Tajael

by Alisa Woods

  He laughed, and it was a puff of warm air across her face. “I know you do. I hear of it every night.”

  Her eyes went wide, and she pulled back a little. “Oh God. Don’t tell me I—”

  He smiled and stroked her cheeks with his thumbs before releasing her. “Oh, yes. You very much talk in your sleep. Or rather, you moan and cry out my name.”

  She sank back on the bed and covered her face. “Oh my God. Is it possible to die of embarrassment?”

  “I don’t think so.” He was still chuckling, but he eased back on the bed. “I’ve been doing everything in my power to resist you, Charlotte. And now my faction leader has ordered me sequestered to my cell with you. Markos cares not whether I Fall or the next angel after me or the one after that. He wishes to crack the secret for breeding more angelings of light, like my friend Erelah. She mated with a dragon and managed to come back from the shadow realm and bear her child. She restored the treaty I told you of… but she is exceptional. I am not. I may have one night with you, my brilliant and beautiful scientist… but it will be my last in the light. And I can’t even be sure I’ll last that long.” He looked her in the eyes. “The least of my possible Sins is the selfish desire I have to spend as much time with you as possible. Can you forgive me for it?”

  Tears were ready to destroy her resolve to remain strong. “If you can forgive me for moaning in my sleep, then I think we’re pretty even.”

  He smiled, then chuckled, then it grew into a grin so beautiful, he literally stole her breath. It wasn’t fair—not fair in ways so epic, it was hard to bend her mind around. She’d thought Craig had broken her for good, and here was a man who brought out everything that was good in her. Her work. Her heart. A healthy desire for sex she thought she’d never have again. And not only was he not a man… loving her would break him.

  Just. Not. Fucking. Fair.

  And on top of all that, he loved her anyway. He didn’t say it in those words, but she felt it, deep in her heart, at the core of her bones, and if she believed in souls—and sitting on an angeling’s bed in the over-dimension, it was hard to deny—she knew this man’s soul and hers were already joined. It didn’t matter if they were joined physically with their bodies.

  The world was a mess, and they were in this together.

  “I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this before,” she said, lightly, “but you’re pretty damn cute when you laugh.”

  That made him laugh again, this time ducking his head, and she swore she could see him blush.

  “Okay, so we can’t make the sexy sex,” she started, and he sobered immediately, giving her a wary look. “And we probably can’t kiss and grope and, you know, make out like horny teenagers.”

  He frowned and shook his head.

  She edged forward and reached out to touch his cheek. He almost leaned back, out of her reach… but didn’t. She gently cupped his face in one hand, then the other, then rising up on her knees, she placed a sweet and light kiss on the tip of his nose.

  His eyes were wide.

  “But is there any rule that says we can’t cuddle?” she asked. “Just for a little while. Just to convince Markos to back the hell off and leave you alone?”

  “There are no rules,” he whispered. “Only Sins and Virtues.”

  “Yeah, well, I think Love is a Virtue… don’t you?” There—she said it.

  His eyes went even wider, but he gave her a slow nod.

  This could be a really bad idea… but she vowed she would be the strong one. If things got too hot, she would get up and out and demand her own room. Fuck Markos and his army-building plans. She would do whatever it took to keep Tajael in the light.

  Even if it meant keeping their not-much-touching rule in force for the duration.

  She kissed his nose again. “Now lie back and make room. I tend to flail in my sleep, so you can’t crowd me too much.” The thin cot was barely big enough for one person, but Tajael scooted as far up against the wall as he could.

  She laid down next to him and pulled his arm around to her front. She laced her fingers with his, so he knew that she expected his hand to stay there… and not, say, wander to her breasts, which were aching for his touch.

  Behind her, he was breathing hard, and to be honest, she was excited about the prospect of this “sleeping together,” too. But not in a panty-melting way. More like she just craved the ability to be honest about this. That they felt this attraction. That they cared for each other. Even if they couldn’t act on it, to just acknowledge that it existed. To cuddle and show their love the only way they could and still stay together.

