Principles of Angels (28 page)

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Authors: Jaine Fenn

BOOK: Principles of Angels
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Finally she opened her eyes.
 
His eyes were closed and his breathing was slow and even. For the first time since she had met him, his face was serene. Beneath the bruises, it was beautiful.
 
Apparently the effect was not entirely one way. She stood, her legs shaky, her pulse racing.
 
It was full daylight by now, and as Taro rested and healed she moved carefully around the room, blowing out candles. She fetched her gun, took it from its case, assembled it swiftly and slung it over her shoulder. She was lifting her cloak from its peg, her back to Taro, when she felt him wake.
 
She turned, smiling, and when despite herself she met his eyes, she felt their thoughts begin to mesh together. He gasped and she looked away. Resisting the temptation to dispense with words altogether, she forced herself to speak out loud. ‘Can you stand?’
 
He nodded and swung his legs gingerly onto the floor.
 
She walked over to him, aware of the delicious tension of their new bond. ‘I’m going to put this on you; when I wear it with my gun it tends to catch, and carrying you as well . . .’ She let her voice trail away as she reached up and fastened her cloak round his neck.
 
He closed his eyes.
 
She knew how her touch was singing through him; she felt it too, the joy of his presence. After years of solitude her mind yearned for this closeness. She had given in to her desire, telling herself she had to, to help an innocent. It felt so good . . .
too
good. The line between love and annihilation was so very thin.
 
She stepped back and he opened his eyes. He looked at the gun on her shoulder. ‘You think we’ll need that?’ he murmured, his voice heavy and sensual, as though he were asking another, altogether more intimate question.
 
She avoided his eyes. ‘The dataspike will have the Minister’s preferred time and place for the removal. We may not have the chance to come back here for the gun.’
 
‘What’s it feel like?’
 
She didn’t need to ask him what he meant; he had never killed, though he had lived a step away from death all his life. ‘The act of taking a life is a wonderful, terrible privilege. For me, it is far more than you could imagine, for when someone is about to die, I no longer have to hide from them. I am open to them, and they to me, if only for an instant. The shields are gone, the glamour is blown away, and in that moment I am complete. Killing is . . . addictive.’ She laughed wryly at the reactions she was picking up from him. ‘Aye, that is appalling, is it not? I told you I was a monster.’ She kicked the door open.
 
He turned to stand beside her. Though they were barely touching, she could feel his heat. ‘You said
humans
thought the Sidhe are monsters. That ain’t the same thing.’
 
‘Contempt for humanity is bred into the Sidhe; for their part, almost every human I have ever met would wish me dead if they knew the truth,’ said Nual, somewhat bitterly. ‘So why shouldn’t I take their lives when they would happily take mine?’ But she was not like her sisters. She had been born different, and she had made choices that would alienate her from them forever.
 
‘Don’t try to make me hate you. You know I can’t,’ he murmured.
 
She nodded. ‘Just try not to love me, either. We can’t afford to get lost in each other. Not now, perhaps not ever.’
 
She put an arm round his waist. Though she held him outside the cloak, not wanting to risk flesh on flesh, she still felt that spark of unity when they touched. Before they could give in to the mutual desire that sizzled between them, she stepped forward and they fell together into morning.
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
 
‘Hello? Who is this? Your com appears to be faulty, there’s no image.’
 
‘Sirrah Meraint.’
 
‘Ah. You. How did you get this number?’
 
‘I believe I told you, I do my research. I did call your office first, but you weren’t there.’
 
‘It’s my day off.’
 
‘How nice. Spending time with your lovely daughters, no doubt. Were you planning to take them anywhere, or are you just having a quiet day at home?’
 
‘I—That’s none of your business. What do you want?’
 
‘I have a job for you.’
 
‘I’ve told you, if and when Medame Reen contacts me again—’
 
‘Not that. This is something different. I believe you have access to sophisticated decryption routines and the expertise to use them.’
 
‘Yes, I do.’
 
‘I have some encrypted data that I wish you to apply your skills to. As an added incentive I will even offer payment for this service.’
 
‘Just knowing you would leave me alone would be payment enough, Screamer.’
 
‘Oh, I think our association might be at an end soon enough. This job is extremely urgent, otherwise I would never be so rude as to interrupt your day off. I am hoping for results by this afternoon. ’
 
‘This afternoon? I can try - but I don’t even have the data. Can you transmit a file?’
 
‘I don’t think that would be wise. I’ll bring the chip to your office in half an hour. Unless you’d prefer I deliver it to your home?’
 
‘I’ll be there.’
 
 
Taro rested his head on Nual’s shoulder and thought of nothing.
 
Everything was so simple; as long as he was close to her, the other stuff, the bad stuff, none of it mattered. Right now he was content, cradled in her arms while she flew beneath the world.
 
‘Taro.’
 
He liked the way her whisper disturbed his hair, the sense of his name forming in her mind before the sound escaped her lips.
 
‘Taro!’ she whispered more urgently, ‘you must not let yourself get too close. You must resist the temptation.’
 
He sighed. If only she’d let him complete their union, let it become physical as well as mental, then everything would be perfect, but instead she was forcing him away, keeping her distance - and he didn’t know why, when she obviously wanted him as much as he wanted her.
 
‘I warned you this could happen.’ He felt her shiver. ‘Physical proximity will make it worse.’
 
‘Wouldn’t call this worse,’ he grinned.
 
