by J. K. Coi
An angel. One he’d been lusting for like a hound after the bitch, making disgustingly detailed plans to get her into his bed. He’d spent hours picturing her naked, imagining all the different times and ways and places he was going to fuck her. And that wasn’t even the worst part. Instead of the truth acting as a cold shower to bring him back to his senses, the knowledge of who Amelia really was—and the sight of her beautiful, soft wings—only added fire to his erotic fantasies. Fantasies that raced hot and wild in his unworthy, tainted human veins.
Gabriel wanted her even more, despite being angry as hell. He wanted her even though the wanting made him feel like a sick deviant, made him ashamed for thinking of corrupting something so beautiful and perfect. The reasons why he couldn’t have her didn’t matter, none of it mattered. His body didn’t seem to care, and his mind didn’t care enough.
Which was just more for the growing pile that proved—despite giving up the drugs and the girls and spending the past year focusing entirely on his music—he hadn’t really changed. He was still a selfish bastard, and always would be.
Amelia waited calmly, saying nothing.
Her detachment quickly converted Gabriel’s hunger to temper—or maybe some more volatile combination of the two. He wanted to shout and throw things. It took every ounce of self-control he had not to do just that, not to get in her face and shake her, yell at her, or kiss her until she gave him some hint that the woman who’d finally begun to come out of her shell was still there, lingering behind that cold façade, somewhere.
“So, angels are for real.” Gabriel watched her carefully. Did he see a softening in her eyes when she turned to him, or was that his wishful thinking? “I’m guessing from recent events that you celestial types aren’t supposed to spend a lot of time here on earth among the common people.”
“That’s correct.” She nodded, her voice sounded crisp, without inflection. “Our life force is tied to the angel realms. If we leave that domain for any extended period of time without submitting to angel song, we will grow weaker and eventually die.”
“Angel realms?”
“Another dimension existing alongside this one. Ethereal and insubstantial, your race would liken it to heaven, but of course that’s not what it is.” Pausing, she frowned. “Now isn’t the proper time to discuss this. We have to leave this place as soon as possible.”
“Forget it, angel face. I’m not going anywhere until I get answers to each and every one of my questions.”
“Gabriel—”
“Don’t even try it, Amelia.” He ignored the sharp pain in his chest as she murmured his name. “You owe me this much.”
With a curt nod, she gave up on whatever argument she’d been about to use against him. The woman wasn’t getting her way this time, and she knew it. “All right.”
“Go on,” he urged. “Tell me the rest of it. First, I want to know what angels are doing going to rock concerts in San Francisco. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the fan love. But if our world is poison to you, I doubt very much you came for the music. I also want to know why angels are killing people, and what the hell all this bullshit has to do with me.”
She let out a breath before moving to stare out the window once more. Touching her finger to the dirty glass, she started to trace an invisible pattern in whatever reflections she saw there, but quickly pulled her hand back.
“I’m not supposed to feel anything anymore,” she said, her voice thoughtful and far away.
He wanted to go to her and prove that was a lie, make her admit she had to feel something—for him.
“Angels don’t, you know,” she continued. “We’ve been stripped of our emotions and bound to the angel realms for millennia.”
Reaching up, she drew the heavy brown velvet curtain across the window, shutting the rest of the world away before turning back to him. “But it wasn’t always that way. There was a time when angels came and went freely between our domain and yours. In fact many of us assumed a kind of guardianship role over humankind—which is where a lot of your people’s legends about angels come from.”
Us? She looked younger than he did, maybe mid-twenties. The rational side of Gabriel’s brain denied she could be telling the truth, even as he looked again at the soft wings peeking over her slim shoulders. “Just how old are you?”
“I have no—”
“No age, that’s right. I remember,” he interrupted with a choked laugh. “So, what happened to change this blissful coexistence between human and angel kind?”
“What always happens when the balance of power is uneven? A group of rogue angels, led by one in particular, allowed that power to corrupt them and used it against the humans. They not only believed it was their right to take this world for their own but went on a rampage, killing many. The Archangels challenged them, and our entire race suffered thousands of years of war as a result. We fought amongst each other until the Archangels defeated the rogue leader.”
Gabriel shook his head. “Wait a minute. You’re not talking about that battle? This rogue leader wasn’t actually Lucifer?”
“Yes, Lucifer.” Amelia blinked. “Most of his followers quickly surrendered when faced with the Archangels’ power, but others were forcibly brought to heel.” The way she paused made Gabriel wonder just what part Amelia herself had played in this epic battle.
“Partly as punishment, and partly to prevent anything like that from happening again, the Archangels put unbreakable wards on our realms.”
“What gives them the right? How are Archangels any different from you?”
“Archangels are of the ruling class. Their kind has enhanced powers and duties. They’re guardians of the gates between the angel realms and mortal world.”
“So how did they put locks on those gates?”
“They bound our life force to our sanctuary. Even if we managed to find a way to escape it, our power would quickly drain away. At the same time, the Archangels, who long ago evolved beyond the fallibility of irrational emotion to a level of pure logic and philosophy, believed that our race’s only chance for survival was in the renunciation of strong feelings like hate, greed, envy—”
“Let me guess,” Gabriel interrupted. “They made it so those sticky emotions went away—along with the good ones like hope and joy and love.”