  It wasn’t everything… but it was more than she’d had in forever.

  Eventually, he stopped being as stiff as a board behind her. Well, certain parts were still stiff, but even that relaxed after a while. They settled in, spooning and cuddling… not talking, just holding.

  She cried a little, but only because of the beauty of it.

  Then she, miraculously, started to drift off to sleep. Her breaths were deep and even, Tajael’s chest warm at her back, his arm strong around her, holding her close.

  Somewhere in that twilight time when you’re not quite asleep or awake, she heard him whisper something. A string of words, but they were no language she knew. It roused her a little.

  Without turning, she whispered, “What does it mean?”

  His breath was on her ear, his head tucked just behind hers. “Love is Patient. Love is Kind. Love bears all things…” He kept saying more, but it was like a lullaby in her ear, gently rocking her into the deep embrace of sleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Are you sure you’re ready?” Tajael didn’t like Charlotte’s frown.

  “Absolutely. I’ve been gone too long.” She was tucking in her t-shirt then pulling on her shoes. They’d only been in Markos’s Dominion for twenty-four hours, and even though it was his home, it felt like a wondrous alternate reality. One where Charlotte spent every moment in his bed—talking, cuddling, letting him whisper his love for her. Miraculously, she returned that love, even though he couldn’t give her all the things a man should. He couldn’t pleasure her body, but he found he could kiss her forehead with a tenderness that felt it might break his heart—agony and bliss entwined again. He couldn’t offer her sex, but he could give her comfort. Talk away her fears. Hold her hand for encouragement. Bathe her in the words of love that flowed ever more freely the more he used them.

  All of it was a miracle he didn’t want to end. Which might happen upon return to the lab.

  In Truth, he expected her need for him to wane eventually, no matter what the return to earth entailed. She was a brilliant, vibrant woman. She would want—and would deserve—a man who could give her all the blessings of a mortal life. Sex. Children. Pleasures he could only dream of. That she shared herself with him now… that she freely gave a love he’d never had and never would again… it meant the world to him.

  “Are you ready?” she asked, peering at him.

  He’d been silent too long, so he gave her a small smile. “In Truth, having to choose between you in my bed and you in your lab… it is only a great act of Charity to the world that I can allow you to return.”

  She grinned. “Well, that just means we’ll have to explore my bed. Guaranteed more comfortable, I can tell you that.”

  He shook his head, just a little. “You’ll be busy.”

  “Not too busy for this.” She leaned up on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. They still avoided the lips, but cheeks and foreheads and noses seemed… safe.

  “That is a promise I plan to hold you to.” Sweet magic, it would break him when she eventually tired of him.

  He reached out his senses to sweep the Dominion and found the others had gone ahead to the lab—nearly Markos’s entire contingent of angelings, plus some on loan from several other angels of light, comprising a force almost a hundred angelings strong, including Markos himself. The plan was to converge on the towers where Charlotte�
�s lab and apartment were located. They’d tapped the dragons to erect one of their wards around her apartment, keyed for any angeling pledged to Markos, but they couldn’t encase her laboratory in any such magical shielding. Otherwise, her experiments would be futile.

  “All right,” Tajael said. “Nearly everyone’s gone ahead, so they should be ready for us. But at the first sign of trouble, I’m pulling you back here.”

  “Understood.”

  He didn’t think there would be trouble, not at first. He would have heard already had Markos arrived to find chaos in the wake of their previous departure. But two concentrated armies of angelings in Seattle would attract the attention of the shadow realm, even if they hadn’t noticed the ripple through magical space before. But such a show of force should also deter them from attacking. Light and shadow would not be battling for Seattle as a whole. Markos would merely protect two safe harbors within it, carving out territory, so to speak. Tajael would transport her between strongholds, as he should have been doing from the time he first revealed himself.

