by Michele Hauf
Tapping the birthmark below her inner elbow, she wondered at what the punk had asked her.
Do you wear a sigil on your body?
“How could he know?” Was it possible he knew things like she did?
“No.” He must have seen her tug up her sleeve. Talk about a cheap pickup line at its strangest.
Waving her arm, she sought a cab. The sidewalk was cluttered with people en route to the subway for the supper rush. Toeing the curb, Eden was distracted by the sudden appearance of the white-haired man charging toward her.
A cab pulled up with a squeal.
Startled by the man’s intent path toward her, Eden rushed for the cab’s back door and managed to open it just as the punk grabbed her by the wrist.
“You were holding out on me, Eden.”
The wild look in his eye cautioned her. His crooked grin freaked her. “Let go of me!”
He stroked his fingers over her forearm. “A number. That’s an interesting one. Six,” he pronounced with a hiss.
She struggled, but his grip pinched her skin.
Then he did something so bizarre Eden could but stand, frozen like a scared alley cat, and watch. He licked her forearm, right below the weird birthmark that looked like a Roman numeral six. As if from a cat’s tongue, the contact abraded her skin.
His exposed eye now glowed a brilliant blue as he drew his gaze up to hers.
Survival impulse kicked in. Eden leaned against the cab and kicked high. The spike of her heel sunk into his gut. The man staggered backward with a yowl of pain.
Eden bent and landed in the backseat of the cab butt-first. “Go!” she yelled. “There’s a creep after me.” She slammed the door shut as the cab spun away from the curb.
“Fight with the boyfriend?” the cabbie asked in a Texan accent.
“What?” She was so flustered, she sat sprawled across the backseat, arms groping for hold and one leg still poised for another kick against the door. “Boyfriend? No, he dumped me after the— No! I’ve never seen the guy before.”
“They’re all a bunch of crazies. Where to?”
“Just drive!”
She shuffled upright on the seat and looked out the rear window. The punk’s arms pumped vigorously.
“He’s running after us!” He couldn’t possibly catch a car on foot, could he? “Take the next left turn. Don’t slow down or let him catch up.”
“Yes, ma’am. A car chase. Haven’t done one of those in a while.”
“Yeah? There’s a big tip in it for you if you lose the guy.”
“He’s on foot.” The cabbie gunned the engine. “No problem.”
Shaking the rain from her hair and tugging up her sleeve, Eden stroked her forearm. It was pink.
“He licked me,” she said in horror.
“What did you say?”
“That man, he licked me. Why do you think he’d do that? Oh my God, I wonder if he has AIDS? No, I couldn’t get it that way. What are you doing? I said don’t stop!”
“Sorry, ma’am, red light.”
Eden twisted up onto her knees and scanned the sidewalk. No sight of the punk. He was thin and she hadn’t nailed him for being overly strong. That she’d been able to kick him away impressed her inner kick-ass chick. He must have given up. Though it was likely a man on foot could catch a cab in this rush-hour traffic—
Thunk.
The man landed on the trunk of the car on all fours, as if an animal had dropped from above.
“Holy crap,” the cabbie said, and rolled through the green light. “That is a mite dangerous.”
“Shake him off,” Eden warbled nervously. She slid her hand along her thigh, feeling for the small blade she kept strapped there. “He’s climbing onto the top of the cab.”
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” the cabbie protested.
A sudden right turn resulted in a clatter across the top of the vehicle. Eden saw the punk land on the asphalt—on two feet. Not like he’d been whipped off the car and couldn’t catch his bearings. He was agile and determined. One glowing blue eye remained focused on the cab.
“Unbelievable,” the cabbie said. “There’s a short tunnel ahead. We’ll lose him in there.”
“Go for it!”
The punk stood in the middle of the road, right on the yellow no-pass center line. Arms curved out in a fierce stance, he stomped one booted foot and snarled.
Eden couldn’t comprehend this.
