Revelation (22 page)

“Yeah, Morgan, I guess so.” He didn’t look away. Didn’t give her the satisfaction of his shame. “At least when you pray for deliverance, they’ve got the grace not to tell you to your face that you can fuck off.”

“Yeah?” Fury twisted her pretty mouth, but tears shimmered her eyes silver. She wasn’t angry with him. He could smell it. Just with everything. She stabbed her finger at the dead zombie, who bled in a heap at their feet. “Then what do you call
that
?”

Sympathy brushed cool fingers over his temper. Hesitantly, he touched her shoulder. She didn’t pull away, not exactly, but she didn’t warm to him, either. He settled for a quiet caress of her hair. “I call it damnation.”

“But that’s not fair.” She gulped, helpless. “He didn’t ask for this. He just got bitten. It wasn’t his fault!”

“No, but damnation is a curse now. A disease you can catch. The world’s under siege. Nothing’s fair anymore, if it ever was. That’s why they call it the Apocalypse.” His fingers trembled on her cheek. She was so soft and bruiseable. So hard to protect.

For a moment, she closed her eyes and let him touch her.

Lune’s pulse burned. He wanted to take her in his arms, give her comfort. But it wouldn’t fix her broken world. Wouldn’t make everything okay, or put it back like it was before she knew.

He didn’t have that power. No one did.

He swallowed, aching. “Do you get it now? This is the End.
We can’t waste the last days trying to redeem the damned. Their journey is over. Better we fight for the ones who can still be saved.”

“Is that so?” Morgan pushed away, wiping her face. “Doesn’t stop you from enjoying yourself, does it?”

He drew back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve seen you fight, Luniel,” she accused, fiery. “You
like
it. Killing.”

He shrugged, unwilling. How to explain what glory felt like, thrumming through his body, burning electric in every muscle and vein and sinew. Like sex, the breathless delight of tension and explosive release. Like agony, every nerve hacked ragged and alive. Might as well explain what it felt like to breathe. “So what? It’s my job.”

“It’s not your job to get off on slaughtering innocent people.”

“What did you fucking say?”

“You heard me.” Defiance burned in her eyes. She cocked her hand on her hip, daring him to challenge her. So sexy, he wanted to bruise her lips with his, wrap his wings around her and make her his own. So infuriating, he wanted to knock her flat.

His fists clenched, and he restrained from either. But the heat in his anger shocked him hard. “Yeah. And that shows how much you know, human. Hiding in your safe little world full of corpses.”

Her eyes darkened. “I bring justice to the dead. That’s not hiding.”

“Give me a break. Any dumb animal can rage against death. You know what takes real courage? To believe you’ll live forever, and to act like it.”

“Oh, really?”

“Is that why you’re a dead-people doctor? To avoid taking responsibility for the living?”

Morgan’s chin tightened, furious. “Maybe. You should know, angel. Because letting all these people die is really stepping up, isn’t it?”

Lune’s blood burned. He knew he should keep quiet. But that only made him madder, and he couldn’t stop the words spilling
out. “You know what? Screw excuses. Yes, I enjoy slaughtering demons. It feels fucking fantastic. I’m supposed to enjoy it, it’s what I was made for. And demons are like me: they made their choice. They don’t deserve sympathy. But if you think I enjoyed
that
”—he stabbed his finger to the dead zombie, mocking her gesture—“then fuck you, Morgan Sterling, because you don’t know me as well as you think.”

His feathers prickled, and he sucked in a shuddering breath, appalled.
Nice work, Lune. Very calm. Perfect choice of words.

But Morgan’s lip trembled, and she bit it. “Look, I didn’t mean it that way. I just…” She thudded frustrated fists into her thighs. “Shit. Don’t you ever get sick of it? Accepting your lot, I mean. Sucking it up and moving on.”

Luniel closed his eyes for a moment.
Calm. She’s just realized the world’s ending. Don’t say what can’t be unsaid.
“Look, I’m…I shouldn’t have said that. But there are things that can’t be changed. Some roads are one-way.”

“I guess you know that, huh.” She gave a little smile, trying to lighten up. “Getting grounded, and all.”

“More than I can explain.” The last syllable cracked. Glitter burned his wings with shame, and he turned away.
Fuck. Not now, Morgan. Please.

But too late. She’d seen. She touched his arm, and that tender, compassionate brush of fingers was more arresting than a tight grip could ever have been.

