by Tessa Cole
“Right.” I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him as he stared at Zella. My emotions were a mess, the desire from the archnephilim making me yearn for something I couldn’t have and didn’t want with Gideon.
“Right.” I forced myself to turn and head away. I didn’t know how much time I had left, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to have a conversation with Marcus. What could I say when I couldn’t tell him Gideon’s plan was the only one that would work?
And even then, with the archnephilim able to possess me, that had the potential to make everything more complicated.
Except I had managed to break free. By the skin of my teeth, but I had. Perhaps there was an angle there I could use, a way to help the guys. Maybe if I could distract him, Gideon would be able to strike a killing blow? And maybe I could do more than just distract him, but I needed to learn a hell of a lot more about angelic mating brands to figure out if that was even a possibility.
I hit the call button for the elevator as Amiah came down the main hall toward me, and I prayed she’d just glare at me and head down the stairs to the cafeteria. But she joined me, waiting for the elevator, her hard gaze locked on the closed door.
The temperature around me rose.
I shifted, waiting for her to hit the up button. She didn’t, which meant I was going to be trapped in the elevator with her and her hot fury. Wonderful.
“I think you’re reckless,” she said, her tone filled with ice and the temperature rising a few more degrees.
“You don’t even know me.”
She slid her icy gaze to me. “I know enough.”
Right. One fuck-up before I knew what I was doing, and I was forever reckless. Except that wasn’t true. Marcus was right. I was still taking chances, letting Jacob claim me to protect him and using myself as bait before we knew anything about the archnephilim.
“I also know if it wasn’t for you, Zella would be dead.”
The elevator dinged, the door opened, and I hit the only basement button.
“Gideon will eventually get past his shock and thank you,” she said, her tone softening and a hint of the heat diminishing. “But until he does, on his behalf, thank you. You brought her back to us.”
In the most horrific way possible. “I wish it had been under better circumstances.”
“And I wish,” she said, her voice icy again, “whatever happens next, you think before you act and don’t do something that gets any of the guys killed.”
The door opened and she strode out, heading down a narrow hall to the right, taking her heat with her. A chill settled around me, the actual temperature of the basement, filled with a hint of musty air and the smell of old books.
Ahead of me, Jacob sat at a wide wooden table that was piled with books, looking at me, while Kol sat behind him on a couch watching his phone, listening to the video flashing on his screen with earphones and not disturbing the quiet. Two fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, offering stark illumination, and beyond stood shelves and shelves of books creating long passages. Across from the table, opposite the couch, was a metal door secured by a lock with a fingerprint scanner, and through the thick security glass I could see a neatly stacked row of rifles. The archives and the armory.
“Find anything?” I asked, not that I’d expected anything to be found in the fifteen minutes I’d been talking with Gideon… not that I expected them to find anything at all.
“Not yet. I’m going through the journals and records confiscated from Michael’s facilities. Kol is watching the videos we recovered. If Michael was making archnephilim, he had to have a way to control them. He may have thought humanity was a parasite on the planet, but he wasn’t a fool. An archnephilim is too powerful a weapon to create without having a guaranteed means of controlling it.”
I sure hoped he was right, but I couldn’t place all my bets on that one hope. Michael might not have had a plan to control the archnephilim. Perhaps he was just planning on letting them wreak havoc until the archnephilim were dead or the humans and the supers were.
“I should learn more about the mating brand. Maybe there’s a way I can use it to influence the archnephilim, give you guys a chance to subdue him.”
“Or weaken or sever the bond completely,” Jacob said. “Gideon says it’s not a true brand. There’s still a chance we could find a way to remove it.”
Except Gideon had been adamant from the beginning that once a brand formed, the bond could never be severed, and I really didn’t want to get my hopes up because if there was a way to sever the bond between me and the archnephilim, then there was a way to sever the bond with Gideon. And then I could leave all this insanity behind.
“I really hope you’re right. I would give just about anything to remove the brand.”
Kol’s gaze jumped to me then slid down my arm to where Gideon’s brand was hidden beneath my shirtsleeve.
Both of the brands.
Except a part of me didn’t want to sever the bond with Gideon. It was crazy. God, it had to be the influence of the true mating brand. Staying with Gideon, who didn’t even know me let alone love me, was a disaster waiting to happen.
But even if I didn’t stay for Gideon, there was still Marcus. Confusing, frustrating Marcus. I still had no idea what to make of him or his ferocious protectiveness, and I really wanted to kiss him again and let his wild passion make me forget everything that was happening.
Jeez. This was a mess. I was a mess.
“Marcus is in the stacks toward the back left corner of the archives, looking for books on the angelic mating brand. You can join him or he can point you in the direction of books on archangels,” Jacob said. “Maybe there’s a way to capture them and we can go back to plan A.”
For a moment, I considered asking Jacob to point me in the direction of the books on archangels so I could avoid Marcus entirely, but I really needed to know if I could use the archnephilim’s brand against him. Everything else — finding a way to control him or capture him — sounded lovely, but that wasn’t anything I could control or probably even help with. Using the brand, though? That was something I could do.
