Wounded Angel (The Earth Angels)

by Gail, Stacy

  Wow.

  No force of earth could stop the slow curling of his mouth, though obligation to those waiting for word from him kept him where he was. In so many ways the night before was one for the record books. Considering how combustible he and Ella were together, he supposed they were lucky they hadn’t set the place on fire. Broken furniture was only to be expected with their level of enthusiasm.

  Enthusiasm. He shook his head as he typed in his password to gain access to NeoPhilim. That was one word for his insatiable hunger for Ella. If he looked the world over, he doubted he could have found a woman who could hold a candle to her. Not only had she accepted his secrets and his failures, she’d had the courage to be faced with the horrible image of her deceased attacker and not be irrevocably damaged by it. Anyone else would have checked out of reality on a permanent basis, but not Ella. With that same fierce grit it took for her to survive Charles Rainier, she not only bounced back from facing an actual demon, she’d done her best to grab at life by seducing him with the hottest damn striptease the world had ever known.

  Small wonder he’d become her number-one fan.

  The moment he logged on, a video-chat window opened. “Nate? You on?”

  Macbeth. Nate smiled at the image on his screen. When he’d reported what had happened the day before, the chat rooms on NeoPhilim had been abruptly abandoned in favor of video-conferencing, and it was a kick to see his online friends in person. Lynchpin Security International’s IT specialist Macbeth was pretty much as Nate had pictured him—in his mid-twenties, with a crazy buzz cut and even crazier glasses that looked like they had been made from the gears of an old-fashioned clockwork.

  He tapped the touchpad and opened the program for his own built-in webcam. “Hey, Macbeth. I’m just checking in this morning to let you know Ella and I are still alive.”

  As he spoke, cyber magic brought up three more video screens.

  “Good to hear from you, Nate. Zeke’s still at work finishing up the graveyard shift out here in San Fran, so I’m the one who has your back at the moment.” Kendall Glynn, a feisty investigative journalist and fiancée of a descendant of an angel of death, showed up in one window, while Macbeth’s boss and product of a long-ago Seraph-human union, Sara Savitch appeared in another. The third one showed the epitome of a carefree beach bum, complete with naked chest, dark tan, a tangle of long sun-bleached, dark blond hair and a shark’s tooth necklace around his neck. Kyle.

  “We’ve been waiting for you to check in, Nate.” With her dark hair pulled back in a high ponytail, Sara looked as solemn as her chat room posts had always sounded. “What’s your status?”

  “So far, so good. When Ella woke last night from our little demonic encounter, I had no choice but to give up the whole story, going all the way back to the first Nephilim and the fact that we’re the modern-day remnants of those hybrids. That was bad enough, but then I had to explain that what she saw really happened, that it was a demon, and that it’s using her and the nightmare she went through two years ago to hunt me.”

  Kyle’s hungry-lean face puckered in a wince. “Shit. Did she try to kill you or is she just crazy now?”

  “Neither.” He couldn’t help but smile while both Kendall and Sara told Kyle in no uncertain terms to shut the hell up. “I’ve never met anyone like Ella. No matter what gets thrown at her, she struggles through it and keeps on going. I never knew that just watching someone survive no matter what happens could be so...” He searched for the right word. “Humbling. It makes me want to be stronger for her.”

  “I want to meet her,” Kyle said, eyes wide. “Is she hot?”

  “Good grief.” Kendall’s eye roll matched Sara’s before she began to mess with the keyboard in front of her, fingers busily clicking away. “Nate, since you checked in last night, Macbeth and I have been researching every possible demon that changes shape. While that particular ability seems pretty commonplace—going from its original form to say, a cat or a snake, for instance—melting from one human likeness to another is rare, and going from female to male is unheard of.”

  Nate wasn’t sure if that was good news or bad. “I recall that your fiancé went through something similar to what Ella and I experienced,” he said, frowning at Kendall’s image as he tried to remember the details. “It was mentioned in Macbeth’s last post. Something about fighting with a demon that had the appearance of someone’s dead father?”

