Wicked Fire: Angel Fire, book 2

by Johnston, Marie

  A girl should be able to have sex when she wanted to and move on, but this was the wrong realm to do that in. She’d learned that the hard way.

  So, maybe it was a good time to leave Numen and go back to where everyone didn’t know her name.

  “I guess. My bodyguard is waiting.” She hugged Odessa goodbye, ignoring the burst of agony in her back when Odessa returned the embrace. “Goodbye, Tenley.”

  The female gave her a brief smile and went right back to work.

  Jagger was out in the corridor. Hearing her, he started for the exit. They had to be outside to to transcend to another realm and she couldn’t wait to descend back to the human realm. Warriors passed them, averting their gaze and inspecting corners. A refreshing change. A few months ago, some angels wouldn’t have hesitated to snicker at her or toss Jagger looks full of innuendo. But now that she was basically the sister of their new director, she was dutifully ignored.

  Outside, Jagger cocked his elbow. While they’d both been to the secret nook used when descending to her home, as her protector, he insisted they travel together, and that included transcending at the same time. The man was honorable, if nothing else. Given who his father was, his honor was a prickly topic.

  He followed her lead for the descent. An odd thing for him to do, considering his behavior, but she knew the layout of the city better. If they sensed they might get spotted by a human, she could cart them immediately to another place.

  The vibrant smells of the city surrounded her. Car exhaust, dirty concrete, a splash of sunshine, and the faint smell of urine. Home sweet Atlanta. If she strolled a few blocks in either direction, she’d get a whiff of the magnolia trees. But her section of town grew only concrete.

  Numen always smelled nice. Powered by its own energy, the realm was an elegant copy of what humans probably envisioned utopia to be. Numen wasn’t heaven, but it never smelled foul. Even when angel fire, the divine plasmic eternal flame, had burned her sister’s home down, there hadn’t been smoking remnants. Just ashen rubble.

  Her kind could grow grass and flowers and trees with little effort, so if ever there was a smell in Numen, it was floral. Pleasant. Cheery. And that was probably why she stayed in Atlanta. It was large enough to get lost in, and when the magnolia trees bloomed, she could pretend she was home.

  They each listened for a moment before Jagger gave the all clear by walking away from her.

  “Couldn’t get out of my detail, huh?” She tried to keep her tone light, but it wasn’t fun being someone’s worst job ever.

  “Nope.”

  He punched in the code for her apartment and held the door open for her. His gentlemanly act was just that, an act. He opened the door to look, listen, and feel for trouble, then she entered and he followed so he could check for a tail.

  She jogged up the stairs. The same process was repeated with her apartment door.

  Feeling the need to punch a few things, she was heading to her practice room when her phone buzzed. She’d left it here while they were in Numen. The thing was for emergencies only.

  Jagger narrowed his eyes on it and she realized she hadn’t made a move toward it. It buzzed again. A foreboding sound. That it had happened as soon as they walked in the door was concerning.

  Jagger started for it the same time she did, but she beat him to it, curiosity propelling her.

  “It’s probably just Ode. Bryant probably forgot to mention something.” Which totally wasn’t like him.

  Felicia glanced at the message, blinked, and held it closer, as if reading it was the problem.

  It came from an unknown number.

  Tell my son I want to talk to him. –J

  Chapter 2

  Jagger snatched the phone out of her hand. “It says what?”

  His heart thrummed in his ears.

  He didn’t have a phone. They were a liability, a way for a tricky demon in a computer-savvy host to track him.

  So who else with the initial J would send Felicia a text telling her they wanted to talk to their son?

  Fuck.

  He tapped on the screen. Nothing happened. “What the… Who’s it from?” The force of his taps was increasing.

  Felicia caught his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip and snapped up the phone with her other hand. “It’s an unknown number. I can try to call it.”

