“Come now, you know that isn’t true,” he whispered, smiling a different kind of smile, as if he were calling her out and it was a private joke. He reached slowly to brush her cheek again, and this time when she tried to turn away, she simply couldn’t.
She felt a wave of danger wash over her. “You have twenty-four hours, Angel. I will come for your answer tomorrow night. And for you. Either way.” His eyes scorched a path over her face, stark and starving. “What happens in the meantime is on your hands.”
With that, he spun in a blur of darkness and magic, and was gone.
Chapter Forty-One
Gabriel left the Demon King’s safe house at a fast stride, exiting through a seemingly normal set of double doors that actually deposited him directly into an alley-way “Harry Potter” style. He moved down the alley until he was clear of the king’s wards, then prepared to transport.
He needed to see Angel immediately to fill her in on Dmitri Voronin. Unfortunately, this job had taken longer than he’d have liked. Gabe wouldn’t have taken it had he known Angel would return to Vega territory tonight. As it was, she had been home a good ten minutes already by his estimates. By now she was no doubt pissed off about the extra “security” he’d sent to her apartment.
The moment he’d hung up after speaking with Angel and Crow, Gabriel had called in reinforcements. He’d known it would take him some time to finish dealing with the mess he and his team were in the middle of, so he issued fast orders while dodging spells and demon attacks, then went back to work.
Knight, Hudson, and Daniels were sent immediately to her apartment to meet her there, as was originally planned. Angel was going to motherfucking learn that she couldn’t escape Gabriel’s orders that easily.
Oh, I’m sure she’s learned, Gabe, his guilty mind told him as he called up the transport. You’re probably going to catch a shit ton of heat from her for this.
It doesn’t matter, he told himself firmly. She would just have to deal. He’d done what he’d felt he had to do to keep her safe.
The transport spell swirled around him, melted the dingy colors of the alley, and took him through time and space. But as he neared his destination, Angel’s apartment, he became troubled. The walls of the transport tunnel took on a reddish hue. It was never a good sign when they did that.
Gabriel pulled the gun from his holster, readied it, and waited for the spell to open and let him out. The moment the exit was large enough for him to step through, his concern changed to alarm. He smelled blood. There was a lot of it.
His only consolation was that he didn’t smell her blood.
Gabriel ran from the tunnel as it deposited him, leaping into the apartment that waited beyond its exit. His boots gained an immediate footing in literal inches of spilled blood. His mind cursed as he turned, surveying the damage. Instantly his eyes fell on the figures at the center of the living room.
“Gabe!” Angel called out through clenched teeth. She was struggling with one of three hanging bodies that dangled in grisly fashion from the ceiling. “Please… help me!”
Gabriel shoved his gun into its holster and strode to the center of the room, taking the weight of the Vega assassin’s body off Angel’s hands. He concentrated on the chain around the man’s chest. It had been fastened differently than the other two, and knowing what Gabe knew of the killer’s MO at this point, he was pretty sure he knew why.
Ares Knight wasn’t like the other two assassins. Prior to becoming members of the Vega clan, Hudson and Daniels had already been trained assassins. They’d killed dozens of people, if not hundreds.
But Ares had been, of all things, a kindergarten teacher. Knight wasn’t a bad man. He was a man with serious talent who’d been seriously wronged. He’d lost his family to the supernatural. It sent him to Gabriel’s door and gave him a reason to want to kill. And now if he survived, it looked like he’d have another reason.
The chain around Ares was meant to be undone so the man could be safely lowered, and from what Gabriel could see and smell, his injuries were the kind that would slowly cause him to hemorrhage to the point of death, but there’d been no direct damage to internal organs.
In comparison, the other two had been strung so tight, their chains cut deep into their chest cavities.
The killer knew about the pasts of these men, and as he’d done with all of his prior victims, he’d acted accordingly.
Gabriel tried not to think about the loss he was facing. He shoved it into the recesses of his mind like he’d been trained to do long ago and focused on the task at hand. After a few tense seconds that seemed far longer than they really were, Gabe managed to get the chain loose and lower Knight gently to the ground.
He knew the immediate danger in the apartment had passed, or he never would have reholstered his gun. There was no one else there with them – but there had been. Gabe recognized the killer’s signature in everything around them. He also recognized the fleeting remnants of his vast power, and caught fading traces of his singular scent.
Dmitri Voronin had been here. This bloodshed was his handiwork.
Angel wasted no time kneeling beside Ares, and Gabe gave her space. She placed her hands upon the barely moving chest cavity of the Vega assassin and closed her eyes. He watched as her hands began to glow, and within seconds that precious glow widened, spreading out to encompass the whole of Knight’s tortured body.
Gabriel waited. He waited and he tried not to think.
He tried desperately not to think about the fact that the moment he’d come close enough to Angel, he could smell someone else on her. In fact, he could smell the bastard all over her. In the most intimate of ways.
Gabe’s eyes felt too hot. His fingertips twinged. His gums felt swollen. Down on the blood-splattered floor in front of him, Angel Clemens released rare magic into one of his team members, healing his wounds from the inside out. Gabriel forced himself to focus on that, on the life being saved, on the death all around him, and on the danger that could at any moment return. And as he did, he regained control over his body.
