Le Bone stepped up to Haven with a furious scowl. “What is the meaning of this, Haven? Is this how you treat guests in your city?” he demanded.
“That’s Master Haven to you, venereal disease,” a female vampire abruptly hissed, darting through the ring of enforcers to jerk Le Bone’s head backwards by the hair.
Christ! Where had she come from? And to call Le Bone a venereal disease…that was just rude. I realized none of the enforcers looked alarmed that she had broken through their protective ring. My eyes slowly widened as it hit me. She had been additional security for Haven’s enforcers, hiding in the crowd but always close enough to support them from the shadows.
That was definitely Haven’s style. Secret backup plans.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Haven was incredibly intelligent. Which was why the whole club fiasco had surprised me. How had he not known about it? He was ruthlessly clever, always had a backup plan, and even when he appeared to fail in some venture, it was often later realized that it benefitted him in some significant way.
Haven’s face was entirely too calm, making me wonder what Roland had said to him, what was really happening right now.
“Thank you, Anita. I think he feels properly emasculated, now,” Haven said.
She managed to shove him away, knocking him into his guards before slipping back out of sight in the crowd. Le Bone didn’t even get a chance to see what she had looked like—also intentional, I was betting.
Haven cleared his throat, his features a cool mask. “Guest implies that you reached out to the Master of Kansas City and requested permission to enter. That you then abided by His rules.” Haven’s face slowly shifted into a cruel smile that seemed to take about thirty seconds to complete. “I’m suddenly overjoyed that I happened to miss that meeting,” he added.
“When my Master arrives—”
“He will request my permission to enter my city, as per custom. Since none of that has taken place, I must treat you as a rogue vampire in my territory. And it seems you’ve been quite the nuisance, killing indiscriminately and playing at being a businessman.”
Le Bone grew very still. “What do you mean, ‘playing at being a businessman?’” he asked.
Haven sighed in mock disappointment. “You confess your crime with your own words. Why didn’t you ask about the killing as well? Are you truly that stupid, or just that arrogant?”
Le Bone’s face paled as he realized he’d messed up, and that his powerful Master wasn’t here to save him.
“You see, we are quite civilized in this…backwards city, as you called it.” Haven said, using the exact quote Le Bone had used to describe Kansas City. The crowd growled threateningly. “I offer you the chance to come clean on your business ventures, for what good it will do you…” he gave an easy shrug, not providing a benefit to sweeten Le Bone’s decision.
The crowd was eating it up. Haven’s decision to make this public also served as a subtle message to the supernatural community that the vampires would keep their side of the street clear of any trash. Allowing them to witness the vampires’ dirty laundry was a sign of goodwill.
“There is nothing to come clean about,” Le Bone growled defensively. “What evidence have you fabricated to frame me? Do you even have any?” he demanded, growing bolder.
If I hadn’t been privy to the evidence, I might have even believed his denial. Damned vampires perfecting their ability to lie over centuries of practice. No such thing as an impartial jury when many of the older vampires could talk their way out of most anything.
Haven sighed. “So be it.” He turned to the crowd, surprising everyone. “Would anyone like to claim responsibility for the evidence I just received? I don’t want this to look suspicious…”
I scooped an apple off a nearby table as I considered outing myself. He had a point I hadn’t considered. It did look like a typical vampire frame-job. They were notorious schemers, and it was important the city saw they could be trusted. Everyone was already terrified of me and would likely attribute this to the White Rose’s growing list of atrocities by tomorrow, no matter what I did. I may as well get out in front of it. Own it.
I stepped forward, clearing my throat to get everyone’s attention. “That would be me, Haven. You make a good point, though…” I scanned the crowd with a thoughtful frown, feeling the tension bubbling up with each passing second. Then I nodded distinctly. “This whole crowd looks suspicious. It’s all dudes in here…except for these bitches.” And I ended by pointing my finger directly at Le Bone and his thugs.
Cain choked loudly on his wine.
