by Larissa Ione
“You’re sure.” He swallowed, buying time to process this. It didn’t help. “You’re positive that I’m the father.”
She glared. “I’m sure. This is your doing, Hawkyn.”
His legs gave out, and he sank down on the mattress. He had truly never thought about having kids. Not when it could be hundreds, or even thousands, of years before he Ascended, became fertile, and took a mate. This wasn’t just unexpected; it was unprecedented.
And he was in a shitload of trouble.
This would end in his expulsion from the Memitim order. He’d be stripped of his powers and left to live in the human realm for eternity.
The human realm. With Aurora. And his child.
Maybe...maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
“Look,” she said as she finished packing her duffel. “I’ve learned enough about Memitim from you, Suzanne, Lilliana, and the people here to know that this is probably really, really bad for you. No one has to know that you’re the father—”
He didn’t even know he’d made the decision to flash himself to her until he found himself in front of her, his hands on her slender shoulders, his face in hers.
“That,” he growled, “is not an option. I grew up without a father, and that will never happen to any child of mine. We’ll get through this, Aurora. Things might be a little rough until we get it all figured out, but we’ll do it.”
Tears shimmered in her eyes, and dammit, he couldn’t handle it if she cried. Gently, he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, tentatively at first, letting her decide if this was what she wanted. Did she want his kiss? Did she want him?
His pulse raced as he waited for more than her passive kiss. He wanted the passion she’d brought to bed last night. The passion she had for life and all that came with it.
Nothing. She stood stiffly, her spine as straight as a sword, her pulse fluttering in the vein in her temple.
Please, Aurora.
He increased the pressure on her mouth, using his tongue to stroke the seam of her lips, and finally, blessedly, she responded. With a moan, she sagged against him, wrapping her arms around him and opening up to his kiss.
This was what he’d wanted his entire life, even if he hadn’t known it. He’d lived for duty, never for himself, and for the first time, he understood his sister Suzanne’s desire for a life and interests outside of the confines of Sheoul-gra.
The problem was that it wasn’t possible. Not for Memitim. Idess was proof of that. She’d lost her angel status and was all but human now.
Idess is happy.
Yes, she was. But Hawkyn knew himself well enough to know that, while he could survive being expelled from the Memitim order, especially if he had Aurora and a family, he would always have regrets. He’d always wonder if he should have done things differently. Because he wanted it all. He wanted Aurora and the life she carried inside her. But he also wanted to serve on the Memitim Council.
He couldn’t have both, and he knew it.
Reluctantly, he pulled back and gazed into Aurora’s drowsy eyes. “We have to get you someplace where you’re allowed as Primori.”
“How about my home? Can we at least stop by there so I can check mail and pack a few more things? We left in such a rush last time.” She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth. “If you think it’ll be safe for a little while.”
He started to object, but her new status had just changed things. She would never be safer than she was right now.
“You’re Primori, so you have your own guardian angel.” But who? He was going to need to find out. He hated to admit it, but some of his siblings were far more reliable than others, and he wanted Aurora to have only the best.
“No,” she said, putting her palm on his chest. “I have two.”
Yes, she did. For as long as he was still an angel, anyway. He had a feeling his time had become very, very short.
Chapter Eighteen
Hawkyn flashed them both to her house, but he kept her close as he cleared the place to make sure there were no signs that Drayger had set a trap or was hiding in a closet. Once Hawkyn gave the all-clear, she nearly collapsed in relief.
It was good to be home. She was exhausted, mentally tied up in knots, and she’d kill for a cup of chamomile tea.
“Are you hungry?” She headed for the kitchen, her stomach rumbling. She’d missed breakfast, thanks to the fact that she’d suddenly become pregnant and Primori, and the Memitim at the castle had kicked them out. Nicely, but still.
Jordan had even given her a hug.
“Hungry? No. I can’t even think about eating right now. I don’t like being out in the open like this.”
“You said it yourself. I have a guardian angel, right? So if Drayger shows up, won’t my new angel sense it?”
“Yes, but—” He flinched and looked down at his arm. For a long moment, he simply stared.
“Hawkyn?” His silence was starting to scare her. “What is it?”
“It’s Drayger.” His mouth curved slowly into a grim smile that gave her chills. “He’s no longer Primori.”
She sucked in a startled breath. “Seriously? What...what does that mean, exactly?”
“It means he’s no longer under angelic protection. Mine or otherwise.”
Afraid to hope but hoping to no longer be afraid, she studied every micro-expression on Hawkyn’s face for signs that there was a catch to what he was saying. But his eyes glittered, his fangs gleamed, and he was smiling like he’d won the lottery.
“So he can pay for what he’s done?”
He nodded. “We can alert the police.” His gaze turned dark with bloodthirsty anticipation that sent a fresh wave of chills across the surface of her skin. “Or I can kill him.”
Oh, yes. She wanted that. Holy shit, it frightened her how much she wanted that. But she wasn’t Drayger’s only victim. There were a lot of families out there who needed justice and closure.
As if Hawkyn sensed her inner turmoil, he folded her into his arms.
