by Azure Boone
Toren turned a little, still keeping his hand on the mare. His low voice carried so there could be no mistake what he said. "Back the fuck off. You aren't hurting this horse."
Unable to shoot without hitting Toren, Joe darted around the pen, trying for a clear line of sight of the mare. "That thing's insane." At the same time, near the barn, the foal responded to the vet's efforts with a plaintive whinny.
The mare suddenly reared again.
Joe’s face tightened with his determination to finally pull the trigger and he took deliberate aim.
Sam launched herself at him with superhuman effort and reached him in the split second before the firing pin fell. She hit hard, knocking his arm up and over to send the bullet harmlessly into the air.
The mare wheeled toward her foal and one forehoof struck Toren in the side of the head. He went suddenly boneless and started a slo-mo slump to the dirt while the mare leapt over him.
Sam started toward Toren but a heavy weight crashed into her before she could reach the fence. Going to her knees from the impact, she realized Joe had tackled her. His fist came out of nowhere to land a glancing blow to her jaw.
Toren struck the ground, limp, as Sam's vision blurred. Fear for Toren drove her to fight unconsciousness. She had to help him…
** ** **
Skylar let her head fall back against the headrest of her truck seat. God, she was so sick of running. If anyone had told her a year ago that she'd actually miss the rodeo circuit, she'd have laughed. All her life, every single day had been filled with competing or preparing to compete. And when she wasn't working her ass off to get to national level rodeo queen pageant competition, she was studying to earn her first Bachelors of Science at seventeen.
And none of it mattered any longer. Life had changed drastically when her mother remarried just eleven months after her father's death in a car accident, but it didn't get bad until her mother died from a freak case of food poisoning. A bit over a month later, her stepfather had insisted she wear the sexy revealing new gown he gave her and go to dinner with him. Except it wasn't dinner. An exclusive club had been closed for the night for a special event. The evening culminated in a silent auction. Skylar and two other young women were up for sale.
Refusing to sit and brood any longer, she climbed out of the truck and headed into the little diner. The sign said they had computers and internet access. Maybe she could find a job to tide her over a little while before she had to hit the road again. Before her stepfather's goons gained too much ground on her and closed in.
** ** **
Kassern stood with his hip propped against the counter watching the woman he loved devour her breakfast with uncharacteristic aggression. He knew it was time to bring her in, that all her symptoms said it was the right thing, the safe thing. He’d wanted to ask her about how she truly felt but had no appetite for it. She'd grown especially moody since he first mentioned having her tested. Yesterday, she'd made Devyn cry, bitching at her for not making a fresh pot of coffee. Something was definitely going on with her, and the endless possibilities terrified him.
A bleary-eyed Troy wandered into the kitchen searching for the cup of strong coffee that seemed to help wake the human in him. Barely aware of where he was going, he bumped into Karly's chair and stumbled to the other side, over balanced and stubbed his toe.
Karly leaped to her feet. "Watch where you're going, asshole!" She drew one fist back and, before Kassern could stop her, punched Troy in the solar plexus.
Troy's breath exploded out in a whuump! as he bent double in reaction.
Kassern grabbed Karly's other arm and jerked her back.
"Let me go, you bastard." She wrenched her arm away from Kassern and stomped out the door.
Kassern tracked her footsteps to their room feeling like the twenty-two foot distance spanned eternity. "You okay, man?"
Troy grunted with a few gasps of shaky air. "Who pissed in her cereal?" He rubbed at his abdomen, slightly bent over still. "Yeah, I'm okay. Question is, is she okay?”
The voiced concern coupled with the sensation of her presence leaving their hide-out sent Kassern on a turbo-powered flash after her. His panic doubled when he realized she'd not only left their safe location, she'd left the shielded area he and Dorn had so carefully prepared to mask their presence from the demons. She might as well have sent up a flare announcing their presence, since she should have known he would flash after her, using angelic power.