  “All right, then,” he said with a sigh, placing his hand on her shoulder and gently squeezing. “Here we go.”

  He twisted, opening a doorway and taking her with him.

  They appeared in the hallway of The Point, the exact spot in the office from which they left. It appeared empty.

  “Where is everyone?” Charlotte whispered.

  “Everywhere.” Angelings of light filled the hallways—cloaked, so he couldn’t see them, but he could sense their magical signatures. They also lined the roof, filled the hall outside the office, circled above… shadow angelings could travel into their midst, just as he did, but they’d have a dozen angel blades in their backs the moment they arrived. “Just go to your lab. Do your experiments. Wait… you’ll need new clothes.” He lifted her t-shirt off, ignoring that she was now in her bra alone, and conjured a new one. It said Black holes are where God divided by zero.

  She peered down at it. “Ha ha.”

  He smiled and brushed back a lock of that gorgeous dark hair, the silky strands he’d been playing with, exploring, for the last twenty-four hours. “I’ll whisper in your ear if I need you to come out for a visit.”

  She gave him that smile, the secret one full of meaning and promise that he’d seen blossom on her face in the last day.

  It was like a physical pain in his chest when she turned away, heading for the lab. He cloaked and followed, but it wasn’t the same. He was instantly reduced to a shadow. An insubstantial thing that only mimicked a man. There was a hollowness to it that echoed the empty space where she should be—where a full life with her would be if he were capable of it.

  He struggled mightily to banish those thoughts and become attentively watchful, as the other angelings must be. They were a dozen shadows, wraiths from the over-dimension, haunting the hallways and guarding humanity’s greatest treasure. And his heart.

  “Holy shit!”

  “Charlotte!”

  “Where have you been?” The last came from Jimmy, and his scowl was as much a fatherly reprimand as anything.

  “Hey, guys,” she replied, shuffling her feet a little for dramatic effect. “Sorry, I’ve been sick. Twenty-four-hour flu.”

  “Dude, did you turn off your phone?” Tomaz complained. “Jimmy was calling you like every hour. I said you were out getting drunk or, you know, celebrating.” He waggled his eyebrows, which Tajael took as a euphemism for having sex.

  “I wish.” She sighed convincingly, which only made Tajael cringe more. “Mostly I threw up until I thought I was going to legit die. Then I pictured Robert picking up my Nobel prize in physics, and I said, No way! Not in this or any other dimension.”

  Robert scowled at her. “Typical. Big Wig scientist floats in at the last minute. Wants all the credit.” But he gave her a wink as he brought over the Flash figurine. “We were waiting for you to try this one, Dr. Netherman.”

  She took the Flash but frowned. “Wait, have you done more tests while I was gone?”

  “Just system checks,” Tomaz said. “Jimmy wouldn’t let us move forward without you.”

  “I was a little pre-occupied with finding our physicist.” He stepped up to Charlotte and looked her over. “Are you sure you’re all right? I was ready to call Daxon and have him bring out that small army of private security guys he has.”

  “I’m fine.” She nodded for emphasis. “Did you tell Daxon? About the experiment, I mean?”

  “I figured you’d want to be the one.” Jimmy smiled.

  She grinned. “Well, let’s get back to it. I want more than one successful run on tape before we go to the boss and tell him we’re making his dream come true.”

  “All right, then.” Jimmy nodded for her to put the Flash in the machine.

  Tajael had already taken his perch above the ring, and now that it had proved successful with the paper crane, he figured they didn’t need him as an invisible shield. It was as good a spot as any for staying out of their way as they scurried around the tight space, and it was tactically a better position. Just in case.

  Charlotte placed her Flash figurine in the device. Tajael wondered where the objects really were going, but he supposed it didn’t matter. The immortal realm was vast and formless, just a gray void of magical energy unless one crafted something of it. Markos and his Dominion. The other angels of light had theirs. Each of the shadow angels had their Regiments. And the Winter and Summer Courts had done the same, creating a solid physical oasis out of the pure energy void. Charlotte’s Flash would most likely be out there, somewhere, floating in nothingness for all eternity.

