Urban glanced up, his coffee-brown stare grave. “There was a fight here. Much of the blood has been absorbed and the ground is returning to normal. I’d guess the fight was quick.”
Phillip crossed to Urban, sadness and grief etched into the creases around his eyes. He released a shaky inhale. “Her life ended here. I can feel it.”
Urban straightened, murmured something Odessa couldn’t hear, but from his folded hands and sympathy-filled gaze, she would guess they were words of condolence. Phillip shuddered a breath, his head bowing as tears flowed freely.
Bryant stood behind the stricken male and set his hand on Phillip’s shoulder. Odessa expected him to talk, but the males stood like that for several minutes, her warrior allowing the male time to grieve without being alone. Odessa blinked as tears stung, her heart weeping for the male’s loss, for his children’s loss. First Cal was taken, now Magan. Could they stop whoever was doing this?
“We’ll wait while Urban takes you home,” Bryant said.
“Thank you.” Phillip used his robe sleeve to wipe at his face. “I’ll break the news to Magan’s parents before I tell the children. But first, I’ll need some time.”
Phillip straightened, his wings held as high as his grief allowed them. Before he disappeared with Urban, he spoke to Bryant. “You’ll find her body and send her to the angel fire? I can’t stand the thought of her rotting away somewhere.”
After Bryant’s solemn nod, they disappeared. Odessa used her own robe sleeve to clean her face of tears. She wasn’t embarrassed by her emotion, but she wanted to be included in the search. Magan died for her work, leaving a family behind. Those sweet children she’d met once when Magan gave her family a tour of the archives.
No way could she return home, even with her fearsome mate by her side, and wait while the others searched for the watcher who was killed for being good at her job.
A whisper of wings signaled Urban’s return. He said nothing, but disappeared into the Mist to where Harlowe had gone.
Bryant crouched and inspected the area Urban had been studying. “She was beheaded,” he said abruptly.
“How can you tell?” Her gut wrenched. Urban must’ve known and kept the information to himself. Phillip didn’t need to hear more than what his intuition told him.
“Our blades are treated to basically cauterize Daemons when we behead them, otherwise their blood is like acid. Magan’s blood is pooled in one spot, as if it emptied rapidly, like when a head is suddenly removed from a body.”
“But demons can’t cross into the Mist without Numen help. Did she try to fight a demon by herself?” That wasn’t like Magan at all. She was a watcher to her core.
“No. I don’t sense the fading effects of the incantation we use to bring a demon over.”
“Oh.” That was bad. Could a demon have killed her? The significance of a demon independently gaining access to the Mist was monumental. If they were in the Mist, it was to be killed. To roam free? It was one step closer to unfettered access to Numen. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Bryant replied grimly. “Let’s find Magan’s body and get some answers.”
* * *
“What do you have, Harlowe?” Bryant held his hand up to signal the rest to stop. The area had to remain pristine for the female warrior to read.
Harlowe squinted through the fog. “Where we stopped is where she was brought into the Mist and killed.” She pointed to the larger splotches of fading blood. “But whoever it was carried her body and her head to another location.”
Bryant followed her hand to where she pointed to smaller drops. Magan’s body must’ve been slung over one shoulder, her head carried with the other hand. Demons had humanoid forms, but they were draggers, careless of the evidence they left behind.
Bronx crossed his arms over his wide chest, his feet spread shoulder width apart. “If a demon figured out how to cross into the Mist, they couldn’t use their host’s body. We can’t even get humans over the barrier. So how did the demon leave? It would’ve attacked us if it were still here. It couldn’t help itself.”
“Maybe it was an angel.” Urban countered in his usual quiet way. Wider and stockier than Bronx, he was a burly, muscular male with understated intelligence. Not at all like the cocky Bronx.
“Or it was a demon,” Bronx reiterated. “If they figured out how to cross here, can we cross into the Gloom?”
