by Michele Hauf
“Yeah, whatever. How many souls do you have within you?”
“Just the one.” He winced as the blade cut through muscles.
“Impossible. I’ve heard Sinistari tell about stealing thousands upon thousands of souls from one angel kill. You guys spread your creative mojo across the lands. You can’t convince me you taught one single person the craft and it became what it is now.”
“Just the one,” he repeated. “He was a Mesopotamian potter. Ouch!”
“I think I found it,” Pyx said. She stood from the bed. Cooper saw her wipe blue blood down the side of her dress. “Can’t get it out.”
“Why the hell not?”
“It’s a small metal piece fused to your bone.”
“Carve it out with your big bad knife.”
“Can’t.”
“Pyx. Come on!”
“I’m no surgeon!” She marched into the adjoining bathroom and Cooper heard the water gush in the sink.
He reached around to inspect the wound. It wasn’t completely healed but he could not feel deep enough to touch bone. He wiped the blood on his jeans and sat up. Muddy blue stained his fingers. So different.
Would he ever earn the right to fit in? To belong on earth?
Why did he believe obtaining his halo would give him the right to live here? He wasn’t like any other. His experiences were too vast and tainted by murder at command. Was it wrong to want what he’d never been designed to have?
“What is right?” he whispered. “What is wrong? Who’s to judge?”
Could it be only his peers who would judge him? But he was no longer a peer to those angels still Above.
Rubbing his fingers along his jeans was like trying to erase his truths. The stain of their existence would never be washed away.
It felt wrong—it had been wrong—he’d committed sins against mankind.
“You okay?” she called out from the bathroom.
No. He wasn’t sure what he was anymore. A fool for thinking he could have what He had gifted to the mortals?
“I don’t understand. Why vampires?” he said. “And why me?”
“This is a guess.” Pyx appeared in the doorway, shoulder to the frame. “Maybe it’s some kind of tracking device.”
“Why?”
“So they can keep an eye on you and when you’ve found your muse, can move in.”
“I’m not going anywhere near my muse.”
“They don’t know that.”
“Yes, they do. That vampire, Bruce—the one who tagged me and left with his dramatic threat to return when you weren’t there—he talked to me earlier today. He wants names of my fellow Fallen brethren.”
“Why?” She tugged at the torn skirt.
“Because the vampires are summoning we Fallen to earth hoping we’ll find our muses, and…well, then I don’t know.”
“I had a tussle with a vamp myself.”
“You did?”
“Yes, they’re after me, too. Supposedly, I’m their greatest threat. And now it makes so much sense. If the vamps want you to find your muse, I could step in and slay you before you get a chance. So keep the Sinistari out of the mix and they get what they want.”
“Except I’m not going after my muse. This is ridiculous. I will not be bagged and tagged like an animal. Give me that blade.”
“Joe belongs in no hands but mine.”
“Then I’ll use a kitchen knife.”
She flashed to the bedroom doorway, feebly blocking it with her narrow frame. Cooper could have easily pushed by her. But instead he slid a hand up her back and pulled her close, hip to hip.
Garnet hair fell over one of Pyx’s eyes. She looked up at him with that one wide kaleidoscope eye and Cooper thought surely if his heart could beat, it just did. As the mortals liked to say, the eyes were a window to the soul. Yet though Pyx had no soul he saw in those myriad colors the promise of what could be.
“Did I tell you that you do the female thing well?” he asked.
“I’m trying.”
“Stop. I like it better when it’s a happy accident with you. Look at you. Your hair all tousled and wavy. Most women would spend hours before the mirror to get it this way. And your style. It’s I-don’t-give-a-damn meets sex kitten. And your mouth.” He thumbed her lips. “You want me to kiss you, don’t you?”
“You got kiss me out of my threat with Joe?”
He nodded and leaned in closer to her. She didn’t back away. Challenging him or maybe stubborn. He figured stubborn, but he liked that about her, along with her crazy fashion sense.
