The Angel's Fire

by Holley Trent

  “Elizabeth?” called the voice deep inside.

  “Oh, she’s going to have something terrible to say about this,” the one apparently named Elizabeth said.

  The lock clicked. The door creaked as she pulled it open.

  A woman of around forty stood in the doorway wringing her hands in front of her belly. Her bright eyes were wide behind her trendy clear-framed glasses, and her lips turned down into a grimace of “Oh shit.”

  He gave her a long blink.

  “Of course you still look like that, hmm?” she said. “You’re like you, but better. Unfair.”

  “Have we met?”

  She sighed again. “Yes.”

  “When?”

  She gave her head a shake and gestured into the inside of the house. “You’ll figure it out on your own, I imagine. Magic’ll fall off in a few minutes now that we’ve encountered.”

  “What magic? Something with my memory?”

  “So you already know, then. No need explaining, hmm?”

  He stepped into the small house and inhaled the scent of savory meat and lingering spice. It was a good thing Tamatsu hadn’t tagged along. Being in that place with its scents would have had him needing to binge every edible item in the space.

  “She gets bored. She cooks,” Elizabeth explained without being asked. “She has her mother’s appetite.” She added in a hostile murmur, “and her father’s metabolism.”

  Tarik held his tongue regarding that mysterious statement and closed the door behind him.

  Elizabeth led him deeper into the house, hands dug in deep to her pockets, and clearing her throat nervously.

  “You all right, Elizabeth?” came the voice that seemed to be outside.

  The other side of a deck door, he realized as they approached.

  “Fine, dear,” Elizabeth said.

  Something about the way she cringed was familiar to him.

  And the dishwater shade of her hair.

  And her posture. It held a graceful hesitance. She had the gait of someone used to being stopped in her tracks. The bearing of someone very good at following instructions if she had to.

  She had the expectant resignation that only the best sort of friend would have.

  She turned as they approached the door and blinked up at him.

  Oh.

  “Hello, Elizabeth,” he said softly, remembering.

  Anger bloomed in him and doubled by the second.

  He understood then. Remembered what that pull was caused by—remembered what was taken away from him.

  Her cheek twitched. “I don’t…think any excuse I give you would be what you want to hear.”

  “What is it that I want to hear, Cat?”

  “That she feels guilt for this. She doesn’t. She believes this was necessary. Keeping you away.”

  “Because I’m a monster, hmm?”

  “Elizabeth?” the voice called out.

  “Uh. One second, dear,” Elizabeth called back with a tremulous voice. “How is the grill faring?”

  “Oh, that hunk of crap needs to be dragged down to the junk man. Maybe he can do something with it. I’m switching to charcoal now.”

  “Good idea.” Elizabeth turned back to him, wringing her hands. She whispered, “She was a friend to me when I had no one. I have no close family left and no mate. She took me under her wing and connected with me, even when she would have preferred to keep her distance. I doubt she’d admit it now, but that small act of friendship changed her life. She built something in that place and she’s as close to content as she’s ever been.”

  “So what is this?” he whispered back, gesturing to the house and the woman outside. “Abandoned here? Hidden from me?”

  He balled his fists at his side and tried to staunch the welling urge to hit something, destroy something. He didn’t like being manipulated. Hated having his options stripped away without him having a word to say in his defense.

  “She’s not abandoned.” Elizabeth crept to the sliding door and closed it gently. “Cloistered, perhaps. None of us really understand what she is, and as far as we know she has no innate knowledge of any magic she may possess. In all these years, she hasn’t demonstrated anything curious, but that doesn’t stop us from being afraid.”

  “Lola is afraid of her own child?”

  “No. She’s afraid of not knowing what your contribution played into the mix. She’s afraid of the fact that the child was possible at all.”

  “She said I…did something to her. I didn’t.” He was surprised by how hurt he was by that memory. He was a Fallen one. His feelings weren’t delicate things, but even creatures like him had mortal weaknesses, it seemed. His were female—a fiery goddess and the child they’d made.

