Angelic Avenger (30 page)

“You have a choice, DeFlores. You can start shucking your clothes to prove to us you don’t have a scar, or let our truth seer dig really deep into your soul. I’m betting there are a ton of secrets in there you won’t want her to see and tell the rest of our good buddies, here.”

“She’s no more reliable than you are.” His face snarled and his voice deepened.

Bravado really didn’t suit him, I decided. It made his already unimpressive looks melt into something akin to demonic. I wondered if he was going to make my job so much easier by losing control. Of course, my second thought was Angie wasn’t putting her hands on this madman if he was about to go all furry. She could shift as fast as the rest of them, but she wasn’t a match for a fully grown male in a fight.

Before I had a chance to voice my objection, Mr. Swarthy stepped away from said madman. Just like that, the circle around him melted away. I recognized two men who had guarded her father falling in at her back and knew that they’d take care of their own. Gavin may be healing on Gray’s couch, but his pack was fully functioning. Three cheers for healthy leadership. Maybe the rest of them would learn something.

“Oh, I don’t know. You walk into her territory, incite a riot taking out their king, but you didn’t research who was next in line? How careless of you.”

His eyes widened with understanding. I was on a roll with my hunches.

“She’s a female. Females do not lead.” He really didn’t understand how we did things around here. I’d heard someone say that Southern belles were ninjas with painted toenails. I wondered what color hers were today.

“This one does.” Angie stopped at the front of the group of shifters as she spoke. I blinked when I noticed the line between the two groups had merged. I was willing to bet the men standing at DeFlores’s back were his own. “I believe the lady gave you some choices. Shall I find some music?”

We’d put him in a corner and should have realized it was a mistake. If he wasn’t going to back down from an alpha of equal power like Gavin, he certainly wasn’t going to back down from a female he viewed as lesser. She and I shared a smile, taking the moment to gloat. We assumed the victory to be ours without a fight.

You know what they say about assumptions? Well, it’s true.

Neither of us saw him launch himself at her, but the roar of the shifting wolf brought reactions all the way around. The bodyguards did their part, physically picking her up and putting her behind them as Mr. Swarthy shifted into halfman, putting himself between the wolf and the wall of muscle. I swore that when this was over, I was not only going to know his name, but what his deepest ambition was so I could get it started. The rest of the mass was in motion, too, putting themselves between DeFlores and his followers.

Halfman and wolf isn’t a fair fight. The halfman rolled to his knees with the wolf in his arms, locking his hands behind the canine ears and pressed. Cutting off his air supply would make him pass out and he’d return to his natural form. If it was a wolf, I was so screwed.

Whether the brawl would have picked back up or not, we’d never know. A surge of angelic magic behind me made me turn. Gabriel and Foras stood there with a dozen warriors each at their backs. I blinked and jerked my gaze to their faces when I realized they’d shown up in battle gear—which is to say naked. Granted, it was a nice sight, but it was still embarrassing. Their sudden appearance made all the shifters in that mass of chaos suddenly try to be invisible. Two dozen angels combined with the two most powerful angelic generals who happened to be Archangels in a fight? Hell yes, I’d take that.

Neither Ben nor I reacted; we stood back and waited for the hoopla to die down. Slowly, the thrashing wolf lost his fight to breathe and went limp in the halfman’s arms. Magic surged as the dark wolf bled back to the man and it turned out we didn’t need music at all. The halfman didn’t shift back. Instead, he hooked his arm from underneath the man’s chin and hooked it around his chest, standing up in a fluid motion. There, for all to see was the scar along the inside of his hip. It wasn’t much, really, just three little white lines not much different from stretch marks. Even skimpy underwear would have covered it.

After the build-up, it was anticlimactic. The utter stillness in the room was more than enough reaction to the revelation. Angie and I exchanged glances and I nodded to her. As the ranking member of the host pack, this had become her show.

“Teddy, lock him up. He’ll answer to what he’s done when Gavin sees fit to talk to him.”

The halfman nodded and carried the man away. I watched her stand tall as she surveyed the other members of his party, now ringed by local shifters.

