Veiron shrugged. “It could’ve been a lot worse.”
“Gross.” Amelia grabbed Erin’s hand and pulled her onto her feet, dragging her towards the deck. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
“You’re not my mother, Amelia,” Erin groused and tried to get her hand free. “And he’s smexy as hell... and really nice... and will you let me go... and why is your hair silver?”
Veiron wanted to follow her but the look in Marcus’s eyes said to give them a moment alone to catch up and argue it out. At least the former guardian angel wasn’t giving him the third degree about what had clearly happened between him and Erin.
Marcus nodded towards the deck and turned away, and it was then that Veiron noticed what he was wearing. Or not wearing. The man was dressed in nothing but a pair of black swim shorts. That was a little too much Marcus on show for his liking. Whenever they had met in the past, Amelia had been wearing a summer dress and Marcus had been wearing linen trousers at worst or trousers and a shirt at best.
Marcus sat down on the edge of the wooden deck, legs dangling over the short drop to the white sand below. His dark hair was wet and slicked back from his face. Come to think of it, Amelia’s hair had been wet too. Had they been swimming together when they had sensed his arrival, or in the hot tub at their own villa?
Veiron looked down at the one on his deck, wishing he’d had a few minutes alone with Erin so they could have tried it out before her sister had invaded their lives. He sighed, toed his boots off and removed his socks, and then yanked his black t-shirt over his head and tossed it onto the bed. He stepped out onto the deck, the boards warm beneath his bare feet, and sat down next to Marcus.
“You are in trouble.” Marcus glanced across to his left.
Veiron followed his gaze to the next villa. Erin and Amelia were sitting on the chairs on the deck there, having what looked like a heated debate rather than a sisterly catch up session full of ‘I missed you’ and ‘I’m glad you’re safe’.
“Don’t I know it?” Veiron sighed and pressed his palms into the wooden boards of the deck, curling his fingers over the edge. He stared at Amelia and Erin, his gaze constantly wandering back to his impish beauty. “I’m always in trouble one way or another. I thought I would at least get a thank you.”
Marcus settled his hand on Veiron’s shoulder and Veiron tore his gaze away from Erin. “Amelia came over with the intention of thanking you but whatever she walked in on, she wasn’t expecting it. What were you doing to Erin?”
“Exactly what Amelia said. I was kissing her... or about to.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“She was beneath me on the bed at the time.”
Marcus’s black eyebrows rose. “Ah.”
“It could have been far worse.”
Marcus’s expression said it all. “At least you didn’t barge in on us.”
Veiron chuckled and Marcus laughed along with him. “A pot and kettle situation then. I wonder if Erin knows it.”
He looked back across at her. The heat seemed to have subsided and the two women were now chatting animatedly, Amelia toying with her silver hair and waving her hands around. Was she explaining everything to her sister? He hoped so. Erin deserved to know everything.
“Marcus.” Veiron turned back to face him. “There’s something different about Erin.”
“Different how?” Marcus frowned at him and then looked beyond him to the women. Veiron didn’t need to look back at them to know that Marcus’s gaze was locked on Erin rather than Amelia. “She’s mortal.”
Veiron nodded. “She is, but she’s had visions her whole life... and a few days ago she fought back against a man claiming to be her guardian angel.”
“Visions aren’t that uncommon.”
Veiron frowned at the white sand and then at Erin, and finally at Marcus. “No... but hurling fireballs is.”
“Fireballs?” Marcus’s focus shot back to him. “Like Amelia can use?”
“No, different somehow. They are almost the same but they’re red and they’re damn powerful. She almost took him down but he did the disappearing trick.” Veiron glanced back at Erin. “Another thing... the little fucker came to her in Hell. He must have wanted to bargain with her about something. I’ve had Hell’s angels on my arse since leaving it. I use one iota of my power and they’re coming for me... for her. She was more than bait, Marcus. I know the Devil. If she was just bait, he wouldn’t have tried to bargain with her and he would have changed tactics once she escaped Hell. He wouldn’t send his men after her every time we popped up on his radar. He would’ve waited for her to meet Amelia.”
Marcus frowned. “What are you saying?”
“He was trying to take her back.” That thought left Veiron cold inside. It was the only logical conclusion. It hadn’t made sense before but now that he knew Erin had a power of her own, one that could challenge Amelia’s, it was something he couldn’t deny and something that turned his blood to ice.
“You think he wants her power?”
“It’s a possibility, and not one I enjoy entertaining.” He stared across the open stretch of beach to her and she looked over at him, her smile quick to come but just as quick to fade when she saw how serious he looked. “We need to figure out where her power comes from, why she has her own guardian angel, and what the fuck the Devil wants with her.”
“Easier said than done,” Marcus murmured and cast a glance around them. “And this isn’t exactly the place for it. I know one thing though... if Heaven assigned her a guardian angel, then they knew about this power.”
“The angel didn’t. It shocked him.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” Marcus practically growled the words. “I swear they enjoy keeping us in the dark so we obey them. My only wish is that we could expose the whole thing and make the angels see we have all been used by Heaven and Hell.”