He must be on drugs to have survived being thrown from the top of the car, and then to stand as if nothing had happened. Now he ran after the cab like some indestructible robot from a sci-fi movie.
“Drive faster!”
The cab interior went dark. The red lights lining the inner walls of the tunnel flashed intermittently. The cab slowed.
“What are you doing? Traffic is going faster than this. Keep up!”
“It’s…an…angel…” the cabbie said in a wondrous tone.
“What?” Eden leaned over the front seat, dodging her head down to see around the rearview mirror. “I’m the only nut who ever thinks she sees an— I don’t see anything. You have a clear lane. Keep driving!”
She snapped her fingers next to the cabbie’s ear. He shook his head as if snapping out of a trance.
Daylight burst into the cab as the car cruised out of the tunnel. Ahead, a four-way stop did not slow the cab. Eden gripped the driver’s-seat headrest and twisted her body to scan out the side and rear windows. No sign of the punk.
Then the cab turned left—into oncoming traffic—and Eden’s body was thrown from the back of the cab into the front. Her head plunged toward the passenger side floor. Impact thudded her shoulder. Metallic blood trickled across her tongue.
The vehicle’s tires left the tarmac. The cab flipped and landed upside-down, spinning twice before slamming into a street signal pole. Glass shattered. Iron bent.
Eden blacked out.
Her eyelids fluttered.
The smell of gasoline mixed with the sweet odor of blood. Her chin was shoved down to her chest and her legs felt higher than her shoulders.
Trapped.
Blinking rapidly, Eden grasped for what had happened. The accident. They’d run a stop sign. Because the punk with the eye patch had tracked them across the city—on foot!
She eased herself out through the open door and landed on the street on her knees. Safety glass littered the ground, but she avoided it. Peering into the taxi, she spied the cabbie, his head on the steering wheel. There was no visible blood, and he was groaning.
“Not dead, thank goodness.”
A constant honking car horn effectively cleared her foggy brain. Other vehicles had been involved in the crash—two more, she saw from her kneeling position.
Fore in Eden’s mind remained the strange man. He’d literally been hell-bent on getting to her. Was he still in pursuit? Had he been hit by one of the cars that had collided in the accident?
She slid shaky fingers along her forearm. It itched where he had licked her. She scratched, but a drop of blood on the seat distracted her. Where had that—? She touched her head. A gash across her eyebrow bled. Didn’t feel deep. It didn’t hurt at all, which could be a good thing, or very bad.
A slide of fingers under her skirt and along her thigh verified the small blade still there. She could have been poked with it. She’d been fortunate.
“Have to…” If the punk found her what would he do? Heart racing toward a cliff, she couldn’t think beyond the insanity her pursuer had instilled in her. “Hide.”
Shuffling backward, Eden scrambled along the curb until she stopped at a spinning tire attached to a battered SUV. The radio inside the car blasted a Jimmy Hendrix tune.
Bent over, she crept-walked around the front of the SUV and spied a magazine stand on the sidewalk. She dove to the ground behind the wooden rack, her position hidden from the accident scene.
The sound of a new crash, like rubber-soled boots landing on a trunk, set her rigid. Already he
r heart beat maniacally. She couldn’t get more alert or tense.
“Here, pretty, pretty.”
It was the punk. Clasping her arms about her legs, she winced when her forearm crushed another cut below her knee. She would not cry. She must not make noise.
What would a man who had followed her through traffic, been thrown off a moving vehicle and was sorting through the scene of a wreckage want with her? No answer was good.
And any answer tested the boundaries of what was real and what could only be supernatural. Eden believed in beings not like herself. She had to, because she believed in angels.
The boots stomped the sidewalk not twenty feet from where Eden hid. She heard a snorting noise, like some kind of animal. He was…sniffing. It was as if he were a wild cat stalking its prey.
She didn’t like thinking that word—prey. Her gut clenched and she tried to stifle the uncontrollable need to sob.
