Angelic Avenger (15 page)

“Humble?
You
? You don’t know when to stop, do you?”

“I’ll stop when I find out where the line is with you,” he replied softly into my ear. “You’re not so cruel as to deprive me of a little bit of fun. I promise to be as nice as you want me to be.”

I ignored the evocative tone and resisted the urge to roll my eyes. What is it with men and the idea they’re simply irresistible to women? I smiled and tipped my neck so that my mouth was close to his ear. Craig jumped when I nibbled it lightly, and then pressed me closer as he purred. Leaning closer still, I whispered low enough so no one could hear us over the crowd noise.

“Oh, I’m sure you will be. There are way too many men who will kill you if you’re not. Neither of us wants that to happen, so we’ll play the game, for one night only. There’s a very small list of acceptable men out there for me, apparently.”

I was only half jesting and he knew it.

“Well, for tonight—” he snickered as he kissed my cheek, “—I get to be on the list. You need a reason to be in here. Ben comes in every so often, but you’ve never graced us with your august presence. People will be much freer with their conversation if they think you have a reason to be loyal to us instead of
them.
Play the lover for me
.
”

I couldn’t argue with his logic. It was very much an “us versus them” philosophy between the angel and shifter communities. There was apparently a sharp mind behind that lazy smile, after all. They’d known when I met with them last night that I’d be here tonight and had set up the scene accordingly. I hated being predictable. It made me want to do something rash to shake up whomever thought they had me marked.

Tonight, I would have a bit of fun with my eyes and ears open. No apple martinis for me to cloud my senses. At the end of the night when the mortals were sleeping, Ben and I would be drinking coffee around my dining room table trying to find a way to keep the shifters from getting themselves annihilated.

“Which side are you on, seriously?” I don’t know why I had to know, but I did. No, I take that back. I knew exactly why I needed to know. If this whole thing went sour, I’d be harvesting souls. I didn’t want his to be one of them. Somehow, I wanted to watch his face flirt with me over the bar while Gray played his sax in the background.

How sad is that? Less than a day into an official relationship and I was already planning my life around him. Relationships complicate lives. Why do we do it again?

Oh yeah, some men really are irresistible. Maybe it was the thrill of the attraction and the way love made everyone feel truly alive in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with breathing and everything to do with living.

“Me?” His surprised question jerked me back to the fact I was pressed flush against him. “Seriously? I was honest last night. I’d love not to have to hide what I am, but am certainly not willing to die for it. On a deeper note—” he swirled us off the floor and into a shadowed spot against the wall where it looked like we were doing a lot more than whispering as he rocked against me, “—I honestly don’t believe it’s in the best interest of any of us for the mortals to know what we are. They fear what they don’t understand and Hollywood has been less than kind to the monsters in the world. We don’t need another Salem. We’re between a rock and a hard place. If we fail, they’ll send you to kill us. If we succeed? It’ll be the mortals doing the killing and there’s not a chance in hell the angels will help us because it’ll endanger everyone else’s secrets.”

He pulled back and earnestly stared down at me.

“I don’t want to die. That’s why we brought you in. You’re the only one we could think of who can find the compromise.”

The absolute faith in his gaze shook me to the core. They honestly expected me to save their entire race? Oh man, were they that desperate?

“I’m not making any promises, Craig.” I reached up and ran my fingers through his short blond curls. They were as soft as they’d looked and it made me wonder what his fur felt like.

“If there’s anyone who can find a way out of this mess, it’s you. Everyone else thinks they have to live by the rules. You make your own.”

I stared into his eyes and realized he believed that with a certainty that was frightening. He didn’t know me well enough to have that kind of blind faith in me. It scared me to realize they honestly expected me to find a way to fix this.

Well, hell. Talk about my reputation painting a portrait larger than life. I began to wonder how cold it was in Hell this time of year and hoping I didn’t find myself cashing in that one-way ticket.

Chapter Thirteen

“Do they honestly expect you to save them from their own stupidity?” Ben asked in a wry tone.

