by S. J. Day
The seven archangels were responsible for funding their firms in a secular fashion. Raguel had a knack for real estate, which had created a multibillion-dollar empire and a notoriety that rivaled Donald Trump and Steve Wynn. Gadara Enterprises owned properties the world over, from resorts in Las Vegas and Atlantic City to office buildings in Milan and New York. As a handler assigned to Raguel’s firm, Reed had traversed the various halls so often he could do it with his eyes closed. But ever since he had marked Eve here, he could no longer do so comfortably.
Without volition, his gaze moved to the stairwell door that concealed the landing where he’d taken Eve. Memories hit his brain in a rapid-fire series of graphic images. The recollections were so vivid, he could feel her lush curves beneath his hands and smell her perfume. His dick hardened and he adjusted himself for comfort.
“Damn you,” he growled, as much to Cain and Eve as to himself. He needed her to advance his ambitions, but he didn’t need to admire her. Or covet her.
Entering the elevator, Reed stabbed at the lone button on the panel. There was a long pause as the camera in the corner focused on his features, then the security guard on the receiving end of the feed set the lift in motion. It shot up the thirty flights to the penthouse in a matter of seconds, but Reed could have shifted across the distance in the blink of an eye. Teleportation was a blessing given to all mal’akhs—except for Cain, who’d had the gift stripped from him. Reed chose to take the slower secular route today in order to gain the time needed to get himself under control. By the time the doors opened, he felt ready to deal with Raguel.
He exited into the massive, well-appointed office as if he owned it. An intricately carved mahogany desk was angled in the far corner, facing the bank of windows on the opposite side. Two brown leather chairs faced the desk and an eternal fire crackled in the fireplace. Above the mantel, a portrait of the Last Supper as imagined by Da Vinci brought God into the space, as did the crucifix adorning the wall behind Gadara’s chair.
The archangel himself stood at the windows with his back to Reed. His hands were shoved in his pockets, and his bearing was regal and relaxed. The contrast between his cream-colored garments and his coffee-dark skin enhanced both beautifully.
“How is Ms. Hollis?” he asked, without turning his head.
Adjusting his slacks, Reed settled into the chair before the archangel’s desk. “Recovering and putting on a brave face.”
“Cain is not capable of arranging Ms. Hollis’s resurrection alone.” Raguel pivoted away from the Orange County vista. “You must have helped him.”
“Help Cain? Me?” Reed’s mouth curved slightly. Whether he had or hadn’t was for him alone to know. The ambitious archangel didn’t need any more ammunition.
The mark system had been built to work cohesively and, at one time, it had. Now, however, the race to please God better and more often than their counterparts had led to dissension and subterfuge among the archangels.
“Not that I mind, of course,” Raguel assured. “It would have been a tragedy to lose her.”
“It’s a miracle it hasn’t happened sooner, considering the deviations from protocol that she’s suffered through.”
“She has to be put through her paces. She has to be better than her peers, tougher and quicker. Unafraid. Her work with Cain will always make her the target of Infernals like Charles Grimshaw.”
Reed’s fingers curled around the ends of the armrests. Raguel was using her to further his own ends . . . and to aggravate Cain. “She became a target because we had her waving in the wind.”
It was a coup for the archangel to have Cain on his team, and that was possible only because Eve was assigned to the North American firm. If anything happened to take Eve from Raguel’s power, Cain—and all the prestige he brought with him—would be lost, too. Which was why Raguel was dragging Reed into the whole mess. He hadn’t counted on Eve throwing a wrench into his plans.
“What does not kill her will make her stronger.”
Reed’s gut twisted with the memory of her scorched and broken on the bathroom floor. “She’s already been killed once. Guess it can’t get any worse.”
“Your sarcasm is ill placed.”
“What do you expect, Raguel? You ask if she’s okay when you’re the reason she was dead in the first place.”
