Angel in Waiting

by Sharon Saracino

  “I have no idea,” Elle groaned from behind the fingers she’d slapped over her eyes. “All I wanted was to see a friendly face, and now I’m going to pay for it by going blind.”

  “Stifle your inner drama queen, woman. It’s not like you haven’t seen a naked man before.”

  “Not without prior notice and definitely not my best friend’s husband.” Elle peeked from between her fingers and seeing he’d managed to sufficiently cover himself, dropped her hands and climbed to her feet. “Although at the risk of sounding completely inappropriate, I’m beginning to understand what Kat sees in you.”

  “Completely inappropriate. Thanks, I think,” McAllister set the bottles on a nearby table and securely fastened the throw around his waist like a sarong. “Now what are you doing here, how did you get in, and where’s Dimitri?”

  Before Elle could open her mouth to formulate an answer, Kat came striding from the bedroom, tightening the belt of a blue, silk robe and tossing a black one to her husband.

  “Stop badgering her, Kassian. Can’t you see she’s upset?”

  “But how did she just pop in here?” McAllister muttered, turning his back and slipping on the robe, then he bent to scoop up the throw and toss it on a nearby chair.

  “Didn’t you drop the sigils to let Dimitri and Elle fade out from here?” Kat arched a brow in her husband’s direction.

  “Well, yeah…”

  “And did you remember to put them back up after they left?”

  “Uh…shit! Distracted. Your fault.” McAllister stepped toward the door with a dark frown and began to move his hands in an intricate pattern in the air, resetting the protective sigils around the entrance to the penthouse.

  Kat grabbed Elle’s hand and pulled her down on the couch beside her.

  “Now what’s wrong? And how did you get here? Where’s Dimitri?”

  “Dimitri’s gone. I don’t know where he is, and furthermore, I don’t care. As to how I got here, I was wallowing, you know how well I can do that when I set my mind to it, and wishing I was here with you to hash it all out, and suddenly I was.” Elle shrugged as though she wasn’t the least bit surprised to find herself in Kat’s parlor.

  “What do you mean Dimitri’s gone?” McAllister asked, dropping into a chair perpendicular to the sofa. “Gone where?”

  “I told you, I don’t know and I don’t care. And can you please cross your legs or something?” Elle grumbled irritably and looked quickly at the ceiling. “He got what he needed from me. He knows how to find the Fallen who destroyed his family now, and if he had to break the heart of some freaky lab rat pseudo-angel in the process…oh, well…too bad, too sad, right?”

  McAllister straightened in his chair. “Jebe? He found Jebe?”

  “He goes by the name of Justin Chen now. You know, the money behind Gatewick’s little operation.”

  “When did he find this out?” McAllister rose to his feet and came to stand in front of the women, looking down at Elle from his great height.

  “Oh, c’mon, McAllister! Do you honestly expect me to believe you Defensori don’t share this kind of information? Though, I have to admit both of you play dumb really well. Obviously, he saw something in my memories while he was taking care of me. As for my being an insecure little lab rat who just happened to be his bound mate…well, didn’t that just make it all too freakin’ easy?” Elle sneered making no attempt to hide the pain of betrayal.

  “I take back my earlier assessment of your intelligence, lady. For a woman who’s made a career of writing about love and romance, it’s sad you don’t even recognize it when it bites you in the ass. Dimitri Radchenko has more humanity and less deceit in his soul than any man I know, Earthbound or otherwise. He would never use you, or anyone else, for information. He would simply have asked.”

  “He didn’t deny it!” Elle cried hotly, squirming under McAllister’s accusatory gaze.

  “He wouldn’t. He would expect his mate, a woman who claimed to care for him, to recognize his true nature and give him the benefit of the doubt. An Earthbound can no more betray his bound mate than sign a pact with Lucifer.”

  “Well, how in the hell was I supposed to know that? I wasn’t raised in a typical family environment or traditionally indoctrinated into this whole Earthbound lifestyle, you know.”

  An angry flush stained McAllister’s face. He opened his mouth to continue the debate, but Kat held up her hand to stay his tongue.

