by Harley James
“Stop!” he sputtered, coming up to his knees, straddling her, each of her wrists pinned next to her head under his hands. “Sweet bloody Christ, Sydney! I’m not trying to hurt you. I only want to protect you from the monsters.”
“I don’t believe you! Heeeelp!”
The veins stuck out in her neck as she screamed, her hips bucking beneath him. Darkness surged through him. He leaned down until their noses were almost touching. “You little fool. Alright, just remember you asked for it.”
Before she could respond, he yanked her to her feet, pulling her upstairs. Each step closer to his office cooled a bit of his ardor, leaving a very uncharacteristic sensation.
Insecurity.
Carry. On.
He flung open his office door, doom and triumph weaving through him. He pushed Sydney’s suddenly still form into the room where Father Angus was in full-throttle, demon-exorcism mode, the possessed human snarling and snapping his jaws on the floor, pinned down by iron chains.
“Oh my God, you’re all crazy.” Sydney spun to pound on his chest to get him out the way.
The ether crackled in the space around him the moment her gaze went over his shoulder, eyes widening. The atmospheric disturbance wasn’t as powerful as the Archangel’s.
But almost.
Alexios picked a grand time to show up.
Son of a bitch.
Chapter 18
Sydney held her breath as she peered over Spencer’s shoulder at the most intimidating man she’d ever seen. His short-clipped, dark brown hair hugged his scalp, and a sickle-shaped scar tread down his face from temple to the corner of his mouth. He was even taller than Spencer and definitely more...bulky. His amber eyes took in everything at once, but gave nothing away.
Her self-preservation instincts went on high alert.
Definitely not human.
Demon or Guardian?
She pulled her gaze back to Spencer whose hands gripped her hips, backing her toward the wall furthest from the newcomer who filled up the doorway. Her eyes flicked to the priest who sat back on his haunches next to the poor man chained to the floor. What was happening?
Was this the beginning of the end of the world?
She needed a phone. And her family.
“Alexios, nice of you to finally join us.” Spencer’s cultured voice dripped sarcasm.
“Do you have a death wish?” Sydney hissed.
Alexios turned his stunning, but empty, whiskey-colored eyes on Spencer.
“Wipe her mind, or I shall.”
When Spencer’s fingers tightened on her hips, she realized this scary being was talking about her. How did one go about wiping someone’s mind?
She decided she didn’t want to know.
She stared into Spencer’s eyes. “Please don’t.”
Her head went weightless, her arms flinging out to her sides to balance herself even though Spencer’s hands hadn’t moved from her hips.
“Steady on.” His hushed breath fluttered the hair at her temples. “Just breathe. You’re safe here with me.” To Alexios, he said, “I have the situation well in hand.”
Alexios’s lips pulled down at the corners. “That remains to be seen. If not, I will hold you to full account.”
“No surprise there,” Spencer rejoined, contempt in his tone, tension in every muscle. “But if you touch this woman, you’ll regret it.”
Oh shit. He poked the bear.
Sydney’s brain swam in a rush of light-headedness. Spencer rubbed her arms vigorously. Through a haze, she watched Alexios’s mouth and eyebrows relax, his eyes taking on a new assessing light.
She couldn’t look away, though she wanted to, her life force probed by something dark and powerful.
When he finally broke eye contact with her, he turned to Spencer. “It is good.”
What was good? Her?
Sydney took a shaky breath, an inappropriate urge to laugh bubbling up.
She was the unflappable one. The one who always had the answers.
But now…now she felt like she’d been dropped in deep water with an anchor attached to her ankle.
“What have you learned about using an angel feather?” Alexios hadn’t moved from the doorway. Hadn’t moved a muscle.
Spencer’s grip on her loosened. “The feathers become visible to humans when not attached to their angel, and if used as puncturing tools into the heart, they can paralyze demons long enough to decapitate them.”
Alexios nodded like he’d known all along. “Have you recovered the demon from Baker Beach?”