When Ares began to stir beneath Angel’s touch, Gabe took a knee beside them. With one arm under the man’s head to lift him to a sitting position, he helped the assassin regain his faculties.
“What happened?” Gabriel asked him.
Ares was discombobulated. He’d been near death, and strong magic was moving through him right now, not unlike an extreme narcotic. Ares was high. Gabe knew he would feel weak, light-headed, euphoric. He knew he would need a few moments.
But time pressed in on them; the night was young. And Gabriel’s patience was officially all burned out. He snapped his head around and pinned Angel with an uncompromising look. “Okay, you tell me what happened,” he demanded. It was almost a growl.
But when Angel flinched at the tone of his voice, and he really took the time to look at her, he realized she wasn’t having the easiest time of it either.
Of course she’s not, you idiot. She faced off with Dmitri!
She was pale, she was scared, and she’d used a lot of magic to heal Knight’s wounds. She was also kneeling in a puddle of blood – in her own living room. She had probably walked in on this nightmare.
Despite his lingering anger at her for disobeying his orders and fleeing to Monsters territory, this wasn’t the welcoming party he’d wanted for her on her return. This right here was a little slice of Hell.
He took a deep breath and made sure Ares could sit on his own. Then he sat back on his heels. “Please Angel,” he said, this time more gently. “Tell me what happened.”
Angel nodded, but refused to meet his gaze. It troubled him, but he didn’t push her. She stared at the ground, and he followed her gaze to see that she was unable to pull it away from a particularly nasty puddle of blood. That one was beneath Daniels.
Gabe felt a pang of something inside and realized it was a mix of two emotions. One was a primal need to protect. The other was cold, hard fury. He needed to protect Angel.
He was furious that someone had dared touch any of his clan members, much less kill them. And most of all, he was raging mad that it had happened right in front of her.
“I knew something was wrong when I pulled into the parking garage,” she said. “It just felt off. But I didn’t put it together until I opened my apartment door. I… I could smell metal right away.” Her voice was distant. It sounded the way it had when he’d come upon her after Dmitri’s attack fifteen years ago.
Damn it, no.
“Dmitri was waiting for me,” she continued. “He had attacked all three of them and….” She swallowed. He watched her throat move, struggling with what must have been a closing passage. “He hung them up.”
Gabriel had figured that much out already. What he wanted to know was why the asshole was gone, and Angel was still here. If he’d been Dmitri, he wouldn’t have left until she was turned – and then he would have taken her with him. In chains.
“We fought.” She shrugged, a defeated gesture he’d never seen her use before. “Sort of.” She closed her eyes and her head dropped a little. It was clear she felt ashamed. She hadn’t bagged the supe. She’d lost, and in doing so, she felt she’d failed in her warden duties.
“He was just… too fast.” She paused then, and looked up at him. “I think he knew you were coming though. He told me he would be back and he just left. And then you walked in.”
Gabriel studied her in silence. She seemed so sincere. And yet, he couldn’t shake the feeling she wasn’t telling him everything. There was more to this story than she was letting on. All he knew for certain was that Dmitri had killed two of his men and that Angel wasn’t lying about Dmitri promising to be back.
So that was what he focused on.
“You can’t stay here,” he told her with finality. “And for once in your damn stubborn life, you’re going to do what I tell you, and go where I tell you to go.”
He took her firmly by the wrist as he stood, dragging her up with him. He ignored her shocked expression as she stumbled to her feet beside him, but when she yanked her arm free of his grasp, Gabriel felt his entire body tense as if preparing for a fight.
She surprised him, though. Rather than pull away, she stepped closer to him, leveling a gaze on him that made him feel her eyes were throwing sparks and he was standing in a powder keg. That fiery, furious gaze narrowed dangerously as she pointed her finger and leaned in to let him have it.
“You are the reason these men are dead, Gabriel,” she hissed with poisonous malice. “I came back here tonight out of some sick sense of duty, to apologize to you for disobeying orders and to tell you that I’d been granted the Apex case! Why? Because I fucking care! Because I’m your second-in-command and I felt it was my goddamn job!”
She shook her head, baring her straight, white teeth. “If I hadn’t felt so fucking obligated to do so, I never would have even called you, much less driven back here. And then you wouldn’t have overreacted and sent three fucking assassins into my apartment to await my return!”
He could feel her magic pouring out of her. It was something he’d never experienced before. It was like watching a star fall apart, its outer layers shedding magnanimous light that illuminated everything around it as it drifted away. It was yellow-gold, and to him it tasted like honey. Wasted honey. She was losing control of it, right here and now for the first time in her life, letting it slip past her defenses in her absolute horror and misery.
And she was right. He was to blame.
What the hell was he doing being mad at her?
Gabriel very slowly held up his hands in a sign of defeat and took a step back, giving her space. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry, Angel.” He shook his head, just once from side to side. “Please forgive me.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Pull yourself together, Angel.
She could feel the sponge-like squishiness of the soaked carpet beneath her boot. And she could feel control slipping away from her. She knew her magic was going with it, but she barely cared.
