by Trina M. Lee
“Bullshit,” I countered, squirming uncomfortably against the bonds that bit into my wrists. “You need him to get back into your locked-up hidey-hole. So why? What can he do that you can’t?”
‘Careful, my queen,’ Arys warned. ‘Tread lightly.’
Lilah’s eyes widened at my brazen question before narrowing, tight and squeezed. Going straight for her weakness might have been dangerous, but I didn’t want to play this game. Going for the throat was more my style.
Unfortunately, vengeance was Lilah’s style. Looking to Forest she said, “Break one of his wings.”
My heart jumped into my throat. I wanted to backpedal and reverse the damage my big mouth had done, but it was too late for that. Helplessly I watched as the other two demons jerked one of Falon’s wings out straight, holding it taut.
“Do it and you’ll never see Shya again.” My promise spilled out on a growl.
“Tell me what I want to know,” Lilah countered, a ginger brow lifted expectantly.
“Don’t even think about it, wolf,” Falon hissed, drawing my gaze his way. “We already know she can’t do shit without him. Torturing me doesn’t change that. Don’t give her a damn thing.”
Lilah’s laugh was humorless, low and vindictive. She nodded to Forest. “Do it.”
A shriek was born and died before it ever reached my lips. Between Arys in my head and Falon’s steady warning glare, my protest never had a hope in hell. Staring into Falon’s eyes as Forest stepped up behind him almost broke me. But I just couldn’t look away.
Forest extended a hand and a large, crowbar-like weapon appeared. Then he swung. The sound pierced me on every level. I felt it in my soul. The fascinating web of bones that held the massive wing together shattered upon impact.
I stared into Falon’s silver eyes, watching as pain and wrath shocked his system. In my peripheral view, the weapon again crashed down. I felt it as if I were on the receiving end. It tore me apart.
“Ready to talk yet?” Her fingertips steepled like a mad villain’s, Lilah basked in the torment that tainted the atmosphere. “I almost hope you choose to drag this out. I owe you both some payback.”
I opened my mouth to tell her off.
Before I could a new demon appeared in the doorway from the foyer, an ugly gash stretched across his face from eyebrow to chin. Clutching the door frame, panic lined his face. “I’m afraid we have a problem, my lady.”
Lilah stood stiff, taking in the sight of her injured demon. She seemed perplexed. Instead of addressing the guy who’d spoken, she turned to Falon and me. “I need to handle something, but I won’t be gone long. So enjoy this brief reprieve. When I return, we start in on you, Alexa.”
With a snap of her fingers, she disappeared. Every one of her demons followed, even the battered guy in the doorway.
We were alone. Falon released the anguished tirade of expletives he’d been withholding. When he’d finished with his stream of cunt, ass, and motherfuckers, he sucked in a breath. “We have to get our hands free. Get your sweet ass over here, wolf. We don’t know how much time we have.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Want to tell me what the hell you’re doing here without Arys? I swear you do this shit just to drive me crazy.” Despite being in a lot of pain, Falon had no problem dishing out the attitude.
We stood back to back in an awkward attempt to free our hands. Lilah hadn’t used silver on me. She didn’t need to. If Falon could free me, maybe I could free him. Or at least get us both out of there.
“Is it working?” I asked with a smirk he couldn’t see. It was tough to get close enough with Falon’s broken wing hanging unnaturally between us. The other he moved so our hands could reach.
“You have no idea,” he muttered, sucking in a sharp breath as he fumbled with the coarse rope binding my wrists together. Pain rolled off him in waves that nauseated me. “It was stupid to come here at all but to come alone? Goddammit, Alexa. Do you never learn?”
The intensity of his raw, battered energy overwhelmed my ability to fire back a witty quip, so I settled for a hard truth. “If she’d taken me instead, would you have come?”
We both knew the answer was yes, but Falon dodged the question. “The first thing I’m going to do when I get my hands free is wrap them around your scrawny neck and shake you until whatever loose screw you’ve got falls back into place.”