“I’ll take care of it,” he murmured against her hair. “I’ll make him feel everything he did to you and the others.”
“No,” she said, pulling back so she could see him. “He needs to be caught. He needs to pay for what he’s done, but it needs to happen through the human justice system.”
“But—”
“No.” She pressed her fingers to his lips, silencing him when part of her really wanted him to convince her that his way, the deadly way, would be better. “It’s for the families of his other victims. They need closure. But he’ll pay the true price after he’s dead, won’t he?”
“Oh, yes.” A vengeful light glittered in his eyes. “He’s evil, so he’ll go straight to my father’s realm. I’ll make sure he pays for all eternity.”
She shivered.
“I’m sorry,” he said, regret turning his voice rough. “I scared you.”
“Oh, no,” she whispered. “You turned me on.”
Hawkyn pegged her with an amused look. “In that case, before we call 911, let me tell you what I did to a demon who I once caught breaking into an orphanage...”
* * * *
Hawkyn was going to be there when the police arrived to arrest Drayger. They should be at his house at any moment, and Hawk couldn’t wait. He just had to resist the urge to kill him before the cops got there. If Aurora gave him the go ahead, he’d slaughter that fucker in a heartbeat. Sure, killing a human was forbidden, but so was just about everything he’d done since the moment he’d flashed into the grocery store parking lot and found Drayger in the middle of an attempted abduction.
Hawkyn was so over following the rules. If Aurora changed her mind and wanted Drayger dead, the guy was going to die.
Unfortunately, she was adamant about letting the bastard live long enough to pay for his crimes in jail, so both he and Aurora set wards around her house, allowing him to leave for a few minutes without worrying. Between the wards and her new guardian—whoever it was—she was as safe as
could be expected. He doubted he could have left her anyplace safer, actually.
He kissed her, promising to be back within minutes. Without his shadow wings, he had to manually engage the shrowd with a command, and then he flashed inside Drayger’s living room. But before he’d fully materialized, the stench of blood and terror stung his nostrils.
Something was wrong. Horribly wrong.
Cursing, he summoned a weapon to the ready, an electrical shock that would stun anyone—or anything—he encountered.
Noises came from the back of the house...crying? He moved down the hall, slowing at the trickle of blood that flowed from the master bedroom.
Fuck. A sharp, piercing ache pounded in his chest. If Drayger had slaughtered another female, Hawkyn would never forgive himself. Steeling himself for the worst, he stepped inside the room.
Turned out that there was no way he could have prepared himself for the bloodbath in front of him. The walls, ceiling, furniture, everything was splattered—and it wasn’t just blood. Bits of flesh, entrails, and even teeth had found their way into all of the nooks and crannies.
And all of it belonged to Drayger. The leg on the bed. The arm on the floor. The other arm hanging from the ceiling fan. Hawk didn’t want to know where his head was.
Damn, this house was going to have to be torn down, because no one was going to want to live here after these crime scene photos got out.
A noise startled him, and he spun, instinctively summoning a scythe. A female, naked and covered in gore, huddled in the closet, one hand pressed against a nasty gash in her thigh. She looked familiar, but why?
He stepped out of the shrowd and became fully visible. She didn’t even look surprised. Her glazed eyes took him in with wariness but not fear.
“Who are you?” She scurried out of the closet, putting more space between them and moving closer to the door. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Kill you? What? No.” He spoke softly, afraid to spook her. “I came here to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone else. Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
Flexing her fingers like a cat, she growled, a deep, throaty sound he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear from a tiger. “Not this time, he didn’t.”
“So you did this?” When she didn’t answer, he took a closer look at the carnage, and suddenly, her mannerisms made sense, especially when matched with the claw and teeth marks on the body parts and the ripped women’s clothes on the floor. “You’re a shifter. Lion or tiger. Right?” Shifters often destroyed their clothing when they morphed from human body to their animal form. At her continued silence, he sighed. “Well, he deserved to die, so good job.”
He wholeheartedly approved of her brand of justice. Hopefully Aurora wouldn’t be too disappointed, but he could, at least, guarantee that the authorities learned the truth about Drayger. The photo album of his victims sat on the dresser, obscene in its blatant spot out in the open, and it wouldn’t be difficult for the cops to figure out where his dungeons were once they knew what they were looking for.
The female’s voice trembled as she spoke. “You...you know what he was?”
“I know far too much about what he was.” He frowned. “How do you know? Who are you?”
She took the photo album off the dresser, handling it as if it were a live grenade as she flipped it open and handed it to him. His gut dropped to his feet at the pictures of a dead, dismembered woman who was the spitting image of the female in front of him.
And now he knew why she looked familiar.
“Oh, damn,” he said roughly, slamming the book closed. “Was Lexi your twin sister?”
“No,” she said, her voice a low, tortured growl. “I’m Lexi. He tortured and killed me.” She grabbed one of Drayger’s green and yellow Oregon Duck T-shirts from off a hanger and slipped it on, covering herself all the way to mid-thigh. “I had nine lives. I’m down to six.”
