Avenger's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels (43 page)

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Authors: Heather Killough-Walden

BOOK: Avenger's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels
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“You were a boy . . .” He grimaced as a sharp twinge in his chest arrested his breath.
Kevin chuckled. “It’s good to know her memories of me are fond. Do you think I might have looked something like this?”
There was a brief flash, like a grayish lightning-fast fluctuation of space and time. Uriel blinked, losing sight of Trenton for a moment. When he reappeared, the general was no longer the tall, broad man that he had been a moment before. He was a teenager, still tall, but less muscular, and with a boyishly handsome face that bespoke of an innocence that was in sharp contrast to the tattoos laced across his forearms and biceps.
He can change forms,
Uriel thought, his spirits sinking ever more by the second.
Oh fuck . . .
Kevin flashed again and was once more an adult.
This was too much for Uriel. It was too much information, too much power, too much bad news. It wasn’t a human altercation—a war, a battle, a robbery, a rape—something he’d dealt with for thousands of years and had protocol for. This was different. Kevin and his men seemed all but invincible. If they were all like their leader, they were doppelgangers with magical weapons that could take down the very Knights of Heaven.
He couldn’t process it all. Nor did he want to try. Right now, his bleeding wrists were throbbing and the muscles of his arms and chest were aching. He had no idea what had happened to his brothers or whether or not they were even alive. And Eleanore was with Samael—that, alone, was too much to digest. He was in no mood to consider the philosophy of creation and the reason behind everything that happened and did not happen in this utterly confounding universe.
All he was sure of—all he could even begin to understand—was his love for Eleanore, and the fact that the man in front of him was after her for some reason.
“What do you want with her?”
Kevin considered him for several beats. Then he pushed off of the table, shoved his hands in the pockets of his fatigue pants, and paced slowly around the room. “My kind possess many very valuable talents.” He glanced at Uriel over his shoulder and shot him a smile. “As you can see.”
He turned back and continued. “Part of what originally scared the Old Man was the amount of power he’d given us.” He paused, fell quiet for a moment, and then went on. “However, we have never been able to list the ability to heal among our attributes. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how precious a skill it is to be able to heal wounds and sicknesses, even as we are.”
Here, he stopped again, turned, and stared at the wall adjacent to Uriel.
Uriel wondered what he was looking at until Kevin pulled his right hand out of his pocket and waved it at the wall. The metal surface began to ripple like water. Uriel blinked, unable to hide the fact that he was, indeed, impressed.
The silver-gray wall disappeared and when the shimmering-rippling ceased, in its place was a scene in a playground, as if Uriel was watching it through a window.
Several children were spinning on a small merry-go-round, holding on to its metal bars. A little girl was swinging alone on the swing set not too far away. She had raven-black hair and porcelain skin. She could not have been more than six or seven years old, but even at her very young age, Uriel recognized her as his archess.
“Twenty years ago, I was passing through a play yard. I was unnoticed by the children there. This was what I saw.”
Through the window to the past, Uriel watched one of the children on the merry-go-round let go of the metal bar she had been holding on to. As a result, she went careening off of the surface and flew through the air to land awkwardly on her side and roll to a stop several yards away.
There were screams from the other children, and then a stunned slowing down of the spinning merry-go-round as they tried to climb off. The little girl did not move from her crumpled position on the grass and dirt.
Then Eleanore Granger was jumping off of her swing and running to the little girl.
Uriel knew what was coming.
Eleanore knelt beside the unmoving child, placed her hand to the girl’s back, and then closed her large, dark blue eyes. Within a few seconds, there was a warm glow emanating from beneath her small palm. The glow spread as the children behind her stood in stunned silence and watched.
Uriel wondered where her parents were. Surely, they would have stopped this from happening if they’d witnessed it.
The child on the ground stirred and rolled over and Eleanore lifted her hand, straightening to rest back on her knees. There was a quiet conversation between the two children then, one Uriel could not hear.
“The little girl is asking her if she’s an angel,” Kevin said. He let the scene play out for a few seconds longer, and then waved his hand once more, dispelling the image.
“What would you do to her?”
“That depends,” Kevin replied easily. “We would prefer that she join with us and pass her DNA along naturally. A new race of beings possessing a mixture of our abilities and hers would be unstoppable.”
Uriel realized, then, that Abraxos had no idea Michael also possessed the ability to heal. As far as Kevin Trenton knew, only Ellie possessed that power. And the general planned to bed her—and allow his men to do the same—with the hopes of passing on whatever gene it was that gave her that ability.
Uriel had never wanted to kill a man so badly in his entire existence.
“If that fails, we can take the DNA straight from her veins and experiment with it until we have the results we need.”
Uriel imagined Eleanore strapped to a hard white-sheeted bed with needles in her arms and he knew that what he was seeing would destroy her.
Kevin stared at the spot where the image of Eleanore’s past had disappeared and said, “She’s not an archangel. I can tell that much.” He turned to face Uriel and pinned him with blue eyes so intense they nearly glowed. “So what is she?”
“Bite me,” Uriel ground out, trying the metal around his wrists once more. His efforts did nothing but cause the manacles to cut into his skin, releasing more of his precious blood.
“Apparently, that’s your job now,” Kevin said. “I have it on good authority that you’ve made some sort of transformation.” He grinned, flashing straight white teeth. “You liked your Hollywood character that much?”
Uriel didn’t answer. He tried to enter the man’s brain, but was blocked. He tried to use telekinesis to throw him into the wall. It didn’t work. He tried to set him on fire. That didn’t work either. He tried to transform him into something small and amphibian. But Kevin remained Kevin and Uriel was starting to feel tired.
“It’s all right.” Kevin gave a small shrug and slowly paced toward Uriel. “I can wager a guess as to what she is.”
Uriel held his breath.
“She’s an archess, isn’t she?”
This time, it
was
a question, but Uriel still wasn’t going to answer it. However, he knew his silence was as good as an affirmation.
“That’s what I thought.” Kevin nodded, smiling a strange, somewhat sad smile. “I know of their existence through a sort of . . .
celestial grapevine
.” He laughed, the sound deep and genuine. “Believe me when I tell you that archangels aren’t the only creatures the Old Man has disposed of on Earth.”
The laughter trailed off and Kevin’s expression became serious. He locked eyes with Uriel and his gaze narrowed. “I assume you believe her to be yours.”
Uriel gritted his teeth. “There’s no doubt,” he ground out.
“Oh?” Kevin looked bemused. “I met her long before you set eyes upon her, archangel. Purely by accident. Who’s to say she wasn’t, in fact, meant to be mine?”
“You’re delusional.”
Again, Kevin laughed. “Maybe. But then, you and I both know that the Old Man is not the most powerful force in the universe. Only I’m wise enough to admit it and you’re still a stubborn fool.” He turned away, walked to the table, and leaned against it a second time, his hands shoved casually into his pockets once more.
“No, Uriel. The Fates are stronger. And the Old Man has made mistakes before.” He leveled that sapphire gaze on Uriel again. “And it doesn’t matter. My men and I need Eleanore one way or another. Therefore, now that I know exactly what she truly is, I fully intend to test my theory. After all”—he smiled a devastating smile and Uriel was reminded of his costar on
Comeuppance
, the one who had played his enemy—“I was her first crush.”
“Touch her and I swear on everything unholy that I will kill you.”
“Yes, of course.” Kevin waited several beats. Then he shook his head. “Do you really believe that I’m going to let you live long enough for you to pose any kind of competition, much less
threat
, to me?”
Uriel felt his gaze burning as his vision turned red.
“You’re only alive now because I need you in order to get to her.” Kevin stood and strode casually to the metal door, which clicked open as he neared it. “When Eleanore Granger is in my possession, you will have outlived your usefulness.”
He pulled the door open, stepped through, and shut it behind him. Uriel rested his head against the metal “X” that had become his prison and closed his eyes against the pain.
 