She nodded slowly. “After all, you humans wallowed in emotion and it seemed all you did was war with each other over and over again, filling your world with people who suffered needlessly.”
“So after all that, Lucifer and the other rogue angels were shuttled off to hell?”
“Hell? No, Lucifer doesn’t reside in the fires of hell. That’s where your human theologians and historians have become the most fanciful. Lucifer’s followers—and all the angels—were restricted to the angel realms by the Archangels’ wards, and when they were unable to feel the kinds of damaging emotion that had fueled their rebellion, the rogue angels simply dispersed.”
“I’ll bet.” Gabriel pictured a bunch of lobotomized mental patients in a white-walled, squeaky-floored hospital, and it gave him cold shivers.
“Lucifer himself was simply a misguided, power-hungry angel who managed to evade warriors more powerful than himself—but only for so long.”
Gabriel didn’t quite believe that. He got the feeling there was more to the story than Amelia was letting on. He didn’t buy this notion of Lucifer as nothing more than the equivalent of a greedy politician. Gabriel remembered something Cassiel had said earlier. “Lucifer might not be exactly what we humans have come to think of him, but he wasn’t just any other angel. He’s still referred to as the fallen one and the devil, right?”
She worried her lip with her teeth but Gabriel didn’t call her on it. He didn’t want to remind her she wasn’t supposed to show any emotion—especially signs of weakness or uncertainty.
“Come on, Amelia. Spill your guts.”
Finally, she nodded. “You’re right, Lucifer was different. Even after the wards had
been placed on our realm by the Archangels, Lucifer was still rebellious, dissatisfied and volatile.”
“You mean he still had emotion.”
“Yes. And when he escaped, he continued to terrorize your world and ours until Michael tracked him down. In the final battle, as Lucifer faced Archangel Michael’s blade, the dark rogue cursed himself before taking his own life. He promised that his soul would live on to return one day, and when it did, the angels would be set free to finally take their rightful place on your earth.”
“Why?” he asked. “What made Lucifer different than the rest of you?”
She shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. I only know that if he’s allowed to return, it will upset the balance once more, destroying the peace the Archangels worked so hard to enforce, bringing war to our race again.”
“And they think I’m the key to doing that?”
“Yes.”
“So I’m supposed to believe all this craziness is because a bunch of bored, cooped-up angels think I’m somehow going to bring the devil back to life and release them from their heavenly prison in the process?” And just how the hell was he supposed to do that? Gabriel ran a hand through his hair and let out a sigh of disgust.
Her expression remained hard. “It’s the reason why I was summoned to your side on the night of your birth.”
“By who? Who told you I was going to be the one?”
“Archangel Michael himself.”
“Well, damn, if an Archangel says it’s so, then fuck, it must be true.” Gabriel snorted and flopped back on the bed. Christ, he was exhausted. “Okay, no more revelations.” He closed his eyes. “My poor human brain can’t handle anything else right now.”
Amelia was silent. He cracked an eyelid. She remained standing by the window. She looked beautiful, so damn beautiful it hurt to think it was just a mask, that there was nothing behind her smooth skin and bright eyes. No soul. No depth.
There has to be someone in there, he thought. Just because she said she wasn’t supposed to have feelings didn’t mean the reality was so cut-and-dried as that. He’d seen for himself that Amelia was far from an empty shell. He couldn’t believe all her warmth had just disappeared because some other angel had gotten his heavenly choir groove on.
“Amelia, don’t just stand there playing security guard. Come to bed.”
Her eyes widened with an almost imperceptible twitch. Yes, perhaps there was still a small piece of the woman inside that stone expression somewhere.
“I strongly suggest we leave this hotel room immediately.”
“Well, that’s a switch.” He smirked. “You went and changed tactics on me. Since when do you make suggestions instead of ordering me around?”
Her expression didn’t change, but she glanced toward the door. “I don’t have a good feeling,” she admitted.
“A feeling, huh?”
She ignored him. “It’s imperative that the rogue angels aren’t given a chance to ambush us in this place. The odds would not favor our success.”
“Let me guess, Cassiel won’t be as accommodating to either of us if he shows up here again.”
“It isn’t Cassiel who concerns me now.”
Donato. Apparently, Donato was the angel everyone was concerned about. The angel who’d killed David. The angel who even Cassiel wanted dead. The one Gabriel wanted to meet face-to-face before all was said and done.
But he agreed with Amelia. Forcing that confrontation now wouldn’t be smart, not when he still had so little information and no weapon to use against the bastard. Gabriel planned to handle this the smart way. For once.
“Fine. We’ll leave,” he said. “But I want ten minutes first.”
She looked at him quizzically, obviously leery of his intentions. “Are you hurt?” she asked finally.
“No, but I’m tired.”
“We really should go anyway.” She started pacing in front of the door. For someone who apparently no longer had any feelings, it was a telling action.
