by Anne Marsh
"You're for sale?"
He pulled the blade up, a short, controlled tug. The plastic snapped, leaving .his hand cradling her wrists. "Of course. You think I wouldn't do anything for my brothers, Ria? Anything at all to see them get their wings back and get on with their lives?"
She slid her hands out of his and he let her. He could have stopped her. They both knew that. Only thing she didn't know here was why. "Including come after me for my pictures."
"Including that. Think it over, Ria. Take the night," he added. "If you need to. We'll hit the trail now and you think about my offer."
He hadn't asked her to bond with him. Maybe that omission surprised her, but he didn't fucking care. After all, wasn't that the ultimate purpose of the Fallen here in her world? To seduce and to tempt with their promise of a single, diabolical, all-or-nothing favor? She wouldn't bond with him, but she'd wonder about that dark offer. She'd admit that much to herself, had probably known since she'd found herself tracking his movements across M City. He'd been more than a target. He'd interested her.
He'd get her pictures, though. She'd hand them over before she cleared the wall.
He turned away, as if he didn't care whether or not she followed his lead. After all, if she was being honest with herself, he was her only viable option. "We start walking," he said. "We head for the wall now."
"What about you?" This time, she didn't protest his plan. That was a step in the right direction. She came along with him, let him take the lead here, she'd give him what he needed before they hit the walls and he had to admit the truth. That, now he was inside and on the ground, he couldn't simply climb back over the walls. The wards wouldn't let a Fallen touch the wall—because the Preserves were designed to be a one way ticket.
"This is just a walk in the park, right?" she said bitterly. "Nothing to worry about."
"There's plenty to worry about," he said calmly. "Nothing is safe here. So we're going to head west, right up to the edge of the wall."
"You have a built-in GPS?"
He shot her a look. "Don't need one." He flicked a finger towards the dark night sky. This far from M City, light pollution was at a minimum. Tonight, the sky was a carpet of bright stars, patterns of light and cloud spread as far as she could see. "There's your map."
"I'd rather have the GPS." Folding her arms over her chest, she stared back at him.
"You don't need it." He looked up, his eyes scanning the sky. "Big Dipper is there." He gestured with the tip of his blade. All that lethal beauty focused on the poetry of the night sky—it didn't fit with what she'd expected from him. He wasn't what she'd expected. "And, right next door, you've got the North Star."
His star was beautiful, a harsh, sharp pinprick of light in the black sky. She still would have traded it for a GPS. The sun would erase his map and then where would she be?
"You line those up, you know where you're going."
"I don't."
"You do. Now. Something happens to me, you just keep heading in that direction. You'll hit the wall."
"And then what? You think you can get me over that wall? Or do we just stand around at the base and wait?" she asked.
"I'm going to get you to the wall," he countered, "but I can't climb it. Can't even touch it. The wards won't let anyone, anything, paranormal touch the walls—you don't fly, you don't cross. My helo is out of fuel, so we're not flying. Once we're close enough, though, my team will be watching. I'll either help you scale the wall, or they'll drop you a line so you can climb out."
"The wall doesn't have a door? A gate?"
"No." He eyed her calmly. "You're in the Preserves, Ria. We built these walls to keep the Fallen in. No one leaves once he's inside, so no doors. No exits. Only way out is over. This was meant to be a prison."
He'd come here to take advantage of her fear and isolation, but instead he wanted to comfort her. To tell her that everything was going to be okay here because she could do this. She wasn't falling apart. Her hands shook, but she was keeping the fear under wraps now. He shouldn't have found that self-control seductive, but he did and so he let himself have just a little taste. The soul thirst rode him hard as always, demanding he throw it an emotional snack. Ria's emotions were sharp and strong. And wrong. Even as his thirst eased just a fraction, fed by her fear, he knew that.
A woman like her shouldn't be afraid. She didn't know everything he'd done in the millennia since he'd Fallen, but her pale, set face still reproached him. Yeah, he belonged right here in the Preserves with the other monsters.
So the wry smile she shot him shocked him. She wouldn't admit he scared the piss out of her and he respected that.
