Page 6 of Angel's Vengeance
Because he’d lost hope.
His lids dipped, providing a final shroud of dignity to shield the haziness of his last moments while the rust crept higher over his chest and up his neck.His throat bobbed quickly, and his gasping breaths faded into rattled wheezes.
“Move.Out of the way.Now!”The large male with the man bun grabbed her by the shoulders, knocking her off-balance.Neela tried to catch herself but fell forward, bracing her hand on the shriveling bare chest of the man who’d saved her.
None of them were prepared for the eruption of white light that enveloped both her and the man whose heart had, a second ago, stopped beating beneath her fingertips.
Chapter3
Flecks of Rhode’s awareness flirted with the familiar bite of excruciating pain.Ever the fighter, for better or worse, his mind still tried to bob to the surface, while his body resigned itself to the agony of torture.
There was something he was leaving behind, though.Something his memory recognized, even through the blanketing acid that sizzled across his skin.Something he didn’t want to leave quite yet.Something curious ...
He tried to reach for the memory, for whatever it was that felt elementally wrong to abandon, but every time his brain would snag on a loose thread of comprehension, Cyro’s magical warfare would burn hotter, heavier.
Rhode’s body fell away from him then.No sensation, no movement.No pain, even.Just nothing.
He’d never been so lucky, no matter how many times he’d wished for the prime mages to grant him oblivion.It was fitting, he supposed, that now, when something was gnawing at him, a clue finally offered after eons of searching, it was snatched away like any great danger should be.
And then it all came rushing back to him a thousandfold.Searing light flared behind his closed eyelids.A gentle weight pressed into his chest, molding against him, bringing with it the faint aroma of hyssop, freshly tilled earth, andlife.
The fire that exploded on its heels incinerated it all.Through the din that erupted around him, he heard muffled shouts of “Grab her!”and “Off!Now!”Then a different sort of pain roiled through him, one that both burned for and cried out against the weight being lifted off him.A sharper pain filled in the depression left by that comforting heaviness, instead tumbling within his core and dispersing throughout every muscle in his body.Limbs stiffened, balls tightened, and teeth gnashed together as the brilliant white light receded bit by bit, leaving healthy skin and tissue and awesome power in its wake.
Flames.Blue electric flames exploded from his core and arced down every part of his body.He could feel them, but ...not.There was no longer heat, nor any scorching pain.There was only power.Power he’d solely witnessed in battles long ago but never wielded himself.
Angel fire.
“Back up.Everyone back the fuck upright now!Jesus Christ, how is this happening?”
As soon as Rhode registered the speaker’s voice, the fire around him retreated, shuttling into a ball of banked embers deep within his soul’s depths.
“Chrome?”Rhode whispered hoarsely.
“Right here, brother.I’m right here.”Strong arms gripped him behind his back and gently sat him upright.On any other day in the life of an Empyrean warrior, the picture that solidified around him would have made perfect sense.Piles of dead charmer ashes turning cold enough to gather a thin layer of snow.His sentinel brethren solid and hale, fresh from a victory.
What had yet to make sense was the breathy inhale of the woman standing next to a tow truck.
“I didn’t know you had wings,” she said through a stifled sob.
Then his body nearly exploded again.
Never had he seen such breathtaking abundance as what stood before him.From the rooftop, he’d only been able to make out bits and pieces of the thief.The bare-bones basics afforded by any aerial view.But up close?
She was a blessed bounty.
A vibrantly coiled corona of gold spun down to her elbows, only parting from her full breasts in so far as to hug them, framing them as an offering beneath a bed of cashmere that extended past her generous hips.Her hands were balled up into worried fists beneath her delicate chin, which quivered slightly, likely from the cold, for the outerwear he’d first spied her in sat in a heap on top of him.
The past few minutes came back to him in a rush.The attempted robbery.The charmers.Nets firing from cannons.The woman trapped, lashing out beneath the mesh.The pain.The fire.
Her scent.
And then a collection of words that made some semblance of sense on their own but none whatsoever in the context of who had spoken them.I didn’t know you had wings.
Rhode tossed her coat aside, shrugged off Chrome’s hold, and then, much to the angel’s colorful protestations, got to his feet.Iron and Steel, two of the other sentinels, stepped forward, a shared concern passing across their tense features.
Instantly, Rhode’s stomach seized up, and he fought against the familiar disdain that always threatened to pull him under whenever he saw those expressions painted on his kin’s faces.Damn, how he hated those looks.Hated them ever since he’d been plucked from Cyro’s grotto and thrown into a different sort of hell.They were looks of limitless possibilities and resources, kinship and community, renewed purpose and responsibility.
All things one had little use for when they’d been robbed of as much as he had been.And yet, there they were, stoic reminders baked into the forms of his loyal brethren who looked at him through the lens of their singular shocked and shared emotion: hurt.