by Holley Trent
There was even…knitting.
Any of those things would cause less anxiety than looking into the angel’s face.
She hadn’t understood attraction before, perhaps because in her it was entangled with her ability to feel something—anything—other than an abundance of caution. He was peeling back the protective cover she’d had shrouded herself in for centuries, and he was trying to let out all of her chaotic insides. He was trying to make her be what she wasn’t.
She stood there, angry with him. Disgusted at herself for being unable to normalize her labored breathing and for the fluttering in her belly. Even more disgusted at herself for wondering what it would feel like if his lips were here or…there.
Frivolous.
Waste of time.
She drew away and he let go of her wrist.
Tell him to leave.
She stepped through the doorway, swiping her sweaty hands down her wrinkled dress as she went.
Go back in there. Tell him to go.
She closed herself into her room and locked the door.
She quickly braided her hair and when she was done with that, she paced in front of the settee in search of some other distraction.
The fluttering of the curtains on the wind caught in her periphery. She moved to the window and looked at the brightening morning sky.
She could roam for a bit. Clear her head. Douse the prickles in her gut and swipe them from her heated flesh.
She needed to think about something else.
Anything else.
She pushed the window all the way up and then took a seat on the settee. Closing her eyes, she peeled away her mind from her corporeal form and fled through the opening without her body, without looking back.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I do wish you’d allow me to refer you to my tailor,” Guilielmus murmured into his bourbon glass.
The saloon had been too quiet with the Cougars out and Lola having locked herself away, so Tarik had taken his chances and squandered some of his newly regained energy for a trip back to New York.
They sat in a dark, back corner table of the club where Gulielmus regularly frittered away his time. Gulielmus drank. Tarik pushed the remnants of his unappetizing dinner across the plate. Chicken something. He hadn’t even tasted the food as he took it into his body. He’d been too distracted.
“I know your tailor,” Tarik said, sitting back. “You forget that our networks overlap, especially where other fallen ones are concerned.”
Gulielmus grimaced. “I assumed you hadn’t noticed. He’s terrified of you, but I imagine most are.”
“I find humor in the idea that he’d be so impressed by my reputation when his favorite customer has chosen to make himself a demon.”
“I’m a predictable sort of demon, though, aren’t I?” Gulielmus smiled widely and winked and took a long sip of bourbon. “One can never guess when The Deathbringer will decide that he finds a person’s continued existence lamentable and will come to acquaint them with his sword.”
Tarik tapped his eyes at the nickname. He had numerous names given to him by his compatriots—most of which he didn’t bother remembering, much less responding to. “I have no need of new attire,” Tarik said. “There is nothing wrong with my wardrobe as it is. I dress for utility, not style.”
“Suit yourself.” Gulielmus rolled his unlit cigar against the tabletop and cast his gaze about the room. He was always attentive, no matter how casual an air he put on. They all had to be. At any moment, some hostile creature could spot them and call for a reckoning. If they were hungry enough for the fight, they wouldn’t care that there were humans around—they wouldn’t care how much cleanup work they’d have to do to make witnesses forget what they’d seen.
Fallen angels were nearly impossible to kill, but they could be wounded. A severe enough wound could open the door to a more successful later attempt.
“You never told me what the purpose of this little outing was,” Gulielmus said as he turned his attention to the lighting of his cigar. “None of my spawn have destroyed any of your property, as far as I know, so I don’t owe you funds. You haven’t asked me about work, and as much as it wounds me…” He blew out a heavy plume of smoke. “You’re rarely so starved for my company that you’d want to publicly socialize. So, what is it?”
“Perhaps the socialization is part of it.”
Gulielmus couldn’t have looked more surprised if someone had told him loincloths were coming back into fashion.
“It was too quiet for me to think,” Tarik said. “I needed some noise.”
“Ah.” Another drag on the cigar.
Tarik couldn’t fathom how he could stand the things. The mere scent of them made the acid in his gut churn.