And the element of danger.
“You smell like bubble gum again,” he said, tracing his nose along her tense jaw. “And demon.”
“What does demon smell like?”
“Sweet and spicy, and…warm.”
Her mouth parted and her breath hushed upon his lips. Prolong the moment. Read her easy compliance. Her daring to stand before him and not step away. Her quiet breath tickled his lips.
“Pyx?”
“Mmm?”
“You think this is wrong, the two of us?”
“You mean standing so close like this?”
“Yes, and having kissed already.” Drawing his lips along her cheek, but not quite touching, he sensed a shudder minutely move her shoulders. And she couldn’t realize that her breast hugged his chest, her hard nipples teasing him. “It doesn’t feel wrong.”
“It’s wrong.”
“Then step away from me.”
“I, um…don’t want to.”
“Then your only other option is to kiss me.”
“I could punch you. Or stab you with Joe.”
“Let’s not draw any more blood tonight, shall we?”
He touched her lips with his, no pressure, just moving closer, taking in her apprehension, her growing confidence. The sigh of breath across his mouth felt surreal, dangerous, and prohibited. Breathe her. Taste of bubble gum and heat.
Learn her. Not so sure of what she really wanted or could do.
It was a rare gift he didn’t want to open too quickly. She wasn’t his death; she could very well be his life.
“Very wrong,” she whispered, yet her body melded against his chest, her breasts crushing the black silk to his skin.
“Don’t want it to be wrong,” he said.
He combed his fingers into her hair and savored the slither of a curl across the inside of his crooked thumb. He clutched her hair, not wanting to lose her.
One slip of Joe and he would lose. She wouldn’t miss him. Or would she?
He couldn’t stand it any longer. Cooper crushed his mouth to Pyx’s.
Sighs echoed in his mouth. The sweet sound of surrender.
She clutched him tightly, her fingers digging into the flesh on his back. All the hurt she could give him was no match to the taste of her desire. It flamed in his veins, warming his icy blood. And when their tongues dashed across one another, he moaned hungrily.
His hand wandered down her waist, and he toyed with the rip in her skirt where the skin felt softer than the silk. He flipped his hand, and tucked his fingers behind the dress, softly stroking over her mons.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Pyx broke the kiss, ceasing their contact, the sublime connection of skin against skin. Slapping a hand to the door frame, she steadied herself.
“Sorry, that was wrong to move so quickly.”
“Enough with the right and wrong of everything! There is no right or wrong. Only choice.”
Cooper’s mouth dropped open. The air hummed with the echo of her furious statement.
“That was weird,” Pyx said. “I don’t know where that came from.”
He did. By the divine Above, could she be?
“You were speaking your truth,” he said. “Kadesch?”
“What?” She didn’t know. Couldn’t remember. Wouldn’t, surely.
But he did.
Stepping backward into the kitchen, Pyx shook her head. One hand went down to subconscio
usly pull at her skirt. “That’s enough vampire hunting for one night. Gotta go. Bye.”
“Wait!” He rushed down the hall after her. “I moved too fast. I won’t do that again. Not unless—” The door slammed shut. Pyx was gone. “You ask.”
What she’d said about there being no right or wrong, only choice. It is what Kadesch had said to convince Juphiel to fall.
Of course, anyone could put those words together and form a similar statement.
“But she is like me,” he muttered. “Her eyes. They are like mine. And she doesn’t even know.”
A little bit of his salvation had just run away from him. He felt it every time he touched her. Pyx was the key to him becoming completely human and earning his soul.
With a hunger for pizza on her tongue, Pyx flashed to a pizza shop and was back at her apartment five minutes later with a steamy pie laid out on the coffee table. Food put her mind from deeper issues.
Like the angel.
“What the hell was that about? Letting a Fallen one touch me like that?”
And liking it. That was the part she couldn’t rationalize.
She’d wanted to remain in his embrace and encourage his touch as he explored her skin. He’d been a little cool, not so warm as she was, but she knew it was because his blood ran cold.