Spencer’s eyebrows raised. “You know about Nikolai?”
“He’s the primary reason I’ve been off-grid the last few weeks. He’s very adept at hiding.”
Spencer scoffed. “If you can’t find him, how can the rest of us expect to? What’s he capable of?”
Alexios didn’t answer for a moment. “I’m not entirely certain.”
Sydney almost peed her pants at that.
Here was this huge, powerful being who looked like he could topple sequoias with a flick of his wrist and read your innermost thoughts with a glance, but even he wasn’t sure what they were dealing with.
Alexios’s gaze swung towards hers. “You have ample reason to fear, lady.”
Yep, reading my innermost thoughts.
“Stay out of her mind,” Spencer warned.
Alexios passed his hand through the air, and the drooling, hollering man instantly ceased his struggles. Sydney’s heart beat faster in the uncomfortably quiet room.
“This hostility is not serving you or anyone else, Guardian.”
Spencer ran a hand through his hair. “You have a lot of nerve coming here, dropping orders of a personal nature when Nate, Katherine, Jinx and I have tried to reach you for weeks, yet you return nothing but silence. You may be Michael’s favorite, but I struggle to understand your appeal. Especially when we’ve proven we do just fine without you.”
Sydney held her breath again and huddled closer to Spencer’s back, waiting for Alexios to go ape-shit.
“Nate and Katherine have overcome their adversaries, but you’ve done nothing but make mistakes. The battle is on your doorstep, Spencer, yet you dally with a human, drink to excess, and treat your sacred obligation as though it’s a joke. On top of that, you’ve failed to discover why your exorcisms aren’t working.”
“I don’t see how turning my relic over to another Guardian who can more reliably keep it out of danger is treating my responsibility as a joke,” Spencer retorted. “But I neither care nor desire your opinion any longer. After Jinx takes the relic, and I have seen to the welfare of Sydney and her family, you are free to return for my reckoning. Until then, I ask that you leave me and my club in peace.”
Sydney definitely didn’t like the sound of that.
Her hand reached for the finely-spun wool of his suit coat. Even through the layers, his skin felt warm. So human. She swallowed back a fresh surge of unease. He reached behind him to pat her thigh as though he’d sensed her disquiet.
“I do not acknowledge quitters. Set aside this mental weakness and vanquish your adversary with all due haste. I am not the enemy, brother.”
And then Alexios disappeared.
Like he was there. There, there, there.
And then, not.
“Where did he...? Did you see that?” Well, of course he fucking saw that.
Spencer had turned around and was looking at her expectantly. Like she was supposed to…what? Be a good girl now? Follow all the rules?
Her head was starting to pound, her stomach rumbling.
“You are sure to have more questions now.”
Wow. Epic understatement. She needed answers, yeah, but she needed to get the hell out of dodge more. Careful, Sydney. She gauged the distance to the door. No way could she make it out of here. Besides, what if Alexios was out there in the hallway? She’d rather take her chances with the guy who’d almost put his not-human erection in her body.
Go
d.
“Please let me go, Spencer. I’m nothing but a burden to you. You obviously have much bigger issues to deal with.”
His blue eyes were warm and soft. She bit her lip to stifle the need to cry. Later.
Hopefully there’d be a later.
“I think you know that’s not going to be possible.”
She steeled herself as the woman with black and white hair slipped into the room. The priest took a crucifix from his pocket and resumed his crouch next to the crazed man who’d recommenced growling in a deep, horror-movie voice, speaking a language she couldn’t understand, but made the hairs rise on her arms.
An exorcism was happening. Here. Now.
A tremor skated down her spine. Of course. Because why not?
Moisture blurred her vision.
Spencer took her by the hand and led her out of the room. As he turned to lead them down the hallway, a tiny Asian woman with the most luminous skin and shiny (but tangled) black hair Sydney had ever seen sprinted toward them, a tall, long-haired, bearded man close on her heels.
