Bond with Me

by Anne Marsh

  That he would, if he really wanted to.

  As he watched her stride out of his club, he signaled to one of his trackers to follow her. Brends was going to have Mischka Baran’s secrets. Every last one.

  Brends went back out into the alley—because Mischka Baran had got one thing right.

  He couldn’t leave the bodies where they were.

  Unfortunately for Mischka, she was clearly used to being right. Or self-righteous. Brends wanted to kiss that prim, careful smile from her face, coax those plump lips into relaxing, opening up for him. He couldn’t shake the hot, sweet taste of that mouth.

  Business. He needed to focus on business. Zer would have questions.

  Hell, he had questions. Plenty of questions, but no concrete answers.

  The air’s bite was already noticeably colder as he stepped outside. The darkness was lightening, the blackness no longer almost impenetrable. The mazhlight at the far end of the alley was a paler blur. Dawn was coming, coming fast.

  Zer was crouched beside the dead human female, his large hands methodically going through her pockets. The ID he tossed to Brends claimed she was one Ming John. Pocketing the card, Brends made a mental note to check out the address later.

  He examined the dead human. Her injuries reminded him of—but no, that wasn’t possible. Heavenly angels didn’t come hunting down here. Still, the wounds on the female’s body were not defensive. Whatever—whoever—had grabbed the female had done so too swiftly for her to have a chance to fight back. That, or she’d been too scared to do so. Either way, she was stone-cold dead and he was up to his ass in shit. No way were they hushing up this murder. The Goblins might own M City, but he knew only too well that it was a leaky sieve when it came to information. This information would find a way out.

  “Security vid you wanted.” Standing up, Zer passed the thin data stick to Brends. “Check it out.”

  Sliding the slim stick into his vid-player, Brends watched the footage play across the small screen. First the crisp outline of the night-shadowed alley. The camera made a methodical pan of the space and turned up nothing out of the ordinary. Not so much as a stray dog.

  He skipped ahead several frames until Hushai and his companion began walking rapidly up the alley. The female was tucked into his side and the brother looked grim. His shitkickers beat a heavy rhythm on the pavement. When she said something too low for the security vid to capture, Hushai hesitated.

  When Hushai bent his head toward hers to catch the words, the world exploded.

  The rogue launched himself from the shadows, dropping straight down out of the sky. Hushai had been watching the shadows around him. He had not been watching the sky. It was a mistake that cost him dearly. None of them would make that mistake again; Brends made a note to brief his team and send out word.

  On the small screen, the rogue was a large, hulking shape. His back in the shadows, Brends couldn’t tell how the bastard had descended so quickly or from where. He’d send his trackers out to look for a tie off, but he didn’t think they’d find one.

  He looked again. The bastard had grown a pair of wings.

  Freezing the vid, Brends looked at Zer. “We need to make our move on Michael. Now.”

  “You think the bastard got his wings from Michael? He certainly kills like Michael did.” Three thousand years ago, someone had carved a very bloody path through the Heavens, hacking up angels indiscriminately. Michael had accused the Dominions of the murders, but the Dominions had believed Michael himself was responsible. “We were both there. None of us imagined what happened. We didn’t do it.”

  Brends looked at Zer. “Someone did. And Michael was never quick to judge, so whoever, whatever, convinced him of our guilt must have made a damned good case.”

  If this killer was Heavens-sent, it was the chance to prove with black-and-white certainty that there was, in fact, a killer loose in the Heavens. A chance to prove that Brends’s sire and his fellow Dominions had not been guilty of the crime of which they’d been accused—because someone else had committed those crimes. Someone like Michael. “What else could it be?”

  Zer stroked his chin, all contemplative like, as if he weren’t standing ankle deep in blood in an M City back alley. As if he were still the bloody prince of the Heavens, with a full court of angels kissing his royal ass. The time for thinking was over. It was time to act.

  “Play the rest of the vid,” he said.

  The fight was brutal. Quick. Too quick. Hushai was a mean, street-hardened fighter. Their rogue took off his head with ease.

