I gave a tiny nod. I’d make it so, or at least try my best.
“You must go now. She will still need someone to set her bones and she has lost a lot of blood.” Raphael turned back towards the door. “Ah, your cavalry has arrived, Hope.”
As he said the words, Luc popped into the clinic with Estrella.
Raphael smiled warmly at the devil. “Lucifer! You look well. I see having Acerezeal back has healed your wounds.”
Then Luc did something that I wouldn't have believed possible if I hadn’t seen it for myself. He hugged Raphael, a full blown smile on his face. “Hello, old friend.”
Rella’s jaw dropped open, and I wished mine could do the same. I’d never seen him hug anyone except Ace. Hell, I’d never seen him give anyone anything more than a handshake. Even as children, we would climb over him like our own personal climbing frame, but acts of tenderness were never offered, and definitely not expected. To see him being openly affectionate almost defied belief.
Luc turned to Memphis and scowled. “A little warning next time. Hand her to me.”
Memphis scowled back, and held me tighter. For a moment I thought he might refuse and then they’d have a tug’o’war over my battered body, but eventually Memphis shifted me to Luc.
Luc held me safe in his arms, his large onyx wings curling around me protectively.
“Ace would have my balls if anything happened to you,” he said, then sifted. I knew what he really meant. It was hard to hide your emotions from an empath. He’d been worried. He felt an affection for us that stemmed from his love of Ace, at least in the beginning. Now, I think he cared for us because we became the surrogate children that they would never have. Though neither of them would ever admit that.
Luc sifted us back to my apartment, Memphis and Rella seconds behind.
I could read Raphael, I told Rella as soon as she regained her land legs, and her eyebrows rose.
As she processed my thought, her forehead crinkled deeply. Secrecy is more important than ever now. You’d be a threat to them all. Even if they aren't Fallen, it doesn't make them the good guys.
I didn’t respond. My body throbbed and it was a lecture she’d given me once a week since we were three. It was an issue for another day. Today, I just needed to heal from near death.
Minutes after we arrived, and Luc had laid me on my bed, Ace sifted in. She took one look at me, a little less broken but I’m sure I still looked like crap, and sifted back out again.
I curled into a ball and Estrella came over and pulled a sheet over my body, covering my nakedness. Probably too late for modesty. She laid on the bed and curled herself around me. We’d slept like this often since we were babies. I was always smaller and weaker, and Rella was always my fierce protector. I petted her hand. She would have been terrified.
I’m okay now, I said soothingly. She let out a shuddering breath, and tension slowly seeped from her muscles.
Ace returned less than a minute later with Mom and Eli.
“Hope!” Mom raced to my bedside, stopping with a horrified look on her face when she took in my broken face, the bruises on my neck and chest. The blood drained from her cheeks and I thought she was going to pass out. Ace must have thought so too, because she shifted a few feet closer.
Eli stood beside me. “What happened?” He’d gone into doctor mode. Although he’d retired from being a neurosurgeon a few years ago, centuries of habit died hard.
I couldn’t answer him, the pain in my jaw was intense. Estrella filled them in as Eli began to do triage, checking the severity of my injuries.
“She was jumped outside the Summit. Abducted. JJ is dead, executed professionally. Luc and I only found one guard, but he was just protecting the door. A grunt. He told us who paid him and that was it before Luc…” she made a tearing action with her hands, and I winced, as did Mom. Ace just looked satisfied.
Estrella recounted the whole thing without emotion, her own training kicking in. She’d become a cop for the Boston P.D. A damn fine one at that. She’d assessed the scene with cool efficiency. “I felt her go down. I called for Luc. We got there just as Azriel was going to…” This time her voice hitched, a single crack in her professional facade.
Ace let out a hiss. “I’m going to kick his fucking ass.”
Not Azriel’s fault. He was just doing his job, I defended to Estrella, who begrudgingly passed it on. Ace scoffed, and so did Memphis.