The woman’s clothes were bloody, yet she didn’t have any fresh injuries where her clothes had been ripped to shreds. The man’s olive-toned face and arms bore four parallel, deep wounds like he’d been swiped at by a jungle cat.
“You really must choose more civilized lovers for yourself and our friends, Jinx.” Spencer’s calm voice belied his death grip on Sydney’s hand. “Raj. Good to see you again.”
Tiny Asian dynamo put her hands on her hips. “I get why you’re buffering the office against telepathy right now with all your demon-purging, but at least have the sense to keep your cockamamie phone on you, Doom.”
“It’s somewhere on Folsom Street. What’s the urgency?”
The woman’s alert, intelligent gaze cut to Sydney briefly before returning to Spencer. “Her shop’s on fire.”
Chapter 19
Take her with, or not?
Spencer debated only a moment before demolecularizing himself and Sydney, streaming them to the parking lot across the street from Torque where her dreams were going down in flames.
Soul-sucking rephaim.
Hell’s equivalent of serial killers and arsonists, they were a class of fallen angels who got off on mass hysteria and wide-spread destruction. They were mightier than the demons who possessed humans, but subservient to archdemons like Baal, who was the most likely candidate for ordering this attack on Torque.
The moment their forms solidified, Spencer grabbed Sydney before she could bolt for the burning building. Jinx and Raj appeared beside him, bending the ether as their solid forms pushed against the unnaturally heated air.
“No, no, no!” Sydney wailed. “All my records, my equipment, and the blueprints for expansion. That’s years of my life in there!”
Spencer pushed her into Raj’s arms since Jinx had vanished along the perimeter, likely on the trail of a retreating rephaim. “Stay with Raj—that’s an order. Where are your documents?”
Sydney’s eyes were wild and bloodshot. “What?”
“Are your documents in a safe? Where do you keep them? Hurry, Sydney, I might be able to save them yet.”
“On my hard drive, but you can’t go in there!”
A human couldn’t, but he’d been reborn into this existence in fire. It lived in him, was commanded by him. An uneasy cohabitation, yes, but it was what it was.
He passed his hand in front of her, commanding her in the old tongue to sleep-awake. Then he turned and ran for the flames as sirens began screaming in the distance and the tallest rephaim he’d ever seen stepped out of the building with a smile.
Chapter 20
I thought you’d gone soft, Guardian, the thing had said from across the street. As if she’d been standing two feet away.
Leathery gray skin, solid red eyes, and a skeletal cavity for a nose. Pulsing veins and writhing muscles visible through its transparent, red bodysuit. Like that was all that held it together.
She couldn’t process what she’d seen. It was a hallucination.
She stopped pacing, closed her eyes, and tried to shrink into herself as she slid down the wall in this simple room. Spencer had brought her here like BOOM—teleporting or something equally preposterous—in the same fashion he’d taken her to Torque—after the bloodiest battle she’d ever witnessed.
She opened her eyes and pinched herself. Hard. Wake up.
No dice. This still wasn’t a nightmare. And Spencer was still there, his clothing charred and bloody, sprawled out in a chair less than three feet away, watching her like she was one step from unleashing her crazy.
Didn’t even look like he was breathing. Did he need to breathe?
Before decapitating the gray-skinned monster, he’d sustained multiple life-ending blows, stabs, skewers.
She’d cried, screamed, and vomited, but the other Guardian called Raj refused to release her. Then Spencer had chased into Torque and returned less than two minutes later with her main computer and small safe without one singed hair.
“Yuh—, ah,” she shook her head and cleared her achy throat. Spencer leaned forward in his chair to reach for a glass of water, which he handed to her. She accepted it, careful not to touch him. Several swallows didn’t ease the soreness, but at least she could swallow again.
Their gazes held. No one else was in the room. There were no windows, and even though the LED lights were modern, they were dim, casting soft gray undertones on the white walls.