"So if you can't go over, why can I?"
"Because the wall's only warded against paranormals," he said patiently. "You're human, Ria. You can touch it, climb over."
They headed out and he knew he'd be counting the miles down. "You let me know if you need anything and we'll stop."
She nodded, matching her pace to his. "I'm not stopping for anything," she vowed and he told himself that was exactly what he needed. He didn't want another opportunity to kiss her, to taste all those emotions she kept so carefully concealed inside her. Desire and fear. An arousal that teased his senses, had him longing for something more.
Longing for Ria Morgan, who deserved far better than him.
So he wasn't stopping and he was getting her home.
If he gave into temptation, if he stopped, he might not let her go.
Chapter Four
The crash site stank of death and super-heated metal. The sharp copper tang hit the back of Hazor's nose, burning down into his lungs until he was more awake than he'd been in months, hyper-aware of his surroundings and the rogues crawling over the wreckage of the downed chopper. The human still strapped in the pilot's seat was very clearly dead and there was little he could do with that kind of leftover. The emotions had gone with the soul. Now, the fire had burned the body almost beyond recognition, melting the MVD-issue jumpsuit onto the blackened remains.
That made Hazor's job here that much easier.
One less human to tell the world that he'd seen Hazor raising an army here in the Preserves—an army with forbidden wings. If word got out, if the Heavens learned too much about Hazor's activities down here, the archangel who had taught Hazor the secret of restoring the Fallen's wings would also Fall and Hazor would lose his own newly regained wings.
And that wasn't happening.
"There were three humans," Hazor growled.
His second-in-command inhaled sharply and hissed. "Not all dead."
"One dead. Two jumpers. Both female." Hazor pointed to the corpse. "Pilot went down with the bird, but the photographer and the bodyguard jumped clear. First went out about five minutes before the chopper went down. We'll start the search two clicks west of here. The other jumped last minute, so she should be close."
The second jumper wasn't mission critical. She was muscle for the photographer and Hazor doubted the woman had seen anything beyond her targets. If she'd had the vidstick from the camera, she'd have bailed sooner instead of trying to draw the rogues' fire away from her companion. Whatever intel she had was in her head. Taking care of her would be simple.
The photographer was a different story, he realized as he examined the burnt wreckage of the tripod-mounted camera. Fire had gone to work but not before someone had popped the vidstick, which meant whatever info had been on the camera was now walking around the Preserves.
His second snapped his fingers, summoning a tracker to his side. Rezon was a big, hard bastard with a scar that twisted down the left side of his face. Topping out at well over six feet, he towered over the other rogues who cleared a path for him. He was all cold menace and didn't so much as blink when Hazor gave him his orders.
"You take the second jumper." He'd go after the photographer himself.
""Kill or retrieve?" Rezon asked in a flat voice.
"Retrieve." There were advantages to getting his hands on
the missing female and you didn't send a tracker like Rezon after a female without clarifying the life-or-death situation. "If you can. If she gives you trouble, kill her. The first girl, however—I want her alive. She'll have the vidstick somewhere on her person." And, even if she didn't, he still needed to make sure. He couldn't allow the information she was carrying to fall into the hands of the Fallen—and he'd fought alongside those bastards for too many years to write them off now. The Fallen would send someone after the chopper.
"Speed," he said, "is of the essence. I want these girls. Now."
Nodding, the tracker peeled off, heading north to find the second jumper. Rezon had never lost a trail yet.
Dismissing the tracker and his quarry, Hazor turned his attention back to the crash site and its surroundings, running his eyes over the deets. Twenty minutes and five hundred yards later and he had his direction. The broken canopy and a minute trace of blood on the trees below said that this was where the photographer had hit the ground. He snapped out an order and a second team took off, running hard on her scent. He'd catch up with them after he'd finished his sweep of the crash site. Just in case there was anything—any clue—he was missing here.
