Fallen

by Michele Hauf

  “Sophia, I don’t know.”

  “Ah, you are shy? Shy and so sexy.”

  To hell with it.

  He pulled her to him. The ribbon slipped to her wrist. She pressed her hands to the window behind her, opening herself to him and tilting up her breasts as if to offer them, one for each hand.

  “You don’t know if you desire me? Is that it?” she asked. “I thought, from the way you looked at me at the café…”

  Female breakdown coming on. It was enough to clear Cooper’s head. He released her arms and stepped back.

  “It’s not that, Sophia. I need to…take things slow.” He winced. Stupid. She’d think he was an asshole.

  Better that way.

  No, it’s not. Take her!

  “Yes, this is a little rushed, I admit.” She shrugged her fingers through her hair and sighed. That moment of readjustment worked as if she were coming up for air. “Whew! I don’t know what I am doing. This is too quick. I’m so sorry.”

  “No, I am.”

  “I barely know you. I just, well, I got a good vibe from you in the café. You’re such a nice man, and so handsome. Look at your eyes. I mean, they’re like the sky or something. And the way you smell. So…yummy. I don’t think you’d do anything to hurt me.”

  Poor girl. Her instincts were off the map. And everyone knew when one fell off the map there be monsters.

  Cooper glanced aside, fixing his gaze to the bookshelf and thinking thoughts of ice water raining over his hardened cock.

  “Let’s just talk. I said I had a book to show you.” She wandered off and he couldn’t force himself to turn and walk out of the room.

  Leave her.

  It was the honorable thing to do.

  But she is what you desire.

  He knew it was an innate and greater consciousness talking, a consciousness that belonged to the two hundred angels who Fell. A consciousness he did not agree with now, nor had ever agreed with.

  Standing here right now, Cooper had gone beyond the simple desire to seek a muse. Hell, he’d never touched that desire. When he’d Fallen it had been for one purpose only. And that purpose was personal to him.

  Maybe.

  Had he been fooling himself?

  “I can’t seem to find it,” she called from the next room.

  Cooper joined her before a fancy mahogany secretary, which spilled over with papers and assorted office ephemera. Her pinned-up hair had loosened a bit during their embrace and the effect absolutely screamed sex as she flashed her big chocolate eyes at him.

  “I keep it here. It looks so messy. I’m usually much neater. Oh, here’s a page from it. I stick pages in here and there because I’ve already filled the journal and sometimes inspiration hits me so I scribble on anything I have available.”

  Cooper fisted his hands behind his hips and smiled genially. He could do this. He wasn’t so out of control of his own body he would shift against his will and take the poor thing like an animal.

  She handed him a sketch and he made show of looking intently at it. And suddenly, he was interested. What was on the paper moved his cold blood to his gut. Many little drawings. Of nothing in particular. Codes, devices, designs.

  Yet he immediately knew what they were.

  His shoulder hit the wall, unaware of Sophia’s allure for the first time since he’d fallen under the spell of her sassy red mouth at the café. Sensual smells and sensations fell away. All that mattered was the bold curving lines on the page he held.

  Tracing the lines of one symbol, he shook his head. “Did you draw these, Sophia?”

  “Yes, I scribble. Have ever since I was a child. Symbols, like the one on my arm. You had asked about it, so I wanted to show these to you. I know what they mean, too.”

  “You do?” He scooted a few inches away from her. The front door was in sight. He wasn’t going anywhere. “Tell me.”

  “They’re angel marks.” She took the page he held then handed him two more pages. “That one is mine.”

  She pointed to the symbol on the page, a match to the one he wore on his lower left abdomen. It matched the sigil on her forearm. It looked like an elegant long-limbed number seven that butted heads with its twin. Two number sevens head to head.

  Each angel wore a sigil unique to the angelic dominions. And for each Fallen there was a muse who matched that sigil. But humans had not this knowledge.

  “Why do you call them angel marks?”

  “Because they are. I just know. Sounds odd, doesn’t it?”

