by Tessa Cole
“Okay,” I said, “then let’s go. I’m sure Gideon has his reasons for wanting to go to the scene.”
I motioned and Kol headed down the hall. I followed.
“I think he can’t just sit here, even with Zella, waiting to find out who’s dead now.” Marcus fell into step beside me. “And if it’s a squad member, he and Jacob are the ones who’ll be able to make the identification.”
“Yeah, but he’s endangering Essie by leaving the protective wards on Operations,” Kol said.
“If our wards could even keep that thing out.” Marcus shifted closer to me.
Kol huffed. “I still think Gideon is starting to lose his shit.”
“I do, too, but investigating crimes committed by supers is also our job,” Marcus said. “Maybe we’ll stumble across a miracle and there’ll be something at the crime scene to help us deal with the wraith.”
Gideon was already in the garage when we arrived, standing just outside the glass doors, his expression still raw and haggard like when I’d seen him earlier at Zella’s bedside. It didn’t look as if things were going well with Zella, and I could only imagine his pain at thinking he could lose his destined mate before the mating brand had fully formed.
Kol opened the door from the hall to the garage, and Gideon’s attention jerked to us. Emotional ice swept over his face and through his posture, and the cold, emotionless angel I’d first met stared back at us. His attention jumped to the red mark on Kol’s cheek — thankfully fading and it might not even bruise, so I mustn’t have hit him that hard — and he frowned.
“Has forensics left for the scene already?” Marcus asked, still standing possessively close to me.
“Yes.” Gideon’s gaze slid to the space — or rather lack of space — between us. “The officer who called us said they hadn’t managed to get an ID on the victim, but the scene looks like the other three. We’re just waiting on—” His gaze shifted past my shoulder and Jacob stepped out of the hall into the garage.
His claim on my essence tugged in my chest, and I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him. Every fiber of my being yearned to please him, begged for his touch and command.
I gritted my teeth and forced myself to stay where I was. Marcus bristled beside me, as if he could sense my need to go to Jacob. The tug squeezed tighter and I strained to draw a full breath. God, I couldn’t wait for this compulsion to ease up, like he’d promised it would.
“As you were,” Jacob said, his voice a low rumble, and the pressure in my chest evaporated.
Thank God.
“We good?” Gideon asked.
“Hardly,” Marcus growled.
“Fine.” It was as good as it was going to get.
Jacob gave a tight nod.
“All right,” Gideon said. “Let’s go. We’re headed to Seventh and Foley.” He tossed Marcus a set of keys.
Marcus caught them and glanced at me, as if trying to decide if he should decline driving to stay beside me, then squared his shoulders and hurried to one of the SUVs in the spot across from us. Thank goodness, because this whole situation was uncomfortable enough as it was.
Jacob fell into step beside me and pressed a hand to my back. “How are you feeling?” he asked in a low voice, his words just for me.
“I’m not going to start crying again, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Although if something else monumental happened, I couldn’t promise that I’d be able to keep holding it together.
“Given all that’s happened, you have every right to still be crying.”
“And what good would that do?” I climbed onto the middle bench with Kol, while Gideon took the front passenger seat and Jacob took the back. “We still need to figure out plan B.”
“Ward you with everything we can find and keep you close,” Marcus said, pulling out of the parking space.
“Unless I can wear those wards, no. I’m not spending the rest of my life trapped in a room somewhere.”
Marcus shot a glare at me through the rear view mirror then drove onto the Quarter’s main street and headed toward the human part of the city.
“I don’t think we can try luring him again,” Jacob said. “That didn’t even work the first time.”
“And what the hell is it?” Kol rubbed his face, suddenly looking exhausted. I might have passed out and slept last night, but how much sleep had he gotten? “Is it a wraith or an angel?”
“I think he’s both.” A part of me screamed that I was going to regret pointing out that this thing was a nephilim, but not telling them only prolonged the inevitable. One of them would figure it out eventually. There was no point in pussyfooting around it.