The archangel exhaled audibly, a soft but chastising sound. He was in his element while class was in session, the only time an archangel was given free use of his celestial gifts. Power thrummed through the air around him and divine radiance burnished his appearance with a golden glow. If he chose to, he could extend gold-tipped wings to a thirty-foot span. But he only had four weeks left before his students would graduate and he would once again be trapped within his temporal guise.
The training of new Marks took seven weeks, and the archangels rotated the duties so they could each enjoy their God-given power. The rest of the year the Lord suggested they live mortal lives. He believed the archangels would be more sympathetic to His beloved mortals if they suffered the same inconveniences.
The archangels could choose to disregard the suggestion, of course. Jehovah was a strong proponent of free will. But there was a price to pay for every transgression. Considering the heat of the competition between the archangels, they were loath to incur even the smallest setback.
Raguel changed the subject. “We have to find the Infernal who killed your Mark.”
“Yes, we do. Has there been word of further sightings?”
“One possible. In Australia.”
Raguel moved toward his desk. Elegant in build with coarse black hair liberally sprinkled with gray by design, the archangel didn’t age as mortals did, but he was forced to simulate the passing of years in order to allay suspicion. Eventually, this incarnation of Raguel would have to die and he would be reborn as someone else. Sometimes slipping into the role of a descendant was possible. At others, a full reinvention was the only viable way.
“Was another Mark lost?”
“Yes.”
A chill swept through Reed. He would never forget the manner of Takeo’s death. There had been nothing left of the Mark but skin clinging to forest branches and fluttering in the night air. “You can’t mistake this Infernal’s signature for any other’s. If it’s the same demon, it will be obvious. Was there a witness?”
“Yes, the handler was present at the time.”
Mariel, another handler under Raguel’s purview, had heretofore been the only celestial to glimpse the demon. Only briefly, but long enough to bring a haunting terror to her eyes when she spoke of it.
It crawled inside my Mark, she’d said. Disappeared in her. She c-could not c-contain it.
What remained was an explosion of tissue and skin in quantities not sufficient to make up a body. Where did the bones and blood go?
Reed exhaled harshly.
Raguel leaned one hip against the front of his desk. “Perhaps you and Mariel should go to Australia and question Uriel’s handler yourselves.”
“I want the Infernal, not reports of it.”
“It will not take you long. A few hours, at most.”
“If you insist, I’ll go. Otherwise, I don’t see the point.” But Reed’s outer capitulation came with inner doubts. Aside from having lost a Mark to the beast, he had nothing to offer in the way of assistance. Hands-on investigative work was the duty of Marks. His job was simply to know the strengths and weaknesses of those under his watch and to assign them to hunts where they had the best probability of success.
“You do not seem pleased,” Raguel noted. “I thought you would be.”
“Why? Because I want retribution for Takeo’s death? It won’t bring my best Mark back. I can only pray that my testimony was sufficient and he is with God now.”
“Something else is troubling you, then. What is it?”
“This whole thing troubles me. Violence is escalating. Now there’s a mask Infernals can hide behind and a new class of demon that’s tipping the
balance.”
“We do not know that there is more than the one.”
“It’s killed three Marks in three weeks,” Reed bit out. “One is enough. How long do you think it’ll be before Sammael deems the trial run a success and makes more of them?”
The Fallen One was always eager to exploit any advantage.
“Jehovah never gives us more than we can handle. The Infernals are not the only ones who are improving.”
Reed pushed to his feet. “That knowledge isn’t helping me at the moment.”
Raguel opened the humidor on his desk and withdrew a cigar, placing it between his lips uncut and unlit. He didn’t smoke, but he enjoyed the act of holding a cigar in his mouth for reasons Reed had never grasped.
“Are you having a crisis of faith?” the archangel asked, his words spoken around the cigar.
“If this Infernal continues to murder Marks at a rate of one a week, we’ll need to step up recruitment, training, mentoring—just to maintain our numbers. And if it keeps taking out our best and brightest, we’ll soon be left with only novices.”