Hazor had his orders and they were simple. Kill the girl. She'd seen too much, taken photos of Hazor intoning the runes that gave a rogue back his wings in exchange for a demonic bargain. Maybe, she wouldn't—couldn't—connect those dots. Or, on the other hand, maybe she could. Just maybe, she could repeat the runes and that made her a walking recipe for how to add wings to a Fallen. If that was the case, she couldn't be allowed to leave the Preserves. That information could not be allowed to fall into the hands of Zer and his lieutenants.
So the order had gone out.
The human photographer and her companions had to die. Fast or slow, it didn't matter. What did matter was ensuring she never spoke of what she'd seen.
Picking up the trail, he got his ass in gear and moved out, his pack following close on his heels. He'd lead. They'd follow. It was almost too simple, like using an Uzi to shoot fish in a barrel. Too damned easy.
Sucking air deep into his lungs, he memorized the scent and the taste of his prey. Her aura tasted like lemons and orange, ginger and cinnamon. He could almost taste the shock of her crash landing in the middle of a prison. He inhaled again, holding the breath as long as he could. And desire.
The human woman smelled most deliciously of arousal.
The Preserves had been carved out of the broad sweep of Russian steppe. Hundreds of years ago, Cossack fighters had ridden hard across this ground, driving their horses into bloody battles. Now, after the devastation of the Great Wars, the Fallen had bought up the land. There was nothing pretty left here, just a harsh, stony landscape that would have given even the fiercest Cossack warrior pause, all narrow, twisting chutes of rock shot through a barren landscape. Even in the almost impenetrable darkness that had surrounded them when the sun finally gave in and fell beneath the horizon hours ago, Vkhin's long-legged stride ate up the ground like he just couldn't wait to get where he was going. Which was far, far away from her.
Since he'd taken the lead when they'd set off, Ria had plenty of time to think—and to admire the view in front of her. Vkhin's big body was like something straight out of a dream, strong and sure. And that ass of his was something else. She wanted to beg him to take off the leather duster he wore like a suit of armor.
Which she wasn't going to do.
She didn't want to trust him. He had an ulterior motive, as he'd made perfectly clear. He wanted her pics—not her. And yet she was still tempted by him. She could admit that, to herself. She didn't have to say the words out loud, didn't have to give him that truth. He was big. He was brutal. And he was beautiful. She couldn't stop sneaking glances at him, because the reality of Vkhin was so much more than her surveillance footage had shown.
This trip had to be all business. Something was very wrong because her chopper should not have been taken down by winged angels. MVD needed that intel stat, which meant she needed to haul ass, get out and get home. With her vidstick.
Unfortunately, the only life line she had was a Fallen angel with the hardest body she'd ever seen and a chip on his shoulder even she couldn't miss. He'd made it perfectly clear that he didn't like humans. That she was trespassing on his territory. And he came with a price tag—she wanted out of here, he was claiming her vidstick for his own.
"Why do you really want my pictures?" She staked her own claim, forcing her hand not to check for the vidstick stashed in her bra. "I understand the Fallen don't want MVD sticking its nose in the Preserves. It's your territory. These are your people. You've all made that perfectly clear. But why would my pics matter? This isn't one of those just-on-principle busts, Vkhin. We both know that."
He didn't slow down, those shitkicking combat boots of his eating up the ground effortlessly. "This isn't about MVD," he said, climbing over a pile of rocks blocking their path.
"Alright." She took the hand he held out to her. His fingers wrapped around her wrist, tugging her up. "They're just pictures," she argued. His fingers were warmth against her own, cooler skin. "Nothing you'd want."
"You have no idea what I want." As soon as her feet were firmly planted, he let go of her wrist.
The section of the Preserves they were field-tripping through must have been inhabited years ago, before the nuclear accidents of the Great Wars had rendered large strips of the Russian countryside uninhabitable by humans. The ground was level here, a rusted-out car abandoned on the edge of their makeshift path. Maybe, there'd been a road connecting A to Z here long ago, before the Fallen had bought up the land and turned it into a paranormal prison. Now, the car's exterior was little more than rust-colored strips of peeling metal. The glass of the windshield had spider-webbed, thousands of cracks rippling outward from the hole in the middle. Somehow, that glass held despite the damage.