You need to care. You might have to heal someone else tonight!
Everything that had happened in the last few days, even the last few weeks, was closing in on her now. The culminating last straw was the red and the darkness that now made up the furniture of her apartment living room. And something was fracturing inside her, the bending pressure fueled by the impossibility of Dmitri’s return.
Damn it, Angel. She gritted her teeth.
But she was a warden. And for fifteen years, she had trained herself to deal with pain and loss. She’d been taught to handle blood and death. She’d been schooled in moving past the red and the darkness – for moments exactly like this one.
So when the fracturing inside her grew too prevalent and she heard something vital inside begin to crack, she pooled all of her remaining will and forced herself to do two simple things.
Inhale. Exhale.
Just those two things, nothing more.
She breathed. Sometimes it was all you could do. But fortunately it was often the only thing necessary.
With the new breaths came new focus, and Angel’s mind began to clear. In that blessing of clarity, she was able to think, and to care. She reached out for her magic, and her magic at once turned, spinning around her like a protective blanket, waiting at her beck and call. She drew it completely back in and tamped it down. There wasn’t as much of it as she would have liked, but it was better than nothing.
Then she looked up at Gabriel. She knew he had only wanted to protect her by sending those men to her apartment. But this time, his male ego and ultimately, his lack of faith in her abilities, had gone too far.
“I’m not the one to forgive you,” she told him in response to his plea. Her tone was still seething, but her voice was a good deal softer now. “They are.” She couldn’t look at the two men still hanging from the ceiling. She wouldn’t. But he understood her all the same.
He slowly lowered his arms. After a tense moment, a flash of painful emotion crossed his amber eyes and he nodded. Then he seemed to contemplate her in silence for a long, careful time.
She recognized that look. Despite her defiance, despite these deaths, despite how angry she was with him, he was still the Vega clan leader, and his natural position was one of power. So she knew damn well that while he scrutinized her, he was trying to formulate a plan. The expert chess player trying to see move after move into the future.
But he was at a disadvantage this time. He didn’t know anything about Dmitri’s offer. He couldn’t see the other player’s moves. And she intended to keep it that way. She wasn’t going to let anyone else be destroyed by the man who was for some unknown reason obsessed with her. Not when there was something so simple she could do to prevent it.
“Gabriel,” she said evenly, calmly, “I’m going to go down that hall to the bedroom. I’m going to pack a few things in a travel bag. And then I’m going to go back to the Fairmont. I agreed to meet Jake there tomorrow morning anyway.” It was surreal to talk about this while they stood in stains of red and two men hung from the ceiling nearby. But that was training for you.
“Jake allowed me on the Apex case. We’re officially working it together, so even though we now know who the Apex is… Jake needs to be brought up to speed.”
A deal was a deal. She promised she would include him.
Gabriel lifted his chin a little, just a touch, and light sliced across his eyes. Angel was suddenly glad she’d taken the time to tuck Jake’s pendant under her shirt so no one could see it. She had a feeling it wouldn’t help smooth things over with Gabriel right now.
Even so, she expected him to do something cock-headed in that moment, like ask her if she’d traded her body for permission to work the case. But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He was a man, not a little boy. Instead he said, “You do realize Dmitri’s last two victims are now in Vega territory.”
Angel blinked as that truth washed over her.
Hudson and Daniels.
The two men hanging dead behind her were Dmitri’s latest victims. Technically, Gabriel was right. The job was no longer Jake’s. It was Gabe’s.
Angel’s blood began to heat up again in her veins. He was only stating the facts the way the sovereigns would see it, but her body still automatically prepared for a fight. As if Gabriel could tell this was the wrong route to take with her right now, he held up his hand in placation. “But I happen to agree with you. You should return to the Fairmont.” He took a deep breath and sighed, his eyes never leaving hers. “You’ll be safer there.”
It seemed hard for him to admit it. And honestly, she wondered why it was even true. Why would Cain’s penthouse suite at a hotel be safer than the Vega clan house with its plethora of wards, not to mention wardens milling around it at all hours?
Maybe because Dmitri has already proven he can eat through wardens like a kid and Halloween candy, she thought. But it doesn’t matter. The important thing was that he was agreeing with her, which meant she would soon be seeing Jake again.
The offer Dmitri had made to her spun like a spider’s web in her mind. She knew she couldn’t avoid it, and she knew by now that she couldn’t avoid him. She knew she would be seeing him again. The moment he’d made his offer and its promise, Angel had already made her decision.
The truth was, Angel wasn’t particularly attached to the idea of being human. It hadn’t done a whole lot for her, in all honesty. It had given her cancer. It had taken her parents from her. It made people grow old, get sick, and die. Being human meant having to watch your weight and having to sleep. It meant losing teeth and not having them grow back. It meant being physically weak and physically slow – comparatively speaking. And most of the time, it meant being ugly. God, humans were ugly. Again, comparatively speaking. But in her opinion, that was in comparison to pretty much everything else. A human had nothing on a wolf or a cat. Hell, a human had nothing on a tree frog.
Monsters, Book One: The Good, The Bad, The Cursed Page 24