He really didn't want to fight with her again, but there didn't seem anything else he could do about it. Alerting Dorn and his quad of their compromised position, he proceeded with extreme caution and appeared directly in her path grabbing hold of both her upper arms, prepared to use force. "Baby? You’re not okay, I’m taking you to the Grotto of Aesculapius.”
Karly halted and glared up at him. "What? Because I sucker punched the Bible-thumping fag? Really?" She shook her head and tried to free herself only to curse under her breath and bare her teeth at him.
"You know I love you, right? I’m not going to let anything happen to you but this isn't like you." He grabbed her hands and held fast.
"Let go of me." She jerked again, her angry glare and growl growing more intense. She pulled harder, determined to break his hold.
Thanks to the angelic power she’d inherited, he didn't see the toe of her shoe coming until it collided with his shin. He grunted but didn’t let go. "Enough, Karly." He fought the temptation to shake a little sense into her. "You've already drawn the demons a map right to us. What the hell is going on?"
Tears filled her eyes and her fury gave way to confusion. "Kassern? What happened?"
Terror pumped into Kassern at her sudden confusion. Not a good sign. "There's no time to talk about it now." His demon radar was screeching warnings and he glanced around, looking for the threat. "Come on, we have to get out of here before a—" He staggered into Karly when something big hit the center of his back, hard.
The switch flipped in her eyes again and she went from his sweet, confused wife, to the angry mean banshee. Her palm met his jaw with a resounding thwack that rocked him back on his heels just as another blow from behind rattled every bone in his body.
Kassern spun to meet the new threat, reluctant to turn his back on Karly and whatever was going on with her. His ruby armor gave him his current favorite automatic handgun modeled after the .50 caliber. He panned the gun's muzzle across the visible area, searching for the threat.
Nothing.
The tightly packed spiritual power in the ammo wouldn't do much good without a target to blast. Frustration formed a knot in his gut. He didn't have time to search out the enemy and fight his determined wife when he should be getting the hell out of Dodge.
As the thought passed through his head, he saw it. A low demon grinned, displaying a mouth full of nastily serrated teeth, brilliant white enough for a toothpaste commercial. A Soul Eater. The thing didn't have much spiritual or physical strength, but psychically, it was formidable.
It moved a little, revealing its vaguely canine body. Bipedal and human sized, with a chameleon-like ability to blend into the background, the Soul Eater looked like an over-sized collie/shepherd type dog with misshapen hind legs that allowed it to walk upright.
The beast raised its head to sniff the air, flaring too-large nostrils to reveal crusty yellow and green tissue. Large ears flicked front to back. "What's this?" The long narrow mouth and lolling tongue, unintended for human speech, mangled the words. The demon pulled black leathery lips back to reveal the magnificent teeth again. "Angel and human. Sex. And something dark and new."
Kassern refused to rise to the demon's bait. He grabbed Karly's hand to flash them away, the mist of ruby particles swirling around him.
Suddenly his hand was empty. He spun within the rising cloud and found Karly outside the red haze of his long-distance translocation power.
The grin on his wife's face froze Kassern's blood in his vein
s. Cold anger and hatred turned her natural beauty into an ugly mask of evil. Holy Father. Could the demon exert some kind of power over her? Of course it could, through the taint of her previous sins of prostitution.
Kassern stepped out of the mist ready for battle. He would not forfeit his beloved at any cost.
The demon's grin broadened. "Ah, I knew you couldn't resist the challenge."
Suspicions confirmed, Kassern switched weapons. His handgun morphed into a weapon of his own design, patterned after a fishing net. He cast it without warning, allowing the ruby filaments of power to expand. A second net immediately followed.
The strands of the first net stretched, glistening and pulsing with supernatural energy, to surround and encompass the demon.
The thing screeched and shook furiously, but the net held fast then began to contract as the demon struggled against the restraint. At the same time, the second net surrounded Karly and pulled snug to fit her like a glove. As the net came into contact with her skin, it glowed, radiating the power of Kassern's love for her.