  Elizabeth grimaced. “I believe you. But that’s neither here nor there. The truth is that Lola’s here at least once every day. I’ve been a constant presence because Lola’s magic keeps me around and kicking. Everyone else who knew about the child is dead now.”

  “Sophie and Rachel…” he recalled. Sadness mitigated his anger. He’d adored those mouthy hellcats.

  Elizabeth, however, smiled. “Don’t fret. They were happy. They did quite well in Maria after the fire. Had big families. Rachel’s descendants run the Cougars now. Sophies’ antagonize them in good fun. She and Oscar finally got together. Kids turned out to be Cougars. Kept the Delacroix name instead of taking Oscar’s. The Foyes and Delacroixs don’t even know how far back they’re connected. Lola tried not to interfere with them any further for the longest time and stay on the outskirts of the Cats with Tito—”

  “Who?” Normally, Tarik didn’t have trouble keeping up, but Elizabeth was throwing a lot of names at him rapidly.

  “Oh. That’s right. Yaotl. That’s what you knew him as, hmm? He goes by Tito. Lola Perez and Tito Perez.”

  Tarik stroked his beard, considering. He was pleased for her, even if he hated to be. “So the prodigal son went home.”

  “Yes. They drive each other mad, but I think Tito will stick around in spite of it.”

  “So Yao—Tito—doesn’t know about her?” Tarik crooked his thumb toward the outside. Toward the woman he couldn’t see that his heart was straining against his ribs over. He needed to see her. Lola had to have known he would never harm his child.

  He would have never harmed her either, but she thought he had.

  He wasn’t angry about that anymore. That surge had come and gone. Now he was just sad. She hadn’t given him a chance, and that was all he’d wanted. He’d tried to be better for her and had wanted to be.

  “He doesn’t know,” Elizabeth said. “Things are complicated. There’s so much trauma in their pasts that I imagine she doesn’t want to introduce the two until she’s certain Tito won’t be hostile about her. She’s been coddled in a way that Tito never was. Lola didn’t play by her own rules.”

  Tarik could see that. “Does she know about me?” He tilted his head toward the patio.

  “I don’t know what she knows. She doesn’t ask me. Perhaps she asks Lola, but if she does, they do not share the conclusions of those conversations with me. I’m merely here to ensure she’s safe and remains sheltered.”

  “Powerful magic keeping you so young and lovely.”

  Elizabeth snorted. “Interesting thing about Lola’s magic is that if she uses it more, it stays strong. If she abstains, it weakens over time. She does still get weak every now and then. Usually when she’s trying to fix the unfixable. Fortunately, that’s rare nowadays. She’s got a lot of neat tricks. You should see how many different appearances she can put on in a minute. I lost count the last time I clocked her.”

  Some of her “neat tricks” were probably magic that she’d mimed from his angelic abilities, but that didn’t matter. The fact she was capable of changing her abilities was frightening enough. He nodded and moved to the door. Glancing over his shoulder, he caught Elizabeth’s nod and proceeded onto the deck.

  There was a woman bent over a coal grill. She w
as tall and lean. Barefooted and with black curly hair waving in the breeze like a banner. In her cutoff jeans and blousy white shirt, she looked something like a pirate refugee.

  But when she turned to him with a look of determination on her too-familiar face, he thought she looked like an angel.

  A real angel—not like him.

  She looked like her mother.

  The grin she’d been wearing sagged and forehead creased as she assessed him.

  He stood very still, saying nothing. Terrified for the first time in eons. He feared her rejection—this offspring he’d made with someone he’d loved and who’d cast him aside. He feared her rejection more than he feared oblivion.

  It was a demoralizing existence, never belonging to anyone or anything.

  Her mouth opened and then closed. Her forehead smoothed. She took a step toward him. And then another.

  More, until she was inches from him, staring up at his face like he was a marvel and not just a menace.