He halted, shaking. “Just forget it, okay—”

“Something happened to you, didn’t it?” Her bottomless honey gaze held him fast. “Not just banishment. You’re so full of hope, Luniel. I can feel it. They haven’t broken you by casting you down. Yet you’re so lost. So…alone.” She swallowed. “But you’re not alone tonight. I’m here, angel. Tell me.”

Heaven, help me.

For a long moment, words wouldn’t come. “It was a long time ago. I…loved someone, and a demon prince took her. He tortured her. Tricked her soul from her, Morgan. She was damned and I didn’t…I couldn’t stop it. I tried, but I couldn’t bring her back. And Vorvian…the demon, he got away. I let my need for her get in the way of business, and it cost me everything.”

A tiny feather of his drifted between them, and she caught it, fingering the soft black curl thoughtfully. “So that’s why heaven shunned you? Because you loved her?”

“No. Because by trying to save her, I let Vorvian escape. I wanted her more than I wanted victory.” He swallowed, painful, the memory piercing his heart like demonsteel, but somehow the pain tasted sweeter for Morgan’s presence. “You know what they call that in heaven? Lust. There’s nothing noble about it. If I ever forget my place like that again, they won’t have mercy on me. And if I can’t even bring
her
back, what hope for these poor fools here? No, I’ve learned my lesson. Damnation is forever. It can’t be undone. Not by me.”

“And what about me?” Morgan asked. Her gaze challenged him, but her chin trembled. “If I get the curse, will you kill me, too?”

Lune just looked at her, dark with sorrow, and didn’t answer.

Morgan sucked in a breath, her heart stinging. Disappointment tingled bitter on her tongue. She wanted so badly to help him, it hurt her deep inside. To ease his grief, make his heart well again.

But there was nothing she could say.

And he hadn’t answered her question, and in the darkest recesses of her soul, she knew why.

He’d abandon her. He’d have to. Leave her to the mercy of the zombie plague, if it meant he could save the world. If he couldn’t save his lover—the pain in his eyes as he spoke of her tore Morgan’s heart, part sympathy, part acid anguish, part screaming green envy that shamed her—why would he pause for an instant to save Morgan, whom he’d only met tonight and had spent most of the last hour trading insults with?

The few and the many. Sensible from an ethical point of view. But it sucked the big one, if you were one of the few.

The injustice maddened her. She sighed angrily and turned away. His feather still twined her fingers, and slowly she undid it, studying. So soft, blacker than night. Only her finger’s length. Not like his larger feathers, which were crisp and strong, as broad as her forearm and longer. A strange contrast, soft with steely, not unlike Luniel himself.

Frustration itched her guts. Damn him. Sometimes so gentle and forgiving. Other times, diamonds couldn’t crush his icy will. He made her feel safe and threatened at the same time. And when desire moved him…She shivered, thinking of his remorseless fighting skills, wings slicing the air like sharp black blades, muscles bunching, cruel and invincible as he wrought demon slaughter.

And how effortlessly he stroked her to feverish need, the intensity of his passion thieving her breath away. His groan as he whispered her name into her mouth. His powerful shudder as he slid himself into her hot wetness…

Her flesh tingled in memory, but reluctantly, she let the feather drift away.

Best that hadn’t happened, after all. This way, neither of them owed the other anything. But still, regret twinged warm, and unwilled she pictured herself lying beside him in silvery moonlight. Trailing her fingertips along his smooth back, dipping her face into warm fragrant feathers, her naked breasts sliding in his rough silken hair…

Yeah. Snap out of it, Morgan.
Inconvenient enough that she kept daydreaming about sex with him. Imagining cuddling afterwards was a bad idea.

She stifled cynical laughter. Cuddling with an angel. How quickly one got used to strange new worlds. Twenty-four hours ago, if someone had told her she’d be hunting plague demons through Babylon with an angel fallen from heaven, she’d have prescribed Prozac and a week’s rest.

Now, she’d accepted it, with the same detachment she’d accepted her mother’s unfair suicide.
Mom’s dead, and her faith killed her. Chin up, move on. Medical school costs how much? Get a job, study harder, move on. Angels are real? The world’s ending? Fine. Accept the evidence. Move on.

But still, her soul screamed with injustice and childish denial.
Not me. I’m special, not like all the others. When the earthquake hits, I’ll survive. I won’t get old, won’t get wrinkles or lose my eyesight. Cancer won’t find me. I’m not going to die.

