His brooding gaze shifted her way with a silent, “What” when she approached him.
“Did you kick his ass?” she said low for his ears alone.
The corner of his scarred lip curled into a sinister Jokeresque smile. The tats caging his mohawk seemed deeper, obsidian in the lighting. “Yes, but it wasn’t enough.” The words were nothing more than a rough rumble, and he didn’t whisper. “He must be punished.” So said the former Angel of Atonement.
Malphas snorted, though didn’t look up from his map. “Better than you have tried and failed. Though, I must thank you for the exercise. I was getting a little thick in the middle. Let me know when you’re ready for round two.” He tapped an area on the map and mumbled something but it was drowned out by Kush’s growl.
Her hackles rose from the burgeoning tension in the room. Tension coming from all quarters.
“Soon, Demon,” said Kush.
Malphas’s head snapped up, his gaze locked on Kush. “Not demon. Demoni Lord, brother.”
Brother?
Kush’s eyes glowed full red and the scar dissecting his face seemed to lengthen and widen in stark relief against his pale skin. Blades appeared in his hands and she waited for Kush to lose his shit. Kush didn’t move from his spot by the door and he didn’t rebuke Malphas’s claim.
Could it be true? Brothers? If it were true, if Malphas and Kush were brothers, that meant Malphas was brother to all the UnHallowed.
“All of you were angels,” she whispered, and Kush nodded once. “The Demoni Lords fell first, before the Great Betrayal?”
“They created the word betrayal. It’s all those scum know!” he shouted, then lowered his voice. “Never trust them. Not their words or their deeds.”
Preaching to the choir. He didn’t need to tell her the obvious. The angels were also part of her untrustworthy circle. So much for placing her faith on the side of truth and justice. Michael and Braile didn’t know the meaning of truth when they manipulated it on a whim. And as for justice… Her parents were mauled on a lonely stretch of road by Darklings. She never knew them. How’s that for justice.
But, she did trust the UnHallowed. She trusted Bane.
“Thanks for the advice.” She patted Kush’s shoulder.
He covered her hand with a callused palm. “Sharing a prison with an enemy doesn’t make him your brother.” His midnight green eyes bore into her.
So they weren’t brothers. That didn’t answer all her questions on the subject but she squeezed Kushiél’s shoulder and crossed the room.
“It’s decided.” Bane pushed away from the table and adjusted his weapons. He’d cleaned up nicely—new leathers, white tee stretched across his chest. Her imagination had her stripping him down and dragging him back to bed. Ridiculous when they had so much to do. She should be concentrating on what’s ahead, not his body or a wayward lock curled on his forehead.
Gideon and Rimmon paired off. Daghony and Zed, Tahariél and Ioath, Chay and Kush, did the same, while Gadreel moved off by himself. Malphas continued to study the map. None spoke a word to Amaya.
For a group of men who were so concerned about her earlier, they sure knew how to ignore her. “What’s decided?”
“While you were playing Sleeping Beauty we cleared all of Malphas’s holdings and properties. Those on the books and off,” Riél volunteered.
Bane came up to her. “We worked our way through his aliases and Taige’s. Got nothing until we switched to his buddy, Aiden.”
Amaya rubbed her hands together. “Alright then. Let’s do this.” She pivoted toward Malphas, expecting to hitch a ride.
Bane took her arm, his touch gentle but firm on her bicep. “You’re not going.”
Amaya drew back and met his icy blue eyes. They seemed colder, definitely colder than when he was inside her. And his lips that had kissed and teased and tortured and laughed, were now compressed into a thin, firm line. Something had changed. She glanced around the room. Each UnHallowed had the same closed expression, even Malphas, who’d finally raised his head from the maps.
Amaya tensed, prepared for anything. “What do you mean I’m not going?”
“We believe we’ve found the Spaun’s lair.”
“Great. Then let’s go kill them and be done with it.” She yanked her arm to be free, but Bane held fast.
“The last time you fainted. If you do so again in the heat of battle, it would put all of us in danger and give the Spaun exactly what they need to open the Cruor. You,” he ground out.
She stiffened. “You don’t know that.”
