted answers before everything went sideways.
I reached out to touch his face again to get him to look at me once more. I wanted to encourage him to talk to me, not force him to. We needed to discuss this because I had some very real feelings on the matter, and I wanted to know how he felt. I didn’t speak again until his eyes were on mine. My voice was even but firm, quiet and slow.
“What happens to us after we do this?”
March’s sigh seemed to deflate him, and he took my hand from his face. He kept hold of it with both of his hands, which settled down the panic I was feeling.
“Brenna...” He seemed to struggle for a moment. A kiss pressed to my fingers appeared to be more for him than me. “When this is over, I will take you back to your life in New York. I will make sure that you are cleared of suspicion, and that you get your job back. And then—”
“How?” I interrupted him from continuing to plan out my life for me, exclude me from having a choice. “You’re going to just what? Turn yourself in? Take my place in jail? And how will you get the museum to take me back? Threaten the board? And what do we tell them about the diamond? None of it will make any difference without a diamond to give the museum.”
It was his turn to frown as he gave my hand a squeeze. “I’ll figure it out. If I have to go to jail well, it wouldn’t be the first time, and there hasn’t been a prison yet that could keep me in. Whatever I have to do so you can have your life back. I want you to be happy.”
“Happy?” Now I was outraged. He physically jerked in surprise, but I still didn’t move. I was not letting him off this couch. “How could you possibly think I would be happy without you?”
“Brenna—”
“No!” I pointed at him with my free hand. “You don’t get to sit there and tell me the plan as if I were a child in a custody battle.” He tried to talk, but the look of warning I gave him shut his mouth. “This is my life and I get a say in what happens. And I say I want you in it.”
Sometime later I would be highly amused by the fact that I managed to make a fallen angel look like a chastised little boy, but not now.
The sigh he gave pissed me off more because it indicated he was going to argue with me. I was over him telling me what to do.
“I said I want you in my life. And if that means I don’t get to go back to the one I had then so be it. It is never going to be same after this anyway. Do you really think I’ll be able to work in a lab knowing what’s out there?” His frown had deepened, and he turned his face away from me. “Hey. I’m talking to you.”
TWELVE
MARCH
Brenna was absolutely stunning when she was angry, but even I knew better than to tell her that while she was berating me.
I might not have been a prime example of what a woman looks for in a man, and I was gruff by nature, but I wasn’t dumb. I let her vent her spleen on me to get it out of her system, but I was going to be firm on this. I couldn’t take her with me even if I wanted to. She would be in too much danger, too much of a liability. I would make stupid mistakes trying to protect her which would probably get us both killed or worse.
She deserved better than this life, anyway. Better than being stuck with someone like me. She would come to realize that in time, after she got back into the swing of a normal life.
I was going to tell her all of that, but then I felt it. The feeling was similar to when you realized you were no longer alone in a room, but with an edge of corruption. It would make the skin crawl on anyone else. To me it was familiar. My brethren. The fallen. It was possible that they were just working a spell that was focused on us, but I had to be sure.
I wasn’t aware of it, but my eyes took on that golden glow my kind exhibit when we flexed our powers. I extended my senses out past the cabin to search for the source of what I felt.
“I’m talking to you.”
I shushed Brenna verbally as well as lifted my hand. There. This wasn’t a spell. It was too strong, and too close. I frowned as I detangled myself from Brenna then went to beside the window. I heard her sound of protest but ignored it. I needed to focus, and not on her. My jaw clenched as I peered out from behind the tattered curtains, then my eyes confirmed what my senses had already warned.
“Shit.”
“March?” Brenna sounded scared, and I couldn’t blame her. There were three of my brethren approaching the cabin, swords drawn.
“We have to go,” I growled. “Now!”
I rushed back to Brenna then grabbed up the things I knew were important. Notes, wallet, cards. The rest could be left behind and easily replaced. It wouldn’t make up for the stores we had used, and it would definitely give away that we had been here, but none of it would point directly at us.
“What’s going on?” she asked in an anxious voice, but at least she shoved things into her bag as well.
“They found us,” I answered as I handed her the laptop. That was one thing that could not get into the any fallen hands. “Take your notes and laptop and hold the diamond.”
Brenna’s face had gone pale from fear. Her eyes were wide, and she was shaking, but she wasn’t frozen. I couldn’t help but smile with pride. That’s my girl. Her courage grew swifter than any human I had known before. I had met soldiers, warriors, hunters, and the like. They were brave because they were taught to be. This wasn’t Brenna’s life. It would be entirely understandable for her to cower. Instead, she stepped up knowing she was so far out of her element and outmatched.
Dammit, she is sexy.
There were moments that were technically just a blink of the eye but seemed to last hours. This was one of those moments. It only took seconds for us to grab up what we wanted, but they seemed to stretch into minutes as my mind came to a few conclusions.
I realized that I wasn’t just trying to stand in my brethren’s way, keep them from accomplishing their mission, I was trying to protect Brenna. I’d been doing that this whole time, but mostly because she was the owner of The Ingress. Now, after we’d had sex, I felt a connection that went deeper than any fondness. It took a mortal threat for it to appear, but now I wasn’t just protective of her, I would do anything to be by her side. Not keep her with me, k
eep us together. There was a difference, just a slight shift of intention, but in that moment, my mind put the pieces together.
Brenna was the key to my redemption.
I wasn’t supposed to feel that way about anyone, but especially not a mortal. Humans were forbidden, out of reach even for the angels. We were supposed to protect them, guide them, practically worship them, but never take part in anything with them. It was what had led to the war. Yet here it was. Not only did I care about Brenna, her happiness and safety, not only did I want to be part of that, I felt as if I could. That was supposed to be impossible.
I didn’t have time to explain or contemplate what any of that meant, maybe later after we’d successfully hidden The Ingress. Right now, we needed to leave. I could feel the fallen getting closer.
“You have everything?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said with a nod.
I wrapped my arm around her, held her close, then put my hand over hers to activate The Ingress.
It was much warmer when we reappeared, but that was what happened when you teleported to the Middle East from Canada. I released Brenna when she gasped and felt out with my senses as I turned in place to scan the area for any fallen that might be nearby.
We seemed to be in the clear.
“We’re at the Temple Mount,” Brenna said in hushed tone. That didn’t last long, thought. “We’re at the Temple Mount!” Now she sounded as if she accused me of something.
It was true. We stood in the courtyard of the Temple Mount with the Dome of the Rock fifty feet behind us. It was the middle of the night which meant we were alone, thankfully. It would have been a bitch to explain to the authorities why the tourists were screaming about people just appearing out of nowhere.
“This is one of the places I’m most familiar with since I had worked closely with Solomon.” As I explained my choice, I glanced to Brenna to make sure she was okay. She looked stressed out, and who wouldn’t, but she wasn’t panicked. She was, however, staring at me as if I had grown a second head. “What?”
Demons Are a Girl's Best Friend (Good Girls & Demons) Page 10