  “She’s right, Kassian. Having been betrayed by someone she loved and trusted once, isn’t it understandable she would jump to that conclusion again under the circumstances? Insecurity is a bitch.” She took Elle’s hand and turned in her seat to face her friend. “I get where you’re coming from Elle. Honestly I do, but Dimitri loves you. Don’t let stubbornness and pride get in the way of what your heart knows to be true. Now, at the moment, my empath senses my husband is more than a little concerned about Dimitri, so why don’t you tell us exactly what happened?”

  Elle felt the tight constriction in her chest ease as she related the evening’s events. They were right. Dimitri did love her. She’d jumped to conclusions and let her past rise up and form a wall between them without giving him a chance to explain. He hadn’t stormed out because he didn’t care, he’d done it because he was hurt and angry she hadn’t trusted in him, hadn’t trusted in what they shared. He hadn’t denied her accusations, but neither had he confirmed them. Maybe he’d left to give himself time to cool off and her time to stew in her own assumptions until she figured out she was a complete ass?

  “That’s probably part of it,” McAllister allowed when Elle shared the thought with the two of them. “But my guess is he’s gone hunting. Alone. I will, of course, kick his gigantic ass for that when I find him. But first I have to find him.”

  Without another word, McAllister stalked into the bedroom and slammed the door, presumably to get dressed. At least, Elle hoped he was going to get dressed. She’d had one too many free shows for the night. Though Dimitri had told her not to leave the apartment, it wasn’t as though she’d done it deliberately, and waiting here with Kat…she was just as safe. Once McAllister found him? Then she would do whatever it took to convince him her lack of faith in herself, not her lack of faith in him, was the root of the problem. Maybe it wouldn’t be quite as difficult now that she finally understood it herself.

  “Coffee?” Kat rose gracefully to her feet. “Rhetorical question, of course.”

  McAllister picked that moment to stride from the bedroom, dressed in black leather from head to toe. The hot glance Kat gave her husband as she headed past him into the kitchen spoke volumes. As for Elle, she was just happy there were now several layers of impenetrable fabric between her sight line and everything McAllister owned. She’d just opened her mouth to ask where he planned to start looking when she felt the color drain from her face and a sensation of cold dread snaked through her body.

  “Dimitri,” she whispered, knowing without a doubt that something had happened. She hadn’t even been aware of the bond, but suddenly she couldn’t feel him anymore. Instinctively, she knew they’d been connected somehow and now they weren’t. She turned her stricken face up to McAllister who took one look at her expression and loosed a string of curses in several different languages that almost turned the air visibly blue.

  Elle struggled to make sense of it while her heart pounded and her lungs strained to take in air. Gatewick was human and no match for Dimitri. Even Chen, assuming he was at the compound, was only one Fallen, and Dimitri was one extremely lethal pissed off angel with an agenda. How could either of them possibly have taken him down? Her mind quickly shuffled through one fact and possibility after another, quickly discarding each in turn. When the truth hit her, it did so with a suddenness that caused her to cry out in agony. She scrambled to her feet and clutched at McAllister’s jacket, pulling his face down to hers.

  “I know what they’re doing. The experiments, the monthly injections, the retroviruses. Don’t
you see? I didn’t grow into my powers. That’s why they’re coming back now. I always had them and was given something that suppressed them, something that was supposed to kill me but hadn’t been perfected yet. My creation was a success, but that wasn’t the ultimate goal. Dimitri said Jebe’s goal was to exterminate the Earthbound. What better way than to develop a virus designed to infect and kill them? Oh God, McAllister, what if Gatewick finally figured it out? We have to find him before it’s too late!”

  “Son-of-a-bitch!” McAllister roared, grasping one of Elle’s hands in his, and with the other reached for his wife, who’d hurried back into the room. Wrapping his arm around her, he pulled her to his side and kissed her hard. “I have to go. I’ll call Galen and Alec on the way and have them meet me there. Kat, you call Luca. Tell him to get hold of Michael and let him know he needs to get over here. If Elle’s right, and Jebe has been able to successfully develop something like that, we may need his help. Elle, if they manage to get here before we get back, you can give them directions to the compound, right?”