“I hear you,” Veiron snarled and glared at the horizon. “I want nothing more than to end this crap.”
“Soon.” Marcus squeezed his shoulder, a show of solidarity that warmed Veiron and thawed his blood. When the time came, Marcus would stand beside him. Would Amelia too? The others? Erin? Together they could form an army and could perhaps recruit other angels into their ranks. Amelia was Marcus’s new master and had made him like her. It was possible that she could do the same with other angels. “First we need to learn what the Devil wants with Erin and why Heaven has her under the protection of an angel.”
“Erin saw something in a vision. I need to go to Hell to see if it will come to pass and I’ll poke around while I’m down there, see if I can figure out what the Devil really wants with Erin.” The thought of leaving her didn’t sit well with him but Marcus and Amelia would protect her in his absence, and Taylor and Einar would join them soon.
“Not yet,” Marcus said and scrubbed a hand across his face. “Give her a day to settle in with Amelia again and then go if you must.”
Veiron frowned. He was sure that Amelia would prefer him out of the way given the fact that she had discovered he was intimate with her little sister. Was Marcus willing to go against the wishes of his woman for Erin’s sake or Veiron’s? He couldn’t believe it would have anything to do with him so it had to have everything to do with Erin. Veiron despised the thought of Marcus becoming protective of Erin. That was his job, not the angel’s. He couldn’t protect her from Hell though and she needed to remain here on the island, hidden from his world and that of Heaven.
“What about Heaven? If they have a guardian watching her, he will know where she is. We can’t hide her from him... and that means he knows where we are if he turns his attention back to her,” Marcus said, his face a picture of darkness as he scowled up at the blue vault above them.
“Shit... I wasn’t thinking. I should have delayed our meeting. I’m sorry... I fucked up. I just—Erin was in danger and I had to get her out of there. I thought only about the Hell’s angels and getting her to Amelia so she would be safe
.”
Marcus patted Veiron’s shoulder again. “Don’t beat yourself up about it. Erin sent the angel running, so there is a chance that he is licking his wounds and will not be looking to come back down and confront her until he has more information about her and her powers from his superiors.”
“What if he gets that information... what if he tells his bosses about what happened and they send a whole bloody army to retrieve her and take her into custody for questioning?”
Marcus’s expression turned grim, his eyes brightening and swirling, rich blue puncturing the paler silver in his irises. “They took Amelia from me like that... I will not let them take Erin. With you, myself and Amelia here, and Erin exhibiting a power of her own, it would be foolish of them to try to take her from us, and it would take more than an army to achieve it.”
Dark words from a man who had once upheld everything that Heaven decreed and obeyed his master without question. The game that Heaven had played with Marcus, forcing him to do things against his will, had broken him but Amelia had given him a new life.
That same game had broken Veiron too and he hadn’t felt whole again, hadn’t truly felt anything, until Erin had entered his life and shaken his black world to the foundations and given him a new purpose and reason to end the game and seize his freedom.
“Taylor and Einar will be here in a couple of days. Once Taylor comes, I will make her send Erin to sleep so she drops off the radar.” Veiron dug his fingers into the edge of the deck. They still had to make it to then though. He wasn’t sure what would happen should the guardian angel make an appearance before they could conceal Erin’s location. It would be war. Amelia wouldn’t stand for her little sister coming under fire from the realm that had tried to force her lover, Marcus, to murder her and spill her blood. “What we really need is someone who can go up and see what’s happening up there.”
Marcus tipped his head back, the unruly waves of his short black hair brushing the nape of his neck. “Impossible. Lukas is the only angel left among us who could enter Heaven without raising suspicion and he has his hands full as far as I know. Annelie and Serenity are going through the trials.”
“They want to become immortals?” Veiron found that difficult to digest. The trials were diabolical and few survived, but they were the only way for a mortal to achieve a lifespan long enough to match an angel. If a mortal was serious about their love for an immortal, like an angel or a demon, then the temptation of the trials was probably too great to resist. Immortality and an end to their aging were the rewards if they survived.
He had always thought it was a foolish thing for a mortal to do and that the immortal they loved was cruel to ask it of them rather than convincing them to part ways and give up on their dreams of a future together. Mortals were so fragile and fleeting.
Veiron looked across at Erin, watching her talk to her sister, feeling it right down to his bones. She was mortal. He had never desired to involve himself with them before. In barely two decades, she would look so different, and he would not. She would come to despise him and what love could survive that?
The voice at the back of his mind said again that it was better to end it now, before he was in too deep to save himself. Two decades was a blip in his existence and the thought of watching Erin die, either because of old age or because she decided to face the trials and failed, was too painful to contemplate.
What future was there for them? Even if aging wasn’t an issue, he was. She tried to hold her tongue around him but she had shown the feelings for his kind that she hid in her heart, and he couldn’t blame her for hating them. Hell’s angels had abducted her, tormented her, hurt her and chased her. They deserved her wrath and her hatred.
She would always hate them.
And that meant a part of her would always hate him.
It hurt whenever she turned on him now. It would tear him apart if he let himself fall in love with her.
“We should join the females.” Marcus dropped to the sand below them.
