by Jenn Stark
“He’d surrounded himself with people,” Maria guessed. “Humans.”
“Humans,” Warrick agreed. “Humans I could not help but destroy in my blind desire to get to Holkeri. And as such, he trapped me in the net of my own rage, and that rage was my undoing. I was transformed into a demon that very night.”
“And Holkeri?”
“I made another choice that night, in my agony, twisting in the flames of righteous retribution. I became an enforcer. Not content to walk the earth as a scavenger, I consented to banishment beyond the veil—able to be called out by those who needed protection, needed vengeance, needed a sword of God to strike down their enemies.” His lips twisted. “It didn’t take long for me to be called out to strike Holkeri. I wasn’t successful, but neither was I entirely unsuccessful. And I had many more opportunities, many times thereafter.”
“Many times…” Maria’s eyes widened. “You’ve been called out more than once to take him out?”
“Oh, I have. But he is a demon who responds to every summons by the humans who would pull him back into this plane. And so, inevitably, I am the one called to remove him once more. My sin is rage, and I have been forced to pay for that sin, all too many times.” Warrick smiled darkly. “Then again…So has he.”
Chapter Seventeen
Maria entered the nightclub without incident, flashing her ID to the hostess and nodding coolly as her name generated a thousand-kilowatt smile. As far as the staff at Morpheus was concerned, she was the biggest deal in the club tonight. She was escorted to a primo VIP table with views of the dance floor as well as the stunning Los Angeles skyline, now lit up— literally—like a Christmas tree. Morpheus itself had adopted the holiday theme, the blue-and-purple lighting accentuating the glittering strings of lights that hung in fringes from the ceiling, towering artificial trees that stood like snow-ghost sentinels in cordoned-off outposts around the room. The trees did an admirable job of adding to the ambiance without blocking the view, and like everywhere else in LA, Morpheus was mostly about the view.
A magnum of champagne was waiting for her at the table, already chilled in an enormous bucket. The moment she sat down, a waitress wearing a tiny but impeccably tailored white dress moved up to her. The woman pulled out the bottle and poured it, giving Maria a knowing smile.
“This is one of our best vintages,” she crooned, her voice somehow audible over the thumping music.
She paused to allow Maria to take a taste, and Maria nodded with approval. Yep, pure sparkling water. Warrick was taking no chances with her. Her gun was discreetly tucked into her handbag, which was a glittering confection of sequins and silver. Though Maria wore the expected little black dress, unlike most of the women decked out in pencil skirts and slim-cut sheaths, she was wearing a minidress with a widely flaring skirt over micro shorts. Her boots came all the way up to her kneecaps and were remarkably sturdy for all that they were high, the heel relatively functional. Those heels would also make a mean weapon, should it come to that.
Maria glanced around the crowded room. She certainly hoped it didn’t come to that.
Warrick was nowhere to be seen, but about everyone else in the club was doing their level best to be noticed. She couldn’t even pick out the DEA operatives, so score one for whoever was dressing them tonight. Maria sipped her sparkling water, eyeing all the beautiful people. It was the closest she had ever gotten to such a concentration of wealth and fame and power in one place. The actors and actresses were outnumbered by the celebutantes, but those showed up in ever-increasing numbers as the minutes past the hour ticked away. Every other VIP table was filled except for a few in the far corner, probably the second-most-prized real estate after her own table. A bouncer the size of Mount Atlas stood near her, discouraging anyone from approaching. Though, given she was one woman at a table meant for six or eight, it didn’t take long for her to start drawing stares.
Maria squared her shoulders. She wasn’t the prettiest woman in the room. She definitely wasn’t the richest or the most popular. And at this distance, no one could see the scars that lined her skin, certainly not the scars she carried inside her. But everyone around her looked at her as if she belonged at that table, as if she were somehow more special than they would have ever expected if they’d seen her on the street. Some of the women looked at her with envy, some with irritation, some with simple curiosity. The gazes of the men were easier to discern.
It was one of the most bizarre experiences of her life.
“If you’re going to wear that cross with any authority, you’re pretty much going to need to get used to it.”
Maria looked up, expecting to see Warrick. Instead, the woman who stood beside her looked like she’d been hewn out of marble. She was tall, though not as tall as Maria, and her body was all sharp angles. Her shock of white hair was cropped close to her head on one side, tufting longer on the other into spikes, and her body was encased in a scuffed leather jacket, leather pants, and shit-kicker boots.
“Blue!” someone yelled across the floor, and from the way the woman’s lips twisted, Maria got the impression that she was the one being addressed.
Still, no one was supposed to approach her this night except…
Maria frowned. “Um, you can’t possibly be Warrick.”
“You’re right.” The woman snorted, leaning down toward her. “I’m known as Blue here, as much of a fixture as the chairs and tables for the moment. But Warrick knows me as well, and not by the name Blue. Since you’re wearing that cross, however, you’re part of his path. I want to make sure you’re up to the task.”
“I can’t help you with that.” Maria looked across the room. “It’s not mine.”