  She nodded mutely. He squeezed her hand before releasing it.

  “Okay, sit tight. We’ll find him.”

  “Be careful, Kassian,” Kat stretched up to kiss his cheek.

  “Always am.” He hugged her close and then released her before striding to the door and disappearing into thin air as soon as he was through the doorway and clear of the sigils.

  Kat followed slowly behind him and quietly closed the door, leaning her forehead against it for just a moment and taking a deep breath before turning back to Elle.

  “How about you make the coffee while I call my brother?”

  “How do you stand it, Kat? Every time he walks out the door you know what he could be walking into. How do you stay so calm?”

  “Calm?” Kat’s lips twisted in a comic imitation of a smile. “I’m nothing of the sort. But if he’s distracted thinking I’m here worrying my head off, then that puts him in even more danger. So I paste on a smile and wave him on his way. I hate it. But I knew what I was getting into when I married him, and I wouldn’t trade any of it for the alternative of living without him.”

  “Well, you sure had me fooled.” Elle raised her brows.

  “Good!” Kat’s smile was tired but more genuine this time. “You know me as well as anyone. So if you bought it, maybe he did, too. Now go and make the coffee. It’ll give you something to occupy your mind for five minutes while I call Luca. Dimitri is a Defensori, Elle. He’s their brother. They won’t come back without him.”

  “I know.” And she did. The cold tendrils of fear churning in her gut and climbing into her chest to wrap icy fingers around her heart were because she was terrified the Dimitri they brought back would be nothing more than a lifeless body.

  Chapter Seventeen

  By the time Dimitri hunkered down in the bushes outside Gatewick’s building, he’d managed to reign in his anger and look at the whole situation more objectively. Secure in his righteous indignation that she could consider him guilty for even a nanosecond, he’d stormed out of the apartment, fists clenched, chest tight, and snorting like a bull. But Elle’s pale, stricken face stuck in his mind. He couldn’t rid his conscience of those big blue eyes sparking defiance and begging for reassurance at the same time. Hell yeah, it cut like a knife that she could doubt him after everything they’d shared, after he’d let her into his mind and offered her his heart, but then he remembered this was a woman who, despite her outward confidence and swagger, harbored deep-seeded feelings of inadequacy. It wasn’t something that would go away overnight. Was it really so surprising it would rear its ugly head when she felt uncertain or threatened? If her own father would betray her, why shouldn’t she be suspicious of a man she’d only really known for a few months? Given her history, she probably couldn’t help jumping to the conclusion she had, but he’d seen it in her face. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, she’d wanted to believe in him, and he hadn’t done anything to help her do that. He should have at least denied the accusation, should have stayed and talked to her. Instead, he’d stormed out assuming once she thought about it, she’d understand he refused to justify her finger pointing with an explanation because she should have known him better. In his haste to jump on the pride wagon, he’d managed to completely forget everything he knew about her and do exactly the wrong thing. Well, wasn’t that freakin’ special?

  Dimitri slowly rose to his feet and stretched his tense muscles. What was he doing here, anyway? If this Chen really was Jebe, there was no reason to believe he would suddenly disappear tonight. Dimitri had waited seven hundred years, and he sure as hell could wait another day. Tonight Elle needed him more than he needed vengeance. It was time to go home. He’d hurt her. He realized that now. Sucking in a breath, he blew it out slowly. He didn’t know much about groveling, but if that’s what it was going to take to reassure her, he guessed he could give it a try. Of course, he’d make it very clear she should savor it as a one-time experience.

  Dangerously preoccupied with thoughts of Elle, he failed to notice another mind in his vicinity seconds before he heard the crack of a rifle and felt the scalding pain. He reached for the spot instinctively and yanked a dart resembling a hypodermic needle from the side of his neck. Struggling to stay conscious long enough to fade out, he quickly worked a basic set of sigils around the nearest tree, squinting through the gray vortex engulfing him as a figure crashed through the underbrush in his direction, setting off a series of shocks along his spine. And then the world went black.

