Of Alliance and Rebellion (3 page)

Remembering how dire their situation was, how horrendous it was to watch Oliver go through what he was going through, made the worst of Max’s rage toward Luke vanish. Luke was stuttering like a simpleton beneath him, and Max had to focus hard on the other man to figure out what he was saying. He was no longer looking at the winged beauty but at Max himself.

“Is she an angel?” Luke was asking Max.

Max allowed himself the pleasure of gazing at her once more. She shimmered in the dim light, her beauty was so radiant. She was tall for a woman—statuesque in height—but he guessed the top of her head would reach his mouth. She would only need to tip her head back slightly for him to press their lips together. A riot of golden waves tumbled over her shoulders and down to her waist, framing a face that made him want to weep. Her features were delicate—a direct contrast to her sturdy height. Her eyes were the purest blue, and he knew he was not imagining the golden glow emanating from them. They cast a dim light in front of her as she looked at Max. She wore a glistening white robe that fell in tantalizing drapes from her shoulders to the floor. And, of course, two pearlescent wings arched over her shoulders and flared out behind her.

Holy hell,
was
she an angel? One thing was for certain: Max and the others had learned not to discount
any
possibility since their imprisonment. It would be asinine for a human who had turned immortal by eating fruit from the Tree of Eternal Life to doubt the existence of heavenly beings.

Max still had not answered Luke’s question, but that didn’t keep the man from continuing his dazed monologue. Just how hard had Max hit his friend’s head against the floor? Remorse tasted bitter. Had he truly been trying to harm Luke?

With a grunt, Max pushed himself to his feet and then reached down to grasp Luke’s hand and help him haul himself to his feet as well. Luke swayed and brought his fingers up to his temple. He pulled them back to examine them, and Max could see the telltale glistening of blood on Luke’s fingertips.

An apology flew to Max’s lips, but he bit it back. Luke had tried to hurt his woman. There would be no apology.

In silent synchronicity, Max and Luke turned to face the elephant in the room: the beautiful angel.

“I can’t believe I tried to hurt an angel,” Luke muttered, threading his fingers back through his hair to feel his injury again.

For some reason, though the word
angel
had been bandied about many times in the last handful of moments, this time it seem to stick in Max’s mind. An angel. His
One
was a fucking angel.

With an urgency he hadn’t felt so strongly since first sustaining his scar, Max covered the right side of his face so fast his palm made a slapping sound against his cheek. “This has to be a joke,” Max muttered to himself as he forced his left hand to remain at his side instead of covering the rest of his scar. What cosmic power would put
her
with
him
? Did angels even …
mate
? Was that the word he should use?

Bad luck for her
, he couldn’t help but think. He definitely got the better end of this deal.

At that moment, Oliver thrashed with renewed vigor on his cot, and another of his heart-wrenching screams filled the air. The gravity of Max’s situation hit him full force.

When Oliver was conscious in between his dying bits, he spoke of what had happened to him that day two years ago. Back when this hellhole had been bustling with fervent guards, Oliver had seen a woman through the cell bars. She’d looked right at him. The Voice, which they had discovered only spoke to the three of them, had whispered
The One
to Oliver, and he had immediately wanted her in every way imaginable. Oliver described it as a mating—almost animal-like in its intensity. Within a day, the pain had started. By the third day, Oliver was in severe pain, and by the fifth day, he was in a coma. On the seventh day, Oliver died. His heart stopped; his breathing stopped. But because they were immortal, Oliver didn’t stay dead. The next day, he came back to life, as healthy and pain-free as he had ever been. But then the cycle repeated itself. And it had repeated itself every week for two years.

Max’s gaze focused on the angel he would be dying for. Could she disappear just as easily as she had appeared, leaving him as broken as Oliver?

No. The angel had to stay. Max flinched when Oliver screamed yet again.

He felt a muscle in his jaw clench as he ground his teeth together. Max was no prize—he knew that. But, hopefully, this connection between him and the angel went both ways. With that thought, Max tried to block out Oliver’s anguished shriek and took a step toward his angel. He faked a confidence he didn’t feel, and, turning his right side away from her, extended his hand.