“You’ve abused your welcome. We know who you are. You have until sundown to be out of our borders. In case you’re wondering? That includes the entire state. You can drive two hours in any direction and it’s an email to make sure no one offers any of you safe harbor. Go and be glad we don’t run things the way you do or you’d be carrion.”

DeFlores’s wolves weren’t the only ones looking at Angie like they’d never seen her before. She’d spent so much time in her father’s shadow that she’d been overlooked as a power in her own right. I found myself wondering what Gavin thought of her. That would make a good match. Wait, when had I started thinking so Machiavellian? Oh yeah, when people started thinking they could waltz in here and take over.
So
not going to happen on my watch.

“Angie, honey.” I fairly purred with satisfaction. “With your permission, I’d like to say a few things before you send the good men on their way?”

“Of course.” Her eyes fairly shone with an icy blue fire that made me wonder what she looked like as a wolf. Someday, I was going to have to find out, just to satisfy my curiosity. “Do you want him when we’re through with him?”

“Oh yes, if there’s enough left for me, that is.”

Men underestimate women in a fight because they see the frailer body as a weakness. What we lose in strength, we more than make up in bloodthirsty tendencies. They always seem to forget that.

“I’ll save the last breath for you.”

Our smiles made half the men in the room shift uncomfortably on their feet. Oh yes, we understood each other just fine.

“Now for the rest of you.” I turned to face the group. “This little revolution is over. Let’s call off the press conferences and agree to keep things as they are before you find out humans really aren’t the weaker race. They’ll kill you all and if they don’t, we will. The Creed of Silence must be maintained. I’m not here as your judge, but as a cautious voice. If I’m sent after you, I will take your soul whether I know you or not. I won’t like it, but I’ll do my job. You have choices, we don’t.”

I put as much conviction in the words as I could muster, but their eyes weren’t on me. They were watching the army at my back. Slowly, the vanquished shifters slinked through the wall of local shifters and slipped away. I tried to note the faces that showed defiance because I had a feeling it wouldn’t end with this. We may have taken out the figurehead, but the movement would get a little messier. Someone would have to fall as the example before the rest of them came online.
Please, don’t send me to do it
, I prayed.

Turning around, I slipped my handgun back into the waistband holster and tried to frown at Foras’s face. He smiled at me teasingly and I had to close my eyes. There was no way I could stand there and not look at him. It was like standing in a field of Greek statues.

“Have some pity, here. Clothes?”

That made the angels laugh and there was a flash of magic. Peeking out, I found they’d put on some kind of flowing loincloth that really didn’t cover enough, but it was still better than naked. I was grateful enough not to be rude about it. They had heeded my request, after all. That did count as clothes.

“Thank you. What are you guys doing here?”

“You really don’t think I was going to let you walk into a warehouse full of shifters alone, did you?” Foras was frowning at me.

“I wasn’t alone. He came with me.” I glanced over at Ben only to find him standing with his arms crossed across his chest.

“And what would you have done?” Gabriel spoke up and I faced him reluctantly. I tried to avoid him whenever I could. In the grand scheme of things, he was Gavreel’s boss and the ultimate enforcer of the rulebook I liked to ignore. I didn’t think he liked me very much. “At most, you could have taken a handful of souls and been full. You may be immortal, but I’d prefer not to have to repair the damage they could have done to you.”

Something in his face made me blink. There was a message here, something he didn’t want to say outright in front of the crowd. If they’d torn us apart, would we have been dead as in truly dead? Was there any other way to interpret that comment? After all, shifters were brute force. That was the most damage they could do to us. Well, that and eating us. I shivered at the thought. Moving on…

“Gray was less than happy with the decisions you made and how could I refuse the boon he offered?” Foras tried to look humble, but the half-smile on his face was way too smug.

“You’re a jerk. You let him bribe you to do what you would have done, anyway. That’s not right.”

“The one thing to learn about dealing with humans is that they’ll always give themselves enough rope to hang themselves and far more than we’d need to tie them to us.”

Did I want to know what Gray had negotiated to get us back-up in force? Yes, I did. Was I going to ask
him
? Nope. I’d wait until I got home and railed at my boyfriend about not trusting my judgment. I rolled my eyes and waved my hands at the angels.