And she would have liked to remain in his bedroom to see what would have happened next. So why hadn’t she?
Tossing a crust onto the greasy pizza box, she sat back against the sofa and put up a boot on the edge of the coffee table. She didn’t like the angel Juphiel, who called himself Cooper, and who flirted with every woman he saw. Did she?
She wasn’t hungry anymore.
Padding into the bathroom, she stripped naked along the way, leaving her clothes in a trail. She flipped on the light switch and looked in the mirror. A dribble of black blood ran from her ear. Cooper hadn’t pointed that out. A vampire had clocked her good.
“Can I do this?” she asked the woman staring at her. “Can you? You’re just a girl. You’re an anomaly. And I don’t understand why.”
Leaning in closer, she studied her eyes. They were green, blue and violet with flecks of gold, white and black. Kaleidoscope.
“Just like his.” She leaned her palms on the cool vanity, head hanging. “That’s odd. Why are my eyes the same as the Fallen’s?”
They were two of the most opposite creatures walking this world. One from Above, one from Beneath. They had nothing in common. The angel sought his halo for reasons she could only imagine were not good. And she sought to kill him.
Nothing in common.
Except when they touched it almost felt right.
Pyx recalled telling Cooper there was no right or wrong, only choice. It was the weirdest statement. She didn’t know where it had come from, only that she had spoken it as if she’d meant it.
So could she choose to like his touch? Perhaps she had already done so.
Chapter 9
“You successfully implanted the tracking device in the Fallen?”
Bruce hooked a thumb in his pants pocket and forced a confident grin. “You know it. I am the best.” And don’t ask any more questions.
“That’s all well and good,” Antonio offered, not as impressed as Bruce had hoped, “but wouldn’t it be easier to track the muse? The angel will probably rip the damned thing out.”
“If I knew where the muse was, I’d go after her. Best scenario finds me tracking the Fallen to his muse. Then I’ll have them both where I want them.”
“Which is where?” Antonio asked in his deep, hissing tone. “We need them in a controlled environment.”
“We need the muse. Pregnant.”
“And we’re going to simply allow the Fallen to trot off to his next muse after that?”
“If he’s still wearing the tracker, then yes. It’s a win/win scenario. Every muse he finds, we track him to her and reap the rewards.”
The leader of tribe Anakim sat back in his chair, dissatisfied, but clearly he could not find a better argument. That pleased Bruce.
Now to get that damned tracking receiver working.
He sat across the table from a demon, who sipped a macchiato. Basking in the coppery glow of the setting sun made Cooper feel alive. After centuries of survival in the nonexistence of the Ninth Void it was an amazing feeling to experience life. He hadn’t had it for millennia. And this mortal life was so much richer, full, and exquisite.
Mortals had an idea of heaven. It was all angels, clouds, pearly gates and love, love, love.
Where Cooper had been imprisoned hadn’t emanated love by any mortal imagining. It was truly like the mortal’s idea of hell. A void without sound, color or surface. If he’d uttered a word or cried out, he hadn’t heard his voice. He’d floated, endlessly. He could not see anything. Sensation had not existed. Thought had eventually left him, and he had become a sort of embryo awaiting final judgment.
Yet the slightest thread of hope had bound his being and kept him from completely surrendering to the void. Mortality. Humanity. As Kadesch had implied, it could be his.
Could Pyx know? Could he be right about her? He had no proof. He knew the origins of the Sinistari. Yet Pyx did not, so to simply ask her would serve little purpose.
He turned his wrist where the sun beamed across the flesh. It felt like a gift. Kept vampires away, too.
“You’ve come here every day since you arrived?” Pyx sipped the cream-swirled macchiato the waitress had dropped off. She sat across from him before the white iron café table. “I think I know why.”
He followed her gaze to the waitress’s swinging hips. He hadn’t seen the dark-haired beauty here before but she didn’t appear to be in training. Must have been working different hours the past week.
