by J. T. Hardy
"You were in danger."
Thank you, Mr. Obvious. "Why was I in danger in the first place?"
He shook his head. "Safer if you don't know."
"Screw that. Four of your buddies just tried to snatch me off the street. If I hadn't been a little prepared for that, I'd be lunch right now."
"They're not my buddies."
"You're missing the point. Tell me about this Koka-cola guy?"
"No."
"We can get more holy water you know," I said, narrowing my eyes and putting my bad girl face on. "I'm not above holy waterboarding you."
Daniel smiled, just a little. Slapping him was probably a bad idea. "Yes, you are."
Cocky little... "You--"
"Grace," Libby said, thumping my shoulder. "Police."
I followed her gaze. The cops had finally arrived and were swarming over the shopping plaza. Bright lights swept the sidewalk as reporters set up shop. Only local channels so far, but if the story developed into something interesting--say about a vampire attack on a crowded street in Arizona--we'd be all over the media.
"Let's continue this argument in the room."
"I need to leave," said Daniel, but he struggled just to sit up. He hadn't sparked, but maybe being on holy ground had done internal damage, or drained him in a way we couldn't see. It had been quite the knock-down out there and he was in no shape for a round two.
"You need to stay with us. If they come after you now, you're dead."
"They can't--"
"Shut up and let us help you."
He grumbled, but stopped pulling away. Libby and I each took an arm and helped him to the elevator and up to our floor. Night had fallen and the A/C air felt good against my flushed skin. I had way too much adrenaline in my system still.
Libby unlocked the door while I scanned for any uninvited guests hanging around the halls. Everything looked and felt clear, though Daniel's woodfire scent gave me the willies--even as it made me think of campfires and s'mores. We entered and made our way toward the double beds with wagon wheel headboards. Yeehaw.
Daniel stumbled. I lunged for him, but only managed to grab his wrist. He landed hard on the foot of the bed.
"You okay?" I asked, steadying him.
"I'm fine--" His gaze shifted over my shoulder and he froze, eyes wide, incredible sadness and joy in his expression. "It was real," he whispered. His other hand reached toward the mirror.
Shivers tickled down my back. Don't look, don't look, don't look. I didn't need one more freakishly unreal aspect in my life.
Libby gasped, pointing at the mirror over the desk. "What the--those are--?"
I don't want to know. I really don't. Bracing myself, I turned, Daniel's hands still tight around my wrist.
His hazy reflection greeted me, same as every other Pretty Boy I'd seen. Pale and translucent, like a memory of what he once was. Nothing new there, but behind him, barely more solid than his reflection, golden wings shimmered. They arced from his shoulders and poured down his back. A mere suggestion of delicate feathers traced in sunlight rippled as he moved.
Tears welled in my eyes. Beautiful. Like an--
I sucked in a breath.
Daniel wasn't a vampire. He was a God-damned angel.
Chapter Fifteen
Impossible. He'd smoked and sparked on church grounds. The priests had called him a demon. He didn't show up in mirrors. Holy water hurt him. His not-buddies were after my blood.
That meant vampire.
Libby ran both hands through her hair. "Those are--"
"They are," I said.
"That's not--"
"Guess it is."
"This is real?" she said.
"Yes."
"If this is all real, I'm so going to Hell."
"Not necessarily," I said.
She snorted. "I've broken commandments, woman. Don't tell me where I'm spending eternity. I'm gonna need a minute here." She flopped back on the bed, arms extended, eyes closed, and took several deep breaths.
Daniel still gripped my wrist, his expression joyful and sad and confused. He clearly didn't believe what we were seeing either. His gaze darted between me and the mirror.
With the wings.
The damn angel wings.
"What are you?" I said, awed, terrified, confused out of my mind.
No answer, just his intense gaze at the mirror. He wasn't even looking at me anymore.
I smacked the back of his hand. "Focus, Daniel-san."
His gaze jerked back to me.
"Vampires don't have golden wings!"