Like magic, she took several stumbling steps toward him immediately, and the surge of something like hope that tumbled through his chest robbed him of breath. That hope dimmed, however, when the angel halted before reaching him. Max curled his fingers two times, beckoning her forward. His lips parted around the words, “Come to me.”

The angel’s fists clenched at her sides, and a look of utter wanting crossed over her stunning face. Max’s body responded to that look in swift arousal, the sudden and powerful erection punching into the front of his well-worn fatigues. Max closed his eyes and fought for control of his body. The desire he had to close the rest of the distance between them and press her against him to grind that insistent arousal into the softness of her belly was almost too strong to ignore. The desperation behind his feelings scared Max even more, and he opened his eyes and repeated his order again, this time more firmly. “Come to me!”

The angel jumped, then swayed forward slightly. But after a beat, she shook her head almost violently.

She doesn’t want me
. The thought was accompanied by powerful disappointment tempered with self-loathing. Of course she didn’t want him. He hadn’t seen his face since sustaining his injury, but he knew how he looked. He was a monster. She was an angel.

Max’s hand fell back to his side. He abandoned all finesse along with hope. He began closing the distance between them, and the angel took one step back for every one he took toward her. Lord knew what he looked like right now, but the angel’s retreat was a pretty big clue.

Her back hit the stone corner once again, and Max kept coming, causing the angel to curl in on herself, wrapping her arms around her middle. She was obviously scared, but something told Max she was not necessarily scared of
him
.

He made himself stop a hair’s-breadth from touching her, but he was close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from her body into his. She wasn’t meeting his eyes, and Max turned his face away, allowing only his handsome side to face her, before leaning in and placing his hands on the stone walls by her shoulders, boxing her in.

“You must stay with me,” Max commanded. The air of his words stirred the hair at her temple, and the angel closed her eyes briefly.

“I will,” she said. It was the first time Max had heard her speak, and the melodious, husky quality of her voice caused him to lose focus before he was able to interpret what she said.

His eyes snapped to hers, and he felt his scar pucker as he frowned—a reminder to turn his face aside before she had a chance to look at his ugliness. “You will?”

Her delicate throat worked a few times before those beautiful blue eyes rose to meet his left eye. “I will stay with you,” she said gravely, “because I must kill you.”

Max turned his face to meet her gaze and blinked. Surely he had misheard her. His brows crashed down. “Do you want to repeat that?” Max asked.

Without flinching away from her words, the angel said, “I’ve been sent to kill you and the other two men. You have violated the holy Tree of Eternal Life, and your lives must be forfeited to pay the price.”

Max straightened, and his hands fell from the wall to rest at his sides. After nine years of imprisonment by what had to be the world’s most eccentric group of quasi soldiers, Max had seldom encountered something or someone who took him by surprise.. But this angel had caught him off guard.

Her statement was at odds with her delicate beauty. She looked as though she should be rescuing kittens from gutters, and here she was calmly and gravely stating that she was here to kill him. Could she even take him in a fight? She was tall, sure, but he was a brute. Just how did she think she was going to kill him?

“And when is this killing going to occur?” Max asked.

The angel’s eyes turned thundercloud blue, and her chin tilted up defiantly. “Now.”

Max raised his left eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest. Just as he expected, the angel made no move against him. “Right
now
, now?” he asked.

And then, the angel’s chin quivered. Fucking
quivered
. Max felt it down to his toes, and all of his mirth disappeared. His arms uncrossed, and he reached for her, catching himself just in time to prevent an embrace meant to comfort her.

“Alright,” the angel said in a weak voice, “I shall return soon. I will bring the weapon to you rather than you to it. Prepare your souls for death, for you will not escape it.” Before Max could riddle out what the hell she was talking about, she straightened her shoulders and seemed to be gathering her focus.

On instinct, Max knew she was preparing to disappear on him, just as easily as she had appeared. Panic unlike anything he had ever felt launched him into action. Without thought, his hand snapped forward and wrapped around her wrist almost brutally. He relaxed his hold when he felt the delicate bones beneath his fingers, but he did not release her. “You’re not going anywhere,” Max said simply. It was a fact. She would not leave him. She could not.