  Like Eden Campbell had known exactly how to paint him? Did mortal muses possess such knowledge?

  He stroked her forearm over the sigil. Her skin was warm and smooth. Her blood pulsed against his fingers. He could read her thoughts regarding the marks, but he was too distracted to think that would do any good right now.

  “I’ve been marked by one.” She shrugged and gave a little giggle, and caught a strand of her hair and teased it across her lower lip. “Call it a silly childhood thing. But I still find myself drawing them when I’m chatting on the phone or bored. I wish I could find the journal with all of them in it.”

  “You have more?”

  “A whole journal full. I counted one day. Almost two hundred designs. Ah! I almost forgot about the Mona Lisa.” She skipped over to the coffee table.

  He grabbed the other paper from the messy secretary desk. “Don’t you understand what you know, Sophia?”

  Startled at his outburst, Sophia let the big coffee table book on the Louvre slide from her grasp and land on the sofa.

  Cooper crushed the papers in a fist and she silently protested, reaching out to grab her artwork, but he slapped away her hand.

  “You’re too perfect,” he growled. That his voice had lowered and rasped didn’t alert him.

  He’d gone beyond control. His Fallen super-conscious had taken a step up and now it would not be ignored.

  “I was a fool to think I could follow you up here and not take what is mine,” he hissed.

  “I don’t understand. Your eyes…they’ve changed color. You should leave now. We probably are pushing things a little too—”

  “Not fast enough for me.”

  He slammed Sophia against the wall and licked his tongue up the elegant column of her neck. She struggled but did not cry out.

  “An angelkiss for you,” he whispered in her ear. She truly did taste as delicious as she smelled. “I’ll always know where you are now. Doesn’t matter, we’re going to get busy now.”

  “I don’t… Please, you’re too rough. Cooper!”

  He ripped open the front of her blouse. A black lace bra cradled her generous breasts. So ripe for him. A lash of his tongue stirred a frightened moan from her.

  “You must go!”

  “Not—” he pressed a forearm across her chest to hold her against the wall, and ran his free hand down to slip under her skirt “—until I’ve had this.”

  Why had he walked the waitress home? Pyx thought he was into her. Was the angel two-timing her? Why did she care?

  She didn’t.

  She did.

  The bitch had to answer to her if she thought to steal her boyfriend.

  Well, he was a male, and a weird sort of friend. The label boyfriend worked for her.

  Pyx rushed up the stairs in the apartment building. She didn’t know where the waitress lived, but she sensed the Fallen was close. By the third floor she heard the female scream.

  Pyx kicked down the door. Inside, the angel, half-shifted, and his stained-glass wings tearing through the Sheetrock, held the muse pinned to the wall.

  Chapter 16

  The shift melted away her human costume. Beneath that, muscle liquefied and stretched. Bone grew to adamant black metal forged from Beneath. The Sinistari demon grew two feet taller than her mortal form, arms bulging with muscle and powerful thighs thickening. Skin was replaced with an armor of black metal. Horns curved down the center of the skull and back of the neck.

  Hooves
dug into the wood floorboards as it charged, the angel-killing Joe held ready to stab.

  The muse, pinned to the wall by the angel, screamed madly.

  The Fallen spied the Sinistari and howled, high-pitched and not of this earth, but did not release his prey.

  Pyxion leaped over the sofa, a hoof biting through the green velvet and taking out a chunk. A backhanded smack flung the glass table aside. The demon growled, revealing square teeth designed for doing damage.

  The Fallen ignored the nuisance, ripping open the fly on the mortal jeans it wore, for it was only half-shifted from hips up—it was the only way the normally sexless angel could mate with a human.

  The muse’s manic scream suddenly faltered. Her cries ceased. She fainted, wilting against the Fallen’s blue glass chest.

  The angel couldn’t support the muse and tear down his jeans at the same time. He was also aware its shifted flesh would quickly freeze the mortal’s skin. He dropped the muse and stepped back. Glass wings scraped the walls and tore gouges through the living-room wall.

  Suddenly the Fallen jerked his head up. Glowing blue eyes sought the Sinistari.