  After making his kill, the rogue turned to face the security cameras. Eilor. Brends hadn’t known the former Dominion well, but the bastard was humming under his breath as he wiped the blade clean. The entire scene had taken twenty seconds, tops. Brends almost didn’t recognize him, but that wasn’t unexpected. There were thousands of Fallen and some had hidden themselves away for millennia. Plus, the soul thirst twisted a male. Distorted his face, his features, burning away the man and replacing it with the beast.

  As the lupine face of the killer made all too clear.

  The club door cracked open in the vid and Mischka Baran stepped out into the alley.

  What the hell?

  The rogue melted back into the shadows, paused. The humming stopped abruptly and there was no mistaking the flare of interest in the male’s eyes. He palmed a vid-player of his own, images flashing rapidly over the small screen.

  “Have security run the vid,” Brends said. “Slow the feed stream down. Have them find out what the bastard is looking at.” The rogue on his screen froze a frame with a tap of his thumb and Mischka Baran’s face stared up out of the small screen in his palm.

  That was a connection he hadn’t anticipated.

  The rogue knew who Mischka Baran was.

  In the vid, Mischka Baran moved toward the bodies. The rogue’s gaze tracked her, one hand going to his knife. He’d thought about using the blade—hell, yeah, he had.

  So why hadn’t the rogue killed Mischka Baran?

  He had his answer in the next frame. Brends saw himself appear at the far end of the alley. The rogue’s glance moved between the two of them and a slow smile, frightening in its ferocity, creased his dark face.

  Then the rogue shot upward, and the vid ended.

  “Put out the description. I want every Goblin from here to Siberia to have Eilor’s mug staring up at him within the hour,” Zer ordered.

  Brends nodded. Interfering with his territory was a fatal mistake. This rogue would pay for that intrusion.

  He’d find a way to deal with the preternatural strength of the rogue later. And with the wings. If he was honest, he didn’t know if he could stop the rogue. But he’d find a way. He had to. The bastard was hunting on Brends’s turf and had killed a brother. No one did that and lived. No one.

  “I’ll catch him,” he vowed.

  “And then?” Zer prompted.

  Information would be useful. First. “We’ll have us a conversation,” he acknowledged. “I’d like to learn more about these wings of his. Where they came from, who gave them to him.”

  Zer nodded a terse acknowledgment. “Keep it quiet.”

  Brends didn’t like taking orders. Hell, he’d never been good at it. Still, he hadn’t been planning to make a block party of it. “Because?”

  “Because I said so,” Zer said with smooth menace. “And because, last time I checked, you were sworn to me.”

  Brends eyed his sire coldly. “So now you’re going to tell me how to do my job? You want to hunt this rogue down yourself, sire?”

  “No.” Zer didn’t back down. In a hand-to-hand fight, they would have been evenly matched, but they both knew Brends wouldn’t raise a hand to Zer. Because he had sworn to the male. “You take this one. Fine. But I have a job to do, too. Liaising with humans doesn’t get any easier, Brends, when one of my brothers is running around publicly hunting down another. They have rules about violence here.”

  “Rules we
ignore.”

  “But we don’t rub their faces in it. A modicum of discretion, Brends, that’s all I’m asking for.”

  For fuck’s sake, he had to handle humans with kid gloves now? Sure, Goblins had never been welcome. Sure, M City, heart of the paranormals’ empire, had a nuclear arsenal pointed straight at it and a bunch of trigger-happy human politicians who, when they weren’t busy grandstanding for their constituents, just might be willing to punch a button to make their point.

  Humans looked in their papers, flipped on their televisions and saw a pack of bloodthirsty monsters. Which was not, Brends reflected, all that far from the truth. Soul thirst did that to a male. Most of them simply managed to control it. Or had it controlled for them. That’s what the Preserves were for. Even so, delicacy wasn’t exactly in Brends’s nature. And yet, no matter how rough he seemed to humans, he could never show them the full extent of the beast living inside him. Because if the humans cottoned on to the truth, they’d be punching buttons left and right, more than ready to blow half their planet to kingdom come if it took the Heavens’ outcasts with the blast.