“Fine, you’ve made your point. Go away.”

“Bella, love,” Foras interrupted, “we are your honor guard. I’m sure present company understands how valuable you are to us, but it’s always nice to reinforce the lesson. There are such rare chances to make the statement these days.”

Have I mentioned my suspicion about theatre being invented by angels? Their flare for the dramatic was always a touch over the top. Shaking my head, I turned my back to them and faced the congregated group and took inventory. The alphas present included high-ranking males from every cat group in the state including ocelots as well as the Bear King, the Avian King, and the Rat King. There was more than enough representation to get my point across.

“That goes for the rest of you, too. This little revolution can’t go on unless you want genocide. It wouldn’t stop with the wolves, even if they were the only ones to go public. Those of you who are turned understand my point, and maybe you can talk some sense into the ones who don’t get it. Either way, the big picture is bigger than any one group. The ripple effects might kill us all.”

“Just what would you have us do about it, Ms. Morrison?”

I blinked and found Winston in the crowd. I’d always liked him because he knew what question to ask. I made a mental note to thank him the next time I ran into him at the Hatch.

“Talk among yourselves and see if you can’t come up with a plan of action. I’m around, if you need help. My door is always open. Hell, I’m always getting popped in on by them.” I waved my hand behind me. “So what are a few more issues to resolve? Seriously, though, I think this has gotten way outside the box and someone needs to rein it in before it goes beyond the few angels who know about it and ends up being debated before the Council.”

There were a few nods and murmurs of agreement from the crowd, but I didn’t focus on them. I didn’t know who had started the night in favor of the little revolt and who had come to talk against it. I didn’t think I wanted to know, to be honest. The only thing that mattered now is clear heads needed to prevail and squash this thing.

“Thank you, Bella.” Angie’s words brought my gaze back to her. Her bodyguards made her look like a child, again, but for once, her power pulsed enough to make her overshadow them. If nothing else had come out of this, I’d brought her into her place in the wolves. Her father would have thanked me, so I considered it my last gift to him. Lord knows, he’d tried to get her to acknowledge her place among them often enough before he’d died. “You’ve given us a lot to talk about. If you’ll excuse us, it would be a shame to waste the opportunity with so many of us gathered to work out your suggestion.”

See? She even dismissed like a queen. My enhanced sight saw the quirk of her lips and I shot her a quick grin even as I ducked my head. She was going to take them by storm. That was dealing with two crisis points at once, so I was being efficient.

“You have my number, if you need me. Wait, I’m not at home…” I blushed. I had announced to every major shifter in the state that I wasn’t sleeping in my own bed. Why did that embarrass me so badly? Because I was doing more than sleeping and they all knew it. Oh well. Nothing to be done about it now.

“I’m sure I know where to find you.” Angie let me off the hook with a smile and I bolted while I could.

“A ride?” The eager hope in my voice made even Gabriel smile, but it was Foras who opened the exit onto the cosmic highway for us and followed us home.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I wanted to get back home fast…why again? One look at Gray’s face when I stepped out of the light made the question bounce around in my head like a racquetball. Gavreel’s face wasn’t much better. I looked at them both. What had I done now?

Craig came laughing in the house a step ahead of Lizzy and stopped so fast that she knocked him over when she barreled into his back. The resulting yelp and tumble broke the tension in the room. He bounded up and grabbed Lizzy by the armpits and swung her around. Her squeals of delight made me smile and I ignored the scowling men long enough to watch.

The scene was so fraught with lost dreams I’d totally forgotten that a knot lodged deep in my throat. Would I have had that? Once upon a time, I had thought so. My choices had taken that away and I had no one to blame but myself. For the second time in as many days, regret filled my heart and I longed to be mortal, again. This time, it was worse and I couldn’t help but wonder if that piece of Gray’s soul I carried was the culprit. My gaze drifted to his and noticed his were blue laced with silver. He was seriously upset about something. Why hadn’t I noticed his eyes could broadcast his moods so easily before? I had noticed, but not the extent of it.