"I was shooting out of a moving chopper." She shrugged. "I doubt those shots are too clear. Your boys intercepted them, so you know exactly what I have." Which was more than she did. She'd shot on instinct, her finger on auto-pilot, because she'd needed the barrier between herself and the horror of what was unfolding on the ground.
"It doesn't matter now," he said. "If you don't go over the wall before the rogues catch up, it doesn't matter what you did or didn't see."
"Let's talk about that, shall we?" The kernel of anger was unexpected. She might not be as big or as strong, but she was part of this strange partnership. For some reason, he wanted something she had. He wanted—needed—to get her out of the Preserves. She didn't want to think about what would have happened if she hadn't had the photos as a bargaining chip. Nausea curled through her stomach. The winged angels had battered at the chopper like the bird was a toy. She could be dead.
All in all, MVD's recon mission had been a failure. Sure, she'd shot pictures, but what had she really captured? She thought back over the scene on the ground, talking it through out loud. "Tell me when I get close," she suggested. "We fly in—"
"Illegally," he interrupted. "No humans in Fallen airspace. That was the deal, Ria. Whether you knew it or not, your superiors knew it real well. They knew they were sending you on a suicide mission."
Those words of his hurt, probably, she decided, because they were true. She was disposable. Just like always. It didn't matter that she'd been sent. Someone had to go—and she'd been handy, like running through a drive-through when the hunger pangs hit and there wasn't enough time to do a sit-down.
"Fine," she said, because there was no point in harping on her role here. "MVD decides they need a closer look at what's going on on the ground in the Preserves because, you see, Vkhin, we've been hearing things. Rumors. Wild stories about flying angels, even though we all know your kind can't fly." What the hell, she decided. Maybe, she'd give him the truth after all. "I spot an anomaly while operating one of the drones—what looks like wingless rogues flying— and MVD chain of command decides it merits a se
cond glance. So I go up, in a chopper, and we head for the problem spot. Only, the problem turns out to be that that spot isn't some blank spot on the radar with weird weather. No, what I'm seeing are flying objects. Angels, Vkhin, who've got their wings back."
He stopped then and just stared right at her. That hard, black gaze was the most lifeless, soul-less thing she'd ever seen. His eyes were cold as a bitch and she'd clearly connected one too many dots. He didn't like her conclusions. At all. So her breath shouldn't be catching, her eyes shouldn't be moving over the hard planes of his face, wondering how he'd got the small, silver scar on his left cheekbone. He didn't want her, she reminded herself fiercely. She was just the means to an end.
She hated the lack of light, the way the sky overhead was all impenetrable blackness. She stumbled because her night vision wasn't great and cracking open a torch would have been a nice move, but something about the darkness stopped her. That lack of light was menacing. As if something—someone—was watching. She could feel her pulse speeding up, slamming against the skin of her wrist, her throat. In another minute, she'd be fighting to breathe as the world and her chest closed in. No.
Don't think about it.
Desperate for something new to think about, a distraction from the darkness, she replayed the scene in her head. So she had proof that some of the rogues had wings. Those wings were no happily-ever-after, but they didn't have to mean Armageddon, either. Half the world would dismiss the pictures as more evidence of media tampering. The other half would rant and rave, but just because a few of the rogues could fly, didn't mean the world was coming to an end.
Did it?
The flying angels had been different from Vkhin in more ways than just the wings. She tried to remember the how and the why of what happened, because she sensed the connection was important.
"The rogue Fallen on the ground—" she said, thinking it out—"not all of them had wings yet." Memory brought back the frantic click of the camera's shutter. She'd zoomed in on one dark shadow. No wings, not at first, just the red runes writhing on the male's scarred back. Forming one by one. "I have the recipe, don't I?" she said flatly. "Those words the winged angel was chanting—those are the magical step by step instructions on how to put a pair of wings back on a Fallen angel. I look at those pictures and figure out how to pronounce the runes, I can add wings to any of the Fallen."