I hadn't realized Memphis was still here. He’d drifted into the shadows in the corner of my room. I tried to get a read on him, and flinched back. His emotions were still a torrent of darkness that scared me. I didn’t know why he’d come for me. Memphis, or Mephistopheles as he’d never invited us to call him by Ace’s nickname, didn’t leave Hell often. Ace called him a Hellbody. She had a weird sense of humor.
Estrella must have picked up my loud thoughts. He was with Luc when I called. Luc brought him for back up. Overkill, in my opinion. Nothing on the human plane could take on Luc, let alone Luc and Memphis together.
I could only agree. Luc was petrifying on his own. With Mephistopheles in tow, they were your worst nightmare made flesh. And they’d come for me.
I looked at the dark Fallen angel, his almost midnight black skin making the startling blue color of his eyes all the more intense. His wings sucked up the light in the room, casting him in shadow. His face was perfectly smooth, but it was so hard it may have been marble.
Thank you, I whispered. He inclined his head, and I tried to shift past the anger in his emotions, delving deeper. I was rewarded with the hint of something softer, though I couldn't quite reach out fast enough to grab the emotion. It was like a scent on the breeze, barely a hint before it was swirling away beneath the churning rage.
I was pulled from my analysis by Eli’s growl of frustration. “She needed to go straight to a hospital. She’s going to need surgery to pin some of those fractures, and she has lost far too much blood. I’m calling an ambulance.” He whirled away, a phone to his ear.
Estrella looked guiltily at Mom. “I didn’t know how I could explain us sifting into an American hospital with her naked and bleeding. The tabloids would have been all over it, considering she was very publicly in Geneva a few hours ago.”
Mom stroked Estrella’s hair. “I know, love. It’s okay. You did what you thought was right. Eli is just worried. He loves you two.”
We knew. We might have seven fathers, but each of them loved us unconditionally.
Eli must have still had some serious clout at the hospital, because the paramedics were there in minutes. Or maybe it only seemed like minutes, because Raphael’s healing was starting to wear off and my thoughts were getting slower and slower.
The Fallen went invisible as the paramedics walked through the door. “We’ll go collect the rest of your seven,” Ace said to Mom. “Lux must be going nuts.” She sounded amused. “Memphis will help.”
The large angel scowled. “I’m not a taxi service,” he grumbled, but he threw me another inscrutable look and nodded. Luc, still invisible, leaned close despite the fact the paramedics were loading me onto a stretcher. “You didn’t call me.” He sounded hurt.
“There wasn’t time.” I wanted to reach out and touch his cheek, but that would look super strange.
Luc just growled. “You will call me if you have need.” His tone brooked no argument and I smiled.
The Devil had my back. Always.
Chapter Two
I woke up sobbing. Tears dripped down my cheeks until the pillow beneath my face was uncomfortably damp. It was a little from pain, though the pain medicine usually kept me comfortably numb.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the shiny barrel of the gun, felt the hot splatter of JJ’s blood against my skin as my abductors, dressed as Valet’s executed him. I felt every cut, bruise, broken bone all over again. In the true depths of the darkness, my mind made up stories about how I got my injuries while I was unconscious.
I was alone, everyone finally go
ing home to get some rest, though there were still police officers outside my hospital room door.
“Why are you crying?” a voice asked from the darkness, with the almost innocent curiosity of a child. Except he wasn’t a child. He was the Angel of Death.
“I hurt,” I said, my voice muffled because my jaw was still healing. Even in the darkness, I could see him wince
“You’re healing. You aren’t in any real physical pain. When I saw you in that warehouse, you hadn’t even shed a tear, and you were in far more physical agony than you are now.”
I wanted to smile at him then, but that hurt too.
“My pain isn’t physical, Azriel.” My face scrunched up in pain as I spoke.
“Mindspeak. You are injuring yourself more.” His voice was cold, as if he didn’t care I was hurting. But then, if he didn’t care, why would he have said it?
