Page 5 of Angel's Vengeance
Neela tracked her eyes up and up and up ...God, they were the largest men she’d ever seen!Despite all their wings being similar to the first man’s who’d swooped into the fight, only two looked like, well, men.She had to blink a few times to call her certainty to the surface, but when she narrowed her eyes on the final man in front of her, the only explanation for what she saw had no choice but to solidify.
The third one was most definitely and completely covered in metal, from the charcoal-gray hair pulled back in a bun to the wide gleaming cuffs encircling each meaty wrist.Never mind the dangling mace and battle ax coated in a blue fire that never seemed to burn him or any of the others.
Yeah, the dude was metal all right.With every small glimpse Neela managed through the netting, men with wings seemingly made from various types of elemental alloys assaulted both her senses and her attackers.
The rest of the parking lot fell away into some form of an arsonist’s wet dream.Electric blue flames arced across bodies in a dazzling display of horror.Even the falling snow seemed to read the warning on these men’s faces, wisely jumping out of the way of the flames.
Then there was a slight tug at the corner of the netting holding her head down.Before she could turn around fully, that strange sickle-shaped blade flashed in her periphery and the rest of the mesh fell away.
“Run.Touch nothing.”
Neela kicked the remainder of the nets free and was about to bolt when the voice by her ear nearly stopped her heart.
That voice.
Somewhere, primary parts of her picked out the bits of timbre that made sense, the notes that rang with a gentle familiarity, while moving to the side the parts that didn’t.
The hint of a tenor’s raspy whisper.Vowels that almost fell away from the tentpoles of stronger consonants.Fragments.Nothing but the essentials.Urgency.All of that floated to the surface, far above the foreign darkness that seemed to coat what, for so long, had been spoken with a haunted sort of tenderness.
It can’t be ...
Neela scrambled to her knees and spun to find the man with blindingly white-silver wings holding that sickle-shaped weapon in one hand and a shredded net in the other.
And that was when the rest of the pieces clicked into place.It had been too dark before, the streetlights too dim and her vision too obscured.Up close, however, yes, she could see it.Though her brain had to work overtime, it managed to slowly morph the gaunt lines and haunted angles of the man from her memory into the powerful package before her.Through the haze of the past, the scraggly beard had fallen away, revealing a rough-hewn jaw hardened with tension.Strength compounded on strength as he squatted before her, with his muscular thighs hugged by black denim supporting a frame that didn’t make sense with the one her mind called forward.
He’d been sick.Close to death.Not ...
Then those umber eyes searched out hers, and she nearly fell back on her ass.
Many things could change about a person.Hell, she could write a freaking ten-book anthology on that subject.What never changed, however, was their soul, no matter how much one wanted it to.She’d been alive long enough to know that.And beneath the perfectly cut body capable of not only freeing her but also, apparently, flying, that same soul held out a direct line to her own.
“Axtar,” she breathed.
Recognition flashed briefly in the depths of those carob-colored eyes, along with something she couldn’t quite place.Fear?Confusion?He opened his mouth to speak?—
A bullet exploded through his tucked wing and pierced clean through his right shoulder.Blood peppered the air, misting Neela’s white coat with its gruesome spray.The man roared in pain, clutched his shoulder, and tried to turn around to see who had fired at him.Horror seized the last breath from her lungs as he faltered, his legs giving out beneath him.He toppled forward, and she caught him as best she could.Though he still tried to use his right arm to prevent himself from crushing her, the effort was largely worthless.If any part of her was still uncertain about the amount of strength he wielded, it was quickly jettisoned from the ship.All two-hundred-plus pounds of the man fell on top of her, effectively pinning her against the side of the tow truck.
“Rhode!”The largest of the winged men, the one who had been in a metallic form but was now flesh and bone like the others, sliced his ax through the only remaining body that hadn’t yet been reduced to ashes.The final head separated from its owner, and blue flames had gotten to work eating away at the rest of it—including a hand that held yet another gun she hadn’t seen before.A gun that was still smoking.
Rhode?Who’s Rhode?
Neela stretched her arms wide around the man’s broad shoulders and did her best to roll him over and lay him flat on the blacktop.Her thighs burned with the effort, but she eventually had him supine enough that she could inspect the wound.
Wounds, at least, she could handle.
“Go ...”The hoarse whisper that fell from his full lips was nothing like the demand from earlier.All confidence had been stripped away, only to reveal a sad desperation that offered hints of something far sadder.
Did he ...?No, he couldn’twant this, could he?
“No, I’m not going to leave you,” she said as she shrugged out of her coat.“Help!Someone help me!”
Heavy footsteps pounded the pavement around her, but she didn’t bother to look up.Because by the time she’d wadded up her coat enough to place it against the bullet wound in his shoulder, her hands stilled.
Several buttons had been lost on the silk shirt he wore, allowing for the edges of the garment to fall free in relief to expose the wound left behind.
A wound that no longer seeped blood, as Neela expected, but one that had turned all the skin around it into large crumbling flakes of rust and was spreading nearly as fast as that blue fire from earlier.
Nothing.There was nothing in her arsenal of wound care knowledge that could even come close to explaining away what she was seeing.And she knew the moment he realized it, too.Thatwas why his sadness was so permeating, why the finality of the word he’d spoken to her betrayed the regret they both felt.