“What did you need to think about?”
Tarik shrugged and instantly regretted the action. He wished he could reach the ache in his wing joint so he could apply some counterpressure. Of all the things he was, double-jointed wasn’t one of them. “I should just remove the blasted things,” he muttered.
Gulielmus stared, slack-jawed, but quickly recovered. “Maim yourself?”
“If that would make the pain go away, I absolutely would. I have other ways of traveling. My feet still work fine, and I don’t need…” The club butler walked past with a newspaper folded over his arm. Once out of earshot, Tarik continued, “I don’t need wings to move about in some of the angelic ways.”
“No, but they certainly make landing a hell of a lot softer at times.”
“True.”
“So, you haven’t made any new attempts at correcting the problem?”
“You know not to bring that up.”
“You haven’t explicitly asked me not to, and why not clear the air, hmm?” Gulielmus sloshed more bourbon into his glass and tipped the bottle toward Tarik.
Tarik shook his head. He didn’t like the taste of the stuff. “It should be enough that I change the subject when you broach it.”
“It’s not enough. Why is it a secret?”
“Have you no secrets you keep from me?”
“I’m sure I have plenty, but only because you haven’t asked me the right questions. I’ll tell you anything. Always have. You know that.”
Tarik did know that. Gulielmus didn’t consider words to be precious, nor did he ever feel shame.
Tarik grabbed the liquor bottle. He’d changed his mind. A few inches of the swill might take some of the edge off the throbbing in his back, at the very least. “I will say this, and we’ll leave the subject alone afterward. Many, many years ago, I did make an attempt to correct the joint. More out of curiosity than anything else, I visited a healer. She insisted she could call on the spirits to fix me. I conceded, expecting that I’d reveal her as a fraud and scam artist.”
“But she wasn’t?”
Tarik grimaced. He let the bourbon burn down his throat and poured himself another glass. “She died in the attempt.”
For the second time in minutes, Gulielmus’s expression cracked with surprise. “You jest.”
“No.”
“You never told me.”
“Why would I have? You have no special attachments to any humans, not even the ones you decide to sleep with more than once. You would have told me that ‘these things happen,’ and that she was just one more disposable sack of meat and bone.”
The blond scoffed. “I would have cared that you were bothered.”
“No, you wouldn’t have.”
“Of course I would have!” Gulielmus practically shook with indignation. “You call yourself my friend, yet I don’t know why if you think the consideration is so one-sided.”
“I can admit when I’m wrong.”
Gulielmus set the cigar on the ashtray and cupped his ear. “Yes, you can.”
Tarik growled. “Fine. You would have cared.”
“Good.” Gulielmus straightened up, annoyingly buoyant once more. “Now tell me what happened.”
“The short version
is that she put her hands on me to promote healing, and she called on whatever power she was connected to. I was surprised, to be honest.” Tarik poured bourbon into his mouth, swallowed, and then pulled in a bracing breath. “For a few fleeting seconds, I thought she’d been successful. The pain was starting to abate, and I could feel the shrapnel being pulled to the surface. Just before the completion, her hands fell off me. When I sat up to see why, she was on the floor.”
“Dead.”
Tarik grimaced, not wanting to think of the macabre sight that still affected him in a way that few other scenes in his past could. She hadn’t deserved her fate. She’d been an innocent. “A husk. She needed too much. Tried to use too much. She couldn’t handle the energy.”
“But perhaps someone else can. Perhaps all you need is a better conduit.”
Tarik shook his head hard. There was no way he was going to make that attempt again. If anyone was going to die because of him, they had to either need it or deserve it.
Lola’s ignorant attempt at fixing him that morning had rekindled a resignation about the situation. His wing wasn’t going to be fixed, and certainly not by her.
He wouldn’t be the thing responsible for her demise.
But that issue did remind him of something he could seek counsel about from Gulielmus.