The screams that Max had tuned out for the first time in two years as he talked with his angel seeped back in to his consciousness, and he turned to look at Luke. “A little help here,” he said, nodding toward the angel in his grasp.

Luke’s head snapped up from its bent position over Oliver. His eyes swept over Max and the angel, and both of his brows rose in silent question.

“She’s trying to leave,” Max said, the desperation in his tone shocking him.

Luke frowned. “And you want to … what, exactly?”

“Capture her.”

Luke’s chin lowered. “Capture her,” he repeated in dismay. “Capture an angel. Are you crazy? Or do you just have a death wish?”

Max closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Luke’s religious side was showing. Damn pastor’s kid with his damn ideas about heaven and hell.

“If she leaves,” Max said harshly, “I turn into him.” He gestured toward Oliver with his chin, and right on cue, Oliver thrashed and moaned on his cot.

Luke stared at Oliver before muttering, “What do you want me to do?”

Max tightened his hold on the angel’s wrist and began walking her across the cell to the other cot. “I need a way to tie her.”

After several seconds, Max heard the sound of the threadbare sheets being torn. The angel stumbled along behind him, and Max was shocked that she was not putting up any sort of fight. When he reached the cot he and Luke shared, he pushed the angel down to the floor beside it.

She blinked up at him in the dim light. Luke arrived at his side and handed him strips of fabric. Without even looking, Max knew the weak fabric would not hold her without her consent. But it was better than nothing.

When Max knelt down in front of her and began tying her wrists to the cot, Luke shuffled his feet next to him. “I’m sorry,” Luke whispered. “Forgive me, angel.”

Max bit back a growl and finished securing his prisoner as Oliver’s screams cut off abruptly. They all froze and Max’s eyes traveled up to Luke’s. The haunted expression on Luke’s face must have mirrored his own.

Grief poured through Max. The screaming session was now over. Oliver was in a coma. At this point in Oliver’s cycle about two years ago, guards would have rushed the cell, jeering and calling out insulting things while Luke and Max tried their best to make Oliver’s last moments as comfortable as possible. Though Max felt himself brace for the shuffle of boots against stone, he knew no one would be coming now. No one ever came anymore. As Max gave a final jerk to the angel’s bonds, Luke plodded over to Oliver’s side to keep vigil. Max was sick with their current situation, but he couldn’t decide what was worse: ridicule or oblivion.

Anahita sat on the floor, the coldness seeping through her robe and rendering her bottom numb. Her arms were pulled awkwardly to the left side of her body to accommodate her wrists being bound to the cot. Her Temptation had not looked at her once in the two days since he had captured her, but she could not tear her eyes from him no matter how hard she tried. It was times like this when a little personal reflection could come in handy.

For example, perhaps Anahita should ask herself
how
she had ended up tied to a rickety piece of furniture in the middle of Afghanistan by the humans she was charged with killing. Certainly there were lessons to be learned from such an occurrence so the same situation could be avoided in the future.

She had to fight with every fiber of her being not to simply break the weak ties that bound her wrists. Had they restrained her with steel manacles, she would have been able to escape, and they thought to detain her with what amounted to a bit of string?

Yet, here she sat. As Max had charged her, Anahita had attempted to melt back through the wall and make her escape. For the first time in her existence, it hadn’t worked. Anahita longed to blame it on the jumble of her emotions, but she suspected that she was unable to make her escape because she was unable to leave her Temptation. She had heard rumors to that effect amongst her brethren. That was one of the downfalls of encountering one’s Temptation: you could never leave them. Made resisting that Temptation even harder, which, Anahita supposed, was part of the point.

It was working. She couldn’t stand being this close to Max for much longer without touching him. She needed to flee, but beyond suspecting that she
could
not, she felt she
should
not. Now that she had allowed the humans to think they had captured her, she felt trapped into perpetuating the misconception. After all, she
did
still have to kill them. The Compulsion to do so was pressing against her skull every moment, begging her to decide on a course of action.