Page 12 of Angel's Vengeance
Then that thick and aggressively pokey finger swung in her direction again.Man, she had gottenso goodat not flinching.Too bad her outward efforts did little to calm her inward nerves whenever she found herself the object of Rhode’s attention.
“She did something to me.Something else.She’s a demon.Trust me, Tungsten, she is more than capable of crimes you couldn’t conceive of.”
She was ...What did he just say?Had he just…?
Neela shot to her feet.“I am not!”
With a voice that brooked no argument, Tungsten offered his ever-so-levelheaded two cents.“We will sit, and we will talk.No one is accusing you of anything, Neela,” he clarified.But once she settled back in her seat, the prime sentinel’s tone changed to something altogether darker as he addressed Rhode.“And if I have to weld your ass to a chair and have Iron and Titan hold you down, you know that is what I will do.Now, I have a theory, and you will hear it whether you want to or not.The facts of the matter suggest it’s not solely conjecture but truth.A truth you need to, at the very least, understand, for I know acceptance is out of the question.”
The gravity of Tungsten’s words urged Neela to hold her tongue, but Rhode continued to pace a trench into Molly’s newly waxed hardwood.
“While the Empyrean houses many types of celestial beings, including the seraphim, who make up our soldier and spy legions, there are only seven sentinels.We are the elite guard of Heaven and command her armies by virtue of one unique power: our angel fire.As a seraph, Rhode does not innately possess such a power.And neither is a seraph healed by the manner in which he was once you touched him, which leads me to believe two things.”
“What?”Neela asked, while Rhode’s silence let her question hang suspended for longer than she would have liked.
“I believe that when you touched Rhode for the first time, the soul bond connection was initiated, lending its healing force to Rhode.”
“He’s right.”Titan stepped forward and ran his knuckles under his neat beard in contemplation.“Saw the same thing happen with Rose the first time we met.She’s patched me up more times than I can count, and the power she gives off sounds exactly like what the others told me they saw in front of the mechanic’s garage.”
“Ridiculous,” Rhode added.“And it still doesn’t explain the fire.”
“Which brings me to the second truth.”Tungsten leveled his heavy stare at Neela, and she knew that whatever tumbled out of this angel’s mouth was something she wouldn’t be able to escape from.“I also believe that you, Miss Neela, are something more than a mere charmer, and Rhode, though we all wish differently, may no longer be a simple seraph.”
Neela fidgeted in her chair, doing her best to both avoid and make sense of what Tungsten was saying.But when the prime sentinel’s accusatory tone shifted in the direction of Rhode, she didn’t know whether to be grateful for the reprieve or worried about what it meant.
“You’ve said you have no memories of what was done to you.Is that still the case?”
Rhode halted his pacing, and the other two angels stiffened, with neither appearing eager to bear witness to whatever was coming next.
No memories?Was that true?How could he have no memories from before?
She carefully tried to reconcile that possibility, but every time she attempted it, a sinking feeling rose up to drown out all the other far more hopeful scenarios.
The slight spark of unknown awareness when he’d first met her.
The even quicker cooldown and about-face once he’d learned who she was.
The silent coldness and hostility that, would they have been alone, she suspected would have been far more brutal.
The conclusion was a rock-hard kick to her more tender parts, chief among them being the simpering organ in her chest that had only ever cared for her plants until recently.
He remembers.He just wishes he didn’t.
“Yes.”Rhode’s solemn response had broken through her hazy thoughts, and she had to remember whose accusation he was addressing.The disappointment at his dubious dishonesty struck a sour chord within her, though the precise explanation why still eluded her.
“Then I shall now ask Neela to enlighten us a bit further.”Tungsten’s pewter eyes pinned her to the floor.“Tell us how it is that Rhode came to find you, for it will no doubt prove useful in understanding why a commander of an Empyrean spy legion now finds himself bound to a demon.”
Rhode kepthis body absolutely still while he waited for the charmer, Neela, to speak.During that time, he raked his ruthless internal assessments over her form for the dozenth time.Despite the difference in her outward appearance and the obvious peculiarity of her gender, he couldn’t ignore the sensory markers of her race that were indeed buried below.
Deep beneath the hyssop and earthy aromas that seemed to carry across the room and envelop him whenever she adjusted her mass of hair, the underlying essence of the shadow realm still coated her makeup, like the smoke ring hidden among the most succulent cut of meat.
Neela was a charmer.There was no mistaking it, which meant he had no true reason to discount her story or her origins.And didn’t that just rankle him all the more?
In truth, the simple fact that she even had a name surprised him to the point of borderline intrigue.In all his time in the demon camps and grottos, never once had he recalled any of the other charmers being named.Names were personal—or, in his case, had been at one time.The only thingpersonalabout the charmers was their unique delight in others’ misery.
But this one had a name.Neela.
He’d heard all but a handful of sentences from her and was repulsed to discover that he wanted—needed—to hear more.If she kept talking, maybe his mind would cease the relentless spinning.However, the longer he stood there, trapped within the four walls of the increasingly cramped restaurant, the longer he feared he’d already gone insane and the anticipation was just another way for his brain to roll out the red carpet, bypass the coming attractions, and welcome him into the fresh hell that was the feature presentation.