  His eyes flickered. “It’s quicker to simply hunt down the rogue. I get it. I’ll take care of it.”

  Unfortunately, the soul thirst had reduced more and more of the original Goblin warriors to mindless beasts ruled by the bloodlust and primal instinct. They either killed to satisfy those thirsts or their saner brethren locked them up on the Preserves Brends had created. Brends had bought up great sweeps of land on the Russian steppes where the predators could roam in packs, hunting, howling. Where the beast could roam freely and the man knew that he would not tear apart the innocent. He’d built Preserves in Siberia. Two on the African plains. And more in Greenland and the American desert. Human military patrolled the watchtowers on the perimeters. The high, wire-topped walls were filled with the latest sensor technology and to touch the wall was death. All designed to keep the beasts in.

  “No civilian casualties. No obvious property damage. By all means, hunt him. Take him to the Preserves or kill him. I don’t care which you choose. But you do it without alerting the entire human world to your actions, Brends. No collateral damage.”

  He didn’t kill indiscriminately—only when the situation warranted killing. “Fine. No collateral damage, but”—he eyed the vid—“I’ll need the female.”

  “The dead one?”

  “No. That one.” His thumb caressed the frozen image of Mischka Baran. “Our rogue spotted her; he’s got her pic on his vid. Unless I miss my guess, he’ll be hunting her next.”

  “You see yourself on protective duty?”

  “No.” Hell, no. The only thing he protected was his sire. And his brothers. The rest of the world could go to hell. After all, the fallen angels had already been condemned to hell. And it hadn’t turned out as badly as Michael had hoped. “She’s bait.”

  Six

  Eilor was merely a tool.

  A century ago, Cuthah had given the Goblin back his wings—temporarily—and Eilor, in exchange, focused his obsessive need for violence on the females Cuthah identified. A win-win situation.

  Eilor’s kills didn’t interest Cuthah. Those were casualties of war, and while the dead were graphic reminders of certain costs, they were really just a means to the end. Cold, raw power. The power to reshape the Heavens. Four ranks of angel guardians were all that was left between him and the final throne. Having the Fallen cast out had been a masterstroke. Their kind, the Dominions, had been fierce fighters. Now, however, he needed to keep them where they were.

  Out of the equation.

  Impotent.

  Soon, Michael wouldn’t question any longer. Three millennia the male had waited, wondering why none of his beloved Dominions had found—or even sought—redemption in the arms of their soul mates. And meanwhile, the number of soul mates dwindled with every passing year. When these two were dead, there might not be more than a dozen left in the world. Cuthah would be safer than he’d ever dreamed of being.

  Because Michael never went back on his word. And he’d vowed that the Fallen would never return to the Heavens until they’d found their soul mates.

  Of course, as a tool, Eilor simply didn’t understand this larger picture, and that meant that sometimes he got things wrong. Very wrong.

  For example, Eilor had had no idea that Cuthah, the archangel Michael’s second-in-command, had been identifying potential soul mates almost since the Fall. And wouldn’t the Fallen be interested in knowing that little fact? Of course, Cuthah had no intention of sharing. The information was too valuable.

  Another interesting little tidbit that Cuthah had learned since the Fall was just how one found these potential mates. Sheer, raw sex would eventually do it, but Cuthah had never been particularly interested in running an M City—sized orgy. Instead, he’d researched bloodlines. Granted, the work was slow and rather tedious. Cuthah had been at it now for centuries. It wasn’t the possibility of making a mistake and identifying the wrong females—after all, human females were disposable, and knocking off a couple of extra here and there really didn’t make a difference. No, the reason for the painstaking research, tracing the females descended from a particular biblical tribe, was that he couldn’t afford to overlook even one potential soul mate. Until he eliminated them all, the Fallen still had a chance to return to the Heavens.