Bryant twitched his wings at Bronx’s excitement. The Gloom was Daemon’s equal to the Mist. Numen couldn’t cross on their own. But unlike warrior angels with the Mist, demons didn’t try to throw angels into the Gloom for battle. They wanted nothing good to touch their realm, no matter what, and they were only interested in conquering Earth and Numen. Getting into the Gloom was a perfect challenge for a guy like Bronx.
“We don’t know for sure a demon came into the Mist unaided.” Urban scowled at Harlowe, who had ignored them and crept up to the barrier, searching for the location on the earthly realm the unknown assailant had taken Magan’s body. “Perhaps she decided to fight a master on her own.”
“Magan wouldn’t do that,” Odessa broke in. The two burly warriors turned their scowls onto her, but she continued, unfazed. “She wasn’t like that, always very proper. Very…watcher-like.” Odessa glanced between each of them. She seemed unable to explain further why she knew Magan wouldn’t do that.
“Harlowe?” Bryant hoped the female would have more to weigh in with. All warriors are trained to track in the Mist, but Harlowe excelled in her abilities. It was like she had a sixth sense when it came to disturbances in the realm.
“There was no sign of a fight, just a murder. The killer got into this realm with her and took her body back to the human realm. Probably for disposal. I think I’ve found where.” She peered through the veil, walking forward a few steps. The border thinned. “I can’t fucking believe it.”
Bryant took Odessa’s elbow, unwilling to be far from his mate, and led her to where Harlowe was waiting. His mate huddled close to him, enveloping his body in her calming, summer breeze scent. She didn’t want to be far from him, either, but that was due to fear. He wouldn’t let it go to his head.
Urban reached her first. “Fucking Vegas.”
“Las Vegas,” Bronx said, a wide smile forming.
The two males had very different views of Sin City.
Odessa squinted through the Mist. “I can see the light from the Strip, but where is this?”
“Looks like it’s on the outskirts. Let’s cross over and keep searching.” Without thinking, Bryant grabbed Odessa’s hand and cleared his mind to step out of the Mist. At the borders, all it took was a little concentration to cross the barrier.
She stepped over with him, her warm fingers clinging to his. He didn’t sense any danger, but regardless, he didn’t let her go. Harlowe, Bronx, and Urban stepped out after him, fanning out to the sides to hunt for clues.
“Oh my…” Odessa scanned their environment.
It was night. Casino lights highlighted the horizon, but where they had entered was surrounded by red dirt and opaque warehouses and…statues. They were on the property of a company that made lawn ornaments, and that didn’t bode well.
“Boss,” Urban warned, just as Bryant’s gaze landed on a particular statue.
Harlowe and Bronx turned simultaneously, drawing short swords into their hands. Urban and Bryant slid out their eight-inch dirks. They circled the two-foot tall statue of a short man wearing a red pointy hat.
Odessa gasped and pressed closer. “What is it?”
“Gargoyle.” Bryant kept still, hugging Odessa close as his team slowly circled the lawn ornament while also monitoring their surroundings.
Odessa’s brow creased. “It’s a lawn gnome.”
“Because gargoyle statues aren’t as popular anymore.” Harlowe paused by each innocuous lawn ornament she passed before moving to another. “So real gargoyles take on cuter images like gnomes, and they can be spread far and wide by
adoring landscapers.”
Odessa’s grip tightened on Bryant, her body curving into him, heating where she touched. As if it wasn’t bad enough he had to take his mate out on a mission with him, he had to be so attuned to her presence that he might distract himself by his own arousal.
“Whoever it was fed Magan to a gargoyle?” Odessa’s horrified whisper echoed his team’s suspicions.
All desire fled, and he didn’t reply. They’d find out soon enough.
“Hey.” Bronx reached out his sword and gave the gnome’s hat a few hard taps. “Shorty.”
An image passed over the gnome’s face, like a morbid hologram—fangs and red eyes set into a skeletal face.
“I’m talking to you.” Bronx clipped the tip of the hat with the sharp edge of his blade, chipping it.
“Stop!” cried a garbled, rough voice.