And the rest of the crowd burst out laughing in one thunderous explosion, openly pointing and laughing at Le Bone. None took offense at me referring to them all as dudes. I wondered if anyone recognized that I had just quoted one of Eminem’s battle-rap lines from 8 Mile.
Le Bone snarled as he lunged towards me, but Haven’s associates gripped him firmly before he could take more than a single step.
Haven masked his smirk like a pro, but I knew him well enough to recognize it was a struggle. “Thank you. Eloquent and ladylike, as usual, Miss Penrose.” I curtsied with a bright smile as if he had meant it as a compliment. He turned back to Le Bone, holding up the phone I had given Dorian earlier tonight. The infamous playboy was as stealthy as he claimed, because no one had brought up his name so far.
“It seems Miss Penrose cloned your cellphone at some point. It shows time-stamped GPS coordinates matching two recent murders that you previously denied involvement in. It also has a convenient bank statement, downloaded earlier tonight, that shows all recent transactions as of…” he glanced down at the phone, tapping a few times on the screen before looking back up, “yesterday.”
Le Bone seethed, pointing at me. “I’m being set up. Even I’ve heard about the crazy bitch—”
“I have an idea,” Haven said, typing a phone number onto a second phone in his hand. “I’m going to make a quick call and see who answers,” he said, lifting the phone to his ears.
Le Bone looked incredulous. He opened his mouth to respond—
The room suddenly wavered like a mirage and I gripped a table beside me in confusion.
Simultaneously, my thumb pulsed with such a bone-deep cold that I actually hissed. The ring of shadows encircling my thumb was about to make the White Rose lose a petal to frostbite.
RUN…FLY…OR DIE! a weary, disembodied voice wheezed from within my mind, sounding as if it had used the last of its energy to warn me while hanging suspended in the deepest, darkest pits of Hell. Which might not be that far off base.
Because the voice belonged to Nameless, the Fallen Angel I had bound to my finger.
Chapter 8
I wasn’t sure if the shifting shadow ring was the Angel or if it contained the Angel. But it hadn’t been there before I trapped him. I gritted my teeth against the pain as I glanced down to find the shadows spinning faster than usual. And my thumb was almost entirely purple. No one in the room seemed to have noticed, still staring transfixed at Le Bone, waiting for him to respond. But…no one was blinking.
Like apparitions, I saw a host of winged, robed creatures racing towards me from the furthest edge of the room, ripping through people like they were mist—but causing them no harm and seemingly unimpeded by their physical bodies. In those hooded faces, I saw only glowing white eyes and outstretched fingers like pearl claws as they whisked closer, eyes locked on only one thing.
Me.
It seemed the Angels were finally ready to chat with me about their little brother, Nameless.
I didn’t even hesitate to question the lack of reaction from the crowd. I spun and sprinted as fast as I could towards the giant glass window overlooking the streets below. I flung my hands out ahead of me in a concussive vortex of air like a horizontal tornado—knocking everyone in its path safely to the side and creating a clear tunnel for me to run through. Since they were still frozen, my real-time vortex struck them to create a cinematic marv
el that would have made Netflix drool—if they ever decided to call me about a documentary on my life.
Or the end of it, depending on the next few minutes.
It was the most bizarre sight to see the party-goers completely motionless, and then suddenly flung back as if hit by a truck. My blast of air hit them so fast and hard that I could see the skin on their cheeks quiver and ripple upon impact, sending them immediately out of my way before they slowed back down again, drifting through the air like dandelion fluff. I hoped the time-distorted blow hadn’t broken their necks.
I sprinted down the tunnel of still-rotating air, angling my shoulder forward as the tornado shattered the glass. I hadn’t been sure if the glass would need an extra little nudge in addition to my weight.
I flew out into the night sky, the slits of my gown ripping as I called upon my wings—only now considering what might happen if they didn’t respond. I was still learning how to control them and hadn’t perfected their use yet. They seemed to work best on instinct.