Long wooden beams warmed the space, running the length of the room with strange, beautiful carvings along the inner edges. More elaborate carvings on the wall beyond the glass conference table flanked by chrome and black leather chairs. The wall she slumped against held an extra-large steel door with a veneer of smoked glass.
“Where am I?” Her voice was chain-smoker scratchy.
“My bunker. You’re safe, Sydney.”
She was starting to think that was relative. Safe compared to five minutes ago? Definitely.
Safe compared to three days ago. Fuck no.
“You tried to put me to sleep.”
He nodded. She waited for him to say something, but he only watched her.
“You should have died, Spencer. Over and over. First from fighting that…thing. And then from the fire.”
He leaned forward in the chair again, resting his forearms on his thighs, his face inscrutable. “In four-hundred-sixty years, no one—human or otherwise—has made me make as many rash and illogical decisions as you.”
Four-hundred-sixty. As in…four centuries.
She pressed a hand to her gut. “Well maybe the universe is trying to tell us something. We shouldn’t have crossed paths, obviously. Take me to my family. I—”
“I would that I could,” he interrupted, his face focused. “Before I became a Guardian, I was a spoiled and ruthless naval officer in sixteenth century England. I had everything I could’ve ever wanted, first because of my family name, and then because of my naval fleet’s victory over the Spanish Armada. I was the son of The Marquess of Northampton, a miserable ponce, who, along with my mother, despised the fact that his only non-bastard son preferred academics over whoring, gambling, and hunting.”
He paused, narrowing his eyes in a way that made Sydney think he wasn’t really seeing her anymore. “I shouldn’t have allowed my father’s poor decision-making to influence my own. But I became as irresolute and dishonorable as he. My life had no meaning and, therefore, I lived that way. Lashing out in calculated and organized ways became a game.”
He refocused on her. “When I was eighteen, I killed my him when I caught him raping the servant girl I loved. I didn’t face judgement or any sort of consequence because our butler and the rest of the household staff made up a compelling story of his demise, such was their hatred of my father.”
As the last of his words faded into silence, she didn’t dare breathe. The big picture was emerging. His old-world mannerisms. His wealth and arrogance. Even the imperviousn
ess to the gossip rags. He could erase memories and confiscate phones with any type of video or photo documentation, and no one would be the wiser.
“Sydney?”
It was hard not to enjoy the way her name sounded on his lips. Or to feel sympathy for the boy who’d been mistreated by the ones who should have guided and loved him the most.
She pushed up from the floor, putting her hands out in front of her when he stood. “No, please. Stay where you are.”
He frowned. “I won’t hurt you.”
The man he described didn’t sound like he put much stock in responsibility to others. And that frown he wore was making her hands shake.
She clasped her fingers together in front of her, willing her breath to slow. “Why am I here?”
His eyebrows rose. “That’s potentially a big question. Are you speaking philosophi—?”
“No, no, no.” She waved her hands in the air impatiently. “I know my life purpose. What I mean is, why can’t you just leave me alone?”
“Ah, Sydney.” He looked at the floor like he hoped it would open up and swallow him whole.
She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Answer me, and if it’s good enough, I’ll stop fighting you.”
He pursed his lips. “I’m not used to being ordered about.”
“It’s probably good for you.”
One side of his lips quirked. Just a little.
“Alright then. In addition to enhanced eyesight, hearing, and strength, Guardians control an element to help us battle the dark ones. Mine, as you have seen, is fire.”
He held his hand open and a small flame leapt from his palm.
She gasped, wanting to touch it for some ridiculous reason.
“Go on. It won’t burn you.”
She stepped forward, holding his gaze before passing her fingers through the crackling flame. It licked across her skin, soothing, warm, arousing.
“The longer we exist, the more our sense of color begins to fade.” His soft voice wove around her. “My colors were nearly gone. But when you walked into Inferno two nights ago, my world erupted with vibrant hues. We call it amplio.”