The little gnome animated, fanning his hat as if the wound burned. Odessa’s fingers tightened around Bryant’s.
“Look at that.” Bronx held his sword at the gnome’s throat. “It talks.”
“Of course, I talk.” The angry gnome was trying to feel his wound with his short little arms. “You chipped me! Now no one will buy me and the company will smash me. I’ll have to wait in line for another piece to possess. You know how many gargoyles are waiting to inhabit statues? It’s not like they grow on trees.”
Bronx’s expression remained impassive. He was less than moved by the gargoyle’s plight. Bryant stepped forward, shoving Odessa behind him. Reluctantly, he let go of her warm hand and squatted down to put himself at the short statue’s level, though with his frame it was impossible as he hovered several inches above the tip of the red hat. He could squat even more, but the still-healing tissue at his side pulled against his movements. For the tenth time, he realized he’d be fully healed if he and Odessa’s sync was complete. For the eightieth time, his brain wanted to dwell on what finishing their sync entailed. Now wasn’t the time.
“You ate a watcher last weekend.” Bryant didn’t bother to phrase it as a question and the gnome stilled, narrowing his stony gaze. “Tell me about who brought her to you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The gargoyle wiped at some stone fragments that had landed on his shoulder.
It’d be comical if Bryant didn’t know that the gargoyle would love to feast on his team’s remains. They were like the turkey vultures of the demon world. Normally, they subsisted on demon remains in their own realm, concentrating only on their duties as spies in the human world. But they were opportunistic vermin.
Bryant lowered his octave to a more menacing level, letting his accent punctuate each syllable. “You’ll have more than a chip in your hat if you don’t start talking.”
Bronx flicked his blade making the gnome flinch.
“It was a dude. Tall, dark, and handsome, if you’re into that stuff.” The gnome stopped. Bryant stared him down. He expected more. The statue huffed. “I don’t know who he was, just showed up with the watcher’s body and told me it was my lucky day.” He licked his little lips as if he salivated at the memory.
Disgusting creature.
“Numen or Daemon?”
“Neither.”
Bronx scowled. “What do you mean neither? He couldn’t have been human.”
One pudgy shoulder shrugged. “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck.”
Bryant considered the information. “He stepped out of the Mist carrying the watcher’s body and knew how and where to find you?” The gnome nodded. “And then he went where?”
“Just walked off.”
“He didn’t transcend?”
“Nope.”
Bryant lifted his gaze to Bronx, trusting his warrior to read his intentions. Then, as Bryant was rising, Bronx raised his angel-fire–kissed dagger and slammed it into the gnome’s chest. He heard a sharp inhale behind him from Odessa. The gnome screamed, the rage resonating through the still night.
Bronx signaled to Urban and Harlowe to search the rest of the grounds for gargoyle-infested statues to destroy.
“You said—” The gnome dropped to the ground, gurgling, writhing in pain, its true form showing through the statue’s disguise, all bony wings and sharp fangs.
Bryant leaned in closer. “I made no promises, and I didn’t touch your hat. Never”—he poised his own dagger for the decapitating blow—“eat our kind.”
He removed the head. The figurine shattered, and the image of the gargoyle dissolved in smoke once its head was removed. A busted, headless statue left behind. Sounds of stone crashing ricocheted through the night as Urban and Harlowe dispatched four more gargoyle gnomes.
He dreaded turning to face Odessa, not wanting to witness her recrimination after watching him lie to and kill a cute little statue. She was gawking at the gnomes’ destruction, her jaw hanging open.
“They all had to have taken part in disposing of Magan’s body.” He offered it as an excuse while convincing himself he shouldn’t need to. “An angel is more than one gargoyle’s stomach can handle.”
Her startled gaze flew to meet his. “No, I know. It just took me off guard.” She glanced down at the shattered gnome at his feet and then back to him. “It’s so different than learning about it in school. Those creatures actually possess adorable little statues? And can make them move?”