He studied the label on the bourbon bottle and gathered his thoughts. “After that nasty mess between Tamatsu and Fionnuala, I imagined that all of us would question the wisdom of seeking a…deeper sort of relationship with someone.”
“Are you?” Expression deathly grave, Gulielmus leaned in as close as he could. “Who? Are you being hypothetical?”
“Yes.”
The demon narrowed his eyes to slits. He couldn’t tell if Tarik was lying. He rarely could, probably because Tarik generally didn’t bother with deception.
“Have you ever heard of anyone doing it successfully?” Tarik asked. “Anyone like us, I mean, of course.”
Gulielmus snorted and ashed the cigar. “Oh, certainly. Of course. Even with as much as I get around, I’ve never heard of any fallen one committing themselves to anything resembling monogamy. Is that what we’re discussing? Monogamy?” He shuddered. “Boring.”
“Perhaps because you lack creativity.”
“Yet again, I wonder why you consider me a friend.”
“Anyhow.”
“Yes, anyhow.” Gulielmus rolled his eyes. “I’m not entirely certainly anyone would find creatures like us endearing enough to keep. We’re deeply flawed. That’s why we’re here, sharing air with the less evolved masses. Romance isn’t in the cards for us.” Gulielmus beckoned over a member of the staff, who courteously ignored that Tarik was there and set his focus entirely on the creature paying for the meal. “Something sweet?”
The young man tugged at his collar and shifted his weight nervously.
“Something edible, Winston, for goodness’ sake. Perhaps some of the members here bother with speaking in your silly codes, but I don’t. If I were looking for someone to fuck, I certainly wouldn’t have the club recruit the volunteer.”
“Well, I—”
“Who could possibly trust your taste, anyway? If the décor this place has is at all representative of the staff’s preferences, I’d likely recoil at whomever you dared to bring me.” Gulielmus snorted again. “Olive green? How gauche. No thank you. I’ll source my own companions, thank you very much. Now, what have you to serve?”
“Uh.” The server gulped. “There’s a…trifle, sir.”
“Fine.” Gulielmus shooed him away.
“You should be kinder,” Tarik told him after the young man had scampered off to the kitchen.
“Given what the flavor of my energy is, if I were kinder,” Gulielmus said around his cigar, “the bumbler would try to follow me home. I don’t like taking work home with me.”
“You’ve never complained before about your affliction. You said it was hardly a punishment. You laughed that being constantly enkindled should be your fate because you found the medicine to be so enjoyable.”
“Yes, well, there’s something to be said for selectiveness, isn’t there? I’d probably have to make my heart stop beating to turn down the energy.”
“And it’s only gotten worse with your current affiliation.”
Angels all had different punishments attached to them when they fell. Gulielmus’s crime had been unabashed carnality and so he was afflicted with being a carrier of lust. He spread it like plague, and never quite felt fully satisfied with intercourse. Tarik didn’t envy him. His bloodlust was inconvenient, but at least it didn’t constantly nag at him in the way Gulielmus’s and Tamatsu’s urges did.
Gulielmus grimaced. “So, you feel it, then.”
“The magic is pouring off you. It’s a wonder you don’t have an entire swarm of cats in heat following you home.”
Tarik had been speaking in jest, but Gulielmus perked up suddenly.
Fuck.
“Do you know any shifters?”
Tarik kept his mouth firmly shut.
“They put off so much energy that I wouldn’t think about so much as a fondle for a week.”
The server brought the trifles.
Tarik pushed his toward Gulielmus and pushed back from the table. “I’ll see you soon, friend.”
“Spoilsport.”
Smiling, Tarik started away.
“Tarik?”
“Hmm?” He turned.
Gulielmus’s expression showed actual concern. Rare for him. He wasn’t a sort who was generally generous with his emotions. “You’d tell me if there was someone, wouldn’t you? Not like Tamatsu? I would have told him it was pointless. We’re not allowed to be happy. Not like that.”