Blue glanced down at her, swirling her drink in her glass. Maria suspected she hadn’t taken so much as a sip of the clear liquid. “Isn’t it, though?” Blue asked, and there was the faintest Irish lilt to her voice, an inflection Maria hadn’t caught at first. “You’re wearing it, aren’t you?”
“Only because it’s original owner can’t.” Maria’s lips twisted. “She died a long time ago.”
“A bright light, burned out too quickly…” Blue mused, and Maria shot her a hard glance.
“I’m sorry, you said you were a friend of Warrick’s?”
The woman gave her a wry smirk. “Not a friend, exactly. But someone who knows him well—who’s known him for a long time. He needs someone strong enough to fight with him. And he’s already declared you as his to protect.”
“He’s declared half the world as his job to protect.”
“He has.” Blue nodded. “But that’s not what I said, is it?” She gestured to the cross, and Maria cut her gaze away. “That little bit of gold is blessed, you know. It’s special. And though Cara couldn’t believe in herself enough to fight, in the end, she believed in you. So make sure you’re willing to fight for her…and more than that, make sure you’re willing to fight for Warrick. He deserves that, after all these years.”
“Look, I—” Suddenly realizing Blue had used Cara’s name, Maria glanced up sharply—but no one was standing there. The woman was gone.
She flagged down another waitress, the twin to the one who poured her champagne. “Can I have another drink?”
“Of course,” the woman smiled. “More champagne?”
“Not even remotely,” Maria said. “Tequila, chilled, twist of lime. The best bottle you have.”
The woman moved off, her smile remaining perfectly curved, and Maria returned to the study of the room. The game plan tonight was simple. The undercover cops in the room wouldn’t be bagging Takio tonight. Warrick had been clear on that point. At best, the LAPD would be taking down Takio’s lieutenants, the men he surrounded himself with most closely. Those, according to Warrick, would be human. They would know enough to tank the organization. Takio couldn’t be taken by the authorities, no matter how hard they tried. If Takio allowed it, it was only because he was planning something far worse. He needed to be banished again…this tim
e, for good. For Cara, and for the sake of hundreds of thousands of people like Cara that his operations had harmed throughout the centuries.
She smiled grimly as a glass and full bottle of tequila was set down in front of her, the waitress deftly serving her before moving away. Maria picked up the glass and took a quick, shallow drink, savoring the sharp, angry liquid as it scorched down her throat.
Okay, mostly for Cara.
The clock ticked on another fifteen minutes, the night not so much wearing toward midnight as building up to it with an energy that set the entire room to hopping. Everything seemed sharper, harder as the night progressed, and Maria’s adrenaline amped with every new knot of people that came in the door. But still there was no Warrick, and the VIP table at the far end of the room remained empty as well.
Where was Takio?
Finally, there was a rustle of movement at the club’s entry, a murmur of excitement that rippled through the room like a living thing. Maria straightened in her seat, but once again, she was doomed to be disappointed. A woman walked into Morpheus, probably one of the most striking of anyone in the club, and that was saying something. Her body was tall and lithe, her hair long, straight, and pure white. Her features were porcelain perfection. But unlike Blue, with her hard-focused energy, this woman appeared languorous as she walked, waving with relaxed ease to her fawning public. She was beautiful and entitled and luxe, everything Maria was not. And Maria couldn’t take her eyes off her.
“It’s starting.”
Maria jerked her gaze away from the opening to Morpheus and connected with Warrick’s hard stare. Like Blue and the woman who’d just made her entrance, he looked like he belonged in clubs like Morpheus. He was dressed in a suit that probably cost more than a month’s salary—and not one of her month’s salary either. It was the color of dark steel, single-breasted and open to reveal a deep blue silk shirt that bared a swath of his deeply tanned skin. His shirt cuffs were visible at the edges of his jacket sleeves, and a platinum watch glinted from his right wrist. He was easily the most arresting man in the room, and he was sliding into the seat next to her, leaning toward her to brush a kiss against her cheek.
“Are you ready? Because it will move quickly now.”
“You’re kidding,” Maria said, her voice equally low. “That’s Takio? He’s taken on the—glamour or whatever to look like a woman now?”
“A woman?” Warrick scowled. “What are you talking about?”
“Her.” Maria jerked her head to the right, where even in her periphery vision, she could see the woman in the ice-white bandage dress making her way across the floor. “She just got here.”
Warrick glanced up casually, then his entire body seemed to freeze in place. His face blanched, his eyes went flat, his mouth opened, then shut—then his lips curled into a hard, implacable snarl.
“Um…” Maria hazarded, feeling the menace flow off him in waves. “You okay?”
“Holkeri, you bastard,” Warrick seethed.
Warrick struggled to keep himself under control—struggled and failed mightily. He knew that Holkeri had survived millennia for a reason. He’d been called to defend humans from the demon on more occasions than any other, and he’d taken intense delight in carving pieces out of the demon every chance he could.
But in all those times, Holkeri had never revealed that he’d been holding back the ultimate prize from Warrick.