  Kendall nodded. “Good memory. It happened shortly before Zeke and I met. He had no idea what the demon’s intentions were, but the end result was a knife-wielding crazy guy who would have taken out everyone in the vicinity if Zeke hadn’t intervened.”

  Nate shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s the same one. There was nothing out of control about Richard Rainier. Both he and the demon were calm and deliberate.”

  Kyle adjusted his webcam, making the picture jostle. “Hey, Kendall? Did Zeke ever say what happened to the demon?”

  “Just that it seemed fairly weak, opting to run away when Zeke tried to banish him from this realm by using a technique all angels of death have—he calls it soulfire.”

  “Did he notice anything else about it? Characteristics? Abilities? Did it say anything?” This, from Sara.

  Kendall pursed her lips. “You’d have to ask Zeke, but he’s never mentioned anything like that. The only thing that stuck out in Zeke’s mind was that when he had the demon by the throat, he described the exact same face-melting visual you mentioned, Nate. He said it seemed to get stuck in mid-shift before throwing Zeke off and high-tailing it out of there. I have no idea if it ever said anything, though.”

  “Kinda hard to talk when your mouth melts away,” Kyle offered.

  Nate shook his head. “That’s not a problem for this demon.”

  “After Zeke and I started going out, I looked into some of the supernatural stuff he had to deal with, to familiarize myself with the world of the twenty-first-century version of the Nephilim,” Kendall went on, then hit a decisive keystroke. “Nate, I just sent you some research on shape-shifting demons. Macbeth and I will continue to look for the identity of the one you’re dealing with, but so far we’re coming up empty on any specific reference to a demon that transforms into people who are supposed to be dead. Apparently, this is a really rare one.”

  “I vote for this being a demon that governs over zombies,” Kyle said, perfectly serious. “Is there such a thing? I feel there should be such a thing.”

  Sara sighed. “We’ll keep looking, but in the meantime do you need anything, Nate? Whatever it is, just name it. As of now, LSI and all of its resources are at your full disposal.”

  “Dude! Ask for a plane!”

  “Shut up, Kyle. First and foremost, LSI is a globally based private security firm, so you can believe me when I say we’re good at it.” Sara lifted a brow while Macbeth hooted and munched on CheeZee Puffs, and Kendall chuckled into a coffee mug. “If you’d like a security detail for Ella, we could have a team on the ground in Chicago in less than four hours. I’d be happy to head up that team myself.”

  Kendall nearly choked on her coffee. “Whoa, hold up, Sara. Isn’t there a problem with the Nephilim descendants being together in the same area? The way Zeke explained it to me, I thought there was a possibility of...I don’t know, getting a celestial spanking if you guys congregated.”

  “A spanking I would enjoy. Thoroughly. It’s the inevitable smiting that would be a drag.” For once there was no trace of humor in Kyle’s face before he looked right into his webcam. “But as far as I’m concerned, none of that matters. I don’t like how this dick of a demon eats up innocent people just to get to us, and I sure as hell don’t like the idea of it showing your girl the face of her torturer, Nate. That’s officially unforgivable in my book.”

  “Mine too, but for right now Ella and I are holding our own. I’ve decided to get in touch
with the Rainier family attorney, Archibald, and see if I can get any more information on Richard Rainier. That man sold his soul—maybe to get his hands on his grandmother’s money, but then again maybe not. Whatever the case, I want to know why. I also want to know why Rainier seemed so content to ride around with the image of a dead woman by his side. No matter how you look at it, being all cozy with one of the murdered victims of his serial killer brother is profoundly messed up.”

  Kendall made a notation. “What was her name again? Lana...?”

  “Lana Dever. According to the police report, she was the first woman Charles Rainier abducted.”

  “I can research her while Macbeth, uh...troubleshoots Richard Rainier’s personal finances. Sorry to volunteer your computer whiz, Sara,” Kendall added, wrinkling her freckle-dusted nose. “But if anyone can get to that kind of sensitive information in a hurry, it’s Macbeth.”