Boot steps slowly approached. They paused and she heard a sniffing sound, as if he were testing the air. Then the boots jumped onto a vehicle and she heard metal crunch beneath them.
In the distance an ambulance siren wailed. Eden realized people from nearby shops had begun to step out and were gathering near the crashed cars.
“Not here,” the punk growled under his breath. “Bitch got away.” He landed on the asphalt. It sounded like he was walking away.
The back of Eden’s head fell against the boards behind her. She could be injured but she didn’t care. It was a relief to know the creep had given up. Finally.
She scratched the itch on her forearm. As if a wasp sting, it burned worse than any of her cuts.
The crowd exhaled a collective gasp, as if they’d witnessed something strange or horrible.
A pair of heavy leather biker boots landed on the sidewalk right next to Eden.
Chapter 2
The punk leaned over Eden, extending his hand for her to grasp. She fixated on the shiny steel bar pierced through his nose as if a bullring waiting for tether. His smile was wrinkled. It didn’t meet his kaleidoscope eye. Nothing on his face was cohesive.
He did not speak, yet the eye not covered with the patch screamed at her. The promise of something vast and unfamiliar shouted from that eye. It frightened her.
And it compelled her.
She’d almost touched that feeling once. A year ago. Joy.
The crowd again gasped in unison as rubber peeled across the asphalt. Out of the corner of her eye, Eden saw a motorcycle do a one-eighty. The rumbling steel bike approached the accident too quickly. Surely it would crash—
The rear tire stopped two feet from her legs.
The white-haired punk snarled and leaped away from her. It was a physically impossible move, because he soared straight up through the air, flipped in a backward somersault and landed on the other side of the crashed cab.
“My lady, take my hand,” commanded the black-leather-clad motorcyclist. “If you want to be safe.”
Too much happening. So much to register. But Eden heard safe and scrambled to her feet.
Yet she looked to the punk, standing poised to leap upon the hood of a stalled car. Still, his eye beckoned.
I can give you what you seek. If you dare to take it.
“Now, my lady!” the rider insisted.
Shaking from shoulders to legs, wanting to scream, and wondering why she could not physically make a sound, Eden was tugged onto the motorcycle behind the imposing man.
She recorded sensations only. The rough slide of leather under her palms as she groped to wrap her arms about his waist. The burn of the exhaust cylinder when she initially put her shoeless foot right on it.
The intense realization that the man was solid, hard and all muscle. Yes, safe.
The rider gripped her by the ankle and pulled her foot higher to hook behind his booted foot. She sucked in a gasp as his fingers clasped about her bare flesh. At this frantic moment it was too strange to feel desire, yet she did.
The command he projected with the protective move melted her resistance. The world wobbled and skinned her face with brisk air as the motorcycle sped away from the scene of the crash. She clung desperately, crushing her cheek to the supple plane of his leather-clad back.
She didn’t know who this man was, but he’d taken her away from the other man who had looked like a junkie. A man whose hand she had almost taken because the unspoken promise in his gaze had reached inside and touched a part of her she’d thought buried.
Had she heard him say, “I can give you what you seek”?
How could he know what she wanted? Half the time she didn’t know what she wanted.
Safety was fore on that unknown list, and she grasped it, if only for the moment.
“Stop ahead on Eleventh Avenue,” she yelled. Eden could barely hear her voice. She doubted he could hear her over the roar of the motor. “Please!”
He reached back to slide a hand along her thigh. Her skirt road up high and his palm burnished her flesh. It wasn’t a suggestive move, but more to ensure she was still there. Safe. The tingling desire she’d felt when he’d touched her ankle returned. The touch ignited beneath her skin, shimmying adrenaline and a frenzy of want to her belly.
So this was what the damsel felt like when rescued by the knight?
She’d take it.
Guilt reared up too quickly. They’d ridden away from those injured at the scene. But she’d heard the ambulance. The driver, and any others who may be injured, would be taken to the hospital.