Veiron nodded, shook away his painful thoughts, and followed him.
He would do as Marcus had asked. He would wait a day and then he would leave Erin and return to Hell.
He had to. Not to continue his mission, but to discover his fate and the truth about Erin.
She needed answers.
And he would get them for her.
CHAPTER 17
Erin had barely seen Veiron since Amelia had come in unannounced and interrupted what had promised to be another very wicked moment with her demonic angel. A moment she had needed with every ounce of her being and all of her heart.
Things had been off kilter between them since she had unleashed some sort of power on the rooftop back in London. She had tried to get it back on track, tried to shove her worries to the back of her mind, and had even tried to speak to Veiron about them a few times, but none of it had worked.
How could she have been so stupid as to say all that stuff on the boat? She hadn’t been thinking. Sometimes, it was so easy to forget that Veiron was from Hell, that he lived there and was a part of that place. She needed to start watching what she said around him or he was going to end up leaving her. Now that she was back with her sister, it was only a matter of time before Veiron made his excuses. Her heart ached at the thought of him leaving, casting aside what they had together, but her conversation with her sister had given her a clearer understanding of his reasons for trying to keep some distance between them and wanting to leave.
He had a mission, a vow to destroy the game that Heaven and Hell was playing with him, Marcus and Amelia, and to free himself of it forever.
From what Amelia had told her and what she now knew of the Devil, Erin wasn’t sure that was entirely possible. The Devil was powerful. He had killed a demonic angel right in front of her and hadn’t even broken a sweat, and the man had been strong and huge. If Veiron went after the Devil, things would end as they had in her vision, and that was something she didn’t want.
Marcus talked to Veiron at the edge of the deck of his and Amelia’s villa. It was smaller than the one she shared with Veiron but it had the same luxuries. Amelia had offered to share a dip in the hot tub with her but Erin had turned her sister down. She wanted to take a dip, just not with Amelia.
Her gaze roamed over Veiron and she made the appropriate murmurs and grunts as her sister continued to speak to her, telling her all about everything that had happened.
Marcus was good-looking, tall and athletic, his muscles honed to the point where he looked like a fitness model on the cover of one of those health magazines in his black shorts. He wasn’t a patch on Veiron though. She loved Veiron’s dark sensuality and his possessiveness. She was sure that Marcus was just as lethal as the man stood beside him, but Veiron broadcasted danger and it drew her to him.
The only thing she didn’t like about Veiron was his mood swings. It annoyed her when he shut down his feelings around her and turned cold, especially when she was burning for him.
Veiron glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Erin smiled at him, gaining a tight smile in return. Whatever they were talking about, it had Veiron on edge. Or maybe that was her. She hadn’t exactly started off their time on the island in a good way and she had wanted to tell him that, and apologise, but she had ended up kissing him instead. When she had tried to offer up a heartfelt apology and an explanation, it had come out sounding weak. After that, he had joked with her as though everything was fine but she had seen his playfulness for what it really was—a way of covering his hurt.
She longed to escape Amelia and take Veiron somewhere quiet so they could talk but it wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. Whenever she so much as looked at Veiron for longer than a few seconds, Amelia started reminding her that he was a Hell’s angel, as though she cared about that.
Veiron was a good man.
He had protected her, had been gentle with her for the most part, and had even saved her life.
She didn’t care what Amelia
thought about him. She only cared that she was falling in love with him.
Erin turned away to talk to Amelia where she sat beside her on a reclining lounger and felt Veiron’s gaze shift to her entirely. She wanted to look at him again but settled for enjoying the feel of his eyes on her, locked and focused.
“I’m never getting used to the hair.” Erin combed her fingers through Amelia’s long silver ponytail. It was like looking at a different person. “It doesn’t suit you, you know? It’s too wild for you.”
Amelia smiled. “You’re one to talk. When did you do that to your hair?”
Erin fluffed up her own much shorter black hair. “About a year ago now. You don’t like it? Dad loves it. He says it makes me look artistic.”
“How is dad?” There was a sombre note to Amelia’s voice and it was there in her grey eyes too.
When Amelia had first told her about everything that had happened, she had felt a little jealous of her sister’s powers and the fact that she could fly. Now, Erin didn’t envy her at all. Amelia was constantly on the run with Marcus, moving from one hideaway to the next, hoping to live to see another day.
Was that how Veiron had been living since turning his back on his master and siding with the enemy?
Her gaze slid back to him. Amelia patted her knee.
“I was speaking?” she said and Erin smiled, returning her attention to her older sister.
“He’s good. I tell him whenever I hear from you. He thinks you’re off travelling, which I guess you are. It must be a nightmare.”
Amelia shrugged and cast her gaze downwards. She picked at the hem of her pale dress and sighed. “It’s been difficult. Marcus takes care of me though. I’m lucky to have him.”
As if he had heard her, Marcus looked across the deck at Amelia. Erin looked to Veiron to find him walking down the wooden steps to the beach. The sun was setting now, sinking towards the infinite horizon, and it cast warm light over him. Erin went to stand but Amelia’s hand on her arm stopped her.
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