“You have the grace of an archangel in your veins, fused to your atoms. That’s why they attacked you in the first place.”
She glanced at Malphas, shocked she’d divulged so much. Yeah, she admitted to being a Halfling, but she can’t believe she went into details. “Then they already have what they need. I’m going.”
“That was before the wings, Amaya,” Bane stressed.
Meaning: The attack preceded her absorbing all of Braile’s grace from his burial mound.
Now she did yank free and pointed a finger in his face. “I saved your ass! All of your asses!” She speared each of the UnHallowed with a fierce glare and returned to Bane. “You need me,” she snarled.
Banked fires flared in the depths of his eyes and his entire face softened. This was the face she stared into as unspoken words passed between them. Bane nodded once. She supposed in response to her last three words, which elated her and sealed her fate. He needed her, but not as a warrior fighting beside him in danger.
But this was bigger than what they wanted. Needs fell to the wayside when the world demanded your blood, sweat, and tears, demanded every atom you possessed to achieve the one goal you were born for. As Braile had proven, no sacrifice was too great in service of the greater good. She would do no less than her mentor would.
Amaya steeled her spine and locked her emotions down. “Just because we had sex, doesn’t give you the right to tell me what I can and cannot do.”
A long—painful—pause stretched the silence between them and everyone in the room. She didn’t break contact with Bane, yet she felt communication between the UnHallowed as if there were tangible wires strung between their bodies. What were they saying? They couldn’t agree with his bullshit decision. Repeatedly, she’d proven herself. How much proof did they need to realize she wasn’t a distraction, she could hold her own and deliver.
Voice grave, Bane said, “You’re not a part of UnHallowed. So I can’t tell you where to go, but know none of us will help you. None of us will tell you where we are going and none of us want you there.”
Well if that wasn’t a slap in the face. In one fell swoop, he officially claimed leadership of the UnHallowed, what he’d wanted all along, and cut her out. From savior to liability in three days.
Her gaze veered away from Bane. Each UnHallowed—Daghony, Kush, Chay, Gadreel, Zed, Ioath, Rimmon, and lastly, Riél—met her anger with cool resolve. The bastards. Fine. I don’t need them.
She turned to Malphas and found the same expression draping his arrogant face.
Amaya rounded on Bane, fists clenched. “So now you speak for all of them?” She clapped once. “Congratulations.”
“Amaya—”
“You finally got what you’ve wanted, leadership of the UnHallowed. Does that make you an archangel now? Your wings should appear at any moment, right? Or will you be stealing mine?”
One by one the UnHallowed entered the shadows, dismissing her. Malphas departed last, leaving by a dimensional pocket without a final glance.
Amaya and Bane were the only two left.
She squared off against him, hurt, betrayed. He usurped her in a misguided attempt to protect her fragile feminine senses. He didn’t get it. She didn’t need his protection. Not when they first met in that abandoned house in Detroit, and not now. She opened her mouth, ready to spew more hate.
“I love you.”
Her mouth closed with an audibl
e snap. Oh Shit. Did the world just tilt or was that her senses reeling from the unexpected blow to the temple?
“Watching you collapse at my feet, not knowing what was wrong, was worse than any pain I’d ever experienced, even in the bowels of Hell. Knowing you put yourself at risk, pushed yourself beyond your limits, which could’ve cost your life… It’s unacceptable.” Crimson flared in his eyes, shattering his cool façade. “I will do what’s necessary to protect you. So go ahead. I’m prepared for anything you have to say, but it won’t change my decision.”
She sputtered, her breath trapped in her chest. “You-you can’t throw out ‘I love you’ like a gauntlet. And who gave you the right to decide anything for me!”
He took her arms. She yanked away. He cupped her face and stared into her eyes.
His touch grounded her, made the anger ebb. She knocked his hands away, but Bane wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his body. He surrounded her—his warmth, his strength, his scent.
She wanted to be free as much as she wanted to stay. Unable to decide, her fingers curled into his leather coat.
“You are my Heaven,” he whispered into her hair.
“I-I-” Her brain refused to form a coherent thought so she could string together the proper words to form a sentence.