‘Romantic,’ came Arys’s unwarranted observation. ‘The two of you certainly have an interesting repertoire.’
‘And on that note, I’ll let you know when we get free or if Lilah comes back.’ I gently but firmly closed the door between Arys and me. He didn’t need to be part of the conversation right now.
“Less talking, more making yourself useful,” I said, knowing that needling Falon would keep him fighting, not only me but anything in our path.
He cursed in the language of the immortals. It took Falon exactly seventeen minutes to free my hands. I knew because I stared at the clock on the kitchen wall the entire time.
My wrists were raw and sore, my shoulders ached from being pulled backward. Physically weak and slow, I turned to examine the silver cuffs locked on Falon’s wrists. My gaze kept straying to his awkwardly hanging wing. I hated so much that it had happened.
“I don’t think I can get these off.” The restraints holding Falon were heavily magicked. If I’d been at full strength I’d have stood a chance. “I’m not strong enough right now.”
“Take from me,” Falon insisted. “Whatever I have left, take it, and get out of here.”
Too bad he couldn’t see the scowl I directed at the back of his head. “Hell no. Not an option. Try again.”
“Fine. Try tapping into Willow.”
“Willow?” I repeated, both confused and curious.
Falon pushed to his feet with a few curses and pained groans. I rose with him, shaky on my weak legs. “Yeah, tap your guardian. You need the power of the light to break demon shackles. Since you’re tapped out, Willow is your next best option.”
Did he know something about Willow that I didn’t? Or maybe I did. I’d sensed the light in him. Still. “What makes you say that?”
Falon whirled to face me, his bloody and bruised brow furrowed in frustration. “Don’t play games with me, Alexa. There’s still light in him. I know you’ve seen it. Now stop wasting time and do what you’re told for once in your wretched life, you stubborn beast.”
Despite the violent fury lurking in Falon’s eyes, I couldn’t help but want to touch him. Wobbling precariously on my tiptoes, I softly kissed his cut and bleeding lips. Grudgingly, he kissed me back.
I halfheartedly twirled a finger for him to turn back around. I was willing to try anything. So I closed my eyes, hovered my hands over Falon’s bound wrists, and reached for Willow.
I felt him there on the other side of the small divide between us. With a nudge he let me slip into his head. The weight of his sudden concern touched me. He was with Gabriel, making their way here using alternate backroads.
Willow let me in fully, giving me full access to his power. It hummed steady and strong in my head. Like a breath of life it restored me enough to attempt this feat. Sifting through Willow’s power, I sought those tiny threads. Tendrils of angelic essence wound through the weave of vampire and werewolf energies, near impossible to notice if one wasn’t looking for it.
The light force nestled within Willow recognized me. It obeyed when I called it forth. With my focus on the cuffs holding Falon, I pulled the force and guided it to break the bindings.
My control was shaky, but with tightly honed focus I was able to direct the flow. Having so little of my own strength made the whole process a little painful, but since it was nothing compared to what Falon suffered, I pushed through.
Just when I couldn’t channel any more from Willow without burning out, the cuffs opened with a ping. With a silent declaration of thanks and gratitude, I let Willow slip away. It took too much effort to stay connected.
Opening my eyes, I found Falon examining his burned wrists. “How did you know? About Willow.”
Falon winced and gasped. Slowly the edges of his wounded flesh grew toward the center. Too slowly for an immortal. Lilah had wounded him badly. Only a rest on the other side would restore him fully now.
“In Vegas I saw his aura take the form of wings,” he told me. “Just for a second. But I know what I saw.”
“I’ve tasted it in his blood,” I admitted, reluctantly trusting Falon with this information. “Nobody can know. Falon, please.”
“Yeah, yeah, he’s vulnerable and shit. I get it.” Doing a double take, Falon nodded at the bite on my neck. “He did that, didn’t he? Right on my fucking mark. Bastard.”
I took hold of his arm and gave a meager tug that did nothing. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before that wackjob gets back.”
Although we rushed toward the door, we moved in a shuffle that involved half dragging one another. Well, mostly Falon dragging me. But it was all for nothing. When Falon went to cross the threshold, he tripped a ward. A small explosion threw us both onto our asses in the foyer.
