by S. J. Day
Yes, he’d suspected he would lose his ability to love Eve—if only subconsciously—but he’d planned on her leaving him first. He’d intended for her to be mortal again and moved on with her life when his advancement came. The loss of his ability to love her would have been welcome then. How else would he survive her loss?
But Eve wouldn’t understand. She would see only that his love for her had taken a back seat to his ambition.
“Sarakiel toyed with Abel,” Sabrael argued, “and Abel used her in return. God created us to connect physically by design. But sex does not a true partnership make.”
“I really don’t care about Abel or our anatomy.”
“And now, you do not care about Evangeline either. Life must be much simpler for you.”
“Go away,” Alec dismissed. “You’re annoying me.”
The seraph burst from the chair like a rocket. In a flaming trail of wings, leather, and spikes, he kicked Alec in the chest and ripped through to the other side. The gaping, smoldering hole Sabrael wrought was so wide it nearly severed Alec’s torso in half.
Dropping to his knees with an agonized scream, Alec toppled to the floor, his cheek skinned by the harsh pile of the carpet.
You forget yourself, the seraph roared.
In torment, Alec tapped into the power of his beast and found the strength to extend a middle finger and flip Sabrael off.
There was a moment of terrible silence, when his pained gasps were the only sounds to fill the eerie quiet. Then Sabrael laughed—laughed-—and hauled Alec to his feet, restoring him.
“You amuse me, Cain.” The seraph brushed away Alec’s tears with tender swipes of his thumbs. “Because I like you, I will not tell your precious Evangeline about your choice of ascension over her. Your secret is safe with me.”
Alec slapped the scorching hands away. “Leave Eve out of this.”
The seraph hovered over him with a broad smile. “Might I suggest you purchase new linens for your guest room? Something floral, perhaps? Your mother does love gardens.”
As swiftly as he’d come, the seraph was gone.
Alec began to pace, his mind working judiciously. The seraph clearly needed something else to occupy him. But what?
Then there was Eve.
The time had passed when he could have laid everything out on the table for her. Now he had to find a way to get his shit together. He refused to believe that his brother had been right all those years ago, when he’d shouted the words that had goaded Alec to kill him.
The darkness in him smiled at the memory and his lips curved in a mirroring movement before he caught himself.
Who the fuck was running the show in his body?
He inhaled and exhaled, restoring a semblance of his usual equanimity.
One thing at a time. Sabrael. Eve. Himself.
Hand to his stomach, Alec still felt the tearing of the seraph’s boots through his entrails.
Black leather. Spikes.
An idea formed.
He shifted to another part of the building and paused, eyeing the lone blonde on the indoor shooting range. Tucked away in the bowels of Gadara Tower, the range provided a convenient place for Marks to hone their marksmanship. Silver bullets were still the swiftest way to vanquish werewolves.
Sensing his perusal, Iselda Seiler—Izzie, as the other Marks called her—turned her head and met his gaze. She set her gun down and removed the glasses and hearing protection that was less critical for Marks than mortals, but still necessary. She studied him with a now familiar odd intensity that had taken him some time to become accustomed to. There was an air of expectation about her, a sense that she was searching for something in his speech or expression.
His gaze lowered from the kohl-rimmed blue eyes, to the purple-stained mouth, to the spiked leather collar around her neck.
Malice made him smile. “I have a task for you, Ms. Seiler.”
Her eyes glittered. “I’m at your service.”
Eve wished she could cry. As it was, she felt as if her heartbreak was bottled up inside her, building in strength until something exploded.
“Ugh.” Abandoning the drawing table, Eve moved to the desk and woke her computer. She logged into the Gadara Enterprises system and opened the file that contained her report of the Upland incident. When she’d been told that the mark system kept secular records as well as celestial ones, she had been shocked at what she considered a security breach waiting to happen. But both Gadara and Alec had assured her that a divine hand protected the information. God liked the status quo.
As she refreshed her recollection of the report, she noted the sidebar with various links that ran along the right side of the main text. There were reports from Reed and Mariel—both handlers who’d lost Maiics to the heithounds—as well as the guards who’d been present, Alec, and Gadara himself. It was the latter she was most interested in, so Eve clicked on it. A password prompt box appeared and she frowned.
What would Gadara use as a password?
Archangel. God. Celestial. Mark. Christ. Jehovah. Bounty hunter Christnws.
Nothing worked. Eve growled. A warm breeze moved over her skin. Her eyes closed.
Reed.
She reached for him, into him, farther than was necessary, running the name “Raguel” through his mind to see what stirred.
He who inflicts punishment upon the world and the luminaries.
“That doesn’t help.” she muttered.
Eve was drawing a supporting column in her preliminary sketch when Montevista shouted from her living room.
“Hey, Hollis! Wanna play?”
She finished the precise line before answering. “No, thanks. You two go ahead.”
“Aww, man,” Sydney complained. “I’m getting tired of kicking his ass at Wii tennis.”
“Try the bowling.”