  He hovered over her as she concentrated on the screen. The mind fuck that his father might be trying to reach him was the only thing keeping his gaze off the way her tank top gaped to reveal impressive cleavage. Or how her hair glimmered like hammered gold in the sunlight streaming through the sliding doors in her main room.

  She held the phone to her ear and met his gaze. He was inches from her but he didn’t back away.

  A ringtone vibrated on the air between them. The message had come just as they’d returned. He should be shutting blinds, spying out the windows, updating Dionna. But he couldn’t pry himself away from Felicia and the possibility that his dad might be on the other end of the phone.

  The ringing stopped. His lungs seized. Someone had answered.

  “Ms. Montclaire.”

  Jagger sucked in an icy breath. That voice. He hadn’t heard it for years. How long had Father been fallen?

  Felicia’s eyes widened when she got a load of his expression. He had no idea what he looked like, but his skin was probably as pale as his hair.

  She stepped back just as he was reaching for the phone. “That’s me. I’d ask your name, but I don’t care to end up fallen for associating with one. So let me ask this instead—there’s a guy standing next to me. Is he the one you want to talk to?”

  Jagger dropped his hand. He’d forgotten all the instructions drilled into him the day he’d lost Father. No contact. No checking up on him. No aid whatsoever. It was as if his loved one had died and there was no place to pay respects. His loved one had vanished and was gone. Forever.

  Jagger could lose his own wings for talking to Father. But at the moment, it didn’t seem to matter. He’d reverted to the sixteen-year-old kid who could hardly comprehend what was going on.

  The rumble of a smooth chuckle was clear on the other end. “Ms. Montclaire, you surprise me.”

  “Do I?” she asked innocently. “You chose me to contact, after all. So why would you want to talk to him?”

  “Put my son on the line.”

  Jagger’s hand twitched to grab the phone.

  “Wrong answer,” Felicia replied. “See, the guy next to me, his dad hasn’t talked to him in a while. Years. And he’s had good reason not to. And I would think that if my friend’s dad cared about him, he’d know the trouble he’d be bringing down on him just by contacting him.”

  Jagger had never been so grateful for Felicia’s presence and her calm, collected demeanor. Part of him feared that she’d never give him the phone, but she was right not to. And as the warrior, he should be disconnecting the call and apprising his boss of what was happening.

  But he couldn’t. He leaned closer to hear Father’s response.

  “Hand the phone over, Ms. Montclaire.” The charm was gone, the demand clear.

  Felicia didn’t immediately hand the phone over. She held it away from her ear and regarded him. The unspoken question was in her eyes. Are you going to risk it?

  She’d already risked herself. For him, no less. He wasn’t going to think deeper about it, wasn’t going to consider that there was more to Felicia than her beauty and privileged upbringing. And he could pass off this conversation as part of the investigation. He was still a warrior.

  He accepted the device. Unsure what to say, he went with a gruff “What do you want?”

  “Julian.” Relief and satisfaction poured from his father’s voice.

  He wanted to point out that no one called him that anymore, and that Father would know that if he were around. Father would know if hadn’t chosen to fall in love with some human and place her feelings over his family’s safety. But Jagger stayed silent.

  Fathe
r waited a heartbeat before he spoke. “It came to my attention that you may have gotten mixed up in some of my affairs.”

  “The whole realm is mixed up in your affairs.”

  “Yes, well. It wasn’t my intention for your safety to be in question.”

  “My job is to put myself in harm’s way to keep the realm safe,” he said tightly. “From people like you, apparently.”

  “There is no one like me. It’s why they’re scared, and they’ll use you to get to me.”

  There is no one like me. What an understatement. And disturbing for a kid who’d grown up being reminded how much like his father he was. “Who will use me?”

  “Those aligned with me who seek to control me, and those who aren’t and seek to stop me. Watch yourself, Julian.”

  He hated how much he craved hearing his name spoken in that voice. “You could just bow out and get an honest job and leave the realm alone. Boom. You’re out of danger. I’m out of danger.”

  “You know that can’t happen.”