  Jaw tight, the Fallen struggled. “Pyx.” The angel’s voice was deep and metallic. “Do it!”

  The angel spread out his arms, opening his chest and giving the demon a clear target for the red heart that glimmered behind the solid yet flexible, glass chest.

  Lifting her arms overhead and gripping Joe with both fists, Pyxion charged toward the Fallen.

  Toward an angel who had turned his back on his master by falling.

  Toward the Sinistari’s only enemy.

  Toward the one being in this world who had opened her steel heart to the marvel of humanity.

  The blade screamed through the air, yet Pyx’s muscles tightened. As the blade tip touched glass her movement stopped.

  The angel lunged, pushing the blade tip into the liquid blue skin. The tip was soaked in qeres, the poison that promised the first sweet breath of the afterlife when it penetrated the angel’s heart.

  The demon twisted a muscled black fist, withdrawing the blade and—Pyx threw the blade aside, landing it point-first in the wall near the door.

  The muse, now conscious, slid away from the pair, her palms guiding her along the wall. Eyes wide and mascara running down her cheeks, she squeaked nervously.

  “Get out of here,” the angel bellowed at her. “Save yourself!”

  The muse scrambled out on all fours, stood, and ran down the stairs.

  Pyx stepped away from the angel.

  “Do it!” the Fallen growled. “Kill me!”

  “No.” She turned from him, bowing her head.

  Slapping a metallic hand against her chest clanged loudly. So hard on the outside, yet inside, something had changed. She had become…soft.

  Pyx shifted to human shape. Her arms tugged and the heavy metal skeletal structure gave way to weak mortal flesh. Garnet hair spilled down her bare back. She turned and rushed down the hallway, not wanting to show her weakness to the powerful half-formed angel who seethed at her.

  Slamming the muse’s bedroom door behind her, Pyx plunged to the thick white rug spread at the end of the bed. Gripping the long, soft fibers and bending over her knees, she let out a keening wail.

  Cooper shifted to mortal form. It was like shaking off ice adhered to his mortal skin, accompanied by a cutting sting as the ineffable glass cracked off his arms and vaporized. His shoulders hung heavily. The sigil on his abdomen ceased to glow. He bowed his head and closed his eyes.

  The muse had fled.

  Never had he witnessed such utter terror in a human being. Sophia’s eyes had mirrored a creature—him. It sickened him he had been responsible for her fear. He was a soulless monster who could not control his own base lust.

  Yet in the moment he’d worn wings granted by Him, his perception of the world had altered. Juphiel had taken control. All he’d wanted was to fulfill the original mission the Fallen had agreed to. The desire had been instinctual. No part of the man he had become since landing on earth this second time had been able to wrestle the unfeeling and mechanistic angel he was from the task.

  More surprising? Even when he’d pleaded, the Sinistari had not slain him. Because the demon was Pyx and she had gotten to know him, Cooper, the man. And she hadn’t been able to bring herself to kill him. What a pitiful demon.

  “What a pitiful Fallen one you are.”

  Shaking his head, he let his eyes roam the walls where his wings had cut gashes and left behind disaster. Sophia would return and never be able to rationalize what had occurred. He could never face her again.

  He must never face her again.

  He’d get himself as far from Paris as possible. Until he found his halo, he was a danger to one vulnerable and kind mortal woman. She hadn’t asked for this. She didn’t deserve to be treated like a brood mare for the Fallen’s vicious and twisted desires.

  He would flash right now—

  Sniffles from somewhere down the hallway distracted Cooper from his intent. Who was here? Had the muse…? No, she’d run out.

  Pyx.

  He padded down the hardwood floor. When he’d shifted, his shirt had shredded and fallen away. His jeans had begun to tear at the waist, but they were still intact. No shoes though. Why did the shoes get kicked off when shifting? His feet didn’t change shape.

  It was an anomaly that puzzled Cooper to no end.