Even her angel, it seemed, couldn’t save her now. But that didn’t stop her hoping.

Best we fight for the ones who can still be saved,
he’d said.
To imagine she’d be one of the lucky ones seemed the height of human hubris. But to accept fate, and give up?

Not Morgan Sterling. She hadn’t given up when her mother died. Not when cramming for exams and working double shifts at the diner starved her of sleep. Not even in the residency from hell, when wave after wave of New Anarchist bombs rocked the city and she wept from exhaustion and helplessness, amid bleeding bodies spilling from the ER and a week without rest or respite.

And she wouldn’t give up now.

Not until the last star burns out.
And if that meant she had to fight on alone? Try to save them, when Luniel just wanted to kill them all? She would.

She tugged stray tangles from her face, beating back exhaustion. She’d been up all night. But thanks to the zombie, they knew where to look. For Quuzaat. The Prince of Poison. No point waiting.

Luniel watched her turn away, and wanted to slam his head against the ground until his brains bled out.

Curse her for calling him out. And curse his weak, unworthy heart.

Fuck. Lune, you could at least have said something.

But he didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. And he didn’t have the strength to lie.

He couldn’t promise to keep her safe. A demon prince had defeated him before. No guarantee one wouldn’t again. And if Morgan got the curse, there was no saving her. Eleanor was proof of that.

Eleanor said she loved him, and he’d trusted her. But she’d believed Vorvian when he said Lune had betrayed her. She’d broken so easily. And nothing Lune could say had changed her mind.

He gritted his teeth on acid self-disgust. He didn’t blame Eleanor. It wasn’t fair to blame her. Demons were crafty, and knew all the right buttons to push. But still, after so many centuries, it rubbed a raw salty ache in his heart that she hadn’t loved him enough to hold on a little longer.

That he wasn’t worth the effort. And in the end, he’d proved her right.

But somehow, right now, he still burned to take Morgan in his arms and make her his own. Draw his flaming sword and protect her with slaughter, rip skin and rend bones and drink the stinking blood of any foul hellslime who dared glance in her direction.

Morgan. A woman he’d known for one night. Who made his skin burn and his pulse race and his heart ache for days long lost, a time when he was strong and virtuous and might have deserved her.

Staunch that bleeding heart,
whispered Michael’s voice in his head.
It’ll only get you killed.

Rotten frustration bubbled in Lune’s chest. He wanted to scream, let his torment ring out until glass shattered in heaven.

Instead, he switched on his phone and called Dash, keeping one eye on Morgan in case of trouble.

No answer. There was a missed call, Dash’s number. So why wasn’t the shithead answering?

Frustrated, Lune ended the call, and made another, his sharp gaze fixed on Morgan.

“Yeah, Lune. What?” Japheth’s voice, low, like he whispered with his hand over the phone.

“I can’t raise Dash. He with you?”

A cool sigh. “The battle’s over and it’s party hour. Dash will be working off the glory rush with some besotted female. Did you really think he’d answer?”

Lune chuckled. “Guess not. Just checking in. How’d you guys fare?”

“We did okay. Look, I’ve gotta go—”

“Listen, we hit the jackpot down here.” Quickly, Luniel told him about the Prince of Poison’s burned housing project. “We’re heading there now for a look-see.”

“Uh-huh. Is that doctor still with you, perchance? Dash told me.”

Lune bristled. “Of course. Why wouldn’t she be?”

“No reason. Don’t burr up. But it’s five in the morning, Lune. She’s probably tired?”

“Oh.” He gulped. Sure enough, a pale tinge of dawn filtered the eastern sky. “Right. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Japheth’s fingers clenched, and he jammed his phone away lest he crush it. He hadn’t lied, not exactly. But he knew precisely where Dashiel was.

He hovered, high on currents of warm breeze, and before him, moonshine streaked red on the apartment window. But it didn’t stop Japheth seeing inside. Dark wooden furniture, rich carpets on timber, shelves of antique weapons. And Dashiel, in human guise on white silken sheets, making love to his latest conquest.

Japheth stared, mesmerized. Naked, shining with sweat, wet dark hair plastered to his shoulders. The girl was blond and tiny—Dash always chose the tiny ones—and her throaty sighs set Japheth’s blood alight.