by Jenny McKane
Sunny wasn’t certain she liked the idea of Gideon carrying Selah anywhere but to a dumpster, but she saw reason in what Plaxo was saying.
“We need to move quickly,” Plaxo continued. “The old portal is gone. Plaxo was sure to destroy almost all of the portals nearby, except for one.”
The brilliant little dream demon had used his time outside of the keep wisely and would make it difficult for Camael to use the Shadow Realm to jump over to the human world.
“We must walk quickly,” he said.
“Why?” Sunny asked. “Didn’t Camael die?”
Gideon gave a terse shake of his head.
“He ran,” Gideon spat. “Along with Azrael’s other son—the cowards ran.”
They were moving again, following Plaxo.
“And Alder? The one who did these things?” Sunny asked.
Plaxo gave a snort of derision.
“The second that creature put a paw on Plaxo, Plaxo ripped its head from its body,” the dream demon snarled.
He sounded so feral that Sunny shot a questioning glance to Gideon. Gideon shrugged.
“Seriously? I thought you were unconscious. I thought you had a collar that prevented your magic?”
Up ahead, Plaxo laughed.
“Dream demons have claws stronger than Kevlar and that idiot forgot,” Plaxo said proudly. “He was dead in half a heartbeat.”
They moved in silence at that point and they wandered into the small village that Sunny had noticed when she first arrived. Walking wordlessly through the small path that wound through the village, Plaxo finally stopped at an abandoned building that looked like it was once a demon home.
“Plaxo made a small, temporary portal in here,” he said. She followed and Gideon ducked into the building behind her.
“Right through there,” Plaxo pointed and Sunny saw the swirling whorls of light that shone from the portal. Plaxo had built it right into the side of the home’s interior wall. Clever.
When Plaxo didn’t move from the doorframe, Sunny stopped.
“You’re coming right?”
She said it with a laugh, but the smile died on her lips when she saw his serious face. He shook his head and she felt the bottom drop from her guts. No.
“Plaxo needs to stay behind and destroy this last portal in the Shadow Realm.”
“No,” she argued, moving forward to grab at the dream demon. He held his hand up.
“You must play your part, Lady Hunter, from your side of the realm,” he said seriously, suddenly looking a lot like the centuries-old demon that he was. “Plaxo must do his part from this side. One day, we will meet again, Plaxo promises. We will both survive, Plaxo swears.”
Sunny wasn’t ready to believe him, not after everything she had seen in the past few weeks. But she also knew that Plaxo wasn’t some pet for her to care for. He was a leader of his own people and had an entire race to worry about. There was still a war brewing and everyone had their part to play, Plaxo was right.
“You swear it on your honor as a dream demon? As my friend?” She demanded some sort of promise from Plaxo as her vision blurred with tears. Her heart was ripping in half at the thought of leaving her dear friend behind.
“On Plaxo’s honor,” the dream demon promised. “We will see each other again. Now Lady Hunter must go. Now.”
Sunny swallowed hard and rushed forward to embrace her friend in a final hug.
“I will see you soon,” she whispered before standing. Without looking back, Sunny walked through the portal and closed her eyes.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Austin, Texas?” Sunny asked the question aloud as she read the board at the Greyhound Terminal. “The portal that Plaxo built for us shot us out in Texas?”
Gideon looked around before dropping Selah to a bench and covering her with a blanket. She was in bad shape, but they needed to stay out of hospitals and away from authorities because they’d never be able to explain how this woman (demon, really) ended up with a red demon arm stitched to her body. Selah was unconscious, and Plaxo had explained that it was a state called stasis that some demons, the more powerful ones, could dip into when they needed massive healing. Well, Selah needed massive healing, apparently.
Sunny didn’t look much better, truth be told. She was wearing a t-shirt she’d scavenged at some point in the past 12 hours and the ripped bottom half of the bridesmaid dress Selah had made her wear. Gideon was wearing a shredded guard uniform from Azrael’s keep. All three of them were splattered with blood and looked like they’d just escaped an insane asylum.
Unfortunately for Sunny, she didn’t have a phone to call anyone. Gideon stepped away from Selah and walked away without saying a word, leaving Sunny standing against a wall, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. He returned wordlessly a moment later and produced an unlocked phone. Sunny didn’t ask questions, she simply dialed.
Just before she expected it to go to voicemail, Eli’s voice answered.
“Yeah?”
Sunny swallowed against a wave of emotions rising up at hearing his voice and realizing they’d really made it across the portal in one piece. And that she’d gotten Gideon, mostly whole, out of Hell.
“Hi, Eli,” Sunny began and she heard Eli swear. “It’s me. We’re in Austin and we’re sort of stuck. Can you help?”
“Holy hell, Sunny,” Eli said, the emotions clear in his voice. “Are you okay?”
The tears cracked at that point.
“Not really,” she croaked. “But we’re alive. It’s a start. But we’re sorta battered and bloody without anywhere to go. Can you help?”