  “I really am that good,” Macbeth nodded.

  Kyle snorted. “Modest, too.”

  “If I’m able, I’ll get back online around six this evening, my time,” Nate said before Macbeth could retaliate. “Hopefully I’ll have more information by then so I can plan my attack. My main objective is to keep Ella safe, and the only way to do that is to land on this demonic problem as hard and as fast as I can so that it goes away forever.”

  Macbeth crinkled his snack bag. “Yeah, but...what is it that you can do, Nate? I mean, this is a demon we’re talking about here—a demon who wants to knock off the Nephilim for reasons known only to it. Other than melting its face and bartering for human souls, we don’t know what it can do, but I’d be willing to bet it can do lots of other demony tricks. Not to be rude, but you said yourself that you can’t fly and you don’t have your locating powers, so...”

  “This demon isn’t up to his full speed yet either.” Discomfort at having his weaknesses pointed out made him want to squirm, but he kept his gaze steady. “This thing doesn’t want me to look his way and locate him. Not yet. That means I have to do it now, while he’s still weak.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Nate paused and wondered if they’d think he was nuts if he told them he’d seen it in his dreams.

  “Well, well.” Kyle’s grin flashed like lightning, a brilliant white in a darkly tanned face. “Look who’s getting his mojo back. Has your inner compass hit the reset button, Nate?”

  “Maybe.” And maybe it was something more, something that had been lurking under that compass he’d quietly tried to manipulate his whole life, Nate thought as he logged off. Whatever was happening to him, it was strong enough for him to know he’d be an idiot to ignore whatever message it was trying to get through to him. Now more than ever, he had to accept his family’s curse was actually a gift that needed to be used.

  “Ella?” The sound of water had suddenly ceased, and the quiet in the hotel room was almost deafening. With no more obligations hanging over his head, he made a beeline for the bathroom door, offering a perfunctory knock before turning the handle. “Why didn’t you wake me? I could’ve scrubbed your...”

  As sounds of movement from the bathroom next door fully filtered through, his heart came to a standstill when he found the room empty.

  * * *

  The hotel’s lobby overflowed with guests enjoying the complimentary breakfast. After snagging a couple of apples to tuck into the duffle bag now doubling as her purse, Ella made a beeline to the tiny general store off to the side of the much quieter front desk-reception area. Jacob had made sure her bug-out kit had all the basic necessities, from changes of clothing to duct tape. But there was one thing not even Jacob had thought to pack.

  Condoms.

  Funnily enough, this was probably the only thing duct tape couldn’t fix in a pinch.

  What they really needed was a damn toolkit to put the bed back together, though she suspected the poor fold-out had given up its life for the sake of their pleasure. And what pleasure it was, she thought, trying not to smirk as she perused the limited selection of prophylactics. Once they got over the hurdles of his not-completely-human genetic soup, a demon who wore faces of the dead, and the angel-wing scars—both his and hers—it had been clear sailing. It was as though now that the absolute worst of their secrets was out in the open—and neither one had run away in hysterical horror—there was nothing left but acceptance and peace.

  Acceptance, yes, but as she paid for her purchase she couldn’t help but smile. Peace wasn’t quite the right word when it came to Nate, her knight in battle-scarred armor. Though she’d learned the hard way that safety was more or less an illusion that happened in between the times when fate unleashed hell on an unsuspecting victim, there was no doubt Nate made her feel safe. He exuded an aura of a hyper-protective attack dog mingled with a badass looking for a fight, plus a hearty dose of Latin lover thrown in for good measure. Was it any wonder she suffered a staggering case of the vapors every time she thought of him? Or was touched by him. Or kissed him. Or was filled with him...