  “Can’t it? Or you don’t want it to? I guess you wouldn’t have risked everything if you’d thought about more than yourself sometimes.”

  “Fair enough, son.”

  “Don’t call me that.” Instant regret coursed through him. His deepest fantasy was talking to Father again, and he wanted to take back his demand. But he wasn’t that sixteen-year-old boy anymore. He was a warrior raised by a single mother.

  Jameson, because that was what Jagger would have to start thinking of him as, didn’t reply for a moment and when he did, his voice had dropped low, like he knew Felicia was trying to listen in. “Again, that’s fair. Watch your back. To do that, you’ll have to keep protecting that pretty little angel. It’s seems my associates have secrets of their own.”

  “Like what?”

  “If I knew, they’d be dead already. I won’t risk us both by speaking to you again. Goodbye, Julian.” The call was disconnected as Jagger was opening his mouth to protest. Don’t hang up. Keeping talking. Just…don’t go.

  The silence on the other end of the line stretched on. He was staring at the floor.

  Felicia’s soft skin brushed his as she took the phone and shut it off. “Are you going to tell Bryant?”

  He nodded numbly. He hadn’t reached out to a fallen, and talking to him was part of the investigation, part of catching him. So Father could be properly executed.

  God almighty, the man had murdered a watcher. Watchers were tasked with monitoring humans. They were a threat to no one. But the poor female had deduced what Jameson was up to, and when she’d reported it through the proper channels, she’d gotten killed for it.

  That was just one they knew about. The frequency of warriors’ deaths had increased in recent years. Was he behind any of those?

  Why hadn’t Jameson Haddock faded into obscurity like the rest of the fallen? It would’ve been the last decent thing he could’ve done as a father.

  Jagger couldn’t look at Felicia. The sympathy in her eyes would remind him too much of how others had looked at him years ago.

  That poor child. The son of a fallen senator. How humiliating.

  Energy swirled inside of him, coiling and uncoiling. He wasn’t so dense that he didn’t know it was his emotions.

  He glanced at Felicia. She didn’t wear those sexy clothes to taunt him. It was the way she normally dressed; it wasn’t for his benefit. And didn’t that ruffle his feathers?

  But he’d been around her long enough to know that she beat the shit out of her punching bag when something was bothering her. Lately, that something had been him.

  She might be onto something.

  He turned away and stormed to her workout room. “I’ll call Bryant. First, I need to use your bag.”

  * * *

  Felicia perched on her couch. Rhythmic thumping came from the back of her apartment. Good thing this place had solid insulation, but even better—tenants she got along with and talked to regularly. The rooms above and below the workout room were guest rooms. The renters always let her know when someone was staying with them so she could take her workouts elsewhere.

  She tapped her fingers along the cushion. She’d heard most of the conversation. Jameson Haddock was a fallen, but he’d only gotten worse after losing his wings. But that wasn’t why she was worried.

  Jagger’s reaction. The yearning in his eyes. The hopefulness he’d tried to hide. The hurt and anger of a kid toward a parent.

  She knew that one all too well.

  But this was Julian Hancock. He was untouchable, unflappable, nearly as stone cold as his mother. To see him vulnerable and hurting…

  A twinge in her back took her mind off him. Her shoulders ached. For years, she could pretend to forget what had happened to her and the agony of the days after. Recent events had brought it all back, making it harder than usual to ignore the constant throb in her shoulder blades and back muscles.

  Her wings were morphed, and more comfortable than they would be if she were forced to extend the damaged scar tissue. When she was alone, she would let them hang out, gut through the agony, but with Jagger around constantly, she’d held them in more than usual. It was like keeping her leg bent twenty-four/seven. First the limb itself ached, then soon after the surrounding joints.

  Going to the medicine cupboard in the kitchen, she pulled out a couple bottles. She threw back a few ibuprofen and an acetaminophen and turned around, and almost yelped.