Max watched as Michael pushed himself up onto one elbow on the cushions of the couch and blinked hard, trying to clear his vision. It was the same thing Azrael had done an hour before. The former Angel of Death was the strongest of the four; his body had repaired itself first, but it hadn’t been pleasant to watch.
Gabriel, who had been hit twice in the chest with the strange weapons, had yet to awaken. He still lay sprawled and seemingly lifeless on the second couch in the mansion’s living room.
Max Gillihan was more worried about his charges now than he had ever been. Uriel was missing. Eleanore was with Samael. And Gabriel’s chest was black as night and hard as stone. Max honestly wondered whether the Messenger Archangel would ever move again.
Max knelt beside Michael and caught his gaze. “Can you hear me?”
Michael grimaced and held up a finger, unable to speak, then curled in on himself in pain. Azrael had been in agony as well; it seemed to be what happened when they came out of the cursed state the strange weapons had put them in. It didn’t kill them. It just . . . petrified them, or something akin to it.
Michael groaned low in his throat and then the groan turned into a growl of rage. Azrael had been furious as well. Neither archangel had taken well to being felled by an attack.
“Who—the—fuck—”
“We don’t know,” Azrael replied calmly. He had healed completely and now stood in the archway between the dining room and the meeting room, his tall, broad frame outlined by the low light behind him. “But whoever it was has captured Uriel.”
Michael’s gaze cut to him.
“Michael, are you well enough to heal Gabriel?” Max wanted to waste no further time. Michael was the only one among them who possessed the ability to heal, and Gabriel didn’t seem to be coming out of this on his own. It might just be a matter of time before he did, but then again, time might take him from them altogether. Max would rather be on the safe side.
Michael looked over Max’s shoulder to the unconscious form of his brother, sprawled lifelessly on the couch opposite him.
“His injuries are greater than ours,” Azrael said.
Michael slowly angled himself to a full seated position, his brow sweating with the pain it caused him. Then he closed his eyes, took several very difficult, deep breaths, and got to his feet. A few stumbling steps across the gap between the two couches and he was once more falling, this time to his knees beside Gabriel.
“Gabe . . .” he gasped, as he shoved Gabriel’s shirt open to reveal his blackened chest once more. It looked bad—as though Gabriel were a Michelangelo sculpture constructed of some black marble; a statue of an archangel, and not the archangel himself.
“Christ,” Michael whispered, shutting his eyes and shaking his head. At once, he pressed his right palm to his brother’s rock-hard chest and Max watched him sit back on his heels to concentrate.
The warm light that peeked from beneath his hand grew from a soft glow to a radiant, blinding flash. When it at last died down, Michael was hunched over, his eyes shut, his body utterly exhausted.
Gabriel’s chest was no longer black—and best of all, it was moving up and down.
He’s breathing,
thought Max, feeling vastly relieved
.
It was clear that Michael was drained. He had never had to put forth so much effort to heal someone before. His face was pale, his tall form slumped, his breathing slow. He was nearly unconscious again. But he had healed his brother.
“You did it,” Max exhaled, only then realizing that he’d been holding his breath. He hurried to the couch and knelt down beside them both. “He’s breathing.” He placed his hand on Gabriel’s wrist and felt the pulse there.
Finally
.
It was as if he were back from the dead.

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