Thankfully, my wings also responded well to panic—because I wasn’t sure I had ever felt so startled and caught off-guard as I was to suddenly have Angel assassins gunning for me. Maybe it was because I couldn’t think of a reason for Angels to suddenly want me dead. Well, there was the ring, of course. But I hadn’t heard anything alarming from the Biblical side of the fence—Angels or Nephilim or Demon—since the night I had trapped Nameless and freed the Greater Demon, Samael. An accidental twofer.
My wings flared out from my shoulders, chips of ice, stone, and blue vapor crackling around me as they caught the air in powerful sweeps to either slow my descent or take me away from my pursuers. Preferably both. Shards of glass rained down around me, seeming to blend with my wings.
I thought I was going to pull off my escape before I felt one icy claw grasp onto my shoulder. Another grabbed my leg. Then another gripped one of my wings. But rather than climb up my body to pummel me midair, they seemed to work like a single hive mind, and collectively threw me straight down.
Wind whistled in my ears and the sounds of the street—laughing people, honking cars, and jazz music from a street musician—mocked my plight. My eyes watered at the unbelievable speed in which the dirty sidewalk raced closer. Several rapid blasts of power struck the ground in a ring, flaring to life in a circle of unfamiliar runes on the pavement. The concrete between the runes rippled like a pond, the ground no longer solid below me.
I struck it like a rock hitting wet newspaper, the sounds of screaming wind and nightlife ceasing in a single moment.
My wings caught the air, finally, and I landed in a crouch upon cracked, dry earth. I panted in relief to be alive, but my wings abruptly flickered out as if they had run out of batteries or been damaged by the Angels. I scanned the area to assess my battleground, wondering where the Angels had sent me.
Maybe they had whisked me off to Heaven. If so, they had probably deposited me conveniently outside the Pearly Gates, since they hadn’t given me a security lanyard yet.
I frowned to find that I wasn’t even in a distant, twice-removed cousin to a paradise.
I stood in a desiccated world of dehydrated plants, husks of skeletal trees, bleached bones, and discarded weapons that looked to have once been the finest blades ever created.
An ancient battlefield where the war had been so profound that even now, generations later, nothing dared grow back to life…almost like—
“What is Blockbuster Video?” one of the Angels asked from above, catching the idle thought that had briefly flickered across my mind. I blushed in embarrassment, pretending I didn’t know what he was talking about. I looked up at the flapping sounds that heralded the arrival of the rest of the Angel gang. They circled above me like vultures, but I let out a gasp when I saw that the semi-transparent ceiling above them showed the streets of Kansas City—it was like looking at a reflection of my city in a puddle.
Three of the Angels remained circling me in the air, sweeping their wings to watch as their brother landed about a dozen paces away from me. He lifted his hand to flash them a few unspoken commands, and then turned to face me, his wings evaporating. His fellows continued circling us, but in ever-widening arcs, eyes outward as if determined to make sure my execution remained unwitnessed.
The Angel before me flung back his hooded cloak and tossed it to the ground dismissively, obviously not sticking to the unwritten—but universally accepted—Eleventh Commandment, Thou Shalt Not Litter. He seemed content to stay put and study me with his white eyes from a safe distance, possibly wary to get too close and catch the human contagion I carried.
His face was merciless and beautiful, harsh and perfect in every way—but it was an entirely different type of beauty from Dorian Gray. The Angel’s beauty enticed no sexual hunger or fiery passion of any sort in the beholder—only the frozen, untouchable perfection of an ice sculpture. A mold of what mankind should look like.
I realized my eyes were watering, but not from the dry air of this place…it was at the sudden acceptance of how starkly flawed I was in comparison to the blonde Angel.
However…
Despite his millennia of existence, his face looked lifeless, showing no sign of wrinkles from the thousands upon thousands of laughs or tears he had to have spilled over his long lifetime. Like a new pair of boots that had never been worn, eternally stiff and crisp and painful.