“Shit.” In a sudden burst of temper, Falon swung a fist at the decorative foyer mirror. Shards rained down onto the floor. “She warded the house so I can’t leave. I suspect the ward was made for me specifically, so you can still leave. Just go, wolf.”
I held a hand out for his, ignoring his derisive snort. Blood dripped from his cut knuckles. Too weak to deny the urge, I dragged my tongue over the small gashes. A small pleasurable intake of breath escaped him as he watched.
The immortal power in his blood struck me like a slap across the face. Still it wasn’t as potent as usual. Lilah had done a good job of tearing him down.
“I’m not leaving you,” I said. “But I can’t tap Willow again either. I don’t have it in me. We’ll have to just hang tight and hope that he and Gabriel get here before Lilah does.”
Falon’s face morphed into a judgmental scowl. “Don’t be an idiot. Get out of here while you still can.”
“You need to sit down and rest. Maybe if you didn’t waste so much energy being a dick, you’d have more for healing.” Ignoring the way his scowl deepened into a full-on snarl, I nodded to the couch in the living room. “Sit. Now. Before we both collapse.”
Every passing second made it harder to stand on my own two feet. Grumbling about what a massive pain in his ass I was, Falon dragged me along to the couch where we both all but fell into the soft cushions. Man, if those cushions could talk.
Falon’s injured wing wouldn’t tuck behind him, so it stretched haphazardly across most of the couch and drooped on the floor. In contrast to his harsh words, he pulled me against his chest on the side with the good wing. An arm slid around my waist, holding me close.
I let my head fall back against his shoulder, too weak to keep holding it upright if I didn’t have to. “I’m sorry she hurt you like that. I wish I could heal it for you.”
Anticipating a snarky reply, I didn’t expect him to lean his cheek against the top of my head. “Don’t worry about me. I’d rather take it than have you take it.”
“She must have knocked you in the head a bit as well,” I joked, still not certain how to talk to Falon without banter. “You sure didn’t seem to mind seeing me take some pain back in Las Vegas.”
Quiet filled the room, loud in its suddenness. Falon’s fingers played in the tendrils of hair that tumbled down my arm. “I hated every second of it.”
The poignancy of his words, the truth within them, it crushed the breath from me. “Yeah, me too.”
We sat in a silence that was both torturous and comforting. That night in Sin City had left me confused. So many questions, I knew Falon would never willingly answer any. The fallen angel proved an eternal mystery. As soon as I thought I had him figured out, it became abundantly clear that I didn’t.
He continued to take me by surprise. So when he grasped a feather and tore it from his broken wing, I slapped a hand over my mouth. And when he held it for me to take, I could only shake my head with wide eyes.
“Take it, Alexa. Hold onto it. Just in case.”
My mind played out several horrifying scenarios at the sight of that silver feather, blood dripping from its tip. “In case of what?”
“You know what.” He continued to thrust the feather at me. “If I complete my fall, use it to take me out of the game. Lock me up like Shya.” Falon lay the large feather across my lap. Almost the length of my arm, it shimmered with iridescent color in the artificial overhead light.
I couldn’t agree to this. “Falon, no.” Struggling into a more upright position, I turned to better face him. “I can’t do that. Don’t ask me to do that.”
“I’m not asking.” There was no room for argument in that tone. “Hide it here somewhere. Come back for it when you can. But you will promise me this, Alexa.”
I recoiled when he tried to touch my face. Pasting myself against the arm of the couch, I shook my head, my protest lacking the vigor it deserved. “No, I won’t. You sound like Kale asking me to kill him. And I cannot face something like that again.”
My sanity wouldn’t survive intact. The wound was still fresh. Knowing Kale had found his peace made it easier to accept, but it didn’t pick up the pieces of me that had shattered that night. Right here on this property.
My gaze darted to the window, to the exact place in the backyard where I’d slid my dagger into my lover. Where his ashes hit the ground. Tears welled in my eyes, and I feared that I lacked the strength to blink them back.