He tipped her chin up and brought her lips to his. Amaya clung, fisted his coat, and held on tight. She kissed him back with everything she couldn’t say, poured it into their connection. She felt him going, fading in her embrace.
She held on tighter, determined to keep him with her. Bane pulled away, breaking their kiss. His heated gaze roamed her face, lingered on her lips, met her eyes again—then he was gone in a swirling wave of shadows that swept over him, curled away from touching her, and vanished.
Chapter Seventeen
At a sedate pace, Sammiél walked down the sidewalk of a street named Nowhere USA, slightly amused. On one side of Nowhere USA was a bar, a convenience store, a gentleman’s club with a full parking lot, a church with an empty parking lot, and a twenty-four-hour daycare. On the other side of the street: a funeral home, and a graveyard.
One stop shopping. All your needs met on fifty yards of real estate. He shouldn’t find humor in the products of human consumption on display, yet did. Thank you, Scarla, for the silent social immersion she forced on him through the years. He interacted with so few of the species that this—what was the word? Road trip? Yes. That’s what Scarla would call it—was enlightening and reaffirming. Her presence in the lives of the UnHallowed dragged many of them out of the shadows.
Before the half-UnHallowed, half-human infant came into their lives, the fallen angels kept their distance. Less interaction meant less chance they’d kill each other on sight. She ended millennia of solitude, cured by an orphaned six-pound infant abandoned on a November night on a lonely stretch of road.
For a second, he wished the intractable female was here. Sammy needs his handheld? He snorted at the sound of her voice in his head. Better to suffer this road trip on his own than to suffer her teasing for the next sixty years…or however long she lived.
Mood fouled, Sammiél yanked his thoughts away from the Halfling he considered a member of his family and refocused on the task at hand.
A spirit floated out of the funeral home to flit between the headstones. Male. Dressed in a zoot suit with wide lapels and padded shoulders on long jackets combined with high-waisted pants, he stared at Sammiél but didn’t dart away. Why would he when death had already claimed him.
Besides, Sammiél had never been the one to collect souls. That job had been the responsibility of the Reapers. Sam had been created to deliver death on a much larger scale. Which was odd when Father charged him with the leadership of the Reapers, a role he couldn’t refuse.
The spirit floated closer, drawn to him by a supernatural magnet. This was why he never visited the dead. Because until they crossed over, they were never truly gone. They lingered, sometimes for centuries, in limbo. On earth or in Hell, limbo was the same. Waiting around for something to happen was its own special torment.
He ignored the similarities of his own behavior for the last several millennia. His pact with Father gave him little time to recover between monthly flayings. The empyreal whip cut to the bone. As is, he’d only achieved vertical in the last few hours. A week had passed since his meeting with Michael. Not that he wanted to do Michael’s bidding, but the sooner he found the female, the sooner he could demand his favor of the archangel.
He had no idea what that favor would be, but there wasn’t anything better than having Michael owe you one.
His gaze narrowed on the gentlemen’s club. The one he wanted was there. How low had the Reapers sunk if the one he sought lounged in there ogling females? Perhaps, he should find another Reaper. Indecision was a strange bedfellow when he avoided making any since his last decision robbed him of his grace.
A lie. No one robbed what he bartered away.
Again, he yanked his thoughts away from the past. Making his decision, he ignored the spirit and crossed the street. Ghosting through the brick and mortar, through the drywall and plaster, he entered the establishment and remained undetectable to the human eye.
Hard to pick what annoyed him more—the multi-colored strobe lights or the noise humans label music. Until he spotted the action on the stage and changed his opinion to humans. Definitely, humans topped the list of most annoying things on the planet.
He searched the room for the shrouded figure. The scent of sulfur, boneyard ash, mingled with a hint of decay, drifted in from the left. Death smelled death.
He veered in the direction, unimpeded by the crowd of men, milling women, tables, chairs, or anything else. Ghosting down the back hallway, he passed through the steel door at the end and stopped short.
The body of a black man lay sprawled on the floor, a hole in the center of his forehead, blood spreading in a widening pool beneath his head. Crouched next to him, the Reaper.