I’m sad, and scared, I clarified for him. I had a suspicion that Azriel wasn’t the most emotionally intuitive of angels.
“You have nothing to fear from me now.” He sounded almost offended.
A little laughter bubbled from my throat. It's not you I’m scared of, I answered, then laughed again as his face got even more offended.
“How could you not fear me? I am the Angel of Death,” he huffed, like he hadn’t just told me not to fear him. I think I just hurt his angelic pride.
I raised an eyebrow at him. It was basically the only movement I could do that didn't hurt. One word. Lucifer. You’re scary, Azriel, but he is downright petrifying. Only if you don’t know him, though. Once you get to know him, he’s basically a huge teddy bear.
For the very first time, I saw Azriel’s lips curl into a small smile. “I’m sure he’d love to hear you say that.”
I don’t know why that small expression meant so much to me, but it made my heart swell. I tamped down the feeling.
“Not that I don’t appreciate your visit, your Angelicness, but why are you here?”
The smile dropped from his face. “I wanted to see the aberration up close. You are… different to what I expected.”
Oh? I resisted the urge to punch him in the nose for calling me an aberration again. Only the fact he didn’t seem to be saying it in a derogatory manner prevented me from kicking him out. What did you expect? Horns and a forked tongue?
“I expected more of Acerezeal’s influence. But your aura is almost,” he hesitated, “angelic.”
I raised my eyebrows high. You’ve obviously never met my twin. I couldn’t help my smile at the mention of Estrella, despite the pain it caused to my face. She is a lot like Acerezeal. The apple of forbidden knowledge didn’t fall too far from the tree with her, if you get my drift.
His eyes crinkled, and I could have sworn he was going to smile again, but instead his face turned granite hard.
“Hmm, he’s coming. There is something about you that is wrong, because I have never seen him act this way. You’ve bewitched him.”
Then Azriel was gone and I was alone again. Though, as the Angel of Death had suggested, I wasn’t alone for long. I felt the swirling discontent before my eyes could even find him in the darkness.
“Memphis.” I muffled it out loud, because I wanted to hear him answer me.
“Hope.” His voice was cold as he stepped from the darkness, his blue eyes glowing eerily.
He looked like the Angel of Death, not Azriel. Azriel was almost pretty in his perfection, a teenage girl’s version of the perfect man.
Memphis looked like a demon, with his black wings and his hard eyes. Why was he here? His huge black wings took up all the space in the room, his hard face sending waves of fear through my body. Or maybe it was lust? Maybe I was fucking losing my mind.
I tried to speak again, but Memphis lifted a hand. “Don’t speak. I find I’m disturbed by your pain.” He sounded perturbed by the admission too. “I just came to, well, check on you. I do not like you here alone, unprotected.”
There's police right outside my door, I reminded him, but he rolled his eyes almost like a teenage girl.
“And your previous bodyguard was from your human armed forces.”
The stab in my heart at the reminder of JJ’s death made me whimper, and Mephistopheles stepped forward, laying a hand on my shoulder. He loomed above me, and my hindbrain thought that perhaps I should be scared, here alone in the dark with the very embodiment of a nightmare trying to console me.
“I apologize. That was heartless of me. Please don’t get upset.”
You are a fool, Mephistopheles. With his hand on my shoulder, I heard his thought as clear as my own. I resisted the urge to console him for his faux pas. It was still important to keep my empathic abilities a secret. I just nodded, blinking back my tears furiously.
“I will guard you the night.” It was a statement, not a question. Who would guard me from Mephistopheles, though? I eyed his dark shirt, it’s fabric shining unnaturally under the artificial hospital lights. He was handsome, but it was a harsh sort of beauty; you admired him in the same way you admired a well-crafted blade. He drew the eye and held it, and before you knew it you were broken on the floor at his feet. No, he might be playing nice, but Memphis was trouble.