Falon’s thumb caught the first one to fall. “I’m not Kale. This isn’t like that. Don’t fucking cry.”
His efforts to infuse his usual venom into those words failed. My tears unsettled Falon, although he’d never say so. The night I killed Kale I had come apart in my fallen angel’s arms. Falon had held me on the floor of the shower and let me cry myself raw. But it had taken a lot for him to sit through it. I’d felt it. The reluctance. Because something about it made Falon weak.
“Is that why you did this?” My hand strayed to the angel mark on my neck. “To force me into being your jailer when the time finally came?”
“Of course not,” he snapped, offended that I’d suggested such a thing. “You know why I did it. Do you really still believe that I’d do something so devious? Aren’t we beyond this yet?”
My body might have been weakened, but my temper functioned just fine. I slapped his hand away when he reached for me again. “Until recently I never believed you were capable of slicing me up like a fresh kill either.”
“That was under Envy’s influence,” he snarled, leaning in close to pin me against the couch arm. Not that I had the energy to flee him anyway.
Falon’s whirling array of pain, anger, and frustration clouded my head. But it didn’t fog my memories. “You wanted to do it. Envy could only work with your true feelings.”
So close our faces almost touched, he shouted, “I don’t even know what my true feelings are anymore!” With one hand on the back of the couch and the other on the arm, he trapped me. Through clenched teeth he eyed the mark on my neck. “Do you want me to remove it? Say the word and it’s gone.”
Tension thrummed through his taut arms. Holding himself like that had to have been stressing his injured wing. He was giving me an out. One word and the mark would be gone. So why did I not want that?
Nose to nose we glared at one another. In another time and place, if he’d trapped me like this, it would have been a heck of a turn on.
“No,” I heard myself say. “Leave it.”
Doubt flickered across Falon’s face. Had he really expected me to tell him to get rid of it? “This is your chance to change your mind.”
If I started second guessing this mark now, it would never stop. Maybe it wasn’t me second guessing. “I’m not changing my mind. Maybe you want to change yours.”
Falon’s hand crept to my throat, a firm grip that promised
many unspoken pleasures. “If that was even possible, I’d never have marked you in the first place. I made my choice to make you my queen. The entire underworld knows it. There’s no going back from that.”
When he put it that way, the whole damn thing felt heavy and surreal. Falon had chosen me, but I had chosen him too the moment I struck a deal with Salem that would protect him, claiming him as mine. Still, it felt strange to hear this fascinating immortal claim me as queen.
“Nova was right,” I blurted. “We are so screwed.”
Falon crushed his lips to mine. I tasted blood from a slow healing cut on his lip and ran my tongue over it a few times, coaxing a soft moan from him. That sound alone was nearly enough to rejuvenate me.
I slid both hands into his blood-matted hair, holding as tightly as I could. His tongue delved into my mouth, possessive and yearning. The loathing-fueled eroticism that brought us together no longer defined all that we were. There was true affection here now.
In the heart of that moment I understood with perfect clarity why Arys resented my time with Falon. Nova saw it too. Falon and I crossed worlds when we were together. A fallen angel and werewolf turned vampire queen, dangerously entangled.
Being able to draw on Falon’s power the way I had the night I turned Willow human was unheard of. It never should have been possible. And I hadn’t done it since on such a grand scale. I’d been afraid to even try.
However, twin flames weren’t supposed to be restored either. So maybe I had to accept Falon’s Queen of Light and Dark theory as more than a crazy thing he liked to say.
Something about that terrified and excited me.
The air rippled the way it did before an immortal arrived. Falon pulled away, snatched the feather off my lap and shoved it beneath the couch cushions. Seconds later Lilah stood in the center of the room.
Just two of her lackeys returned with her. Curious.
Lilah’s eyes widened at the two of us on the couch. Seeing us getting cozy set her off. She didn’t bother to bark orders at her followers this time. Forgoing the worshipped demon queen façade, Lilah came at me. Seizing hold of my arm, she flung me.