Gideon glanced over his shoulder, his gaze jumping past me to Jacob. “I think she’s right. One of them survived.”
“Michael destroyed them all when we raided his laboratory,” Jacob said. “None of them hatched in that blaze. You double-checked yourself.”
“I know.” The muscles in Gideon’s jaw flexed. “But I’ve spent all night thinking about it and there’s no other explanation.”
“What explanation?” Marcus asked.
“An archnephilim, specifically half archangel and half demon,” Gideon said.
“Are you shitting me?” Kol asked. “Demon and angel DNA doesn’t mix.”
Gideon turned his attention back to the road. “Angel DNA doesn’t mix with any species.”
“Not true,” Jacob said. “A regular angel’s DNA is compatible with an angel-touched human’s. That’s how Michael and Lucifer managed to get their nephilim creation spell to work in the first place. Demon DNA has to be powerful enough to withstand combining with an archangel’s. We saw the partially formed demon-archangel hybrids ourselves. We know it’s possible.”
“Our DNA is only compatible because of unnatural magic,” Gideon said.
“So you’re saying Michael was creating even more powerful nephilim when the war ended?” I asked. God, if anything like the wraith-angel had joined the war, humanity would have lost. I shuddered. And that was what had branded me as his. A nephilim with the power of a demon and an archangel.
My thoughts stuttered and jumped back to something Gideon had said. “You said Michael destroyed them before they’d hatched.”
“So we couldn’t take them into custody,” Jacob said. “We lost more than half the squad trying to take that facility.”
“Could this archnephilim think you were responsible for Michael destroying his lab? That could be why he’s murdering your remaining squad members.” The wraith-angel had said he wanted vengeance, that I should want vengeance, too, for the slaughter of our people.
“So we have a guess what its motivation is,” Marcus said. “Doesn’t help us deal with it.”
He had a point, but I wasn’t willing to give up on that train of thought. “Maybe we can use that to make him make a mistake or something. In the very least, does knowing he’s an archnephilim help?”
“It doesn’t help you,” Gideon said, his voice suddenly void of emotion, as if he didn’t want to say what he had to say. “It’s nearly impossible to win a fight with an archangel if you’re not trying to kill him, and we’d need help from more than one archangel to do that — which, with the toll of the war being so recent, is never going to happen. The only sure way to stop this archnephilim is to kill it.”
Marcus slammed on the brakes, stopping in the middle of the busy two-lane street, and growled at Gideon. “We are not killing it.”
“If it’s an archnephilim, there isn’t any choice.” A hint of Gideon’s ice melted, revealing soul-rending pain. His gaze slid to mine and I could see he’d come to the horrible realization that he couldn’t save me as he’d promised, and it was tearing him apart.
“What happened to not killing the human?” Marcus’s wolf rose to the surface and his pupils turned to slits. “We don’t kill humans.”
“It might not kill her.” Kol’s gaze jumped to my arm.
Please, don’t say it. Please. I’m no
t ready and there wasn’t any guarantee Gideon’s brand would save me.
He must have seen the panic in my face, because he opened his mouth to say more then snapped it shut.
“Sure,” Marcus said. “She’ll just go insane instead.”
The temperature in the SUV dropped with Marcus’s fear, and the driver in the sedan behind us leaned on his horn.
Marcus ignored him. “That’s not acceptable. Essie gets out of this. She gets her life back. Free and clear of all of this.”
More horns blared and someone started shouting.
“We all know that isn’t going to happen,” Gideon said.
“It God damn is gonna happen,” Marcus growled, the temperature dropping even more.
The driver behind us jerked his sedan into an opening in the oncoming traffic and drove around us.
“If magic can create the impossible, maybe magic can capture the impossible,” Jacob said. “Or break it. We have an archive of ancient texts and a handful of journals that we managed to confiscate from Michael’s laboratory before it burned down. There might be something in them that can help.”