  The box of condoms disappeared into her bag, but she didn’t expect it to stay there for long. As soon as she got back up to the room she was going to see what it took to break a king-sized bed. And if he suspected she’d become a sex fiend, he was going to have to find a way to cope. Until he’d come along, a sex life had been the furthest thing from her mind. But amazingly enough, she’d found someone who didn’t give a damn about her past; if anything, he had a more screwed-up life than hers. Maybe it was because of that, or because he’d been the one to find her that long-ago day in the North Carolina woods, but she trusted Nate. Even more than wanting him—and she wanted him with the passion of a thousand burning suns—she trusted him. And unless her instincts were on the fritz, he was in the same boat. Now that he’d come clean with all his secrets, some internal wall within Nate had come tumbling down.

  That kind of tumbling was always a good thing, and with a quick glance at her watch Ella picked up the pace. The note she’d left on the bedside scratch pad had promised she’d only be gone five minutes, and she was already past her self-imposed curfew. No doubt Nate would be irked with her for not waking him to go with her on a simple condom run, but if her luck held he’d still be asleep when she got back.

  She had gone no more than a couple of steps outside the small shop before she came to a dead halt, her blood icing over in a flash freeze that almost hurt. Dressed in neatly pressed khakis, white shirt and an argyle sweater vest, Richard Rainier looked like he was out for a morning round of golf. With his face in profile, he scanned the dining area with a studied air of nonchalance. Standing at his side as if yearning to be surgically attached to his hip was the image of the woman Ella knew was dead—Lana Dever.

  But of course that wasn’t Lana, any more than Richard was an aging preppie looking to get his nosh on before hitting the links. They were a demon-powered dynamic duo, and they were here for Nate’s blood.

  Nate.

  Panic strained to break free, and in a last-ditch effort for control she held her breath until she was sure she wouldn’t scream. Panicking wouldn’t help. What would help would be a plan. Rainier and his demon were strategically placed on the edge of the dining area and directly in front of the bank of elevators that had just disgorged a troop of Boy Scouts. Since her phone was dead thanks to her charger being left behind at her place, her only option was a house phone, which unfortunately was right by the elevators. She ducked back into the store, keeping her gaze fastened on them as she racked her brain on how she could alert Nate. She had no idea where the stairs were located. She couldn’t wander around the lobby without being seen, and she didn’t particularly relish the thought of taking on both a Rainier and a demon all by herself.

  For a fleeting moment she marveled at how quickly her brain had come to a point where the idea of actual demons didn’t make her thought processes completely short-circuit. But life had taught her
that the strong didn’t just survive—they adapted.

  The question now was how she could adapt her way out of this.

  The noisy gaggle of scouts came to a stop as their haggard troop leaders paused at the front desk for what looked like sack lunches. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a mischievous kid pantomime pulling a placidly blinking fire alarm on the wall even as Rainier turned to shoot the rowdy bunch an irritated look. That was all it took for inspiration to hit like a ton of bricks. She edged back against the wall, waiting for Rainier’s attention to turn away. Almost against her will, her gaze slipped to the thing that looked like Lana Dever practically standing on Rainier’s shoes. Obviously demons didn’t understand the human concept of personal space.

  The image of Lana was truly breathtaking. It was a flawless portrait of a woman Ella had only known after a gruesome, twisted take on a Maori-like design had been carved into her face. How sad it was that the real Lana had once looked like that. In her memory, open wounds had been cut from the woman’s chin to her mouth and all over her brow...

  Before Ella’s disbelieving eyes, the thing that wore Lana’s peaches-and-cream face began to lose its color, fading into the clammy, grayish pallor that Ella remembered. Slits appeared on the chin radiating from the mouth downward, and from the eyebrows up toward the hairline that became lank and reddened with blood. More slits appeared beneath the eyes so that it allowed what looked like tears of blood to run copiously down the face.

  Just as she remembered.

  A child’s scream rent the air. Someone dropped a breakfast plate to shatter on the polished marble floor. That seemed to be the cue for all hell to break loose. Shouts for someone to call 911 rose while dining chairs scraped across the floor, adding to the horrified cacophony. The scattered scouts came together and huddled for safety while their frantic troop leaders tried to get in front of them to shield them from the hideous nightmare that now stood next to Richard Rainier.