"You thought I was a vampire?" Daniel had paled to the color of old parchment, but the corners of his mouth twitched.
"Best guess based on the evidence."
"I'm not."
He had to be. The alternative fell well beyond even my crazy-world comfort zone. Pretty Boys were evil, blood-obsessed fiends. They murdered innocent people and ruined families, and in the dictionary under "scourge of society" there was a group photo with a Pretty Boy in the middle. They were bad news, they weren't...
"You're an angel?" I forced the word out, but it didn't feel any less impossible.
He shook his head. "Not anymore."
"But the other ones...this Koka-dude, and the guy who attacked me at Frisco's--those are all vampires, right?"
"No, we're all the same. Mostly."
I jumped to my feet, the urge to run racing through me. The feet had the right idea--turn and flee right out this door and never look back, but Daniel still had a death grip on my wrist and a summer camp love affair going on with his wings in the mirror.
"How are you doing this?" he asked in a strange, dreamy way. "How did you give me back my wings?"
"I'm not doing anything!"
"Is Kokabiel right?" He stared at me like I was the myth in the room. "Can you get us home?"
Vertigo sent the room sideways and--
--Streets of light shimmer below towers of glass and silver. Laughter plays sweetly as music across the square, and winged beings dance. They welcome me, call to me, and I want to go to them so badly it--
"Stop doing that!" I yanked my hand away, back in myself again, but part of me ached for the light and sun. I knew that lonely feeling, that longing for home. But that wasn't my home. It was...no, no, no. I was not going to think about his home.
Without my touch on his skin, the wings in the mirror had vanished, though Daniel's ghostly, hazy image remained. The same Pretty Boy image I'd always seen from them.
"Bring them back, please!" He reached for me like I reached for brownies after a lousy day.
I shied away. "Down, boy."
He waited, trembling ever so slightly, looking a little like a puppy who just wants a treat. Angel puppies. Pull it together, Grace-face.
Curiosity overcame my leeriness. "I'm going to test this, okay?" I said, hands up. "Just stay quiet until I'm done."
Daniel nodded, practically vibrating in his eagerness. I'd had some hot dates before, but no man had ever literally quivered awaiting my touch. Stop stalling.
I reached out and placed my fingers against his arm. The wings in the mirror shimmered into view. I lifted my hand and they vanished once more. Down--wings. Up--no wings.
It was me. Funny, I didn't remember being bitten by a radioactive angel.
Daniel sighed, but the hunger in his eyes remained. "You're miraculous."
Libby half whimpered, half laughed. "Coming from him that means something."
"Libby--"
"Still processing!"
I backed up and sat down on the chair by the desk. I'd always known the Pretty Boys weren't human, so their true nature ought to be only a surprise, not earth-shattering. If I could believe in vampires, why not angels, right? Supernatural was supernatural.
So why is this harder to believe?
"Are you my guardian angel?"
Daniel chuckled wistfully, but shook his head. "Not a real thing."
"Oh, I think it is. You randomly pick people to prote
ct and save from the...what did you call him again? Koka-cola?"
Daniel cringed, but he'd already let the angel out of the bag. "Kokabiel."
"He sounds like a perfume," Libby muttered.
"The blond guy?" I gathered Kokabiel was the pale arrogant one I'd dubbed Handsome Vlad. He'd acted like the one in charge. Looked like it, too.
"Yes."
"The others?"
"Unimportant. They'll do what Kokabiel tells them, but they don't care about you on their own."
"Minions."
"You could say that."
Who knew angels had minions? "Is that why you could kill Fabio?" I asked. "He was a minion?"
Daniel gave me a funny look. "Do you give everything strange names?"
I scowled at him. "Answer the question." Helpful Hottie. Not that I'd say that out loud.
"He's not dead, I only...reset him, you might say." He paused and looked at me through narrowed eyes. The hairs on my neck tingled. "You're the only one I know who's killed one of us."
"Me?"
"You killed Baraqijal in Florida. I didn't know we could be killed."
The eye candy from the bar. "That wasn't me, it was your magic knife."
"It's not magic. It's a claw from an extinct animal."
"Damn big claw."
"Damn big animal."
Libby held up a finger. "If he says velociraptor I'm walking right out that door."
"Not a velociraptor." He pulled out the knife. "It's from a Ziz. Similar beast, but the Ziz is more birdlike. Very rare, very special."
Yeah, that I didn't need to know.
Daniel put the knife away and turned back to me. His color was improving by the minute.
"You can't stay here," he said. "Kokabiel will heal and he'll come after you again."
"Because he wants my blood."
"Yes."
"Why?"
He paused, cheek twitching.
"You gotta work with me here, dude."
"Another peek?" He held out his hand, a coy glint in his eyes that would have been hard to resist on a normal human guy.
"I'll make you a deal," I said, clenching my hands behind my back. "Facts for...wings. As long as you answer my questions, you can hold my hand."
"I accept your terms."
I wrapped my fingers around his and gave him and his wings a second alone. His hand felt...normal. No tingle, no jolt, nothing that said "supernatural phenomenon in progress." Cool and dry, despite how nervous he'd acted.
"I'd thought I'd lost them forever," he said, and my heart pinched with longing for a shining city I'd never seen.
I didn't look at the wings, but I could feel the damn things flickering behind me in the mirror. "Start talking or I let go. Why does Kokabiel want my blood?"
"I don't know."
"Liar." I tugged back my hand, but he held firm.
"Stop! The deal was for facts, and I don't know for sure."
If only I had a stake handy. "Stick to the spirit of the deal, then."
He dipped his head at me. "He wants to go home, him and the others. Kokabiel claims he's found a way, but he's been saying that for centuries. I think he wants your blood for a ritual, but that's a guess, and I don't know what type of ritual even if I guessed right. Few still believe he can do it. He's tried and failed many times before. But if he's right, then the others will come for you as well."
My stomach flipped. Just what I needed--more Pretty Boys. "How many are there?"
"Now that Baraqijal's dead? One hundred-ninety-nine."
Two hundred Pretty Boys. I couldn't fight that many. Hell, I couldn't even run from that many.
"Who were the angels with him in the van?" Another phrase that sounded bizarre coming out of my mouth.
"Kokabiel's dominions. Servants you could say, but their names won't mean anything to you. Your colorful monikers are good enough."
"How many does he have with him?"
"Three dominions serve him. Kokabiel has allied himself with another, and he also has three dominions." He paused. "Two now. Baraqijal was his."
I did the math. We were missing one. "What about Fabio? Who did he belong to?"
"He was Kokabiel's, but he'll be back eventually."
The reset thing. "If you didn't kill that angel, what did you do to him?"
"I...separated him from his physical shell." He shifted in what could have been a shrug or a tell. He was too hard to read. "It's difficult to explain, but as I said, he'll reconstitute in time."
"And rise from the dead?"
"He was never dead, so no. He'll be back."
"How long?"
"Depends on his strength. I've never banished him before, so I don't know for sure. Some are gone months, but others return in a week."
That I could handle. I planned to find Dad and be done with all this mystical mojo before "eventually." "What's his name? The ally?"
Daniel hesitated and I loosened my grip on his hand. "Suriel," he said grudgingly.
Finally, we were getting somewhere. Kokabiel and Suriel and their four little minions. Six angels. Swell.
"Did Kokabiel or one of his dominions kidnap my father?"
"I assume so, but I didn't see him do it, as I was protecting you. Anthony's always run before. Are you sure he didn't this time?"
My anger simmered. Not at the question--that was valid--but at how casually he spoke of what Dad did or did not do. A reminder that he'd been part of our lives for years, directing our fate, ruining my childhood, and all from the shadows.
"I'm sure. Did Kokabiel kill my mother?"
Another telling pause. "No."
"Did his partner, Suriel?"
Daniel's gaze slid sideways, away from me. "One of his dominions did, yes."
"Why?"
"For her blood."
The images of that night flooded my mind again. Mom in the clutches of a beautiful man, his mouth on her throat, the blood soaking through her clothes and running down her chest.
Daniel winced. "I was too late to stop that," he whispered. Then he twitched, jerking his gaze up to me. "That was not my memory. What did you do? How did you show me that?"
"I didn't do anything!" But our hands were still connected. Maybe the visions worked both ways. "The shimmering city with the towers? Is it real?"
He drew back a few inches, sucking in a slow breath. "Yes. Our home long ago." He shifted uncomfortably, and a hint of fear crept into his dark eyes. "You shouldn't be able to do that either. I don't know what you are."
Aside from confused, offended, and scared? I had no idea either. Granted, freaking out the freaky should have been a rush, but not if it put a divine crosshair on my family.
"Is this why Kokabiel wants my blood? My family's blood? Because we can show you your long-lost wings in the mirror and share home movies in our heads?"
"No. Memories aren't enough for Kokabiel or his followers. They want the real city. But if you can do such things...perhaps he's right about you. Maybe you could send them home." That sounded like a good thing to me, but he swallowed and looked nervous.
"Why is that bad?"
Daniel's jaw clenched. "He was obsessed before, but now he's unsettled, behaving erratically. The more you reveal your...uniqueness, the more he'll pursue you."
"If all he wants is some blood, what if I just give him a pint of it?" I asked. "How much could he possibly need for a ritual?"
Daniel blurred to his feet and grabbed my shoulders with both hands. "You can't help him." Nervousness had turned into full-on panic.
"Whoa, back off, dude!" He released me, but kept his hands hovering above my shoulders. "Who cares if he goes home?"
"Kokabiel can't return to Heaven on his own. We have to serve our punishment. If he forces a judgment now, he might bring judgment on all of us--humanity included."
"Judgment." He'd lost his mind. "As in Judgment Day?"
"It's had many names over the millennia, but yes."
I gasped. "Helping Kokabiel could destr
oy the world?"
"Yes."
"That's insane. Why would anybody risk that?"
"Desperation."
"What did you people do that going home would end the world?"
Daniel pushed both hands though his hair and paced the small space between the door and the A/C unit under the window. "It was our task to watch over humanity. To protect you. But we did more than watch--we guided. We gave you knowledge, and tools, and broke our vows." He stopped and a palpable wave of sadness rolled off him and through the room. "We were punished for our arrogance. All of us."
"You and the other angels?"
"Us and the world we'd created. It was washed away."
I blinked. "Uh..."
"The flood," Libby squeaked from the bed. "He's talking about Noah's God-dammed flood."
"Wait." I needed a second to get my heart started again. "That shit can't be real."
"The destruction was real," Daniel said, shrugging. "But stories evolve over time."
"Oh really? How much time? Because my science teacher, Dr. Skorzeny, had some pretty solid evidence about that and--"
Daniel chuckled as if he thought my entire frame of existence was cute. "He's not wrong. The universe is very, very old. Older than us."
It was too much to take in. There was weird, and then there was holy-crap-I've-lost-my-freaking-mind-weird. Mind-bending as all this was, it was doing nothing to help me find my father. The nature of life, the universe, and everything wasn't going to draw me a map to where Kokabiel was keeping him.
Taking a deep breath, I shoved everything but the here and now out of my brain. Dad. Focus on Dad.
"My father--"
"Who art in Heaven," Libby mumbled, followed by a disturbing giggle. She raised one finger. "Sorry."
I refocused and turned back to Daniel. "I want to find my father."
"I told you, I don't know where he is."
"You found me, and I was well-hidden. Why can't you find him?"
Daniel dropped back onto the bed, his fingers interlocked and hanging between his knees. Hesitant hands, a hesitant stance. I'd spent a lifetime with a man who'd held himself that same way, trying hard not to lie to me.
"I've said too much. You know too much. I can't commit the same sin again."
"This isn't the mob, Pretty Boy."
He gave me a puzzled look, head tilted to the right.