Hmm, she was a vision. Obsidian hair and lush lashes gave her an Italian heartbreaker look. Curves, so many curves, his eyes didn’t know where to start.
“She is pretty,” he agreed. “But the coffee here is what draws me.”
“Uh-huh.” No belief in that tone. The demon leaned over the table. “It wasn’t her breasts as she leaned way over the table to pour your refill, Casanova?”
“I do like that particular body part. You jealous?”
“Please.”
Yes, she was. Because she tilted an elbow on the back of the chair, which lifted her small breasts nicely. Score one for the angel trying to soften up the killer demon.
“Why do you want to waste any more time here on earth than it takes to find your muse?” she suddenly asked. “And don’t tell me it’s because of some stupid quest for your halo. Look around you. All of creation is a mess. His sons and daughters are an equal mess. They kill, steal, maim, cheat and lie. And you want to be a part of it?”
“You do, too. Doing a great job of blending with the locals too, to judge from your penchant for kleptomania.”
She had been playing with an iPod since they sat down. And he’d also seen her shuffle a cell phone and car keys in the pocket of her jeans jacket. The demon didn’t own a car that he knew of. She must be starting a collection.
“Not for all the bubble gum in the world. I’m just here to do a job, buddy.”
“And when that job is done, you’ll return Beneath? No arguments? No lingering memories of earth?”
She turned her cheek to him, scanning the street. “We’re not talking about me. I asked why you want to stick around in this mess of humanity.”
“I have my reasons.”
If he told her the real reason for the halo search she’d never buy it. Who would? He was an angel, for heaven’s sake. For as lacking as his power was now that he’d Fallen, he was still stronger, wiser and smarter than any mortal alive. And who would give that up?
Cooper leaned over his coffee cup to bridge the distance between them. From the corner of his eye he noted the waitress. Man, she could swing her hips. Did she smell sweet? Nah. He couldn’t possibly scent her all the way across the dining area.
He averted his attention to the smirking demon. “Why do you want to be here? To prove yourself? That’s weak. If you’d wanted to prove yourself to the Sinistari you’d have knifed me last night after I shifted.”
Pyx glanced aside, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. He’d guessed right. There were deeper reasons she walked this earth.
“Truthfully?”
Now they would get somewhere.
Pyx put up her boot on the nearby chair. No silk dress today, but instead a leather miniskirt and a tightly fitted leather vest over a soft red sweater. “I’m certainly not perfect.”
“No one is.”
“Angels are perfect. Or in your case, you were.”
“Angels have mastered perfection. But once my feet touched mortal ground I lost my divinity. I have never considered myself perfect, even when I was blessed by His grace. But that still doesn’t answer my question.”
She tilted the iPod up and down between two fingers. The sun crept across her cheek and glinted in one of her eyes. A riot of color danced there. The most beautiful part of a demon was not the costume but that one bit of its true self that remained—the eyes.
Yet again, if she knew her origins…
“I do need to prove myself. But…”
“You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone else.”
“I guess I wouldn’t mind becoming a part of this realm. Earth, as it is. I’ve never felt…in place. I told you this already.”
She set the iPod on the table and clasped the coffee cup with both hands. Unable to meet his eyes, she scanned everywhere around her. Teasing the end of a long red curl, she couldn’t realize how dragging it across her lips ignited Cooper’s libido. Made him imagine dragging his tongue across soft parts of her.
“Beneath is the demonic realm, but don’t you think a demon should feel like they belong there? And look at me. I’m a chick!”
“You fit in well here on earth. You’ve mastered the female costume. You are comfortable with the ways and means to procuring material things.”
“Then I must belong here. As messed up as here is.”
“It is a crazy world.” More so than Cooper had expected. But that made it all the more interesting. And a greater challenge to try to assimilate. “But it will be such an adventure to become mortal, don’t you think? So many things to do,” he encouraged. “Entertainments and education. Food and commerce. To hold a job and feel good for accomplishments. And the people!”