“No need,” I said out loud, but he ignored me, going to stand in the darkened corner, wrapping his large black wings around his body until he disappeared into the darkness, as if his huge six and a half foot frame no longer existed.
“Sleep,” he ordered. I rolled my eyes, and found that I couldn’t resist his command, the darkness of sleep like waves, pulling me under and keeping me safe as I drifted off into oblivion.
There was no such thing as uninterrupted sleep in a hospital, and at an ungodly time of the morning, someone was there, thrusting a tray on my lap table, the clattering of silverware loud enough to wake the dead. My eyes flew to the corner where Memphis had been keeping watch, but he was gone.
I choked down a jelly and some juice, flicking the tv between morning shows. I wanted to go home now. Hospitals and forced inactivity weren’t my forte.
I needed to be at the office, or my home office or with Marinette, JJ’s wife, or something.
I sat up, shifting my legs over the side of the bed, glad that my hospital gown tied on the side so no one had to see my butt. I ignored the pain in my ribs, but the throbbing in my jaw made me hiss through my teeth.
“Should you be out of bed?” I turned too fast at the sound of another person in the room, and my body protested. Quite vehemently. I yelled and grabbed at my side, but my eyes watered with relief.
“Dad.”
My father was there in a second, grabbing me in a gentle hug.
“God, I was so worried.”
Oz was my biological dad. He loved me with every ounce of his being. They all did, of course, but Oz treated Rella and I as if we were the greatest gift he’d ever been given, and he was determined to cherish us with everything he had. We were his second chance. Being with him was like being cocooned in love, like a balm on my empathic abilities. No matter how bad we screwed up, wave after wave of love just flowed from him.
“I’m okay now,” I soothed. I looked over his shoulder, knowing there would be others with him. Mom was the next through the door, closely followed by Lux, who trailed after her like a bodyguard, his eyes always searching for threats. When his eyes rested on me, his whole face softened. Tears slipped from my eyes, and I vigorously tried to blink them back.
I didn’t have to be tough with Lux, I didn’t have to put on a brave face, soothe his nerves. Lux was a protector. He would make everything better, either with diplomacy or the threat of violence. Usually the latter. He and Rella were a lot alike, despite the lack of actual shared DNA.
He reached out and wiped away my tears with the pad of his thumb. “You are okay.”
It was a reassurance, and a promise.
Valery and Ri were there next, and I laughed when I saw Valery had Ri loaded down with bags.
Oz stepped away from me and Ri swept me
into his arms, a little less gently than he probably should have, but I gritted my teeth.
“Fuck, Kid. You aged me a hundred years.”
“Does that make you a thousand now?” I laughed, though my words were garbled. He pulled back, and his eyes were shiny. I probably shouldn't have spoken. Apart from being a pretty patchwork of bruises, none of my more threatening injuries were visible. But it was hard to hide the fact that I was speaking like a drunk.
Valery ran a hand over my hair, whispering something in French. “Never again, oui?” I tried to smile. Valery always switched to French when he was upset. I just nodded.
“Let the poor girl get back into bed,” a voice said from the door. I looked up at Sam standing in there. His smile lit up my world, his handsome face ageless. When I was a kid, before I grew boobs, I wished Sam had been my dad. I would have been a stunning. Or maybe I would have been one of those ugly duckling throwback kids that beautiful people had sometimes.
He came over, leaning down to kiss the top of my head, and then held my elbow as I walked the three steps toward my hospital bed.
“Where's Tolli?” I already knew where Eli was; harassing my doctors. I would have bet the family fortune on that one.
“He’s outside. He blames himself for you getting hurt.”
I raised my eyebrows high. “How?”
Sam shrugged. “He believes he should have been there, not you. If he hadn’t asked for you to stand in, this never would have happened.” He waved a hand at my battered body.
I snorted in a very unladylike way. “Tolli is formidable, but not even he can control a hurricane. What happened was no one's fault. Except, you know, them.”
Hell's Redemption- The Complete Series Boxset Page 60