Eli was on it in a second and walked Sunny through the next few steps while he typed away on his computer. He got them a hotel room less than a half mile away and arranged for “special concierge service” from a Keeper that worked there. It meant a guy named Julio was waiting at the back door of the Comfort Villa who would usher them to a deluxe, two-bedroom suite and deliver a few bags of clothing from the local Target before the night was through.
“Stay there two nights and I’ll be there to grab you guys,” Eli instructed. “We’re heading to Metatron.”
He didn’t say much about where Metatron was, but Sunny didn’t need to know right away. She mostly needed her head to decompress.
The suite was beautiful and featured a full kitchenette, which Julio had stocked via Eli’s instructions. They had food, they had room service, they had clothing and toiletries. It was a start.
Gideon and Sunny hadn’t spoken much since walking through the portal in the bus station. Mostly they’d been so busy in survival mode, but now it was just so awkward. So much was different. So much had happened.
Once they had Selah mostly cleaned up and situated on the bed in one of the bedrooms, Gideon had told Sunny she could have the first shower. Pawing through the bags, she pulled out a change of clothes and a few toiletries and shut the bathroom behind her.
The water burned her skin for the first few minutes, but she didn’t turn it off. The burn, it felt good. It meant she was feeling things and that reassured her that she would recover eventually. If she could feel and differentiate between what she’d just been through and what was happening now, it was a good thing and meant that while the atrocities she’d seen in the demon realm might take a while to recover from, her mind and soul were up for the challenge.
When she was done with her shower, she walked out of the bathroom and threw her old clothes away. Gideon moved into the bathroom with his change of clothing and shut the door. She listened to the sounds of his shower, wondering how long it had been since he was a conscious being with his own thoughts. A few days? A week at most?
More than anything, she worried Gideon might not recover from what they were doing to him in Hell. He’d already been damaged with Seumat, but Azrael and Camael had altered him physically and tried to turn him into a weapon.
Sunny lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, her mind unable to keep up with all the what-ifs
that attacked her. What if it was all too much for Gideon?
His shower done, Gideon emerged from the bathroom a few moments later and Sunny caught his original, spicy scent in the air. For some reason, that was all the guarantee she needed and the heavy weight that had just been sitting on her soul was lifted. Down deep inside him, he was her Gideon and she’d be there for him while he healed. Hell, she’d probably need his help with her own healing, too.
They both sat on their respective double beds staring at the wall and not making eye contact for a few moments before Gideon finally spoke.
“Why?”
The question hung between them for a moment.
She looked over at him and found him staring at her, his expression unreadable.
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you come for me? I told you not to.”
He almost sounded angry at her.
“I know,” she said. “But you made an agreement with a cheater against a stacked deck. I figure your deal was null and void and nobody else could cross the portals like I could. It had to be me.”
Gideon was shaking his head.
“Do you realize what could have happened to you? Jesus, Sunny,” he was freaking out on her, running his hands through his hair.
“Do you realize what did happen to you? What was about to happen beyond that? You would have been a mindless bot for your father. Why aren’t you thanking me? Why aren’t you happy to see me?”
Her voice cracked a bit but she reigned it in. Truth be told, he was starting to hurt her feelings, but she was going to be patient.
“I’m eternally in your debt for what you…” he began but Sunny cut him off.
“Cut the shit, Lafayette,” she snapped at him and he frowned. “You would have done the same for me. I marched into Hell and got you out. Deal with it.”
“You could have been killed,” he yelled, standing up. He was agitated.
“And you nearly were!” She yelled back. “I’d do it again, Gideon, so what do you say about that? You’re not my father—I don’t need your permission to do what I know is right. Get over all your hang ups that, like some precious little flower, I could have been damaged. My life wasn’t worth shit without you here anyway. Ask Gabriel. Ask Plaxo. Training to come get you gave me a purpose and reason to live again, so don’t ask me to regret it because I sure as hell won’t.”
That stunned him into momentary silence. They stared at each other for a few moments before Gideon spoke.
“I think it was the second or third dose you spiked my drink with that did it,” he said quietly. “It probably should have taken more, but whatever they were doing to me was making my system more efficient. I couldn’t see you through the glamour, but after I woke up from my trance, I caught little movements that were all Sunshine Bonnard and I knew your crazy ass had snuck into hell.”
He laughed then, mostly to himself, and ran his fingers through his hair.
“I was so mad at you when I realized it,” he said. “And I was powerless to keep you safe as I had to watch them slap you around at Selah’s wedding.”
It was interesting to hear him refer to it as her wedding, and not his.
“Were you conscious when they announced your marriage?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I nearly blew my cover that day,” Sunny admitted with a small smile. “I had that obsidian dagger ready to slash through everybody in a rage.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” he said. “I was still too weak to be of any help. Not sure I could have saved you.”
Sunny chewed her lip a moment.
“I thought my heart had ripped in two the first couple times I saw and spoke to you and you didn’t recognize me,” she said, her voice small. “And to watch Selah put her hands all over you like you were some prize, well, I learned a few lessons in control over there.”
“My thoughts weren’t always my own,” he said. “It was weird. I recognized Selah eventually, but she had changed so much, too. She wasn’t the same and I don’t know if it was her or that place. I just had a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that you were there in disguise as one of her maids. For the life of me, I couldn’t put together how the hell you could get that to happen.”