‘Taro, we cannot let ourselves get distracted. Remember
vengeance
, Taro. Remember Malia and your oath.’
 
‘I remember.’ And he did. Those things still mattered, and he’d have to deal with them soon enough, but not now, not yet.
 
‘Focus on the future. I know it hurts, but you have to.
We
have to.’
 
He laughed lightly, feeling his ribs (which didn’t hurt any more) move against her slender body. ‘I will. But things’ve never made sense before. All that crap in the songs an’ stories.
Love.
I always thought . . . it’s just what yer body does to yer head when you’ve had a solid prime bit of grind, ain’t it?’
 
Despite her attempt to keep barriers between them, he could sense her amusement.
 
He went on, ‘But it’s real. I know that now. It’s like . . . the world re-organises itself, has re-organised itself, around you—’
 
‘—Taro—’
 
‘No, it makes sense. You and I, we’re alike, don’t you see? You do, I know it. Neither of us could ever show our true selves before! It’s just like Malia said: you kill strangers; I fuck them, but either way they ain’t really people to us. They can’t be. So we’ve both developed barriers - like, those topside delicacies, the ones they grow in tanks in the top restaurants,
shells
, that’s it. When you have to use and be used just to live, you end up livin’ inside a shell, but if you find someone else who’s the same as you, who understands the
real
you, then the shell breaks. It’s the best thing that can ’appen. It’s the reason we’re alive.’
 
‘No, Taro,’ Nual said slowly, ‘it’s an illusion, a side-effect of the way I healed you.’
 
He nuzzled into her shoulder and whispered, ‘I can’t accept that. It feels so right. This can’t jus’ be some random weirdness in me head. This is how things is meant to be: us in unity, no walls, perfect trust. You know it, don’t you?’
 
She didn’t say anything for a while, and he could feel her withdrawing further from him, reluctantly but firmly excluding him from her thoughts. Finally she said softly, ‘I know it. I was born into unity. But I rejected it. I can never go back.’
 
Taro said nothing. He didn’t have any idea what was really behind her shell, but if she
had
made him love her with her Sidhe magic, he was hardly going to be able to tell. There was no point trying. And if he didn’t survive the trouble they were heading into, he’d rather die for her than for the Minister or for some high-and-noble idea of duty or loyalty, or even for revenge - though he would hate Scarrion for as long as he had breath in his body. Nual had never lied to him, and she had done everything she could to help him. He knew she loved him too, at least a little.
 
He felt her tense just before she whispered, ‘Hellfire! This we don’t need.’
 
Taro raised his head to see a figure, another Angel, flying towards them from the edge of the City. She was moving fast, brown hair and red cloak streaming out behind her.
 
He felt Nual kick out and they changed direction, moving more slowly. ‘Keep a look-out for a way up into the mazeways, Taro,’ she said urgently. ‘We can’t face her down here in the open.’
 
Taro obeyed, scanning the underside of the Undertow for a gap. ‘There’s a hole in the nets comin’ up on your left, just after that water-trap with the yellow-and-brown banners.’ He had no idea where they were; he hoped they weren’t about to come up inside someone’s homespace.
 
Nual followed his directions. By the time they reached the gap the pursuing Angel was close enough that Taro could make out her face. He thought she looked familiar, but before he could puzzle out where he might’ve seen her before Nual rose into an un-netted stretch of mazeway, cutting off his view. There was a gap of some two metres of open space before the next vane. From the stench of blood and boiling fat, Taro guessed they were close to a flesher’s.
 
Nual swivelled in the air and Taro stepped out of her embrace onto the ledge without being told. He wanted to stay with her, except . . .
no, he needed to get under cover before the other Angel arrived
- he didn’t know if the thought came from her head or his, but either way it made sense. He looked around, but the nearest opening on the ledge was ten metres off, and barred with what looked, even from this distance, like a pretty solid door. He pressed his back against the vane and watched Nual, still floating just off the edge of the mazeway, facing the direction the Angel was approaching from. Despite Taro’s feelings for her, Nual’s expression disconcerted him: she looked completely calm, a little curious, not at all like someone about to face a crisis.
 
When the other Angel rose through the gap Taro realised where he’d seen her before: in the Exquisite Corpse, just a couple of days ago, when she’d decided to slice him up to relieve the tension of a bad day. Her gaze flicked across him, confused, and he suddenly remembered he was wearing Nual’s cloak; though it felt light as water to the touch, if he’d thought to pull it round himself he could’ve disappeared completely. He must look well freaky now, with his head and one arm sticking out of nowhere.
 
‘That yours?’ she said, addressing Nual but nodding in Taro’s direction. Though she was sober now, Taro heard the same anger in her voice.
 
Nual said nothing.
 
The other Angel shrugged back her own cloak, which shimmered and started to pick up the colours of the background. ‘Don’t answer, then. He’ll be mine soon enough.’
 
‘Do you have business with me?’ asked Nual softly.
 
‘Business?’ The Angel frowned. ‘You don’t know?’
 
‘Perhaps you would like to tell me?’
 
The Angel laughed and a flash of silver showed at her palms. ‘After all those years of perfect service, you’ve finally blown it, baby.’ Taro thought she sounded pleased at the thought of Nual having fucked up.
 
‘You are entitled to your opinion. But I have City business and I must ask you not to interfere.’ Nual didn’t move, kept her hands loose by her sides.

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