His claim tugged in my chest. He wanted what he said to be true and, even without saying it, the claim needed me to help him. Now.
I dug my fingernails into my palms, hoping no one would notice, praying the urge to jump out of the SUV and go back to Operations would pass. Jacob wasn’t rushing back. He was headed to the crime scene with the rest of the team. That was where I should be. Really. A hint of pressure eased, but not all, as if the claim only half agreed with my argument to stay.
Gideon shot Jacob a dark look, the warning clear: don’t give false hope.
Jacob raised an eyebrow in response, his message clear: stop being an ass. “I’m not willing to give up on Essie. We’re going to this crime scene then to the archives to find an answer.”
The pressure vanished, but the temperature continued to drop until it was a struggle to keep my teeth from chattering.
More cars jerked around us, and people rolled down their windows and yelled at us.
I rubbed my arms, trying to get myself to warm up before my breath misted and frost formed on my skin. Now I could tell without a doubt that Marcus was terrified and he needed hope more than I did, if only to raise the temperature in the SUV. “We still don’t know what to do about this archnephilim,” I said. “Seeing if there’s anything in these texts might help us to form a plan that won’t get our asses kicked the next time we face off with it.”
“You’re not facing off with it again,” Marcus growled.
“We’ve already been over this. I can’t make any promises.”
“I can,” Gideon said. “Whatever we do, Officer Shaw is going to stay behind Operations’ wards. With luck, their protection against malicious intent should be enough to prevent the archnephilim from entering.”
But would they be enough for me to resist the pull of his brand? Gideon had said the brand drew mates together, and the archnephilim had said I’d give him what he wanted, that I belonged to him.
“Fine,” Marcus said, his voice low.
“Now, can we get to the crime scene to secure it like we’re supposed to?” Gideon asked. “If this perp is an archnephilim, this is my mess to clean up. Not the humans’. And it needs to be soon. Like yesterday.”
Yeah, yesterday would have been great. Preferably before I’d gotten involved.
We arrived at a two-story motel on the outskirts of town, with exterior corridors, faded blue siding, and peeling gray accent paint. The parking lot was riddled with weeds growing out of the asphalt and if there’d been lines marking parking spaces, they were long gone. The neon sign at the front of the property wasn’t on, since it was just after eight in the morning, but I suspected not all of it lit up, if any of it actually did.
Half a dozen cruisers were parked near the back of the lot, along with a black SUV — presumably the JP forensics team. Two uniformed officers were scouring the parking lot for evidence, while four more were in the field behind the motel. Another two stood outside the open door of a room on the second floor.
A young man with a rumpled dress shirt and glasses stood at the front of the building near a sign labeled OFFICE, talking with a man in a suit — probably the detective who’d caught the case before the JP agents took over.
Marcus parked halfway down the lot, putting us between the young guy being interviewed and the crime scene, and we piled out of the SUV.
“Marcus, talk to the detective and find out what he’s learned,” Gideon said. “Kol, Officer Shaw, you can wait with the officers outside the door while Jacob and I check in with Summer and her team. Let’s make this fast.”
Marcus stormed away toward the detective, while the rest of us took the stairs and headed to the room in question.
The two officers at the door frowned as Gideon approached, but he showed them his ID, and they waved him and Jacob inside. A flash of heat swept over me. Anger from Gideon or Jacob that was quickly contained under tight control. I didn’t know if that meant they recognized the latest victim or if there was something else.
Kol leaned against the faded siding beside the closest officer, a woman with flecks of silver in her hair and a slightly green complexion. Her gaze swept over Kol and heat colored her cheeks as he settled in. The officer on the other side of the door, a man with a clean-shaven baby face who was probably in his thirties, cleared his throat, but the woman was too distracted by the incubus to notice.
I pulled my attention away from them and searched the horizon. Not that the wraith couldn’t come from the other side of the building, but I couldn’t help keeping an eye out. It was coming for me. Unless, of course, what he had said in my dream was true and I’d end up going to him because I wouldn’t be able to resist the brand.