  ****

  As he struggled up through the layers of darkness to consciousness, Dimitri was careful to give no indication he was once again aware of his surroundings. The hard, cold surface on which he lay was clearly concrete, and as his mind searched his immediate surroundings, he discovered he was not alone. A quick scan revealed his companion was human. A confused human who was pretty much scared to death of the circumstances he found himself in and the motionless, leather-clad giant now sharing his space. A complete scan provided more useful information. As Dimitri shuffled through the man’s memories, he learned they were currently housed in a concrete and metal cell somewhere below Gatewick’s cryogenic business. As he continued to examine the other man’s recollection of the events leading up to his sojourn in captivity, Dimitri’s eyes flew open and he jack-knifed into a sitting position.

  “What in the hell are you doing here?” He growled.

  Jim-by-the-way, aka Nerd-nuts, cowered further back into the corner of the cell, his teeth audibly chattering.

  “I…I was sort of hoping you could tell me,” he gasped, wide-eyed. “I was just minding my own business when these guys yanked me off my bike and into a van. They started asking me all kinds of questions about the woman at a house I’d been to. Hey, I’m just a fan who saw her on the bus and decided to take a chance. Believe me, I’m not usually a risk-taker, and now I know why.”

  “What did you tell them about Elle?” Dimitri rose to his feet, towering threateningly over the cringing man.

  “Nothing! I didn’t tell them anything. I figured they were reporters or something trying to get the scoop on her sabbatical. Of course, I can’t see why reporters would bring me here and lock me up. I mean, Miss Gates is awesome and all, but c’mon…all this for an exclusive? Who are you, anyway? Oh, shoot! You’re the boyfriend aren’t you? She wasn’t kidding about that whole over the top muscle thing. Look, I’m sorry man. I’ll never bother her again. I swear.”

  Dimitri’s eyes bored into the other man’s as he read him. The poor schmuck was telling the truth. He was simply a rabid fan who’d gotten caught in the middle of something he couldn’t even begin to imagine.

  “If luck is on my side, I’m the guy who’s going to get both of our asses out of here in one piece. So what did you tell them?”

  “I told them I was a Jehovah’s Witness sharing my mission and I didn’t know who the woman at the house was, but she hadn’t been especially interested in what I
had to say.”

  “Quick thinking.” Dimitri’s lips curled in an unwilling smile. “They bought it?”

  Jim shrugged. “Who knows? They didn’t really seem to know what I was talking about, but they didn’t let me go, either.”

  “Yeah, well they must have been animorti. Not a lot of brain cells firing in those guys,” Dimitri rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, halting on the metal plates anchored there with heavy bolts. “Shit!”

  “What’s wrong? Aside from the obvious, I mean. And what are animorti?”

  “You don’t really want to know,” Dimitri replied absently, unsnapping his sleeve and drawing a stiletto from the tattoo on his forearm, ignoring Jim’s wide-eyed stare as the man curled up and tried to make himself even smaller. Stretching his arm over his head as high as he could, Dimitri drew the tip of his weapon along one of the plates, swearing again as sparks rained down on both men. Hell forged steel. No wonder Galen hadn’t been able to get a read on the men he’d seen after they entered the building. The lower level must be lined with the stuff. Not only was it an effective block against Earthbound telepathy, it also prevented him from fading, flushing that means of escape right down the crapper. He was going to have to rely on Plan B. Just as soon as he came up with it.

  “Do you know how many of them there are?” Dimitri dropped cross-legged to the floor.

  “Well, there were the two who grabbed me and brought me here, then there was an Asian looking guy. He was here when I arrived but didn’t stay long. Other than that, I just saw one older man who looked very uncomfortable with the whole thing,” Jim said.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Couple of hours.”

  “Must be close to morning.” Elle would be alone and unprotected except for the sigils around his place. Hurt and alone, she would, of course, jump to the conclusion he wasn’t coming back and then she would leave. She would stubbornly and impulsively walk right into danger and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop her. Shit! “Have they been feeding you?”