Karly's face changed again, the evil rolling back to reveal her normal visage as she looked around in surprise.
The demon's net continued to shrink, pulling the thing into ever tighter contortions while it shrieked and howled, a sound of fury, until it was finally just a bit larger than a softball. Kassern snatched it up and exhaled a ruby mist to cover every pore of the demon's skin. The moisture soaked in, then hardened into a gemstone-infused lump of dark material.
He sliced through the fabric of the dimension with a fingernail and tossed the thing through. The slit closed with a liquid melding that left no trace. The demon would join the several thousand others being safely contained in the inter-dimensional space until Kassern had time to deliver them safely to the Gates of Hell.
He turned back to Karly who once more looked like the woman he'd fallen in love with, the shadow of evil gone from her face.
His demon radar was screeching again, the wonderful sensation of nails raking a chalkboard. With no time for the niceties, he grabbed Karly's hand and flashed them away with the barest thought.
** ** **
Lucian paced, annoyed with the thick carpeting. The outer room of the plush hotel suite where he'd been left to cool his heels aggravated him to no end. Why did they have to go to meet the Pope's representative anyway? Surely the priest could have come to them.
He wasn't sure how Dorn had convinced the Vatican Envoy that Jessie had something valuable to offer in the birth control debate, but somehow he'd managed. And now the Pope seemed to be considering granting her a private audience. If she convinced the representative.
What she might have to do to convince the sleazeball was the problem. Already he could hear her, her voice soft and intimate, coaxing. And when the priest replied, his voice rumbled with very unpriestly arousal.
Damn his head hurt.
Dorn cleared his throat, drawing Lucian's attention. The angel sat at one end of the sofa with Sally tucked under his arm. Where anyone else would have sprawled, Mr. Perfection kept his spine straight and feet flat on the floor.
When Lucian failed to acknowledge him the angel cleared his throat again and spoke. "What's wrong, Lucian?"
He froze. "Why would you think something's wrong?"
Dorn shook his head and pointed to the gilt-framed mirror over the bus-sized fireplace. "Look."
Scowling, Lucian followed directions. The right side of his face was sickly gray instead of his normal tan. Darker splotches within the gray swirled, looking ready to erupt with some sort of poison.
He lifted his hand to touch the skin and found it icy cold, almost painful to touch. His fingers against it felt like white hot brands and he jerked away. Panic struck and his heart nearly pounded its way through his ribs. "The mark?" His voice cracked and became a weak whisper, unable to hold his usual timbre.
Dorn rose and stood beside him. "Whatever is going through your head, you need to get a handle on it. I can guess what it is, and I have to remind you to trust your wife. She won't do anything to betray you."
A few lucid seconds and Lucian sighed. God. Of course she wouldn't. His sweet Jessie didn't have a traitorous fiber in her being. His mind filled with the sound of her soft cries as he made love to her. No, he had nothing to worry about.
He started to turn from the mirror but his image caught his attention again. The gray had faded and the dark splotches had disappeared entirely. He gasped. If he hadn't seen it, he would never have believed the mark held such power.
"Remember, you have to keep those lies out of your head. Doubt is the weapon the enemy will use against you because it's your natural reaction. You have to fight it."
Apparently.
“Something’s wrong.” Toren hovered next to Kassern in the air. He’d had to leave his body that was supposed to be incapacitated due to his injuries, to go talk to the other angel.
“What’s up? Short version please. Karly's at the Grotto of Aesculapius for a bunch of tests.”
"Sorry, but I didn't know what else to do and I'm afraid the mission is going off track." Toren shook his head. “I think I want her too much.”
Kassern quirked a brow.
“I mean I…” Toren wasn’t sure how to put it in human terms. “My mercury is going insane around her it wants…it wants to bind to her. It’s extremely aggressive about it.”
Both his brows raised at that. “How aggressive.”