“Apparently.” I sat across from Ben at my kitchen table nursing a tepid cup of coffee. It was a sad case when I let my coffee get cold. How did I end up in these disasters? “They were even talking about a blasted press conference.”

The scope of this little fiasco was far wider than either of us had realized. I really had been living with my head stuck in the sand. Granted, Ben was as shaken as I was and he had friends in the right circles to have been on the inside of all this. Somehow, that made me feel better.

“Lord.” He snorted as he twirled a pen around on his knuckles. “I can see it now. Yes, what’s your question Ms. Fox News person?”

He threw his voice to a higher, breathier pitch and continued. “Is there any truth to the legend that you can make us one of you if you bite us?”

“Why, what a great question,” he carried on in his normal voice as he snapped his fingers loudly in the stillness of the kitchen. “Unfortunately, it’s all too true in most cases. You’ll be fine if you happen to carry a latent fey, maven or angel gene from that long lost grandfather no one told you about. In that case, you’ll have a nasty bite to have stitched up. If you happen to already carry a shifter gene that conflicts with mine, it’ll just kill ya.”

Hearing him give the worse case scenario voice made me realize how horrible the panic would be. The carnage was too much to contemplate.

“They’re going to get themselves slaughtered,” I muttered morosely.

“Along with every dog, wolf, cat, bear and everything else mortals fear in the world,” Ben agreed as he picked up his coffee cup. “Question is what can we do about it?”

“Find the source and cut it off.”

We both jumped. I turned to find Foras leaning against the doorframe, his shirt open to reveal the smooth expanse of his chest with his jeans slung low over his hips. How had I forgotten he was there? Ben and I looked at each other guiltily. I distracted myself by stirring more sugar in my coffee. I very nearly swallowed my tongue when Ben spoke up cheekily.

“So, General Foras, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal, whatdoya know about all this?”

I kicked him under the table with a significant frown.

“What? He obviously knows more than we do. Hell, he might even have a plan that won’t get us both truly dead in the offering.”

I hated to admit he had a point, so I sighed and looked at Foras. “Do you?”

A ghost of a smile quirked at his lips as he shrugged. “I have an idea or two. I would have been more forthcoming if I’d known what you were going to investigate. Moreover, if I had known you’d come home reeking of a certain cat, I’d have insisted on accompanying you.”

I blushed. All this and I blushed. It bordered on ridiculous. To admit I’d spent the evening acting like a shifter groupie embarrassed me. Where had all these men been a week ago? In hiding, of course. I find a man and fall into a relationship however inadvertently, and then they all come out to taunt me. Just my luck. Murphy’s Law runs my life, I swear.

“Well, I thought you’d run tattle. That honor among thieves thing.”

He raised a brow at my caustic comment. “I am a lot of things, Bella, but a thief isn’t one of them. I prefer conquest to theft. It’s so much more rewarding.”

I rolled my eyes and kicked my chair around to look at him as I slouched.

“Yeah, yeah, tell that to Romans. What do you know about the state of the politics among the shifter communities?”

He smiled that slow, sexy smile that said he knew I needed what he knew. I was going to owe him at least one favor before this was done. I knew it and I hated it. Angels had a way of taking favors and turning them into something the debtor totally wouldn’t want to do.

“I had nothing to do with the Romans, Bella, dear. They were far too—” he pretended to ponder as he strode to the chair at the end of the table, “—Bacchanal for even my taste. Now, our shifter problem is much more to my liking. It has the nuances of a good, complicated battle.”

I sighed and stared at him expectantly, refusing to rise to the bait. I knew him well enough to know he would drag this out as his little way of vengeance. Ben took his lead from me and sipped his coffee as if we had all the time in the world before it blew apart.

“Gregory DeFlores is the visionary. He’s a wolf in Arizona. The background is rather murky on him, so I’m not exactly sure what’s fact and fiction. There isn’t truly much I could do about him without causing undue attention to the situation. Every generation or so, someone cooks up the ideals, but it usually dies down without the hubbub. Something about DeFlores is different. Where all the others failed to inspire the masses, he does. He’s their version of Billy Graham. By the time we realized he wasn’t going to fade into the woodwork like the others, it was too late to discreetly deal with the problem.”