Serena had been one of the most beautiful of the Fallen, her gifts of music, laughter, imagination, and pure joy among the things that made anyone who saw her fall in love with her. When she’d come to Warrick with her plans of leaving the angelic plane and walking among the children that God loved so dearly, not as mystical phantasms but as flesh and blood, able to teach, to guide, to savor the best of both worlds without the extremes of either…
Warrick grimaced. He’d been entranced by her, willingly blinded, and, in truth, already chafing against the bonds of his role in the heavens when something deep within him yearned for more. Serena had promised him a way to reach that more, a rebellion against the strictures they’d felt were holding them back, a path to new possibilities—farther away from the unending source of the creator’s love, but not so far that they couldn’t find their way back one day. Not so far that they couldn’t still bask in his approval, merely in a new and different and boundlessly more interesting way.
She’d leapt; he’d followed.
And it had been glorious.
“Earth to Warrick? You all right there?”
Maria’s voice cut across Warrick’s intensity, and he looked down to realize his hands were gripping the thick steel tabletop hard enough to leave impressions in the smooth surface. He released his hands, running his fingers over the faint grooves. He could already feel the kindling of his rage—because this was part of it. The part where he left marks of his anger on the world around him. Never again would humans suffer for his rampage, sure, never again would bones break and screams fill his ears. But rage didn’t exist in a vacuum. It left a trail. A trail of conquest to some.
For him, only shame.
“No,” he answered honestly. Because he was bound to do so.
“Who is she?” Maria asked the question quietly, and for a moment, all Warrick wanted to do was turn from it, turn from her, retreat. But Holkeri would not have brought Serena here unless he’d needed her. Warrick needed to focus on that, understand it. Use it.
“Her name is—was—Serena. I haven’t seen her since the end days of the war, when so many of our kind were swept away.”
“Is she Fallen?”
“Once.” Warrick’s mouth tightened. “One of God’s most favored angels, fallen to become one of the humans’ most celebrated guides, a bright star in the darkness for all to follow. That was her goal. And she would have achieved it—she was that bright, that strong. Her gifts that many. Art, music, stories, magic. Were she a human, she would have been a queen. As a Fallen, she was nearly a goddess…and there came a time when that was not an easy path to walk.”
“Yeah, I deal with that all the time,” Maria put in drily.
But Warrick’s gaze had turned inward as he conjured up memories he’d long since put to rest. “She couldn’t dim her beauty even when it grew wise to stay in the shadows, was convinced of her supremacy among the humans, the Fallen, and even the angelic host. Her pride—as it was for so many of us—was her greatest sin and her ultimate downfall.”
“Pride? How so?”
“She believed what others wanted her to believe, what she in time wanted to believe, that in the end, her one life was more important than the lives of God’s children, His chosen. She was celebrated and honored and loved and despaired over. She was untouchable, and armies would rage and serve and die in her wake. When the end times came and the humans rose up in their fear-stoked outrage to sweep out the gods who wished to control them, that should have proved her undoing. But she would not be undone.”
Maria pulled over a bottle of clear liquid and sloshed it into a glass. “Here. You need this more than I do.”
Warrick lifted the glass to his lips, tasted the harsh but strangely sweet slide of liquor as it chased down his throat. The sudden jolt of fire, then spreading heat—that was what humans craved so much. In their vices, in their lives.
Not only humans either.
“She didn’t make it to the point of human banishment, refused to be sent beyond the veil, separated from those who had for so long adored and revered her. She could fight, she decided. She would make a stand. She would return one day to rule the mortal realm as she once had led it with her ethereal strength. I, also Fallen, also in danger, pleaded with her to change her course. I believed I loved her, and I placed that love at her feet. Willed her to find another way. But she wouldn’t listen to me. And then I was trapped and offered as sacrifice to appease the humans in her place, banished beyond the veil by those I had pledged to serve.”
“Trapped,” Maria whispered. “They tried to capture y
ou?”
“They did capture me. With chains and lash and magic. I was placed in a cage, wheeled out as a spectacle for a roaring crowd. But I was still Fallen.” Warrick could hear the bleakness in his voice. “I could still see. And there, in the shadows, I could see that it was Serena who had betrayed me. Serena—and beside her, Holkeri. Only then did I realize that he’d become a demon. Only then, did I realize that he planned to make Serena one too.”
“Uh-oh,” Maria said.
“The rage that filled me then was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. It was not heady or pure, it was not filled with righteous fire. It was a black and living thing, a twisting menace. It roared in my blood and broke all my bones, remolding me in its image.”
He shook his head and took another long pull of his tequila, then set down his glass, not objecting when Maria filled it again. “I don’t remember bursting free from the cage, I don’t remember the people at all after that. I could only focus on Holkeri.”
“Holkeri? Not the chick?”
His lips curved into a smile. “In my hubris, I assumed that Serena was the weaker one. That she must have been duped, beguiled.”
“We really have to work on your sensitivity training.”
Maria’s wry, sarcastic comments should have goaded Warrick to anger—might have, in another time, another place, coming from another human. But he knew what she was doing, attempting to pierce the veil of his memories that had for so long suffocated him like a shroud. She sought to misdirect and defuse his anger, his pain, so that he could view those memories more dispassionately. But there was no denying what he’d done. No denying all the children of God he had hurt, killed. His damnation was testimony enough for that.