“As in I have to fight myself to keep from…”
“Tearing into her.”
Toren gasped at his accuracy. “Yes. Exactly.”
Kassern whistled long. “That’s supposed to happen after your humans connect.”
“That was my thought. If it gets worse than it is, I’m concerned I’ll…”
“Hurt her.”
Again he was relieved with his understanding. “Yes.”
“I’ll talk to Uriel and Dorn, see what they think.”
“What am I supposed to do meanwhile? I mean does it matter in which order the quadrumvirates are formed?”
“You mean can you and her join first?”
“Yes.”
“What’s going on here?”
They turned at Dorn’s sudden appearance in the air next to them.
“Hurry, I can’t stay gone long.” He looked at Toren. “Where is your body?”
“Injured. Not really,” Toren said at seeing Dorn’s confusion. “If I’m human I would be. Got trampled by a horse.”
“Oh for crying out loud,” Dorn muttered. "What are you doing on that farm? We do not have time for this. Have your humans mated?”
Toren decided to ignore the angel’s useless attitude. “Haven’t found them yet.”
“Haven’t found them? It’s been three days! So what are you doing here? Now?”
“He’s experiencing the symptoms of his human couple’s joining before they actually join, before he's even found them,” Kassern said.
Dorn’s perfect brows narrowed. “What? How? He hasn’t even found them.”
Kassern sighed. “I’ll need to contact Uriel and talk to him about it. See if there is a necessary order in the formation of the quads.”
“Order is always necessary,” Dorn said. “We can’t keep hodge-podging this operation. Not if we want to ensure our success. No, we keep the balance in the order that it is. Human joining, then angel joining. We don’t know enough about this to dilly dally with the formula.”
Kassern nodded slightly. “I think he’s right Toren.”
“I have to return. She’s coming.”
“Keep your body parts away from her,” Dorn ordered. “Keep your distance. The closer you are to her, the harder it is. Make an excuse to spend a few days away.”
Toren shook his head. “Well, I’m unconscious at the moment and she’s about to walk through the door to doctor me.”
Kassern made a painful sound while Dorn shook his head. �
�Our prayers are with you, brother.” Kassern patted his shoulder.
“Whatever good that will do,” Dorn added. "My God, he hasn’t even gained humanity yet and…” Dorn’s rambling faded with their spiritual particles. Thankfully. He was a good soldier but a fucking annoying brother.
Toren hurried back to his body and slipped inside it even while Samantha was examining him. She was in the process of panicking because she couldn’t find any vital signs.
“Oh shit oh shit.” She approached his mouth and opened it with her hands then put hers right over it.
So much for the power of prayer.
Toren put his hand on her head and held her still while he kissed her. His moans not at all matching her startled ones.
She pulled up with a gasp and stared at him in shock. “Thank you,” he said. “Your lips have the power of life in them.”
She slapped his arm. “What are you doing? I just…” she looked up and down his body, confused. “You seemed…”
“I sleep hard.”
“You’ve been unconscious!”
Toren tried to block out her scent. Her sexy smell intoxicated him every time she came near. He’d relived that moment in the bathroom repeatedly until his mercury became desperately restless for more data. The way she’d touched him. The look in her eyes. She was ready for him in that second, her desire so rich it pained him, filled him with the need to devour. And if they hadn’t been disturbed he would’ve ripped her jeans down and put her on the sink and finally drank from her delicious fountain.
And she would’ve let him.
Toren focused on keeping his own sex member from growing. He braced for her touch, concern overriding her anger now. On his forehead first. Her cool fingers. He wanted to taste those too, bite on them lightly. “I’m using my face to check your temperature so don’t…do anything crazy.” Toren froze as she lowered and pressed her cheek to his. He turned into the feeling as she pulled up and slid the covers down to gently press on those bandages they’d wrapped him in. It’d only been two days since the accident, not long enough to heal. Not that he was in a hurry with her as his doctor.