I headed down a long aisle, the shelves reaching all the way to a ceiling with long fluorescent lights running down the center. The aisle ended in a T-intersection and between the uneven top of the books and the books of the closest shelf, I could see more shelves beyond. I couldn’t tell if the library took up the entire basement, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had.
I wove my way through the shelves, always going toward the back and the left, until I rounded a corner and found Marcus sitting on the floor, an open book in his lap, more books piled on the floor around him. His piercing green gaze, filled with a need more powerful than I’d ever seen from him before, rose to meet mine. My pulse stuttered. Sultry heat fluttered around me, tentative and uncertain, but while I hoped it meant he desired me, I didn’t know for sure. I didn’t know what anything with Marcus meant. I didn’t understand this man at all. He’d acted professionally when we’d been partners, even with the chemistry sizzling between us, and had never said he was interested in me, no matter what the temperature around him had told me.
And then I’d messed up.
“I thought you were mad at me.”
“I was mad— am mad. You keep taking risks, putting your life in danger when you’re not supposed to have anything to do with the supernatural world.” The desire in his eyes hardened. “My world.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” He had no right to be mad at me now. This was my life, my decision, and this time it had nothing to do with him. “Why would you care? I’m the reason you’re in this world in the first place. I’m the one who messed up and ruined your life. You have every right to be mad at me for that, but this—” I gestured to the library around me, meaning the supernatural world and not just the library. “—this has nothing to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with me,” he said, his voice low, and for a moment it seemed it wasn’t
him talking but his wolf.
“Bullshit. You haven’t talked to me since that night. No call, no email, nothing. You didn’t even clean out your locker. You just left. You made your point absolutely clear.” My throat tightened with guilt that I’d never managed to get rid of, only gotten better at ignoring.
“And what point was that?” His grip on the sides of the book tightened.
“That you were furious. That you didn’t even want to accidentally run into me when you emptied your locker. That I’d destroyed your life.” And there wasn’t any way I could make it up to him. The only thing I could do now was ensure my new mess didn’t get him or any of the other guys hurt or killed — and with Gideon’s brand on my arm now, at least one of them was going to get hurt.
“I didn’t come back to clean out my locker because I started turning right away. I barely managed to get to the hospital in the Quarter in time.” His gaze dropped to the book in his lap and he took in a breath that did little to ease the tension in his body. “And then I was angry.”
A hint of mist curled around me, and I realized the flickering heat had vanished. His anger or whatever it was I’d felt before was gone, replaced with grief or regret.
“I was angry for a long time, but not at you. You were a rookie. You had less than six months on the job,” he said. “I was angry at myself for letting you put yourself in danger. I should have done whatever it took to stop you.”
“I shouldn’t have rushed in. We should have waited for backup.”
Marcus shrugged, but the action looked forced. “We should have. But every time I think about that night, I know Ariel Cromer would have died if we had.”
“We don’t know that.” Except I knew he was right… or was it that I hoped he was right? I’d panicked. She’d been screaming and I’d rushed in to save her. And Marcus had been bitten. I had no idea how we hadn’t been killed that night.
His gaze lifted back to me, stalling my pulse again with the desire in his eyes. God, with just one look he could control me, steal my breath, and he didn’t need to use a mating brand. “But most of all I was angry because I couldn’t stop thinking about you. There was something about you, Essie. There still is. I can’t explain it. I’m drawn to you—” He huffed a sad laugh. “My wolf is really drawn to you. That’s why I had to stay away.”
“That still doesn’t make sense.” If he was drawn to me, why would he have had to stay away? Why say nothing about it for the six months we worked together? He had to know the attraction went both ways. You didn’t have that kind of chemistry with someone when it only went one way.
“Come on, Essie. We’d had enough conversations while on patrol for me to know you wanted nothing to do with supers. Every time I brought the conversation up, you’d get this scared look in your eyes and change the topic.” He flicked the tip of the pages with his thumb and the muscles in his jaw twitched. “It took me over a year to get through my transition, to feel right in my skin again. Thank God for Amiah. She was working at Mercy Memorial then. If it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t have gotten through it. But when I finally had my head on straight, I knew no matter what I’d felt about you, I had to stay away. You wouldn’t have accepted my wolf and my wolf wouldn’t have accepted that.”
I opened my mouth to protest that, but couldn’t say the words. Up until a day ago, everything he said about me had been true. I was afraid of supers and wanted nothing to do with their world. I still didn’t want anything to do with them.
“So now what?”
“Now I tell my wolf to shut the fuck up, keep my distance from you, and get you your life back.”
“Gee, when you put it that way it sounds so easy,” I said, unable to keep the sarcasm from my tone. “How’s that working for you?”
“Not well,” he growled, the heat in his eyes making my pulse race. “I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
Pain flickered through the archnephilim’s brand, reminding me that as much as Marcus wanted me to get my life back, it wasn’t going to happen.