“Gabriel,” she replied. “He taught me a lot.”
Gideon didn’t say anything to that.
“It seems you also learned a few things about knife fighting and being some sort of ruthless assassin,” he said.
Sunny snorted and shook her head. “Vitaly was a piece of shit,” she muttered. “And by that time, I’d already figured I was beaten, so why not try to take as many out with me as I could. It was desperation and not skill that got me out of that room.”
“And the tree? How did you even know to do that? Even I didn’t put two and two together when it came to that tree,” he said.
“There’s so much to tell you,” she said with a sigh. “But just know that I paid attention. And I had good training and preparation.”
Gideon nodded and sighed.
“You’ll have to tell me everything,” he said. “But not now.”
Sunny exhaled.
“Okay,” she said. “Some other time.”
His eyes were on hers and she looked up.
“Are you okay?” she asked, suddenly nervous.
He shook his head.
“No?” she replied.
“I’m not the same person I was when Azrael took me, Sunny,” he said, his voice quiet. She could almost feel his shame in the words. “You saw me. They changed me into a monster. I’m not sure how to be around you now—you deserve more than being shackled to me.”
Her jaw dropped and it was all she could do not to stand up and slap him.
“Gideon Lafayette,” she began, her voice rising in anger. “If you think I marched into Hell and slapped around Azrael and his kids just to have you reject me because of some talons and wings, then you don’t me. And you don’t know shit!”
Her breathing was ragged now and she was taking big gulps of air as she considered whether she wanted to throttle him or smack him on the lips with a big kiss. She had missed him so much and now he was putting distance between them. Still.
He shook his head in disbelief.
“You’re not scared of me?”
She snorted in derision.
“Did you see some of those things I fought,” she said. “Did you see the damn demon tree I gutted to free you? Knock it off.”
Gideon stared at her in some sort of awe to the point that she felt awkward and had to look away.
“Look at me,” he said. She ignored him and pretended she had something else to look at on the floor. His voice got more serious. “Look at me, Sunshine.”
Her eyes popped up and froze, studying him for a half second. Then, in a blur, he was across the space between their beds and pressing her body down to the mattress with his. The warmth of his muscles through his shirt scalded her and he put his hands on her face as he hovered over her.
“I love you more than life itself, Sunshine Bonnard,” he whispered before kissing the daylights out of her.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Despite being one of the younger archangels, Metatron somewhat resembled the Most Interesting Man in the World from those beer commercials she used to see on television. Unlike his brothers, Metatron had gray hair and a well-groomed gray beard. He didn’t look like an old man, he just had this silver fox thing going on paired with a cowboy background. He wore Wranglers and boots and flannel shirts.
Oh, and he was jacked.
It was true that all of the archangels were supernaturally fit, but Metatron hardcore lifted and drank protein shakes. He was jacked.
Metatron was the true Alpha male with all his muscles and protein shakes and the fact that he had 400 acres of ranchland in eastern Montana. It’d taken Eli the space of almost four days to drive them from Austin up to Montana and they only stopped for a few hours at a time for showers, food, and sh
ort power naps.
They had a lot to catch up on and Eli didn’t want to stop for anything. So they didn’t.
Because her dealings with archangels hadn’t always been the greatest experiences, Sunny was only mildly optimistic that Metatron wouldn’t be a total turd.
But she couldn’t have been more wrong. He had a select group of Hunters that still worked with him and they all had private dwellings on his land. He treated them like family and had them trained with the best instructors. Their gear was top of the line. He was a bit of a hard ass, but he truly took care of his people, just like Gabriel had done for her.
He even called Gideon nephew which was more than a little awkward those first few times, but Metatron was who he was, hugger and all. He was like a giant Papa Smurf character who seemed more human than archangel. Gideon had later explained that Metatron took to humans faster than any of the other archangels for one specific reason.
“He was the prophet Enoch in his former life,” Eli said. “The only human to ever ascend to the rank of archangel through his own righteous actions.”
Sunny had been duly impressed.
Their first night in his ranch house, after they had all showered and Selah had been taken to the medical barn for observation, Metatron grilled them all steaks while he and Eli gathered and exchanged all the information they could.
First, Gideon told them everything that had happened to him, which wasn’t much because Alder started working on his memories and cognitive function just a few weeks after he arrived. It turned out that Gideon was only allowed out of his cage once all semblance of who he was had been subdued by the poison he was being fed.
“I really only started waking up once Plaxo and Sunny started feeding me a few drops of antidote at a time,” he said quietly, squeezing Sunny’s hand.
“And you say that Camael knew what was happening to Gideon and the others?” Metatron asked.
Sunny nodded. “He seemed to want his son to serve as one of his generals in his new form,” she said.
“And you believe Camael survived?”
“I’m sure of it,” Gideon said. “He and Azrael’s son Victor escaped before Plaxo took the place down. They had a few hundred fallen in their legion, too, and who knows how many Azrael had prepared. There’s no telling.”