What the hell did someone say to that? He could only imagine how much it would suck to live through three deaths and remember them. And she had more to go. Poor female was going to need a lot of therapy.
Sirens sounded in the distance, growing louder. “I’m sorry,” he said lamely. “But we’d better go. Can I take you somewhere?”
Her eyes narrowed, skepticism creeping into her posture, and he couldn’t blame her. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m an angel,” he said gently. “You can trust me. I can take you almost anywhere you want to go.”
Her dubious snort was accompanied by further narrowing of her eyes until they were little more than slits. “Angels kill my kind, and call me a wuss, but I’m not ready to die again.”
“I’m not that kind of angel.” He wasn’t sure what kind of angel he even was anymore. He might be no kind of angel soon enough.
But one thing he was sure of was that, angel or not, he was going to be a fucking great father.
She gestured to the deep laceration in her leg. “Are you familiar with Underworld General Hospital?”
“All too well,” he muttered. “Let’s go.”
The sirens became deafening as he reached for her hand, but before he flashed them out of there, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He whipped his head around so fast a human would have suffered from whiplash. Drayger’s head, there it was, sticking out from under the bed. And it was...collapsing. What the hell? His gaze flicked from body part to body part. His arms, legs, torso...all the parts were deflating like tires with no air.
“What’s going on?” Lexi stared at the scene in horror. “I thought he was human.”
“I thought so too.” A sudden, terrifying thought popped into his head, and as he watched Drayger’s remains become nothing but empty skins, he understood what was happening. “Oh, shit,” he whispered. “Oh...fuck.”
“What?” Lexi tugged on his arm. “Tell me!”
“Drayger wasn’t human. He was a fucking bludgolem.”
“A what?”
He wracked his brain for information he’d stored away since his first years of training, when he’d been required to learn about every type of known demon. Bludgolems were rare, so rare he’d never seen one, nor heard of anyone encountering one. But there were rumors. Lots of rumors.
“They’re like viruses. They infect hosts, usually children. They spend years infecting the child’s mind, and they’re only released when the host dies.”
“Released? So the bludgolem is still alive?”
“And looking for a new host.”
“Another child?”
He shook his head. “According to legend, if they have unfinished business, they’ll infect an adult, and they’ll take over, using the person to finish whatever it is—” He broke off with a curse. “Aurora.”
“Who?”
He didn’t bother replying. He grabbed Lexi’s hand and flashed to Underworld General, dropped her off in the parking lot, and flashed back to Aurora’s house.
The screams reached his ears before he’d even fully materialized.
Chapter Nineteen
The ward Aurora had set should have stopped the stranger from coming into her house. It hadn’t even slowed him.
As she sprinted toward the front door, another scream of terror and pain lodged in her throat. Blood dripped to her hardwood floor from the stab wound in her arm. She shouldn’t have investigated the noise in her bedroom. She should have trusted her instincts and run out of the house. Instead, she’d found the bastard climbing through her bedroom window.
Silver fire hadn’t even slowed him.
Suddenly, there was a flash, and a dark-haired guy with a scythe popped into the living room, putting himself between her and the stranger.
“Not today, fucker,” he snarled.
Her guardian? Had to be. He resembled Hawkyn too closely to be anything else.
And damn, but he had good timing.
Another flash, and Hawkyn was there, menace rolling off him in a tangible wave, both hands gripping swords. He cast her a reassuring
smile, and then he was shoulder to shoulder with his brother, forming a wall she knew nothing would get through.
The air around them went icy and still, and she swore she could feel their desire to fight. This was what they’d been bred to do, and anticipation wrapped around them like armor.
The stranger attacked, and within seconds it was apparent that the man who looked like a skinhead was not entirely human. Sharp, needle-like teeth replaced the tame human grille, fingers morphed into wicked, raptor-like claws, and its screech threatened to shatter her eardrums.
“Maddox!” Hawkyn shouted. “Flank him!”
Hawkyn moved like a dancer, a deadly, lightning-fast dancer. His blades whirled as if they were in a blender, cutting and slicing as Maddox carved chunks out of the stranger with his scythe and with some sort of electrical ability that left thin, smoking gashes all over the demon’s body.
The angels fought well together, completely in tandem, as if they’d practiced beforehand. But when the stranger got a powerful blow in, knocking Maddox into her corner table and lamp, the momentum took a nosedive, and suddenly Hawkyn launched into a wild battle that was going to destroy what remained of her living room.
Not that she cared. Right now her only fear was for Hawkyn and Maddox, and for the tiny life growing inside her.
She held her breath, waiting for the demon do go down, but it wasn’t even slowing. Even when Maddox sent a dizzying volley of lightning, fireballs, and ice needles at him, the demon in a Nazi-tatted skin suit kept fighting. If anything, it seemed to gain strength from the weapons.
She was going to have a hell of a time explaining this to the insurance company.
Wait... It gained strength from weapons. Could a weapon drain it too?
“Hawkyn!” she yelled. “Over here!” She dove under her kitchen table, an ancient aluminum-legged thing that wouldn’t protect her from jack shit, but would provide a little cover. Hopefully just enough.