He nodded grimly. “As long as humans give their lawns and buildings ornamentation, gargoyles will inhabit them. They’re the watchers of the demon realm.”
Odessa shuddered, and he wanted to wrap her in his embrace, wanted her body molded into his again. A male could get used to that.
But he didn’t. She didn’t need his comfort and it would only make their parting all the more difficult for him. He realized, that he would…dislike…not being able to see and talk to her every day.
“We got ’em all, boss.” Urban wiped the dust off his blade before sheathing it.
Bronx and Harlowe had already sheathed their weapons and waited for Bryant’s instructions.
“Is there any surveillance we can view before we destroy the last several minutes?”
“No luck,” Bronx answered. “It’ll look like gnome-hating vandals came through.”
Damn. They could’ve used an ID on the guy that killed Magan. Was he a human working for a nefarious angel? And why? Or was he a human working for a demon?
“The gnome had to have been lying. The guy couldn’t have been human.”
“He wasn’t lying.” Bryant had dealt with enough gargoyles to know. The creatures were naturally shifty when talking, a result of being immobilized as a statue for so long. This gnome had delighted in his vague answer. Bryant sifted through possibilities until it settled on one and the impossible became plausible. “Who would know about angels and demons, and be able to find gargoyles? Who would be neither, yet not human, and know everything about our worlds?”
Bronx frowned and Urban’s brow crinkled just as Harlowe breathed, “Fallen.”
“Son of a bitch,” Bronx spat out. “A fallen would definitely hold a grudge against Numen. But how did he enter the Mist without his wings?”
“And who would it be?” Urban added. “Most fallen don’t survive long without their wings.”
“I can search records of fallen in the last century, find out where they were sent to when they were kicked out of Numen.” Odessa looked down at her robes, as if thinking about a different outfit. “But first, we should visit that club Magan was watching. Maybe we could find some answers there.”
Odessa in a nightclub that could harbor killers? Not just any killers, but angel murderers? No. “You and I can go search records and the others can recon the club.”
She shook her head. “I know what to look for. With all my notes lost, it’d be better if I was immersed in the environment. I can recall the details and patterns better.”
“No.”
The other three warriors fell quiet, watching Odessa and Bryant face-off.
“Brya
nt.”
“No.”
She sucked in a breath and held it, like she was at war with her temper. “I don’t want to get killed. More so, I don’t want any more people to get killed over what I don’t know. I go to clubs, I know how to act, how to blend in. Harlowe and I could get all gothed up, Sharpie a black rose on ourselves, and just have a look around.”
Harlowe nodded. Bryant should refute her idea, but…it sounded like their best option. A good way to get them outed would be for him to go. The scars were too distinctive. He had never hated his scars more than he did now.
He fisted his hands. “I can’t go with, I’d stand out too much.”
“You’d only be a transcension away,” Odessa reassured him. “It’d look more innocuous if two girls went clubbing than if we had an…imposing…guy with. I’ve been deep in Magan’s notes about this place; I know how to make us look.”
Say no. Just say no. He couldn’t. The leader in him knew it was their best bet, and Odessa would be well protected with Harlowe.
“What’s the place called?”
Odessa’s brow crinkled as she recalled the detail. She blinked. “Oh my. It should’ve been obvious from the beginning. Fall from Grace.”
Chapter 16
Jameson reclined in his chair and laced his hands behind his head. He’d taken his suit jacket off and draped it over the seat next to him. While regarding the possessed human in front of him, he briefly wondered if his sweat stains were showing through around his armpits. Perhaps it wasn’t as professional as the buttoned-up, suave persona he showed the rest, but he found his casual stance caused demons to lower their guard and underestimate him.
The one called Sandeen possessed the uptight banker. Jameson had yet to find out exactly what the demon was willing to do for him. And what he wanted in return.
“What makes you think I know the answer to your question?” No one did. What the male was asking was impossible. Daemons couldn’t walk among humans as themselves. It was a divine gift and only for the ultimate benefit of humans.
Angel Fire: Angel Fire, Book 1 Page 14