And what of her? Beyond a few cuts she hadn’t a more serious injury. What hurt was that damned spot on her arm where the man had licked her. If she were not clinging for life to her rescuer, she’d be scratching.
The motorcycle veered right sharply. Squeezing her thighs against his to hang on, Eden recognized the Chelsea Piers. The area boasted a lot of new developments, but as well, many unoccupied warehouses and storage facilities were badly in need of restoration.
They drove through a narrow warehouse door and into a dark, empty storage room three stories high.
The motorcycle stopped and tilted left as the driver let down the kickstand. Eden slid off. Before the man could speak, she rushed him, threading her arms about his chest and squeezing.
“Thank you,” she said. She pushed away and stepped back, sliding her palms down her hips. “Sorry.”
“No need for apologies, my lady.”
“It was a reaction to being rescued. I don’t normally hug strangers. I’m just so thankful.”
“This is not a rescue.”
“Seriously? What is it? You got me away from that freaky guy.”
“He will come to you. I will be waiting.”
She scratched her forearm. Cautious to keep the man in view, she scanned her surroundings. The door they’d rolled through was her only way out.
She noticed his curiosity as she scratched. Eden tugged down her sleeve, embarrassed when she should only be thankful she was safe. But was she? He’d said this wasn’t a rescue. So what did he intend to do with her, alone in this abandoned building?
She wasn’t about to stick around to find out. Reaching up under her skirt, she claimed the blade tucked against her thigh.
Eden dashed toward the open doorway bursting with a shock of orange from the setting sun.
Just as she slapped a palm against the rough wood door frame, a huge body slid before her. Eden’s entire body slammed into the unmoving force of man. He was a head taller than she, and twice as wide.
“I prefer you remain in here, my lady.”
“Yeah? That’s what scares me.”
Pushing from his solid chest, Eden stepped away, knife held before her in warning. She’d taken a self-defense course and was prepared to stab if necessary.
But how big could a man be? He filled the doorway.
The low sun behind him glowed about his figure, giving him a remarkable aura, almost heavenly. Black tousled hair shimmered blue and swept low near a square jaw. A line of dark
beard, trimmed thin, framed his jaw and lips. A sexy soul patch marked a smudge from his thick lower lip down his chin. His flesh was pale—no sun-worshipper, he—yet his eyes and everything else were so dark. The contrast was exquisite. Handsome was an insufficient term for his beauty.
Yes, she actually thought the man beautiful, like a rock star or an actor pumped up for the role of warrior. Yet she also sensed danger from him.
“My lady.” He shook his head at her in pity. “I wouldn’t use that little stick to pick my teeth.”
Suddenly the knife jerked from her fingers and flew toward his. He caught it and tucked it in the waistband of his pants.
“Who— What? How did you do that?” Eden asked.
She took another step back and clasped her arms across her chest. “You ripped me away from the scene of an accident. I thought you were rescuing me. And who was that man? The punk guy. He chased me through the city on foot! He ran so fast it was like he wasn’t human. And he flew away from me when you arrived.”
“That was Zaqiel, and he’s come for you.”
Eden didn’t know how to respond to that statement. The name was weird, but the second part of what he’d said was weirder.
“Come for me? Who are you?”
“I am…Ashur.” He glanced toward the motorcycle and added, “Ashur Man… Yes, Manning. I won’t harm you. I require you to draw Zaqiel here so I can slay him.”
“Slay?”
Nausea wavered through Eden. She spread out her hands in the event she toppled, which was looking probable. But she had to stay strong and keep a clear head. All her instincts screamed danger. And the rescuing knight was beginning to sound more villainous. He had made up the name he’d given her, surely.
“A Fallen one is on your trail,” the man—Ashur—said.
“Fallen?”
“Or Grigori, if you prefer.”
The oddness of recognition straightened her posture and she found a clear thought. For someone who had been painting angels since she was a teenager, she’d spent a lot of time sorting through books about them. She’d read parts of the Hebrew bible and the pseudepigraphal book of Enoch.