  A scowling, sweaty Jagger was frowning at her, his mint-green gaze flitting from the pill bottles to her. Sweat dripped down his forehead and he’d pulled his hair back into a stubby queue at the base of his head, muting the surfer look and playing up the killing-machine vibe. His shirt was off.

  “What the fuck are those?”

  The accusation in those words wiped out her sympathy for him. She shoved the medicine back into the cabinet. Snarky comments almost left her mouth, so she slowed and drank a glass of water. “They’re my drugs.”

  “What kind?”

  “You know, opiates. Laced with fentanyl.”

  “The problem, Felicia, is that you could be telling the truth.”

  She slammed her glass down, a crack renting the base to the rim. “When you get tired of lashing out at me because of your daddy issues, let me know.”

  She pushed past him, wishing her kitchen entrance were wider so she didn’t have to brush up against his hard muscle. He grabbed her arm and she wanted to strain against him, to lengthen her cramped muscles, to use him as her own personal stretcher.

  “Don’t you dare minimize that. My father betrayed us at every level and continues to do so.” He released her. “Can’t you take anything seriously?”

  Her patience had hit its limit. This was why she hadn’t explained any of her actions to him. He didn’t deserve an explanation, but she didn’t deserve his insulting treatment of her.

  “I’ll tell you what I take seriously.” She crossed her arms. Instead of punching her bag, she might take a long soak and loosen up her joints. “My father’s murder. We weren’t close for a reason, but it wasn’t always that way. Maybe someday I’ll have the luxury of mourning him, but I’m kind of trying to stay alive right now.”

  Jagger’s jaw flexed and he had the grace to look ashamed.

  “Another thing I take seriously? My mom walking into the fire.”

  He blanched, but she couldn’t be smug. The pain of her mother killing herself was too raw. Her kind were immortal, but they had an out. Angel fire. The bane of her own existence. The underlying cause of her constant pain.

  A fountain of the deadly substance erupted from the center of the realm. And Mother had taken a long walk off a short pier right into it. As if that weren’t bad enough, Father had shut down that day, and every day of his life thereafter. Felicia had been little more than a nuisance to them.

  She cocked her head. “What? Did you think my father was so hateful that Mother was hiding out in a spa for the rest of her days?” It had always
bugged her how rarely anyone asked after Mother.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah. Not many want to know.”

  He went tense, his eyes hardening. Always defensive. “Why the drugs?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I reveal two of the three worst days of my life and you’re still on the drugs? They’re over-the-counter painkillers, asshole. As for the why, I’ll let you wonder. I’ve already explained myself far too much to a guy who’s set on hating me. Now I’m gonna go take a bath. Try not talking to me for as long as you can possibly manage.”

  * * *

  Chanel Hancock stared across the desk at Director Vale. She’d gone to the warrior compound and that act alone had shocked him, not that anyone would know from his admirable poker face. She looked him in the eye. His scars scared weaker angels, but not her. She was in awe of them, and if she didn’t think it’d belittle the nightmare he’d gone through, she’d think harder about how she must resemble him on the inside.

  Scorched. Shredded. Healed, but never like before.

  And like the director, she was facing that which had inflicted all the harm. Her mate. What did he call himself now? Jameson Haddock.

  With that name, he mocked them all, just like he had as James Hancock. Fucking his way through the realm and then plowing through human women left and right. He hadn’t even changed his initials, the seedy bastard. No wonder he worked so well with the creatures from Daemon.

  He hadn’t deserved his downy, light gray wings. They should’ve been as black as cinder and as leathery as old cowhide.

  The director was giving her the latest report on a missing batch of vials used to store angel fire. Apparently betraying her mate and then raising a son who shunned his father’s existence so much he took up arms had been enough to earn the director’s trust.

  It was flattering, actually. Quite refreshing for once to not have to deal with insecure personalities who thought she didn’t know how they demeaned her behind her back, yet cowered in front of her.

  She interrupted his tale of woe. “Have you located Senator Kenton yet?”