Warrior's Angel (The Lost Angels Book 4) (3 page)

Rhiannon sat up a little straighter. “The cameras didn’t catch anything at all?”

She knew that some of the supernaturals out there could mess with a person’s mind. But to totally evade every form of visual contact?

“Not a thing.” A large blue butterfly landed on the tip of his white and tan wingtip shoes, and the expression on Verdigri’s face grew distant. Rhiannon knew where he went in times like this. To the past. To be with his little girl.

She let him have a few seconds, and then as politely as she could, she said, “It’s possible that I didn’t come back alone. And that whoever brought me back had powers of invisibility. It’s also possible… that we transported here. Or moved through some sort of portal.”

“Or through the very shadows themselves,” he offered quietly. His voice, like his gaze, was distant.

That was something she hadn’t considered. And that raised all sorts of new questions. Why would someone bring her back here rather than just kill her?
The kinds of creatures that could move through shadows weren’t normally known for their generous natures.

“You said you had another job for me?” she asked, deciding to change the subject and get back to work.

Verdigri took a deep breath and sighed. “Yes, indeed.” He looked down at the manila folder that had been teasing Rhiannon since her arrival.

She scooted it closer to herself and opened it up.

“There are several women and four girls, ages nine to fourteen,” Verdigri told her as she looked over the information inside. “Everything you will need to infiltrate the building is within the folder.”

Rhiannon’s heart began pumping as she looked through the file. She could feel cortisol and adrenaline releasing itself into her blood stream. The file encompassed the cases of women who were being confined and sold into slavery through an underground sex trade. The building where they were being kept was in Chicago.

Rhiannon had a lot of cases like this. This was why she worked for Verdigri. Years ago, he’d somehow learned of her abilities, and he’d contacted her. The initial meeting had been so strange, Rhiannon had felt overwhelmed. She had no idea how he’d learned of her powers, and she was veritably frightened. But there was something
to
the man, to his genteel manner, and especially to his cause, that had won her over. She’d been in his employ ever since.

Thirty years ago, Mr. Verdigri had lost his own daughter to a sexual predator. A week after her seventeenth birthday, she went missing. A month later, her body was found. She’d
been dumped in a ditch outside of Las Vegas.

The traumatic event brought about the eventual death of Verdigri’s wife, a beautiful Mexican woman that Rhiannon could tell even now, her employer was bone-deep in love with. They’d been soul mates.

Since the death of his daughter and wife, Verdigri had made it his life’s work to save as many girls as possible from a world that seemed bent on destroying them from the inside out.

Verdigri was an effective fundraiser, but
Rhiannon didn’t know where the bulk of his money came from, and frankly she didn’t care. He was making the world a better place, one rescue at a time.

She closed the folder and took it with her as she stood. “Thank you for the tea. I’ll get on this right away, but I have something I need to take care of before I leave.”

“Ah yes. Miss Mimi mentioned something about a destined battle.”

Rhiannon smiled.
She turned to go, but as she did, she said, “I’ll check in some time tomorrow night.”

Mr. Verdigri’s green, green eyes pinned her to the spot where she stood beside the table. “See that you do,” he told her. It was a command without sounding like one. And it told Rhiannon something the file folder failed to: this assignment was dangerous. Perhaps dangerous enough that he was afraid she wouldn’t come back.

She digested that and turned to leave when her employer spoke up once more.

“Friday night, there’s to be a masquerade gala in honor of a potential new benefactor for the Swallowtail Foundation. I’ll expect you there, of course. He wants to meet you.”

The Swallowtail Foundation was the covert name under which Mr. Verdigri ran all of his operations. He’d named it in honor of his daughter’s favorite species of butterfly, the Purple Spotted Swallowtail.

Rhiannon glanced back at him over her shoulder. Today was Tuesday. That gave her two days to finish this job. “I’ll be there with dancing shoes on.”

Verdigri grinned, and his face broke into charming laugh lines. “I do love a woman who can dance.”

Chapter Two

He couldn’t see her face. He never could.

These dreams that came to him now, after thousands of years of darkness and silence, were both the bane and the immeasurable pleasure of his nightt
ime existence. Whoever she was, she haunted him. The feel of her taunted and teased and fed his hunger with flesh so supple, so perfect, it defied reality. Her hair was so soft, it brushed his chest like feathers. She was warm, real, and tender. She was strength and passion and surrender all in one.

The smell of her reminded him of fresh fallen rain, clean and promising. The sound of her was… sighs so soft and moans even softer. A touch and a gasp and a pounding heartbeat later and Sam was in heaven. And Hell.

He awoke that morning as he always did of late, his sheets soaked, his breath catching, his hands fisting in something that was no longer there. The night before had been a long one.