She glanced at the clock on the wall. Staying focused for longer than fifteen minutes was impossible when she felt as if her world was falling apart. In her mortal life, her brain would have overridden everything and allowed her to lose herself in her design work. As a Mark, her body was a machine that no longer listened to her brain. The mark tapped into her roiling emotions and channeled them into a nearly overwhelming desire to run, hunt, kill...
Alec dismissed me as f I meant nothing to him.
Quit digging, he admonished, with warm amusement. I’ll be there soon, and you can ask me what you want.
Breathing deeply, Eve closed her eyes and reached out to Alec. She moved tentatively, furtively, like a blind person searching through an unfamiliar room.
Until she was snatched by thick, talon-tipped fingers and tossed into the darkness.
CHAPTER 8
Alec’s mind was like an ocean in the midst of a hurricane. Eve was tossed, battered. Dunked beneath the surface, only to emerge gasping. How would she ever find anything inside him? She couldn’t even find Alec.
What do you seek?
She ceased her thrashing. The voice was only vaguely familiar, yet alluring in a way only Alec’s could be. Floating among the flotsam of his emotions, she waited with bated breath for another word from him that might reassure her.
Ah, pretty angel. You seek Raguel here?
Alec? she queried, still wary. The voice was Alec’s, but the inflection was not.
Who else would it be? You want Raguel. One of the holy angels, who inflicts punishment on the world and the luminaries.
Yeah, I heard that already. Give me something new
Luminaries, angel. Now come see me. Give me some gratitude.
You kicked me to the curb, she reminded, reaching out to Reed for the leverage to pull herself free.
Makeup sex is the hottest.
We haven’t made up.
The sea of madness churning around her rose up like a tsunami, dragging her with it to the very peak.
Eve. Alec’s voice at last, furious and frantic.
He threw her out of his mind like a bouncer would a drunk at a bar.
The computer screen flashed, “Good afternoon, Raguel.”
“Luminaries, eh?” she muttered, hating that Gadara’s sojourn in Hell was the reason she was able to snoop without fear of repercussion. The report opened and she leaned back in her chair to read, her hands rubbing at the goose bumps on her arms. How awful that Alec—the one man who had always made her hot—now left her cold.
Eve quickly scanned the brief text. It was only a few pages and focused more on Reed’s uncustomary behavior than on the actual documentation of the events surrounding the discovery of the mask and tengu.
...argued extensively about assigning Evangeline Hollis before training..
…lack of objectivity..
…too emotionally attached..
…overreached his position and approached Sara kiel for use of her personal guards...
Eve’s fingers dug into the flesh of her thighs. Reed.
He’d made a deal just as Alec had. But for what purpose? For her? Or for Sara, who’d been his lover for many, many years? Sara had benefited from her team’s support during the raid that night, with added prestige and expanded duties. Gadara believed Reed had done it for Eve.
The true dilemma in her relationships with both Alec and Reed wasn’t monogamy or honesty, although she most often cited those. Really, it was trust. She didn’t know how much of their wanting her was ambition and how much of it was desire. As long as the two brothers continued to clash over her, she was a valuable pawn to more than just Gadara.
The feel of firm lips pressed to her nape made Eve jump in her chair. The flick of a tongue sent a shiver along her spine. She hit the key on her keyboard that pulled up her e-mail screen and concealed Gadara’s report.
“How are you doing?” Reed murmured, his breath a gentle caress over her moist skin.
“Fine.”
“No, you’re not.” He spun her chair around. “You can’t lie to me. I feel you. I’m sorry I bailed on you earlier.”
Eve tilted her head back to look up at him. He’d shifted her home, then taken off immediately afterward. “Don’t apologize. I know you have twenty other Marks to worry over. I’m just glad you came when you did.”
“I’ll always be here for you.” Reed caught her wrist and tugged her up, pulling her toward the futon she kept against the wall. He sat and gestured for her to take a seat beside him. “Tell me what happened.”
“Don’t you know?”
“You shut me out.”
“Really?” She twisted sideways to face him. “And I wasn’t even trying.”
He mimicked her pose, tucking his right leg onto the seat and tossing his arm over the back of the futon. Her gaze was caught by his Rolex, because of both the beauty of the white gold against his olive skin and the surprise of an immortal concerned with the passing of mortal time.
“Cain pissed you off.” It was a statement, not a question.
She made a careless gesture with her hand. “No. He told me to get lost. Apparently I’m boring when I’m not putting out.”
There was a beat of silence, then, “He broke up with you?”
“That’s a kind way to say it”
Reed’s gaze roamed the length of her and paused on her ripped waistband and belt loop. He grew dangerously still. “Did he hurt you?”
“Not in the physical sense, no.”
“He breaks things, babe. That’s what he’s always
done.”
“There’s something wrong with him.”
“You’re just now figuring that out?”
“Be serious.”
Reed’s fingertips touched her cheek. “I am.” Eve stared at him for a long moment, waiting for some sign that he was playing with her or being less than serious. There was none. All she saw were warm brown eyes filled with compassion. He wore a graphite gray shirt today, open at the collar with rolled-up sleeves, as usual. He was an impossibly handsome man, physically perfect. But it was his imperfections that really did a number on her.
She leaned into his touch. “What do you know about archangels?”