Tarik didn’t want to believe him. They hadn’t been cast out of heaven with the warning that they would never be accepted. In fact, they’d only been told they’d never be cured of their hardships without great loss.
He waved and put on his dusty hat, sneering at the appalled server as he walked by.
He’d keep his hardships—his impulsive hunger for revenge and his bodily ails if it meant there was even the smallest amount of possibility that Lola might give him a chance. He could show her what passion was, if she let him. He could show her what it felt like to be wanted, not because of what she was, but because of how she made him feel.
He’d never before felt so…seen.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Three Weeks Later
“A little stuck on herself, isn’t she?” Elizabeth queried silently. She hooked her arm around Lola’s and navigated them around the obstructed path in front of the blacksmith’s shop. There were trunks and bags piled up on the walkway. Three stagecoaches had arrived in a matter of hours of each other carrying a fresh crop of mail-order brides, hungry cowboys, and the new preacher. The drivers had tossed the cargo off and left the passengers to fend for themselves.
Lola had to open the saloon early to let some in. The hotel was full, and those men weren’t picky about accommodations. Rachel was ensuring that they got fed and found beds. Some of the girls would have to double up.
Clearing her throat, Lola opened her fan and shielded the gathered crowd on Main Street from the probable look of annoyance on her face. People were trying to make their connections—to scoop up their intended brides and new employees.
The sheriff had already found his new arrival. He stood near the fancy woman in the dress with the hoop skirts and all that creamy lace, clutching his hat in front of his belly.
The lady was talking. And talking. And talking.
“We’ll see how much she has to say as days go on, hmm?” Although Lola had initially been hesitant to form such a complex magical connection with Elizabeth, she was beginning to remember the benefits of having such an aide. It’d been more than a thousand years since she’d allowed a mortal into her confidences. The last had acted as her “ear” of sort. The other humans thought she was a seer or soothsayer fielding messages from th
e mysterious goddess. She was merely a psychic sensitive, able to perceive energy and voices others couldn’t. Of course, being a Cougar, Elizabeth was a little more than that, but Lola planned to put her to the same use. She could communicate things to the other Cougars that their absent goddess would have them know.
They still didn’t know who Lola really was.
“I’m sure she’ll have plenty to say.” Elizabeth scanned the edges of the crowd, leaning onto the tips of her toes to see into it. “This place isn’t like nice cities.” Out loud, she said, glumly, “Hey. I still don’t see my nephew, Lola. The telegram said he’d be here this week. None of the drivers said they saw anyone who would have looked like him.”
“We could send another telegram to the orphanage. Perhaps we could learn precisely when he left and with whom?”
“You mean if he left.” Elizabeth grimaced and shook her head. “Don’t wanna waste the money.” Lowering her voice, she added, “I should have let Tarik go fetch him and explained to him what in the world was going on.”
“No,” Lola spat in a rush. She couldn’t help the abrupt response. The man’s name incited anxiety in her whenever she heard it. She was glad he’d left the place, really.
“No?”
Lola cleared her throat again and gently navigated Elizabeth across the street. Since they were out, she figured they may as well see if Oscar was holding any of her mail. She hadn’t heard from Yaotl. She knew he was fine. He was a constant part of her consciousness. If he’d ever met his demise, she’d be aware, but he was a part of her and sometimes to be fully at ease she needed to see him with her own eyes, hear him with her own ears, read messages penned in his own hand.
But he moved so much and was hard to find. Had he been any other Cougar, she could have gone to him in a blink. She was certain he moved so quickly and erratically simply to keep her from crossing his path. They always argued. The last fight hadn’t been the worst ever. It’d been over some silly thing. He’d accused her of being chronically unable to mind her own business, which was laughable. Yaotl was gentle and forgiving more often than not, but if pressed, he could hold a grudge just as ferociously as his mother could, even if he no longer remembered what the argument was even about.