He wore crystal armor straight from a videogame—ridiculously embellished to the point that it looked more grandiose than functional. It was similar in looks to the interior of those seemingly ordinary rocks sold in gift shops near mining towns that had been cut in half to reveal an inner beauty of raw, uncut, vibrant crystal. The Angel and his armor looked to have been pulled from the exact center of a planet after fermenting the Holy Spirit for about a billion years.
I had met two Angels in my life on Earth—Nameless and Eae—and it had been eerily difficult to spend too much time around them because of the raw power emanating from their bodies and their utter lack of empathy or emotion. Still, they had managed to blend in with us humans after much practice. Like a wolf among dogs.
This Angel would never—ever—blend in with mankind. Not a chance.
Witnessing this stark difference in the three Angels I had met up close, I was reminded that Angels had hierarchal classes—a pecking order, if you will.
And this Angel was obviously a significantly higher rank than Nameless or Eae, judging by the incredible waves of power rippling around him. I could tell he was holding back so as not to strip the flesh from my bones as a result of simply standing too close to him.
Reading my mind, the Angel gave me a very slow nod, confirming my analysis.
I stared up at a sudden pounding sound that seemed to echo like distant cracks of thunder. I gasped to see Cain in that strange reflection of Kansas City, beating his fist into the center of the street—but to me, it was the transparent ceiling to this place. Our two worlds brushing against each other like two soap bubbles. From the near-sighted look of rage on his face, he couldn’t see us, having decided to beat his fist into the concrete where I had last been seen.
The anguish I saw in his eyes made me fall partly in love with him. That look wasn’t simply anger from battle, but a deep, inner pain. A personal wound. It wasn’t any kind of romantic love on my part, but akin to seeing a brother-in-arms weeping over your dead body on the battlefield.
You know, because it was totally normal to comprehend such macabre visions as that.
Another thought hit me. If Cain was that upset, wearing a look that screamed that all hope was lost—a look of total despair…who, exactly, did he think had taken me? I had the presence of mind to glance down at my feet—at my shoes. They had been made by Darling and Dear and had the ability to change shape and design to match my outfits.
But they also pinched my toes when pointed in the direction of a nearby demon.
I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or concerned they weren’t pinching my
little piggies right now.
I noticed a scythe embedded in the ground to my immediate right with a flag hanging limply from the base of the blade. The partly scorched ribbon said Non Serviam.
A spear was embedded in a nearby boulder, and a shredded ribbon on the tip said Defiance.
It tickled my memory, but I didn’t know why.
If I had to name the place’s overall style, I would call it Old Testament Chic—a trend that had died long ago. Husks of large trees peppered the landscape as far as the eye could see, but they were burned and skeletal, as if the bones had refused to die centuries ago. I shivered, turning my head slightly to digest the rest of this dead world. The entire place looked to have been scorched to ashes, but white, lumpy pillars rose from the ashes like mounds of melted candlewax. Even though I didn’t see any sun to speak of, the sky was a burnt orange, and the pillars glinted here and there.
Salt, not wax. They were pillars of salt.
I had somehow missed the gargantuan—but worn down—rock wall surrounding a forest of sorts a hundred yards away. A massive golden gate stood in the center of the wall, but it was pitted and bent as if having survived a great battle and a thousand years of acid rain. The gate continued up into a giant, battered arch that read The den of Ed, but the spacing between the words and letters was inconsistent.
I glanced back at my abductor, deciding to speak before he got any fresh ideas about taking me on a romantic walk. “I make it a point to never enter a place referred to as The Den. Only people who like shattered rainbows, lost puppies, pissed-off cats, and broken dreams willingly enter a Den. Not the kind of place a respectable human would enter by choice.”
He didn’t smile, and he didn’t frown. “The Garden of Eden,” he corrected, seemingly unwilling to look directly at the gate.
I stared at him for about ten seconds, my mind rebooting like an outdated computer.
Holy crap.
This was where Lucifer had turned against God, where Angel had first fought Angel.
Feathers and Fire Series Box Set 2 Page 33