His hesitation was nearly imperceptible, but she was looking for it. “Are you digging for anything in particular?”
“Is there any part of the change that would make someone more aggressive than usual?”
“Cain. Is. A. Dick. Period.
“Listen to me. Don’t judge.”
“Fine.” He couldn’t have sounded more disgrun tied.
“I know Alec Cain. But Cain the archangel. . . I don’t know him at all. They’re not the same guy.”
Reed’s lips thinned, then he exhaled harshly. “You’ve known Cain three months total, with a ten- year gap in between. Why won’t you consider that he was on his best behavior for a while and now the effort is wearing thin?”
“Time has nothing to do with intimacy. You can be around someone for years but not really know them at all. The reverse is also true.”
“I think he’s fucked you into believing whatever he wants.”
Eve bit back harsh words. Reed wasn’t trying to be an asshole, he was simply tactlessly blunt. “You can learn a lot about a person when you’re making love to them.”
He snorted, and she realized he might not know anything about that.
“Making love is for girls,” he said coldly, confirming her suspicions. “Guys fuck. We’ll do whatever it takes to get into the pants of a woman we’ve got a hard-on for. Cain is no exception.”
“Then do this for me. Dig into ascensions and see if any possible explanations jump out at you.”
He froze, his nostrils flaring. “Damn, you’ve got balls.”
“You can’t tell me you don’t feel the mess inside him. We’re all connected. There’s something in him that wasn’t there before.”
“He’s the same as he always was’ Reed bit out. “He just has more power and less reason to play nice.”
“You talk a good game,” she shot back, “but that’s all it is. I want to know what’s inside him.”
“I don’t think you do.” He held up a hand when she opened her mouth. “Say no more. I’ll ask around.”
“Thank you.” She put every ounce of gratitude she felt into the words, but his face remained impassive.
He stood and looked down at her with disdain. “Think about how screwed up you are, Eve. I’m right here trying to be what you want, and you’re asking me to help you with a guy who can’t love you.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he disappeared.
Sighing, she said, Come back.
Eve waited, hating the feeling that her life was spinning completely out of her control. Pushing to her feet, she reached out to him again. I would do the same for you, Reed. I wouldn’t let it rest, if I knew something was wrong.
Silence.
“Ugh. I can’t win for trying.”
Exiting her office, she looked down the length of her hallway to the view of the ocean and sky beyond her living room balcony. She was so damn restless, she felt like she was going to crawl out of her skin.
The Novium was pushing her body to have some fun kicking demon ass. That lust for violence could be channeled into a lust for sex as a delaying tactic, but Eve wasn’t getting any, which left her spoiling for a good brawl. Here she’d been bitching about how much hunting she was doing, when it had actually been really damned convenient as far as her Novium was concerned. It took being cooped up at home for a couple of hours to drive that point home.
Now, what to do about it? Playing Wii sports wasn’t going to cut it. She’d suggest to Montevista that they go to Gadara Tower and use the gym, but she didn’t want to risk seeing Alec right now. She would have to thicken her skin before she exposed herself to his barbs.
Eve turned away from the beckoning beach and headed toward her bedroom instead. The moment she entered, she spotted an unfinished task—the beautifully embroidered, burgundy leather Bible Father Riesg
o had lent her.
Perhaps Montevista wouldn’t bitch too much about escorting her somewhere, if she was going to church. Not that a church was any safer than other buildings; nothing was sacred to demons. But worst- case scenario would be that they cross paths with some bounty-hunting Infernals and throw down, and she’d welcome that. The demons were in town be- cause of her. They should be fighting her, not making life hell for the other Marks.
She’d rounded the bed and was reaching for the Bible when she heard the door shut and lock behind her. Tensing, she glanced over her shoulder. Her hand fell to her side.
“All right,” Reed said gruffly. “I feel it, too. Happy?” His hands were shoved into the pockets of his
black slacks; his face was austere and somber. Eve sensed how it pained him to make the admission and how hard he fought against his jealousy in order to be honest with her. He would have preferred for her to give up on Alec altogether. Instead, he gave her hope.
“Don’t get too excited,” he muttered. “He’s still a prick. He knew what he was getting himself into when he went after the ascension.”
She became very still. “You think he wanted this?”
“I think he pursued it.” Reed looked at her. “There are many handlers who are better qualified. Cain was chosen because he secured an endorsement somewhere.”
It felt so odd to be so composed on the outside when she was breaking into pieces on the inside.
“H-he had to know that things would change between us in the process, right?”
His face took on a stony cast. “He knew archangels are incapable of romantic love, yes. But he might not have been thinking about that—or you—at the time.”
More honesty, even though keeping that last sentence to himself might have helped his cause with her.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, rounding the bed toward him. After Alec’s Jekyll and Hyde complex, it was a relief to interact with someone who was bare and genuine. To his possible detriment, no less.
Perhaps Gadara was correct in his assumption about why Reed had approached Sarakiel for assistance.
For her, Abel gave Cain the benefit of the doubt. It was only fair to give the same to him in return.
When she reached him, Eve didn’t think twice. She cupped the back of his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers.