I regarded him wearily, wondering if I should trust him. I didn’t know him. Plus, I was beginning to suspect that even the thick file Bennett had on him was a load of shit.
Who was this guy? And why had he really suddenly showed up in Atlanta? More specifically, why had he suddenly appeared in my life? I thought back to what Bennett had said about the prophecy. What if the attack by the Brethren wasn’t as much of a coincidence as Bennett thought? What if the hot guy with sapphire eyes sitting in front of me wasn’t a coincidence either? What if they were both connected? I needed answers to every single one of those questions. Which is why I said, “Okay,” and left Little Azio’s with him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Well Shit
“Make yourself comfortable.” The guy that was back to being a stranger motioned towards a couch against the one wall in his loft apartment that wasn’t a massive pane of glass. He stalked to the kitchen and opened the stainless steel fridge, holding up a Dos Equis over the top of its door. “You want one?”
“No, I’m good.”
He grinned at me. “I promise I’m not out to poison or roofie you. I’ll even take a drink out of it first then hand it over.”
“I feel like I will definitely need a drink by the time this conversation is over, but while in your presence I’d prefer to stay clear-headed. I don’t trust you.” No sense in putting on airs or beating around the bush. Might as well get straight to the point.
He shrugged, closing the fridge door. “That’s understandable.”
“I guess we should get down to business and get straight to the point.” His words were an echo of my thoughts as he came to sit on the couch beside me.
“That’s the only reason I’m here.”
He looked at me as if he wanted to say something, something that was tugging at the corners of his mouth, but he swallowed the words and turned his expression serious.
“My name is Chase Vincent like my file says. And I’m from Orlando. I was born, raised and grew up there. I am also technically a part of the Orlando Sect, but I am a member of a sect within the sect. We call ourselves the Chosen Ones. And yes, I know how pretentious that sounds, but that’s what you get when an Archangel names you. The Archangel you spoke of formed us twenty years ago. There are twelve of us in total and he told each of our parents that we had been hand picked by him to be his Chosen Ones. We were all no more than a couple of years old. He told our parents what an honor it was to have their children selected but he also swore them to secrecy promising violent repercussions if they divulged our existence. The twelve of us grew up in the Orlando sect like any other member of The Society would. At thirteen, we even began learning to fight daemons alongside the rest of our training class. Then three years later we were broken off from our peers. My mother has been the Sect Leader of Orlando since before I was born, and she doesn’t run it in quite the pseudo-democratic fashion that Bennett runs the Atlanta Sect. What she says goes, and she doesn’t ask for anyone’s input. She told the sect members that she’d deemed the twelve of us more advanced than our peers and were placing us in a special group to sharpen our considerable skills. She convenes with the Archangel in his incorporeal form frequently, and together they personally oversaw our training. It was then that him selecting us as his Chosen Ones were revealed to us along with the fact that our job wouldn’t be to simply patrol the city for daemons. The task he assigned to us was to hunt and kill the Brethren that are still on this plane. The real reason I happened upon you in Five Points last night was because I was tracking him the Brethren that attacked you. That is also the real reason I transferred to the Atlanta sect. The Archangel sent me here to deal with the city’s influx of Brethren. Now it’s your turn. If you’re not a Chosen One how does Bennett know about them? The Archangel claims we are the only ones who do and is insistent upon it staying that way.”
He was right. I did need a drink now.
“So did Michael tell you all, the Chosen Ones, about the prophecy?”
A beat ticked in Chase’s jaw. “No. The Archangel isn’t very forthcoming with information or answering questions. The jackass only tells you what he wants you to know.”
“Now that’s not very nice. I almost feel insulted Chase.”
Who and where in the hell had that come from?! I looked around the loft for the owner of the foreign voice, but drew up short seeing nothing.
Chase jumped to his feet and stood facing the fireplace built into the wall adjacent to the couch. His posture was rigid and his fists were clenched tight at his sides. He looked like he wanted to hit something. “You say that like I give a fuck.”
Then the fireplace lit itself and I was on my feet too. The outline of a face appeared in its flame. “You have a bad habit of toeing the line Chase. One of these days you are going to cross it and then I am going to have to do something about it.”
“If that was a threat it was a pathetic one. Getting rusty in your old age?I know you can do better.”
The flames shot out of the fireplace, making a ring around Chase’s feet. They licked at his lower half without actually singeing the white carpet. The shape his face contorted into made it clear he wasn’t as unaffected by them. My mouth moved open, perhaps to scream, but no sound came out. Then the flames jumped back into the fireplace place just as quickly as they’d jumped out.
“How is that for a suitable threat?” The disembodied voice echoed smugly throughout the apartment.
“What.Do.You.Want.” Chase bit off.
“For you to do your damn job,” the voice snarled. “Which, fortunately for you, you did not make a complete clusterfuck of doing correctly. The Nephilim knows about the prophecy now and the Brethren so you did not do much damage by revealing my Chosen Ones’ purpose. But she was considering telling you the details of the prophecy and that I cannot allow. It has too great a potential to alter events that I have already set in motion.”
Archangel or not, I blanched at how he knew what I’d been grappling with divulging to Chase when I’d asked a question, fishing to see how much of it he already knew.
The flames flared and I suddenly felt my body temperature rise by about ten degrees. It wasn’t painful. I didn’t feel as if parts of my body were being burned alive, but it sure as shit was not comfortable.
“I will be extremely displeased if you tell the Chosen One what you recently found out of the prophecy.”
Okaaay. That combined with my rapidly escalating temperature certainly did not sound good. His threat had been noted, but instead of nodding in acquiescence I clenched my teeth together and simply stared into the flames. I didn’t take well to demands being made of me or threats, no matter how capable the person making them was of backing them up. My body temperature ratcheted up another notch and I started feeling something more than discomfort. A tingling, then a slow burn caressed the surface of my skin. Sweat broke out along my brow line, but I held my position, refusing to offer any words of agreement or even a nod. A growl reverberated throughout the room so loud it left behind ringing in my ears. I felt a wet, sticky fluid prickle down my left lobe. I wiped my fingers across it and they came away stained red.
“You have been warned,” the voice boomed then it and the fire disappeared.
My knees buckled, but Chase caught me before I hit the ground.
“Are you alright?”
“No, but I will be. I guess Supernatural got the part about Archangels being dicks right. Are they all like that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only ever had the pleasure of meeting the one. But he is definitely a bastard.” Chase circled one arm around my waist, guiding me into a sitting position on the couch.
“I think I’ll take that drink now,” I said with a shaky laugh. “But I’m going to need something much stronger than a beer.”
Chase walked to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Jack Daniels and two shot glasses. “Is this strong enough?”
I nodded my head because words had slipped away from me.
We sat in silence for a minute. My mind was trying to wrap itself around a million and one thoughts and even more questions. After the alcohol had had time to settle into my bloodstream, slowing down my racing mind and fooling it into a state of relaxation, my brain was finally able to string together words into a complete sentence.
“How was M-“
Chase pressed against my side, clasping one hand over my mouth, cutting off the words I’d just barely found.
My eyes glittered into his with outrage.
He held my stare. “Don’t say his name. Saying it is the equivalent of providing him a one-way link into your mind.”
I nodded my head in understanding and he removed his hand. My lips tingled where his strong, lithe fingers had touched them.
“So he can still hear my thoughts?”
“No. Too much time has passed now. I’ve figured out, from testing his patience over the years, that the window into your mind saying his name provides him only last for a few minutes at most.”
“That’s scary and kind of freaky and entirely too much power for one being to have.”
“Agreed,” Chase responded dryly.
There was definitely history that existed between him and the Archangel. I curiously wondered at what it was, but then decided that it wasn’t my business to ask. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
“So, he’s like..good? Because he didn’t seem very angelic.”
“That’s because the Archangels are anything but if he is the standard to go by. They’re ruthless, self-important, manipulative assholes who use threats and force to make others bow to their will. I’m more than curious about why he is so adamant about you not telling me the details of the prophecy.”
“That makes two of us. I would think that it pertains to you in some way as well, but from what Bennett told me the Archangel told him, it doesn’t sound like it does.”
Chase looked at me in the same way he’d done earlier. Again, the calculating movement within his eyes told me the wheels behind them were spinning. He was deciding on something. I saw it in his eyes the moment he made a decision.
“I know you probably won’t believe me, or might think I am crazy when I say it, but sometimes I think the Archangel may not be fighting on the same team as us Nephilim.”
He was right, he did sound crazy. The Archangels created the Nephilim specifically to fight a battle on Earth which they could not. Furthermore, M-, the Archangel he spoke of was not just any Archangel. He was the Archangel. The oldest and most powerful of them all who led the charge against the Brethren when they initially rebelled against heaven and the Most High. He was their leader, holding the position equivalent to a General of the Most High’s. Even before he’d inherited the position from Lucifer when he tried to wrest control of Heaven and Earth for himself, he had been Lucifer’s Second and a Lieutenant to the Most High. Still…
“That is quite an accusation given the Archangel in question. But I suppose if Lucifer himself, the righthand of the Most High, could turn against him, then it is possible for any of them to.”
Shock colored his sapphire-blue eyes. “You digested that pill easily. My own mother gagged on it, then vomited it back up when I told her.”
“Everyone who is supposed to be good isn’t always good. Sometimes they are just very good at tricking people into believing they are.” I said the words much more casually than the emotions they induced in me made me feel. But I shoved them back down. Stuffed them back inside the closet and buried them under a mound of earth…like Deacon and Danielle were. Damn it! Why wouldn’t my brain cooperate today? It kept trying to dredge up subjects that were stones better left unturned. I forced the thoughts of the twins out of my mind and they were replaced by a different one. This one was just as dark, but caused a hysterical giggle to bubble up out of me.
Chase quirked an eyebrow at me, no doubt wondering at my sanity.
“I promise I haven’t suddenly gone insane. I just thought about how ironic it is that Bennett forced me to partner up with you, thinking it would give me an added layer of protection specifically from the very Brethren it is your job to hunt down and kill.”
Chase poured us a third shot. “So what are the chances of you telling me about the prophecy regardless of the Archangels’ threat?”