  Tajael watched as they spun up the machine and hovered around the monitor, their expressions just as excited as the first time when they sent the folded crane through. Just like before, when Charlotte pressed the imaging button, the object—this time a miniature red-suited man—disappeared. At the same instant, Tajael felt the pulse through magical space, stronger this time, perhaps because a bigger object had been thrust from one realm into the other. He was sure the legion of light angelings filling the hallways and hovering above and around the building felt it too. It meant something, this pulse of energy. Such pulses weren’t generated when angelings or other immortals simply traveled. This was bigger than just moving a small figurine from one realm to another. Just like the treaty renewing, it was a seismic shift in the rules that governed the magical realm. Charlotte was changing something with these experiments, and he didn’t know what or how it would unfold, but he felt the magnitude of it was far greater than the momentary tremor through magical space.

  Charlotte and her team were all smiles, winding down the machine and congratulating each other. He saw her peering around the room, and he felt like she must be surreptitiously looking for a sign from him, even though she knew he was cloaked. He stood up from his crouch atop the machine to float down and whisper his congratulations in her ear—

  Then an earth-shaking boom knocked him straight off the ring.

  Terror seizing him, he fought his way free of the tight space between the machine and the wall he had somehow fallen into. He frantically looked for Charlotte—her whole team was on the floor, knocked down by the same pulse wave that had taken him.

  Charlotte wasn’t moving.

  He lurched toward her but was thrown back once again—this time slamming hard enough against the recently-constructed wall he literally went through it.

  What in all the heavens— He leaped into the air, and what he saw made his heart seize. Every angeling of light was decloaked and engaged in hand-to-hand battle with a shadow angeling. The office was a chaos of blades flashing and walls smashing and feathers flying. The lab was filled with dark wings, and they were forming a shield—a shield to protect an elegantly tall woman in a dress made of diamonds and snow. Even before he saw the pointed ears, he knew what she was: fae.

  Tajael hurled a pulse of energy to keep her from reaching Charlotte, but her black-winged guard blocked it. He
surged toward them, drawing his blade. Charlotte was still unconscious on the floor—heaven knew how badly she was injured—but a forest of dark blades bristled and blocked him.

  “No!” he screamed in anger, slashing his way toward her, battling off some of the shadow blades, but others bit into his flesh. He couldn’t reach her.

  The female fae knelt next to Charlotte, laid a hand on her… and disappeared.

  His rage blasted forth in angelsong, buffeting the shadow horde attacking him, but that wasn’t what drove them off. Suddenly, as one entity, they twisted away, leaving as fast as they came, just a sole dark angeling left behind.

  Tajael just stared at him. The vast contingent of Markos’s light angelings lay wounded or hovering in a confused state in the hallways. Charlotte’s crew were still on the floor, scrambling for the door. But Charlotte was gone. The shadowkind got what they came for, leaving this one, madly grinning dark angeling behind… Tajael surged toward him, only to see the bomb at the last second. It sailed through the air and into the ring, where the Flash had been just a minute before. The angeling twisted away, winking out of this reality and safely into another.

  Tajael tried to scream a warning, but the blast ripped any cry from his throat as it blew everything apart. He slammed through cubicle walls, pain thrashing him as he tumbled. Sound was gone, for a moment, his ears blasted by it, but they quickly healed. The shadow cuts all over his body would take longer, as would the smoldering feathers and flash burns across half his body. He staggered to standing.

  The destruction was unbelievable.

  A darkened pit of twisted metal stood where the ring was a moment ago. Everything in the lab was on fire or shattered or both. Angelings were still reeling from the blast, the uninjured coming to the aid of those closest, including Tajael. He waved them off and glimpsed the dazed and confused expressions on the faces of Charlotte’s crew. But they were alive.