Page 68 of Angel's Vengeance
She didn’t say anything, only nodded her acknowledgment while she frantically scanned the fit of his black three-piece suit for any bulges or asymmetrical folds that might indicate the hidden relic.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
That caught her off guard.“For what?”
“For forsaking the life I gave you in favor of some mortal existence we both know you could never truly survive in.”
“I’ve been surviving just fine.”C’mon, Neela, look!Where is it?Where would he keep it?
His slacks were freshly pressed and tailored perfectly to his muscular frame, as they always were, with not even the front leg crease out of alignment.The overcoat he wore was open but not particularly bulky.Nothing to indicate stuffed pockets.
“Oh, I highly doubt that.You know, of all the beings ever created on this rock, mortal humans are the least welcoming.Did you know that?And yet, for some reason, they insist otherwise, even going so far as to applaud other species for accepting those not like them into their packs.Those asinine tales of golden retrievers becoming mothers to cheetahs or some abandoned marmoset being adopted by capuchin monkeys and raised as their own.It’s always the mammals, mind you, never the sharks or the scorpions.Ever wonder why that is?”
“Couldn’t say.”Neela squinted against the meager moonlight as Cyro shifted into his usual pacing.She tried to catch a glimpse inside his overcoat, to see whether there was a pocket she’d missed or some sort of necklace.
Nothing.He wore nothing to indicate he had anything on him other than an abundance of arrogance.
Her stomach began twisting into knots.Please be there.Please.
“Becausetruepredators know that even creatures born from your own body wouldn’t hesitate to turn their back on you if it so suited them, let alone ones you adopt as your own.”Cyro drew closer to her, and his expression faltered from that familiar haughtiness to an almost stilted sadness.“You were the closest thing to true kin I ever had.”
“And you tried to kill me.Like,a lot.”
Then his brows drew down, and a mask of quiet fury settled into place.“Do you know what it’s like to live in darkness for so long?To be the first of your kind, theonlyof your kind, but relegated to depths only as deep as the shadows would allow?Astheywould allow?”He cast a finger toward the sky, his chest heaving, puffing out to a size that no calm thought ever followed.“And then I created you.”He drew his arms out toward her as though she was some prized showpiece.“Born from my body, crafted from my magic, but elementally committed to hijacking the source of the very beings who dared to put creatures like you and me in a box in the first place.”A remnant of something flashed in his golden eyes, something so similar to the longing she’d seen on Rhode’s face and the faces of everyone she’d met since.
It was the look of hope right before the cold wave of disappointment snuffed it out.
“You were supposed to be the answer to my sentence.The one being who could infiltrate the Empyrean and dismantle it so you and I and all the other charmers who came after you could finally live freely in a world without light.”Then his face fell and, with it, his arms.“I was that golden retriever offering you a life unlike any other, and instead of embracing it, you abandoned me.”
A flash of something smooth and white peeked out from his wrist as he lowered his arm, and she sucked in a breath.The relic!I was right!
Neela’s mind spun as she tugged on her ear and tried to keep him talking.“I wouldn’t call it abandonment.You had no use for me.I didn’t have any powers.I couldn’t do what you wanted.”
“I wanted to live!”he screamed at her.“I wanted to live with someone like me, beside me, bornofme, who could do what I could not.But instead, all you did, day in and day out, was remind me of every single thingyoucould not do.How your existence, the existenceIgave you, was better suited for anything other than what I could provide for you.A cheetah who preferred the open spaces of the Savannah instead of the canary I needed in the coal mines.”His gaze darkened.“But I don’t like my pets escaping, no matter how damaged they are, and I have built a far better cage for you than the one you remember.Enough of this nonsense.It’s time to return where you belong.”
The rope appeared around her neck before Neela had a chance to scream.Cyro pulledhard,and the breath from her lungs squeezed out of her in raspy ribbons.A portal flashed behind him, and a dozen or so charmers walked out, each carrying more of those cargo net guns, in addition to several other firearms she didn’t recognize.
What shedidrecognize was the relic, white, fang-like, and curving around Cyro’s wrist like a crescent-moon bangle.
Neela curled her fingers around the rope and fought for purchase against the smooth nylon fibers, finding no give whatsoever.In front of her, a firing squad of charmers aimed their guns at her and held the funnels of their launchers in stacked positions to ensure maximum coverage, all saying the same message.
If she tried to run, they’d find her.
Cyro tugged on the rope while holding his other hand high and squeezing it into a fist.“Now.”
Neela braced for the telltale clicks of triggers, the yank on her neck?—
A sharp whine cut through the night, and the rope at her neck went lax.Air rushed into her lungs as she chased the track of the sound.On the ground, a gleaming titanium arrow staked the severed tactical rope to the snow-packed earth.
The sky erupted after that.
Several sets of metallic wings dive-bombed through the snow and let loose a hail of angel fire into the demons charging toward her.The fiery bullets and projectiles lit up the flailing bodies like the grand finale of a fireworks celebration.Those who weren’t thrashing from the fire had dropped to the snow, wasting time while they tried to pull out weapons that would work on the angels.
Meanwhile, a certain set of wings had yet to materialize.Neela assessed the arrow at her feet again and smiled.Despite the metal, she’d recognize the fire engulfing the arrowhead anywhere.Its heat was something that would never harm her.
Then Rhode’s boots hit the snow at her side.He threw the bow he’d been holding over his back and urgently grabbed her to his chest.“Are you all right?”
“I am now.But Cyro has the relic.It’s on his?—”