But not the one Sammiél expected.
He studied the cloaked, seven foot, wraithlike being with its skeletal face and hollow eyes, annoyed. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, a human coined the phrase. Except when you are imitating the Angel of Death and he finds nothing flattering about it. “You are not Daeden.”
“No. I am not.” The hooded head swung his way. The gaze—two bright orbs in the middle of a non-descript head— narrowed to two pinpoint beams. He seemed confused as to who stood in his presence and Sammiél refused to aid him. All the Reaper had to do was stretch his powers to unravel Sammiél’s identity. Yet, he didn’t. Either he didn’t want to know or he didn’t care. Mistake either way.
“What is your name?” Sammiél asked.
“I don’t answer to UnHallowed.” The figure covered part of the corpse. Grave energy traveled from the Reaper into the deceased. The process was only needed when a soul refused to vacate the premises. Stubborn spirits required prying because they knew where they were going. This one was particularly stubborn.
The Reaper increased the amount of grave energy he poured into the corpse, straining under the effort.
He was young, this Reaper, only a few centuries old, by Sammiél’s estimation. One glance at the body and Sammiél had its story, the good, and the bad. The latter outweighed the former by ten to one. That soul had a one-way ticket to Hell, knew it, and fought to stay.
With a flick of his wrist, Sammiél cast the Reaper aside. He slammed into the opposite wall and stayed there as Sammiél stepped to the body. He didn’t need to crouch beside the dead. Didn’t need to lay hands on the deceased. The Angel of Death commanded the soul to come forth and it had no choice. It obeyed.
Sammiél’s will yanked the soul free and received a shocked gasp from the Reaper. Guess he figured out who was in his presence. He released the soul and watched as it sunk through the floor. It fought the pull, not realizing the futility. He couldn’t follow—not that he wanted to—even as the Archangel of Death, w
ith all of his power, he couldn’t make the journey. That’s what brought him to this fine establishment.
“Master… Is that you?” The Reaper dropped to his knees, head bowed in supplication. Sammiél hated it, hated the bowing and scraping. Never wanted the job of leading them, the responsibility. Michael’s favor placed Sammiél in the position where he’d have to assert his leadership to complete the task. Fuck! He should’ve thought of this before he agreed. Instructing one meant instructing all. This one encounter changed everything between him and the Reapers.
“Are you the Archangel of Death?” He raised his head a fraction to stare at Sammiél.
A clip nod was all Sammiél gave.
“It is an hon—”
“Save it.” Sammiél cut him off. “Your name?”
“Barrin. My lord.”
A growl burned the back of his throat. “Never. Ever. Call me that. I am not your Lord.”
Barrin pressed his head to the floor and mumbled, “Yes, Sire.”
“I’m not your damn sire either,” he muttered.
Barrin raised his shrouded head and threw an annoyed glare at Sammiél. “Then what should I call you?”
“Sammiél works for me. And you can stand. No more of that bowing shit.” Barrin rose slowly. “Get rid of the shroud. I want to see who I’m dealing with.”
The swirling misty cloud melted from the man beneath. The skeletal façade and wraithlike appearance reshaped into a man, tall in stature and built lean with black chin length hair, and a scruffy beard coating his jaw. By his skin tone and features, Sam guessed an Egyptian who’d died young and turned into an Agent of Death within the last century.
Wary gray eyes watched Sammiél. “I never thought I’d meet you. Was told of your fall from grace. Was told you are UnHallowed, yet still, you are the Archangel of Death. Angels cannot lie, yet I doubted, until now.” He bowed his head again though peered at Sammiél through his tousled hair.
The deference never pleased him. The homage should have been reserved for Father. Time and his treatment by the Almighty hadn’t changed Sammiél’s opinion. In fact, his opinion strengthened. The hate he nurtured for Father had waned eons ago, leaving a sort of resignation in its place. Metatron chose his path when he refused to obey Father’s command. The UnHallowed chose their path when they followed Metatron instead of Father. Sammiél chose to sacrifice his grace in order to save his brothers. He never regretted his decision.
Only You (UnHallowed Series Book 3) Page 11