Upon arriving at Central Park, where he knew Michael would be fighting off a score of “bad guys,” Sam had been struck with something odd. He’d sensed something in the air that he’d never felt before in waking life. It was a scent on the wind, and a hint of a memory. It was like feeling silken locks of hair slip through his fingertips. It had shaken him. Not enough that he’d allowed it to be seen, and certainly not enough that he hadn’t been able to do what he’d gone there to do.

But it had entered his mind and planted a seed of doubt.

Once he’d taken care of business with the Warrior Archangel, he’d left the menial, remaining tasks to his assistant, Jason, and returned to Chicago.

It hadn’t been until very late that he’d taken to his bed. Alone. With those seeds of doubt sprouting trees in his head. And then, as usual, he’d dreamed of her. Of
her
… whoever she was. And, once more, she had slipped through his fingers. Gone like the wind.

He
wanted to lash out in anger, in desperation, and shove himself back into sleep. He was exhausted in a way that no one knew and in a way he could never let anyone see. He wanted to fall into a coma and surrender to oblivion, if only for the slightest hope of having her in his bed once more.

Now
Sam sat up in his vast plane of silk sheets and promises, shut his eyes tight against the real world and everything about it that
wasn’t
his dream, and fisted his hands in his ash blond hair. He was losing a part of himself in this routine every night. Every time the sun went down, another piece of himself would slip away.

Or maybe… maybe it was something else.

Samael opened his eyes and blinked, his shaking breath hitching as he realized it might be something else. It might not be that he was losing himself.

Maybe it was
that a part of him was already lost. It had been for a very long time.

And he was on the verge of
finding
it at last.

*****

The redness behind Michael’s lids grew redder and brighter, and as he tried desperately to swim his way up from the depths of the powerful sleep in which he was trapped, his skin began to prickle. The prickle became a stinging sensation, which quickly turned into a steadily worsening burn.

He hissed and
attempted to raise his arm over his eyes to block out the sun, but initially failed. His body was having trouble responding.

Fleeting f
ears of paralyzation and fractured thoughts of mortal injuries skated through Michael’s mind. He tried again, pushing with everything he had, and this time, he just managed to raise his right arm before his face.

The sun ceased searing into his brain, but the bur
ning on his skin was becoming decidedly painful. He gritted his teeth and tried to roll over. Something pricked his bottom lip, and he tasted blood.

What the hell
, he thought. His body just did not want to do what he told it to do.
Move, damn it!
he commanded. At last, he rolled onto his right side, but the effort was so draining, it felt like a weight-lifting exercise. By the time he’d managed to sit up, eyes still closed, arm still raised before his face, his muscles burned as much as his skin, and pain was beginning to lance through his skull.

Now the thoughts of injury were warning bells, chiming louder and more
frantically than anything else, and adding to his growing agony.

Something’s wrong.
Michael got to his feet, the effort like another squat with a five hundred pound barbell on his shoulders. He stumbled from the bed, tried to find the restroom, and when he failed, baffled confusion added itself to his incredible discomfort.

He continued to move
though, and within a few more seconds, he was dropping to his knees on a cracked linoleum floor and kicking the door shut behind him in order to block out the sunlight.

Silence and cool darkness embraced him like a salve. Michael leaned against the bathroom wall and
breathed. In and out…. One…. Two….

Within a few seconds, th
e burning on his skin lessened, his head was clearing, and he was able to open his eyes. That’s when he realized several things at once.

He’d never been in this particular bathroom before. It was no wonder to him now that he hadn’t been able to locate it at first. He’d probably never before been in the room beyond, nor in the bed upon which he’d awoken.

Another thing he realized was that everything he was looking at now was in very sharp focus. The yellowed porcelain sink, the dingy floor and peeling walls, the shower with a shower curtain covered in mold – all of it was so clear, it was like getting a new pair of glasses and suddenly having perfect vision when you didn’t even realize you’d been having trouble seeing in the first place.

He could smell it all too. Which was unfortunate.

The last thing he realized, and perhaps the most disturbing, was that the reason he’d pricked his lips and tasted blood was because he was sporting a very long, very sharp set of fangs.

Michael closed his overachieving eyes again and placed his hand to his forehead. His skin was flushed, hot against the cool of his palm. It almost felt burned. Moving on instinct now, he pressed his back up against the bathroom wall and used it as leverage to get on his booted feet.

Two steps, and he was gripping the sides of the sink and squeezing his eyes shut tight. Dizziness and weakness moved through him like the pull of a tide. He weathered it, then raised his head and opened his eyes.

A stranger stared back at him.

Michael’s grip on the sink tightened, and a hairline crack moved through the porcelain.
The whites of his eyes were gone, replaced by solid black that outlined his irises like a wolf’s eyes. His pupils were shrunken, even in the dim light of the shut bathroom, and at their centers were red pinpoints of light, flickering like candle flames.

His skin, once tanned by his many hours
of work outdoors, was now pale in places and covered in painful red patches in others. The burns healed rapidly before his eyes, retreating to leave behind more of that perfect but pale and unfamiliar skin tone. His hair, also once touched by the sun, had darkened several shades.