“You paint the direst of pictures, Abel, as if this demon will charge through our ranks unchecked.”
“It’s my job to anticipate and prevent.”
“Which is why I think you should accompany Mariel.”
“I’m going.” Reed stood. “I’ll call her and we’ll head out.”
There was more behind Raguel’s request than preventative measures. The archangel wanted his firm to be the one responsible for the identification and vanquishing of this new demon. He didn’t want Uriel to take that honor, or any of the other archangels.
“I will be assembling the class and taking them to Fort McCroskey this evening. Report your findings to me there.”
“Fine. Keep an eye on Eve.”
Raguel withdrew the cigar from his smiling mouth. “Of course. She is my star pupil.”
“Is that because she’s already good? Or because you want her to be?”
“She is passably proficient.” Raguel shrugged. “She could be brilliant, if her heart was in it. As it is, only determination drives her, and that is not enough to achieve the heights she might be capable of.”
“How many new Marks have their heart in it? They’re all drafted into service.” Reed ran a hand through his short hair, reminded again that Eve was not at all the sort of mortal who usually became a Mark. She was/had been agnostic and she hadn’t committed a crime of sufficient severity. Her only offense was being a temptation to Cain; the shining, delicious apple in his garden of demons and death.
“Ms. Hollis is different,” Raguel said, his resonant voice rolling gently through the air. “Marks always come to us with varying degrees of faith within them. She has none at all, and she is hindered without it. Other Marks find strength in their desperation to save their souls; she lacks that edge and that deficiency might be the death of her.”
If Raguel didn’t see to that first. “Are the other Marks still hostile toward her? She might be ‘dumbing down’ to avoid further antagonism.”
“I have never witnessed any hostilities.”
Reed’s mouth curved wryly. “That doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
Because Eve was paired with Cain, a legend in the field for both his 100 percent kill rate and his autonomy, she was tormented by those who were jealous of her “good fortune.” They assumed Cain did the lion’s share of the work and she stood around looking pretty. They didn’t bother to learn how wrong they were.
Cain had also pulled strings to keep Eve close to her family. Marks, as a rule, were transplanted to foreign firms. They were mostly loners, those who had either distanced themselves from family and friends or didn’t have any for a variety of reasons. Their lack of strong emotional ties facilitated their acclimation to the life of a Mark. It also created a divide between them and Eve that was undeniable.
But Raguel blindly—or conveniently—ignored how the other Marks treated her.
“Just keep her alive while I’m gone,” Reed said. “That’s not asking too much.”
“Keep yourself alive, Abel,” Raguel returned. “We have a great deal of work ahead of us.”
As if Reed could forget that.
Armageddon. It was coming. Sooner, rather than later.
Alec pulled Eve’s Chrysler 300 into her assigned spot in the subterranean garage of Gadara Tower. Turning off the engine, he glanced at her, noting her set jaw and taut posture. Her long, dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her slender body was dressed in a black cotton tank top and khaki shorts. He reached out to her, kneading her tense shoulder muscles. “Are you okay?”
She nodded.
“Liar,” he murmured.
“Let’s just say I would prefer to go camping with a different crew, if I had a choice.”
His hand wrapped around her nape and pulled her closer. He nuzzled his nose against hers. “I’ll miss you.”
An impatient thumping upon Eve’s trunk shook the car and drew his attention to the rear window.
“No place for muckin’ aboot!” a masculine voice shouted.
Alec pushed up his sunglasses, noting that the heckler was one of a group of three people walking by. He was tanned, blond, and looked to be in his early thirties.
“That’s Ken,” Eve said with laughter in her voice.
Ken’s eyes darted between them, widening with horrified recognition. He quickly retreated, holding both hands up in a gesture of surrender. He had a duffel bag draped over one shoulder and teeth white enough to blind. “Sorry, Cain. I didnae ken it was you.”
“Smooth move, arsehat,” one of his companions muttered, shoving him.