The way he casually said it made me suspicious. He said he had doubts about the Archangel not being what he appeared to be, but what if he was the one who that sentiment really applied to?
“Next to none,” I tell him straightforwardly. “I don’t know you and therefore I don’t trust you.”
In the quirky romance books I liked to read, whenever the girl was faced with the question of rather to trust the mysterious guy that had appeared in her life, the answer was always yes. And it was always based on nothing more than some gut feeling or instinct. I never understood that logic. It was stupid, and naive. People were rarely ever as they appeared and gut instincts could be wrong. I learned that the hard way. The last time I trusted someone blindly it came back on me to do a lot more damage than biting me on my ass. It resulted in the loss of lives. Innocent lives that— shit! The past really was refusing to stay buried today.
Chase raised the bottle of Jack Daniels to refill our shot glasses.
“I think I’ve had enough,” I said stopping him before he could pour more of its contents into mine.
He diverted the bottle to his own shot glass. “That’s understandable,” he said cooly.
I curiously eyed him as he threw back the last of the liquid that had been in the glass bottle. “That’s…a mature response. I expected you to be irked at my refusal.”
His blue eyes sparked with something I would call facetiousness if the discussion we were having weren’t so serious. “Patience isn’t one of my better qualities, but I can muster a bit up when the situation calls for it. We’re partners now remember, and according to you Bennett wants us joined at the hip. Eventually, I’ll crack your exterior.” He flashed me a dimpled grin then followed it up with a wink.
I never thought a guy could look like anything but a dork when winking, but on Chase, paired with twin dimples and a dreamy face nearly perfect in its features, it had exactly the effect he was aiming for. My inner self swooned a little bit and I thought about the word Whitney used to describe guys she thought were hot— fuckable. Oh my God, I must be drunk, I thought while fighting the goofy smile that wanted to spread across my face in response to him. This was not the seventies. Who said or even thought the word dreamy anymore besides the characters on Grey’s Anatomy and the writers who wrote for the show.
“What time is it?” When I jumped up from the couch the room swayed a little. Patting my back pockets for my phone, where I knew I’d stored it, I didn’t at first feel it. Then I patted them again and located it in my right, not my left one. Seriously, it couldn’t have been sticking out of my jeans the entire time.
“Shit! We were supposed to start patrolling Atlantic Station an hour ago.”
Chase made no effort to get off the couch.
Why the hell wasn’t he moving his ass? “We need to go,” I urged him to kick it into gear.
“I don’t think you’re capable of doing anything tonight. I hadn’t pegged you for a lightweight.” He pointedly looked at the empty bottle resting on the glass coffee table in front of the couch.
“I’m fine,” I scoffed.
He quirked a brow up at me. “Really?”
And what the hell was that supposed to mean? “Really,” I snapped at him.
The corners of his lips twitched in response. “Okay,” he said in an indulgent tone that struck a nerve. “
Out of the weapons you have on you at the moment, which one is your weapon of choice?”
That was an odd question and I didn’t see what it had to do with anything. “My throwing knives,” I answered anyway because he was becoming annoying and I was starting to feel particularly surly. I flung the words at him, making it crystal clear that I was envisioning flinging the very things that had been my answer.
His lips twitched again. “Alright.”
He finally stood up. Good. We could go. We were already late.
Instead of turning towards the door, he turned to the wall the fireplace was nestled in beside the couch. A dartboard hung above it. “If you can hit the bullseye we’ll leave.”
I raised my chin. “I don’t have to prove anything to you.”
“It’s cool if you can’t do it.”
I bristled. “I can hit a target from a mile away with one hand tied behind my back.”
“Maybe. But can you hit one from a few feet away with both hands free? Right now, I doubt it.”
“I can hit a target anytime, any place, anywhere.” I wasn’t being conceited. Okay, maybe I was a little, but it was true nonetheless. When it came to knives I had skillz.
“Prove it.”
My ego made me answer the challenge. I bent down, grabbing the knife strapped to my ankle, then straightened my spine. Its weight felt off, heavy, in my hand. I focused my eyes on the small circle of red in the center of the dartboard and saw two red circles instead of one. They were linked together like venn diagrams or olympic rings. I blinked twice then looked at the dartboard again. Good. There was only one circle now. I raised my arm, brining my hand level with my eyes, and threw the knife with a jerky movement. The knife flew ungracefully through the air, hit the wall next to the dartboard and bounced off, crashing to the floor. Well shit. I hadn’t even thrown it with enough force for it to embed itself in the plaster. I plopped back onto the couch.
“Fine. You win.” I swiped my thumb across the screen of my phone then tapped the Uber app to open it. Lucky for me, there was only a fifteen minute wait for an Uber. That wasn’t always the case on a Thursday night in a city with five colleges within a fifteen mile radius of its downtown area. “Since we’re not patrolling I should get home. An Uber will be here in fifteen minutes. I’ll call Bennett on the way over and make up a reason for why we didn’t make it to Atlantic Station. I’ll tell him I got sick or something.” I stood from the couch and headed for the front door.
Craved: A Chosen Ones Novel Page 5