And then there were the fangs. He’d been able to feel them with his tongue, but seeing them in the mirror was anot
her matter.

I’m dreaming.

But he knew he wasn’t.

This is
n’t possible.

But he knew it was.

He remembered now. There, as he stood staring at the alien reflection of a man he thought he’d known, he recalled every single thing that had transpired in Central Park the night before. Rhiannon. The Phantoms. The Dragons. The stranger and Hesperos.

Samael.

And the deal that Michael had made with the Fallen One in order to save his archess.

Everything you love, everything you worship, all that you hold dear, oh Favored One, you lose here and now. All that you loathe and fear and unfairly judge shall become your burden.

A thrum of hard, painful understanding went through Michael. And at once, he understood everything, and he knew just what it was that Samael had done.

He’s turned me into a monster.

The son of a bitch was fond of that – turning people into vampires. Uriel was a perfect example. Sam had turned him into a vampire for breaking a verbal contract. And now he’d done the same to Michael in order to exact some petty form of revenge.

He’d given him fangs and a weakness for the sun.

A pang of yearning shot through Michael’s gut, hard and sharp, and his mouth watered.
Oh, and there’s that lovely thirst for blood.
He was surprised he hadn’t been expecting it.

So I’m a vampire.

But…
no
. There was something
more
.

Michael bared his fangs and frowned. There was something else.
All that you loathe and fear and unfairly judge….

What did Michael loathe? Not vampires.
He certainly didn’t hate his brother.

Azrael was the king of the vampires, the first vampire ever created, and the lord and master of every vampire that existed on the planet today. Azrael was also the
former Angel of Death, and one of the “Four Favored” archangels who’d come to Earth in search of their archesses two thousand years ago. He was Michael’s brother. And Az had never done anything that would make Michael hate him.

What did he
hate? What did he “unfairly” judge?

He peered more closely into that mirror, searching for the answer
s to those questions.

The flames at the centers of his pupils leapt, casting the rest of his ominously vivid eyes into shadow, and the corner of his mouth drew up in a smile that was almost… wicked.

Wicked
. He recognized the face he was looking into now. He’d seen a smile like this before. He knew the men who bore it. In fact, just last night, Hesperos, the king of their kind, had come to aid Michael in the battle at Central Park.

And he
knew.

There were
parts
of Michael now, and that was all. He was no longer a whole, no longer the Warrior Angel, but an amalgamation, a Frankenstein’s creation, a beast. He was part vampire – and he was part Nightmare.

Oh, you’re good Sam.

Michael had been on the trail of a serial rapist that was carving his seductive path through New York and whom Michael had since learned was no other than an incubus. Otherwise known as a Nightmare. The man had broken up couples, destroyed marriages, and ruined lives. He’d been royally pissing Michael off.

All that you loathe and fear and unfairly judge.

“Son of a bitch.”

But when Michael spoke, it wasn’t with as much vehemence as he probably sh
ould have felt. On the contrary, there was a tinge of something
amused
to his voice. When he spoke, it was with a bit of anticipation.

The hunger of the vampire within him was growing stronger, but so were other urges. Samuel Lambent, otherwise known as Samael,
no doubt thought he had created in Michael the epitome of everything Michael despised in the world: the predator who fed off the innocence and beauty that was already so rare in life.

But he’d acted too quickly. And he’d made a very big mistake.

Michael laughed. The sound came from deep within his tightly clenched gut and rode through his broad chest like wicked, echoing magic. Which was what it was. A Nightmare’s laugh could get under a woman’s skin like a drug. His voice could wrap around her like silk ropes. His touch could unravel every inhibition she had ever tied tightly to protect herself in her entire life.

And a vampire’s bite would take her all the places she ever dreamed of going.

A vampire and an incubus together? Michael smiled, and it was, despite everything, a decidedly alluring smile. There was danger in it – oh so very much danger. But it was a beautiful, charming, and undeniable danger.

Samael had managed
to do something wrong for once. He’d meant to punish the Warrior Archangel, make him weak, make him hate himself. Sam probably expected Michael would crawl into a hole and wait to live out the rest of his eternal days as something he despised.

But what Sam had actually done was give him
an incredible gift.

“We must make sure to thank him,” Michael said now, in that voice so deliciously enhanced by darkness, it filled the space with shadows and promises. He turned away from the mirror, and
with a confidence fitting of what he’d become, he stepped through the door of the bathroom –
through
it – using it as a portal.

The portal took him with impossible speed away from the ratty hotel room Samael had no doubt deposited him in last night, through the Mansion that was the magical, morphing home he shared with his archangel brothers, and then deposited him out the other side somewhere nice and dark.

Michael stepped through a second doorway and into an alleyway in New York City. By the way the shadows played on the ground, he guessed it was approximately six or seven o’clock in the afternoon. The sun would be setting within a few hours.