  Then she reached up and planted her hand right on a wing that should have been invisible to most. She let out the tiniest gasp of discovery and smiled at him. “Hello, Papa. I hoped you’d visit me one day.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Meanwhile in Maria, New Mexico

  Shit.

  Lola pulled away from the Cougars and various witches moving to the open hellmouth portal on the edge of the Foyes’ ranch and gave her braid a frantic tug.

  The world was too small. When she’d heard the Foyes had shaken some angels out of their network to close the portal that had been plaguing them for the better part of a year, she’d worried that one of those angels would be familiar. Her worry was justified.

  She didn’t think he’d seen her, though. When Tarik had arrived with his friends in tow—the insouciant blond and the silent one—he’d been tugged immediately toward the disturbance.

  It was only going to be a matter of time before his memories of the last time he was there flooded back, and they would have to have their reckoning.

  She didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t run. Maria was her home and she wasn’t going to quit it due to some momentary lack of judgment she’d had in the nineteenth century. She still hadn’t recovered from their last encounter. Being completely neutral on anything had become impossible for her. How could she be? He’d destroyed any illusions she’d had that she didn’t play favorites. Of course she played favorites, even if her favorites didn’t know the esteem she held them in.

  She was making brisk strides to her car as she dug into her purse for her phone. She needed to call Elizabeth and let her know that the angel was back on her radar. She’d have to be vigilant and ensure that he didn’t discover Angela’s whereabouts. A sweet girl like her would far too easily be bulldozed by a creature like Tarik. She wouldn’t be able to tell right from wrong and Lola had been so careful to keep her guarded from all the nastiness.

  The phone was ringing on the other end when she noticed the disruptive energy forming behind her, and then her cell was whisked out of her hand.

  She whirled around, already poised to hurl whatever stifling energy she could at him, but stopped cold.

  The sight of her tiny phone in his large hand arrested her. He was a man out of his time. He didn’t belong there in the modern world any more than she did, and yet there they were.

  He was the same, but different. More hair. Less smile on his lips. More censure in his expression. More restraint in his energy. He was trying to pin that hot aura of his in close, and almost succeeding.

  “Ms. Perez,” he murmured.

  She fondled her keys inside her bag and shifted her weight. “I…I have nothing to say.”

  “I have plenty.”

  “Save it.”

  “I have been forced into silence for nearly a hundred and fifty years. Is that not long enough?”

  She slid the key into the lock and wrung open the heavy door of her ancient sedan. She’d always liked big cars. They made her feel safe and ensconced. She didn’t even care that all the Foyes called it a boat. She probably would have abided anything from those wild and unfiltered Foyes.

  He gripped the top of the door, preventing her from closing it.

  For a few seconds, she pulled futilely at it, all her physical strength against an iota of his. With a groan, she gave up. “You have two minutes. I have to go to work. Say what you feel you must and then leave me be.”

  “You erased the most interesting parts of a year of my life from me and now you’re granting me two minutes to query you?”

  That smile of his wasn’t the charming curve she remembered.

  “That hardly seems fair,” he said low, crouching beside the open door.

  His wing must have still been giving him distress because as he settled onto his haunches and brushed the side of his body against the door, he grimaced.

  Instinctively, she started to reach for him, but before she could complete the entirely inappropriate action, she forced her hands onto the steering wheel and squeezed the vinyl hard. She cleared her throat and stared through the windshield. “Two minutes,” she said flatly.

  She hoped he couldn’t sense how her magic was roiling inside her, threatening to give away her anxiety and call her out for the messy fraud she was. No longer was she ever as at peace as her face showed.

  “I’ll have more than two,” he murmured at her side. “And I’ll take those moments whenever I see fit.”

  “I don’t believe that is up to you. I refuse.”

  “You refuse to what? Answer for what you did? For judging and sentencing me without putting me on trial?”

  He gave the side of her arm a little nudge. The touch sent a tingling heat up and down her spine and made her face burn hot.