A shiver swept over me and I rubbed the sore spot on my biceps. It didn’t hurt like it had last night, but it was still painful. Did that mean this was a temporary reprieve? Or had I just gotten used to it?
Gideon’s brand, not even a day old, didn’t hurt at all. In fact, I could almost pretend it didn’t exist. God, I desperately wanted it to not exist.
I shoved that thought away. If the wraith-angel was really this archnephilim, as Gideon had said, and the only sure way to stop him was to kill him, then I had to pretend Gideon’s brand didn’t exist. If the mating brand made angels do crazy things to protect their mates, then there was a risk Gideon wouldn’t be able to kill the nephilim for fear of hurting me. And this archnephilim had to be stopped. Gideon’s team was just the beginning. He was going to go after every angel and every super who’d ever had anything to do with the destruction of Michael’s nephilim laboratory. His thirst for vengeance would never be quenched.
So that left me with what? Lying to Gideon and Marcus, and hell, everyone else on the team until I died or went crazy?
I glanced at Kol from the corner of my eye, hoping he wouldn’t notice I was looking at him. I couldn’t trust him to keep the brand a secret, not if he thought I was endangering myself, and not if he thought I was endangering Gideon. And if I died, Gideon would die or go insane.
Jeez, this was becoming a complicated mess. But I was pretty sure Gideon would be willing to sacrifice himself to protect everyone else.
Was that why fate had paired us together? We were both willing to do whatever it took to save lives?
Except if that was the case, then fate had royally screwed us both.
A Joined Parliament Medical Examiner’s van pulled into the parking lot and two guys, one who looked human but could have been any number of supers, the other a demon with green skin, pulled a gurney out of the van and headed for the stairs.
I shifted to get out of the way, and the male officer across from me pushed the room’s door open further, giving me a perfect view of the horror show inside.
The body of a demon with onyx skin lay on an unmade bed, like a discarded crushed doll. All of his limbs except one arm had been crushed and twi
sted, and half of his face had been smashed in. But what horrified me the most was the fist-sized hole in the middle of his chest.
Up until now, the archnephilim had crushed and sliced but not punctured. Now his smoke tentacles were powerful enough to stab straight through someone and I doubted that power had anything to do with natural development. Gideon had said the mating brand enhanced an angel’s powers. I was enhancing the archnephilim’s. That was why he’d wanted me.
I tore my gaze from the body, but my attention got stuck halfway up the wall, staring at a blood smear. Blood splattered everywhere, walls, floor, ceiling, but that smear looked like it had been done on purpose.
The medical examiner guys pushed the gurney inside, the demon going first and using his body to open the door even further.
That smear looked like a T and the smear beside it an H.
I stepped into the doorway to get a better look, and my pulse stuttered. The archnephilim had written in blood on the wall, ‘thanks for the power,’ confirming what I suspected. I was responsible for this new level of gore.
Chapter 14
We returned to Operations, the mood in the SUV grim. Gideon and Jacob had identified the victim as another squad member, which only made Gideon more brooding because the rest of his squad was supposed to be in hiding. Frustration and fear radiated from Marcus in snaps of hot and cold, and his fingers had elongated and narrowed, not fully forming into claws, but on the verge, while Jacob and Kol were on their phones, accessing the JP archives catalogue and searching for any document or recording that might offer a hint to capturing an archnephilim or severing an angelic mating brand.
Marcus pulled into the garage and parked in a spot near the door, and we piled out of the SUV.
“Show me where this archive is,” I said to Jacob, the claim urging me to please him thankfully agreeing with my need to find answers. I hoped we’d be able to find a way to free me, but I was enough of a realist to know I shouldn’t hold my breath on that. Knowledge, however, was power, and I was painfully short on any kind of information about archnephilim and angel brands, so learning as much as I could on this mess wasn’t wasted time.