  That tribe had run almost exclusively to females, birthing girl children one after the other. Fortunately, that kind of genetic inheritance meant the tribe had therefore died out quickly, at least as far as names and birthrights were considered. Less fortunately, some of those females had lived on, intermarrying with other tribes, spreading their contaminated DNA far and wide. A genetic clusterfuck of gigantic proportions.

  All of the potential soul mates he had discovered so far had come from these lines. He’d spent years sifting through public records until the unexpected boon of the Internet. The Internet was like stumbling on an all-you-can-eat buffet, what with the genealogy sites and fan clubs. He’d picked the females off as he—or minions like Eilor—found them.

  Unfortunately, Eilor would have to try harder, or Cuthah would be in the market for an upgrade. Eilor had killed one soul mate—and lost two. Unacceptable.

  “Two,” Cuthah repeated, because he’d already had this conversation once. He kept his voice flat and unemotional. The facts were all that mattered right now, and the fact was that Eilor had got it all wrong.

  “I got one,” Eilor pointed out, clearly not wanting to be shortchanged. “Ming John.” He, too, believed facts were facts.

  “And lost two. Pelinor Arden and Mischka Baran.”

  “I’ll find them.” Eilor would. There weren’t too many places a human could hide from the likes of him, even in the heart of the Goblin empire. Sooner or later, he’d catch up with them. And he’d kill them. It was all really quite simple.

  It was still deliciously ironic, however, that the fallen angels running around on Earth had no clue that Michael really had left them a back door, a chance for redemption. Cuthah was doing all he could to keep it that way—and close the door for good.

  There were three more names on Eilor’s current list. One down. Five to go. If the bloodline was in doubt, Cuthah still ordered the killings. If a few innocent females happened to end up on the wrong end of a blade, well, they were martyrs for the greater good. Cuthah had no doubt they’d be rewarded. Just not by him. Not now.

  He stared at the bleeding rogue. Unfortunately, punishment just didn’t seem to stick with Eilor. He seemed to thrive on his punishments and see them as some sign of favor.

  Really, it made his job that much more difficult.

  Cuthah flicked a finger casually, opening another thin slice in the rogue’s skin, watching closer. When he saw the flicker of pain in the other’s eye, he decided that might be enough. Finally. Eilor was bleeding from the wounds Cuthah had inflicted. The ribbons of pain that colored the rogue’s aura were delicious, but—he looked down—he woul
d need to replace the floor. Things had got rather messy this time.

  The little human Eilor had collected earlier seemed horrified by the whole proceeding. She’d started by screaming—too loudly, so Eilor had been forced to hit her sooner than he wanted—and had finally subsided into terrified whimpers. Really, she seemed to think that someone would come to rescue her. Her naivety was delightful.

  Still, perhaps it was time to check Eilor’s violence. After all, eventually even Michael would notice and might start asking questions.

  “Just so we’re clear…,” Cuthah repeated calmly, because with rogues you couldn’t be too clear. They tended to go haring off on their own quests, which was yet another disadvantage of using the insane to do your work. All that delightful brutality was paired with a childlike predictability, when it came to distraction. “You’re going to go back to M City and you’re going to find these two you lost. Find them, Eilor.” He held up a cautionary finger. “Or I’ll be very displeased. Again. I’ve Michael to placate as well, unless you’d like the archangel sticking his unwelcome nose into our little business. What he doesn’t know doesn’t hurt us, but imagine where his interest would lead.”

  The human whimpered. Again. Really, she was getting too tiresome. They all lived such protected lives that they caved at the first sign of violence. This one might have been related to one of the Fallen. Or not. Cuthah did not care particularly. She was still young and that meant that Eilor had broken her easily. Plus, she had a most exquisite sense of pain.

  As he watched, Eilor picked up her hand, gently twisting her forearm. Blood streaked down the pale skin. “Lovely,” Cuthah said absentmindedly. “A pity that I really do have to leave you now. And that I am in such a rush today. Perhaps another time? No?” He chuckled when she flinched, unable to control the telltale sign.

  Eilor pressed a kiss against the raw flesh.