I blinked and knew what he meant by discreetly dealing with the problem. He was talking assassination. For the first time since he’d popped into my living room seven years ago, I was forced to remember
exactly
who he was.

“That’s some pretty strong intelligence for a problem beneath the notice of our exalted jailers.”

“A general needs strong intelligence if he’s to make decisions that can alter the tide of nations.”

“Okay, I’ll bite.” Ben’s voice cut my thoughts short. I looked at him and saw his normally merry gaze solemn as he surveyed our dark angel. “Why aren’t you hauling your ass up to tell the Council what’s about to happen down here?”

Ben wasn’t angry, but there was something underlying his voice that I’d never heard before. I think it was the strength of the resolve to prevent the impending catastrophe we both saw looming over us. I couldn’t resist the shiver as I cocked my head and looked at him. The expression on his face was cold and distant. I’d only seen him look like this once before. It was his execution face. One hint from the angel and Ben would carry out the implied order without a single qualm.

“Well—” Foras matched him look for look, “—there haven’t been any laws broken as yet. The Council is not exactly known for their tolerance of radical ideas. I’m not inclined to eradicate half the shifters left in the world simply because they’ve begun to chafe at the restrictions that bind them to us.”

“That’s a pretty fine line to walk, Foras.” I picked up my cup more to have something to do with my hands than anything else. The two men I spent most of my time with were contemplating mass murder as if it were as insignificant as bullfighting in Spain.

“Am I wrong, sweet Bella? I am bound by the restraints of my status and my office. My superiors aren’t as forgiving with me as they are with
you.
Do you wonder what happens to the souls of angels when they’ve outlived their service?”

From the way he said it, it was one of those shadows that haunted him. Up until now, I’d have thought he didn’t have any.

“Have you considered that by not telling you’re already putting yourself to that question?” Something cold settled in my heart. When had I been elected to save the world? I was slowly realizing how precarious the situation was in the terms of long-term consequences.

“Even immortals need to feel the exhilaration of forbidden fruit. It helps us to feel alive.”

Why did I think he wasn’t talking about a few half-truths to the powers above?

“How did I get stuck with this job?” There was a heartfelt groan under the words that both men heard. The atmosphere immediately lightened as the moment passed.

“I don’t exactly know the specifics, but I think you jumped off a bridge in a snit over a man.”

I looked at Ben as if he’d lost his mind. He didn’t say that to me. I had jumped into the Twilight Zone. There could be no other answer. Shaking my head and suppressing the maniacal laughter that threatened to bubble over from my soul.

“Very funny. Someday, you’re going to get a little too drunk and spill your secrets, too, you know. Be kind to me so I won’t run around sharing them.”

“You really don’t get it, do you? Of all of us, you’re the only one who doesn’t sit back and do what they’re told. Word comes down for me to do a job, I go do it. I don’t think about if it’s right or wrong or if it’s even justice. I go and do what I’m told. I don’t even think to question if the person I’ve been sent after deserves it or not. It’s all the same to me. You kill when you have to, but try to work around it unless you’re pissed off. You know every loophole and make a few new ones every time we turn around. I envy you. Hell, we all do. Instead of letting your tragedy shape your penance, you’ve worked it all in your favor.”

I gaped at him. Ben shrugged and grinned as he got up to fetch the coffee pot.

“Exactly.”

I jerked back to Foras. What was it about him tonight that kept making me forget he was underfoot? Could I be developing immunity to angels? I could only hope.

“You knew they’d come to me, didn’t you?” I rubbed my eyes tiredly. I was really getting tired of everyone manipulating me. I smiled my thank you when I opened them to see Ben refilling my coffee cup.

“I’m not surprised, no. Did I expect it? I had hoped, I’ll admit. Even an Archangel isn’t omniscient. All the races of man carry free will. They can’t be forced to consider the Great Design. Their lives are too short.”

Okay, maybe they weren’t manipulating me intentionally. I could blame a lot of this on my own rash judgment and quirky sense of humor. No one had made me rattle the cages I’d rattled over the years. I’d done that totally on my own.