  How was it that he could still affect her after so long? And after she’d expelled him so thoroughly from her heart?

  “She’s beautiful,” he whispered. He set her phone onto her lap as her eyes stretched wide in panic and her stomach seemed to fall through her feet. She regretted that third taco.

  “W-who is?” she stammered.

  “You know who. She’s lovely and sweet, despite who her parents are.”

  Lola wasn’t going to take the bait he tossed at her. He hadn’t lied.

  “She’s bored. Did you know that?”

  Lola didn’t respond. Of course she knew. She did what she could to plant cheer in her daughter’s life, but she was clumsy at it.

  “She is safe there,” Tarik said.

  That made her turn to him in time to catch his fleeting grimace.

  “The location is well-protected from hostile magic-holders.”

  “Coincidental,” Lola confessed.

  “Mmm. A natural safe zone. I noticed when I was there making arrangements for Sophie, but at the time, that didn’t matter. Sophie didn’t have any supernatural abilities then.” He stood, slowly, and stepped away from the door. “I won’t disturb her, Lola. I would not have her being one of the things that are hunted simply for her association to me. Much to her chagrin, I informed her I would not be springing her from captivity.”

  Lola couldn’t have been more stunned at the announcement if he’d told her he’d discovered Atlantis. She did her best to disguise her shocked. It’d once been easier to keep her emotions off her face.

  “What did she say to you?” Lola could never guess with Angela. The woman was a sphinx who kept her most dangerous opinions closely held.

  “In a very roundabout manner that reminded me very much of someone else I knew, she commented on my uselessness and then offered me a cup of tea. Naturally, I accepted.” His smile that time was warmer. It actually reached his molten gold eyes.

  “You won’t say anything? To Yaotl or—”

  Tarik put a finger over her lips and quietly shushed her. “I won’t. It is not my place, but you’ll have to one day, hmm?”

  The compulsion to grab his hand from her lips and kiss it overwhelmed her. Angry with herself, she pushed it away
and snapped, “I want to know what you did to me.”

  “Yes, Elizabeth said you’ve been harboring some misguided notion that I manipulated you in some way.” He scoffed and for a minute, paced beside the door. He slid his hands into the deep pockets of his long coat and stared toward the congregation of magic folk in the distance. She wondered if they realized he wasn’t keeping pace.

  He needed to go. She didn’t want to have to explain to them why they were so familiar to each other.

  Not yet.

  But she wanted her answer. “Tell me, bird man, or get the hell away from me.”

  He returned to his spot beside the door and leaned down into the opening. “You think I entrapped you? If I had thought I was capable of doing such a thing, I might have tried sooner. Believe it or not, in all my eons of existence, I’ve never managed to procreate before Angela. If either of us should be suspicious of ill intent, it should be me because you’re the one who’d actually managed to conceive before knowing me.

  Her jaw dropped.

  He nudged it back up and gave the end of her braid a swat. “Run along and complete your errands, Butterfly. I’ll find you again for another chat. Until then, I’ll be sure to give Angela your regards.”

  He slid her phone into the console compartment, closed the car door, and vanished.

  ___

  One Year Ago

  I DON’T KNOW. CAN YOU?

  Tarik grimaced at Tamatsu’s text message. He was sitting right beside him.

  He really did hate having a phone, especially recently. His formerly uncommunicative friend had suddenly gotten chatty. The topic at hand was whether or not Tarik could spawn. Tamatsu’s curiosity had been incited from his recent reconnection with the elf who’d stolen his voice.

  Tarik hated lying to him, but there was no good answer to that question. If Tamatsu had thought Tarik had been holding back information from him, their trust would erode.

  Tarik had been trying to think of a way to explain the circumstances to him, but he hadn’t yet. He realized he was afraid to just come out and say, “I got punked by some witches back in 1871 and I forgot that I’d been here and that I had a kid.” Tarik was supposed to be unimpeachable, and yet he’d been taken down by a sprinkling of wretches who weren’t even as tall as his shoulders.