“And who do you think is going to drive the car?” He’d caught her there. With a smile, he said, “If you want to get out of here, then suck it up and give me my ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes to do what?” She asked.
He laughed. “I just want to rest.”
“All right,” she agreed with a decisive nod. “Then I’ll stand guard until you’re ready to go.”
“Forget it, angel face.” Gabriel feigned a nonchalance he hadn’t come close to feeling all night. Leaning back into the pillow, he threw an arm under his head. “If you want my cooperation, then you have to give me something in return, and right now I want you here in this bed with me.”
She stopped in her tracks. He could see her clever brain working over all the angles, trying to decide why he could possibly want her to join him in bed. “Come on, Amelia. Don’t you trust me?”
Her shining hair slid over one shoulder as she came closer. He wanted to touch it. Bury his face in it. Breathe in her complicated scent. “Not particularly.”
He laughed. “No doubt that’s a sound decision resulting from logical, deductive reasoning and not at all based on instinct or emotion.”
“I never said that angels don’t have instincts,” she countered.
“Touché. Listen, I just want to hold you for a few minutes. I need a break from those glaring looks. Not to mention, I won’t get any rest if you keep pacing impatiently like that.”
“I am no longer capable of impatience.” She sighed but took the final step toward the bed without further argument. She looked down at him with a delicately arched brow. “Or anything else you might have in mind.”
Gabriel shuffled over to give her some room. But not too much room. “Are you going to be able to lie down with those?” He nodded to her angel get-up.
“Yes, but it wouldn’t be very comfortable for either of us.” Her armor and sword disappeared and her wings became fuzzy and indistinct once again, like seeing them through a window tracked with wet lines from the rain, and then they were gone.
She should have looked completely normal now, completely human, but Gabriel imagined he could still see the brilliance of her golden aura, the softness of her angel’s wings. He didn’t think he would ever be able to not see her as an angel now that the sight had been etched into his brain.
Sitting on the bed with him, she leaned back until she lay flat at his side in a stiff line. A wooden plank would have had more give.
“That’s not quite what I had in mind, angel face.” He let a grin curve his lips, hoping he didn’t look too wolfish, too hungry.
“You do realize that trying to elicit some emotion from me at this point is an exercise in futility. I did try to warn you what would happen if Cassiel healed me with his angel song.”
“I don’t understand. If the Archangels took it from you, how could you have felt emotion before Cassiel’s musical magic trick, but not now? I know you did, you can’t act that well.” At least he hoped not.
Her brow formed a single crease. It looked good on her, made her softer, more human. Proof she hadn’t been carved from smooth, cold marble. “I believe that being so far from the angel realms for so long weakened the Archangels’ power. My natural state began to reassert itself as my body weakened.”
“So you admit it’s natural for you to feel things like anger, sorrow, regret…desire. Even love.”
She opened her mouth. Shook her head. “No. There’s a reason why those emotions were stripped from our makeup.”
Gabriel leaned over her, propping his head up, arm digging into her pillow. He observed the frown pulling her lips into a line, the tension that left her body tight beside him. His spirits lifted at the evidence of her irritation, although he kept his expression carefully blank. “And don’t you miss it? The ability to feel?”
Did she pause just a little bit before that stubborn jaw of hers locked? “Of course not. That would imply regret, another emotion I am no longer capable of.”
He
sighed. “Why did you take this job? Why have you spent so many years spying on me?”
“I told you alre—”
“I don’t want to hear about Lucifer. I want to know why you agreed to this. Why aren’t you on the side of the rogue angels? Don’t you want to be free?”
“These emotions of yours are significantly overrated,” she whispered, avoiding his gaze and looking up at the ceiling. “And much too dangerous for beings such as us. You don’t understand. We had become too powerful for our own good. Arrogant. Greedy. A menace to everyone, even ourselves. The Archangels were right to put a stop to it. I won’t be forced to take sides against my own kind again, and I won’t let all our worlds be thrust into war for another millennium. That’s the reason why I’ve sworn to protect you.”
Did she realize how much her vehement denials gave her away?
“Besides, you don’t say no when an Archangel gives you a job to do.”
“If all this is true, it must be a very lonely life. What’s the point? Wouldn’t you rather have your long existence mean something?” Gabriel purposely ignored the irony in the question. A dissolute rocker should not be the one asking an angel if she needed more meaning in her life.
She tilted her head to gaze at him directly. “I don’t need to feel the actual satisfaction to know I’m doing something worthwhile for my race. I have a duty. And right now my life has meaning if I’m successful in protecting yours.”
“How can you be so certain, especially if you can’t appreciate my gratitude?”
She pressed her supple pink lips together. “I doubt very much that what you feel is anything close to gratitude.”
Fierce possessiveness fired his blood as he gazed into her eyes. He lifted his arm, trailing his index finger across the tight seam of those lips. Her body jerked beneath him.
“You figured me out,” he murmured. “I admit it, gratitude isn’t high on the list of things I feel for you, angel face.” He was satisfied when she didn’t pull away from him, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly. “But be warned. The feelings I do have are potent. They’re not all pretty. In fact, they’re messy and complicated and real—and I’m not going to let you ignore them for much longer.”