  If Pyx were still around she would be naked, for her shift to demon had ripped away all her clothing. The Sinistari was a hulking, muscular beast forged from metal. An even match to an angel. Perhaps a greater match to a Fallen, for the angel was grounded, unable to use his wings to fly away from a threat.

  They were more alike than she could ever imagine.

  Pushing the ajar bedroom door inside, Cooper spied the naked woman bent over and huddled upon a white rug. Her head was tucked against her knees and soft sniffles trickled tears down her leg.

  “Pyx?”

  “Go away!”

  The vehemence in her tone cautioned his need to rush in and hug her.

  Cooper clung to the door frame, his grip gouging the soft pine wood. He wasn’t about to leave her. Mortal tears were supposed to burn the Sinistari. Cooper didn’t know how that felt, but right now, each tear that plopped onto Pyx’s leg felt like a demon’s blade stabbing him in the heart.

  Her blade had cut his flesh, and when he’d wanted to jam it deep into his heart and give her the win—and her mortal soul—she had pulled it out.

  “Why didn’t you do it?” he asked. “You had a clear shot at me. You could have claimed your mortal soul. It is all you want. So you can belong.”

  He wanted that for her, more than he wanted humanity.

  She pressed onto her palms. Long hair concealed the side of her face closest to Cooper, so he couldn’t see her expression. It also veiled her bare breasts.

  “I couldn’t do it. I cannot conceive of killing you. Some Sinistari I turned out to be! No wonder they snickered at me behind my back when I was Beneath. I’m just a stupid girl. A stupid. Feeling. Girl!”

  Allowing himself a smile at her ridiculous argument, Cooper scanned the room and spied a red blanket folded over a wicker chaise. He summoned it to his grasp with a gesture and laid it across Pyx’s shoulders, then knelt beside her on the thick rug. Tucking her hair behind her ear, he stroked his thumb along the tear trail painting her reddened cheek.

  She rubbed her cheek with a fist. “Don’t look at me. I’m a failure.”

  “You? Please. I’m the failure. I couldn’t do what my destiny demands of me. I should have shoved you aside and attempted my muse. But…”

  He’d wanted it over within that moment. To have the situation resolved—either by his death or by taking the muse. But that he’d survived only meant he must face this dilemma.

  He’d never wanted what his Fallen brethren wanted.

  “Fine couple of murderous bastards we turned out to be, eh?�
��

  She chuckled through her tears and a few final drops splattered her lashes.

  “I didn’t want to harm her, Pyx.”

  “I know that.”

  “It tears me up inside that I scared her. I was so close. You should have plunged Joe into my heart.”

  “I couldn’t stab you because…” She tossed her head to the side. Bright multicolored eyes fixed to his and touched him. “I like you, Cooper. I’m pretty sure about that, even though I’m still learning things every day and I’m not completely up on all the emotions.”

  “Like is good.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not the strongest way to describe how I feel. I can’t do the other…you know…”

  “The other?”

  She winced and scratched her head, avoiding his searching gaze.

  Did she mean love? Could Pyx’s like be love? The idea of it warmed Cooper’s chest and he thought he felt a flutter deep inside. But that was ridiculous. Angel hearts did not beat.

  Nor did demon hearts beat. Love was the one crime that would see a Sinistari punished with endless torture. It wouldn’t be wise for Pyx to even think she felt it.

  “Oh, sure. I understand,” he reassured. “I like like. It’s a good word. Not overbearing. But not weak, either. I like you, too.”

  “Really? I’ve never been in like before,” she said, perking up. “But I think this might be what it’s all about. This whole human experience.”

  “It’s said that’s why He put them here on earth. To learn to lo—er, like one another. To simply embrace like and all its goodness.”

  She lunged up on her knees, bracketed his face, and kissed him. “Yes. Goodness. Like. All that it embraces. Like you and me. Hold me, Cooper. Show me how much you like me.”

  “Pyx, we could do this.”

  “What?”

  “Us. Do you want to?”

  “Us?”

  “I know you’re scared. I am, too.”

  “I think so, but I can’t—”

  He kissed her to silence her protest.