“Ken, huh?” Alec grinned. “I was just thinking he looks like a Barbie doll.”
“Don’t let that pretty-boy exterior fool you. He’s the best in the class.”
Alec climbed out of the driver’s seat and rounded the trunk. Opening the passenger door, he helped her out and asked, “What’s his nickname?”
Eve had assigned names to all the Marks in her class. He thought he knew why. A nickname could serve two purposes: it could dehumanize a subject or it could personalize them. Alec suspected Eve’s use of nicknames was due to both reasons.
“Just Ken,” she said, “since he does look like a Ken doll.”
Catching her elbow, Alec led her toward the elevators.
She shot him a wry glance. “You know, Gadara isn’t going to like me riding up to Monterey with you instead of with the others.”
“Gadara could use one of his planes to transport you all up there. Since he doesn’t want to make life easy for you, we’re not going out of our way to make life easy for him.”
“You keep breaking rules for me.”
He shrugged it off.
She looked at him in a way that made him want to take her back to bed. “The wolf in the bathroom told me you made a deal for my life. Then broke it.”
“You believe everything an Infernal tells you?” He didn’t want her gratitude. Not when he was the reason she was marked to begin with, and certainly not when he was hoping she would learn to like being a Mark.
“Thank you,” she said softly, killing him.
They rode the elevator up to the atrium level.
Eve’s nose wrinkled. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the smell of so many Marks in one enclosed space.”
“You have to admit, it’s more pleasant than the stench of rotting Infernal souls.”
“Yeah, but it’s too much. Makes it hard to breathe.”
The lush vegetation in the atrium planters created a humidity that intensified the sweet smell created when a hundred-plus Marks gathered. The effect was pleasant to Alec, as was the surge of power he felt whenever he was surrounded by Marks. Stepping into a firm was always a heady rush, no matter which firm he visited or where it was located. His blood thrummed with energy and his heart rate lurched into an elevated rhythm, as if the other Marks shared their energy with him. But
Eve’s senses were still very sensitive. He wondered how long that would last. Since he’d never mentored before and had yet to be trained for the task, he had no benchmark to compare her to.
They crossed the marble lobby to a recessed hallway where a private set of elevators would take them to the bowels of the building.
“What do you know about this fort we’re going to?” Eve asked. “Anything?”
“Fort McCroskey was closed in 1991. There are some services still available—a commissary and some family housing for the students of a nearby military school—but otherwise it’s a ghost town.”
“Why are we going there?”
“There’s enough infrastructure left to facilitate training. The Army still uses it for that reason on occasion and since our purpose is the same—the defeat of an enemy through force—it serves our needs just as well.”
“Fun.”
Alec linked his fingers with Eve’s. The next week would be rough for her. “I’ll be back before you even have a chance to miss me.”
The cast of her features changed from disgruntlement to worry. “I’m an idiot. Bitching about learning how to defend myself while you’re on assignment.”
“I’ll be fine. You just take care of yourself.”
Eve eyed him carefully. “But it’s not going to be easy, right? He has subordinate wolves to protect him; you’re alone.”
“It’s no fun when it’s easy.”
“I wish I felt that way.” She leaned against the metal handrail that surrounded the elevator car and crossed her arms. It was her you-are-not-going-to-bullshit-me pose. “Have you done this before? Gone after an Alpha while he’s home with his pack?”
“Piece of cake.”
“Now who’s lying?”
Alec grinned and took in the view from the top of her head down to the combat boots on her feet. Eve was the type of exotic beauty people looked more than twice at. Creamy skin, inky dark tresses, red lips. His own paradise, his refuge from the rigors of his life.
It had been lust at first sight ten years ago and nothing had changed since then, despite being apart the entire time. She was his apple, his temptation. He was her downfall. Talk about a shitty foundation for a relationship. They had baggage, hurt feelings, regrets. Eve was the kind of woman a man married. White picket fence, kids, and a dog. Alec was aiming for advancement to archangel and heading his own firm.