I pressed my palm to the brand — as if that would do something to ease the pain — and sat on the floor across from him. “I think you’re also going to have to accept that this isn’t going to turn out well.”
His attention dipped to where I held my biceps and his expression darkened. “What happened to the rookie who thought she could run into a room with four werewolves and get out alive?”
“She learned a hard lesson that night.” I picked up the book closest to me. “And I never thought about me. I always thought about the girl. Right now I’m in a position to save a lot of girls. Don’t fight Gideon on this, help me end this.”
“I’m not losing you.”
“I don’t think you have much of a choice in the matter.” Because even if I survived, Gideon’s brand said I belonged with him.
Chapter 16
We read in awkward silence, a strange mix of attraction and regret and anger crackling between us that I didn’t need my not-very-helpful empathy to sense, until Marcus’s phone rang and he left. I wasn’t sure what I thought about his revelation that he’d disappeared to protect me, that he wasn’t angry at me for ruining his life, and I didn’t want to think about it. It was complicated and I didn’t want to spend my last days, hell, maybe even my last hours, worrying about that. I also didn’t want to completely break his heart, so I didn’t act on the desire to kiss him again, even if that would have been a much better way of spending my remaining time.
The first three books I flipped through were different texts of pretty much the same information, long-winded explanations of what Gideon had already told me about angelic mating brands. They were rare — sometimes centuries would pass between mated pairs — and they were unique to the angels involved. Not just the sigil etched into the angel’s body, but how it connected their souls and how long it took to form. Sometimes it enhanced magic. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes an angel developed new magic. A branded pair could almost always find each other, and the mating bond was never ignored — although I wasn’t sure if anyone had ever tried. It was always seen as beautiful and sacred and couldn’t be broken, even in death. The death of one killed the other or drove him or her insane, either raving mad, catatonic, or sobbing uncontrollably all the time. The soul-deep connection between mated angels was stronger than any other connection known to man or super and was seen with awe and respect among the angel community.
Yeah, because they’d never had an angel mated to a nephilim before. I was pretty sure all that sacred brand stuff would get thrown out the window the minute Gideon knew what I really was. He’d probably say it was a fake brand, like the one the archnephilim had given me. Except his brand didn’t look anything like the archnephilim’s and he wasn’t behaving as if he even suspected it was fake — although that might be because he thought the bond was with Zella.
Of course none of that stopped him from changing his mind once all was revealed. And none of that really mattered. The hope I’d found in those books had been a paragraph in one of them about the bond not being completed if something happened to one of the angels before the brand had fully formed. That, at least, confirmed my theory that the sooner we dealt with the archnephilim, the better Gideon’s chances were at surviving this mess.
The next book was more biographical than textbook, and I wasn’t certain how much was truth and how much legend. The first few chapters were the histories of the first recorded mating brands with an account that matched everything I’d learned in the previous books. The next chapter was about a branded trio which surprised me and yet didn’t surprise me.
When angels had first revealed themselves to humanity, they’d been clear that they were beings of energy who existed in the Realm of Celestial Light — while demons existed in the Realm of Celestial Darkness — and that while they claimed to be divine, they predated all human religions. Angels were the law to the demons’ chaos. Or at least they were supposed to be, until Michael decided humans were a plague th
at wasn’t just draining the life of our planet but the life of the Realm of Celestial Light as well.
No one human religion ruled angelic behavior, so while a lot of the human population felt polyamory was taboo, that didn’t mean angels did — and I doubted anyone had tried asking them about it. Most angels didn’t leave their celestial realm, and those who did didn’t socialize with humans. Given Gideon’s insistence that angel DNA wasn’t compatible with any other DNA, I suspected very few if any angels dated outside of their species.
The three stories after that were back to the usual pattern of perfect soul bonds and all the unconditional love that went with it — heterosexual and homosexual bondings, so I guessed the brand didn’t mean mating in the sense of species reproduction — but the story after that was different.
This one started the same as the others, but the man was captured during an assault into the Realm of Celestial Darkness in an attempt to correct an imbalance between the two energies. His soul had been damaged, allowing him to be infected with dark energy and driving him insane. Not even the mating brand had been able to help him, and with the combination of both light and dark energy, he was more powerful than before, killing indiscriminately: angel, demon, human, whoever stood in his way.
After many failed attempts to save him, his mate gathered all the divine power within her — and according to the record she was a powerhouse when it came to summoning divine light — and blasted it through their brand, using their connection to reach and destroy his soul unobstructed.
The record wasn’t clear if the blast had burned away both of their souls, killing them, or if her heart had stopped killing her because they were bonded and he’d died.
I’d found my answer.
I sat back and cracked my neck, feeling the weight of everything that had happened since I’d walked into Pam and Abe’s pharmacy yesterday. Even though I’d slept last night, I was back to being exhausted. Maybe I wasn’t back to anything. Maybe I was still exhausted. I couldn’t tell. Or maybe it was the story that made me feel like I was carrying an enormous weight.