Page 7 of Angel's Vengeance
Rhode tried to clear away the sentiments that had gathered in his throat and silently pleaded to four different sets of eyes for any explanations for what had just happened to him.He’d do far better to get answers to his own questions first than face the painful ones poised behind everybody’s lips.
Steel was the first to step forward and flicked a discerning gaze between the woman and Rhode.“You two know each other?”
“No—” Rhode answered.
“Kinda—” the woman responded over him.
Rhode pinned her with a warning.“Do not tell tales with these men.You will not like the outcome.”
“I-I’m not.I wouldn’t,” she rushed to clarify.“I just mean that I didn’t know you with wings.”
“You didn’t know me with?—”
“Wings.That makes the boatload of us, apparently.”A simmering crackle disrupted the night’s stillness and ushered in the earthy sweetness of Chrome’s choice Nicaraguan cigar.After the angel took a drag and freed the blue smoke to dance with the snow, he circled the butt end at Rhode and threw all his misguided authority into the gesture.“Just when in the hell were you going to tell us that you’ve been able to call out your wings again?Was this a recent development or did you figure it out somewhere around month six or so but concluded it was none of our damn business, so what the hell, you’d just keep your mouth shut about it for another fucking year?”
Rhode gritted his teeth.“I am not discussing this right now,” he seethed, then curled his fingers and caged them to gesture over his exposed chest.“What I want to know is what the hell just happened to me!”
Steel’s icy glare softened with concern.“You called forth angel fire.”
“Impossible!”Rhode slashed his hand through the air.
“Yes, it should be,” he acknowledged, dragging a hand through his short blond hair and shaking his head.“But it happened regardless.”Then his frosty stare settled on the woman with a questing sort of sadness.
Her soft voice rose up among those of the arguing angels.“What was that white light?”Honeyed eyes flicked to Rhode.“What happened when I touched you?”
He paused in his seething just long enough to eye her in disbelief.“You ...you touched me?”
She nodded.“When you were”—she lowered her gaze and squeezed her fists beneath her chin again—“dying, I think.Parts of you were crumbling away.Whole patches of skin were turning to rust and just flaking off you like you were an old car bumper or something.I didn’t know what to do.Your friend screamed at me to get off you, but when he pulled me away, I lost my balance and fell forward.”When she lifted her eyes again, a silent sincerity lit her features with a desperate honesty that would have made his heart smile once upon a time.
Now, it only made his soul scream.
“I landed on your chest, and that’s when the white pulsing light flared out.I felt it.In here.”She tapped the collar of her sweater, which was just high enough to force his eyes away from what had commanded his attention earlier.
So that had been her.The soft weight he’d felt blanketing him, molding him back together in some elemental way.Thatwas what his soul had thrown itself at as whatever it was had stitched him back together.That delicious heaviness was the anchor that the roaring parts of him had been able to cling to as the rest of his body felt like it was being melted down into new molecules with a new mission.
Rhode shook his head in abject bewilderment.
Then a plume of smoke wafted across his periphery.“Lot of people I know would have begun leaking out of both ends and turned tail if they saw a man start losing chunks of himself like that, yet you’re still here.”Chrome narrowed his eyes at the woman and shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth.“Why aren’t you running, lady?”
“And I’d like to know just how you know so much about him.”Iron adjusted a leather bracer and tightened his fist on the handle of his mace.
Steel spread his arms out in a placating motion.“Easy, guys.Look, it’s clear we all have questions?—”
Rhode’s kamas were out and under Chrome’s and Iron’s throats before either of them had taken their next inhale.The cigar tumbled from Chrome’s mouth, while some of the hairs on Iron’s beard separated at the root and slid down the curve of Rhode’s blade.He couldn’t say what propelled him to act, if only thatnotacting, even against his own, was like a strike against his soul.Rhode growled into the angels’ faces.“No threats.You hear me?You willnotthreaten her.”
“Oh?”Chrome barked, sticking his neck out closer against the bite of the blade.Molten metallic flames swirled in his former intelligence master’s eyes.“Does that mean you’re happy to threaten us?You finally feeling up to talking to us afteralmost dying?”
“I had no say in this night!”
“Bullshit.You had a say, you just chose to keep your mouth shut.Every fucking night since I pulled you out of that grotto, you’ve had a choice.And I’ve given you your space, dammit, because it was my fault you were taken in the first place.”A heavy silence settled over the parking lot but did nothing to quell the rage amplifying the moment.“I thought you needed time.I knew you had stuff to work through, and I thought that as long as I gave you time, however much you required, that you’d eventually come and find me.Trust in me again.But instead, I pick up on the scent of charmers, follow it here, and what do I see?My former seraphim commander, who barely looks me in the eye anymore, let alone talks to me, slicing up the enemy with his wings out, blades out, like the past year and a half just didn’t happen.Like I hadn’t beenbeggingDrea, my own fucking soul bond, to lie to me and tell me that everything will be okay with you, with us.That tomorrow would be the day you’d finally talk to me about what Cyro did, because I don’t believe for a second you don’t remember.”
“Cyro?You know him?”
If any words in the mortal realm could have broken through the rage coating Rhode’s vision, those were it.All four angels turned toward the woman in unison as Rhode lowered his blades.
“What do you know of that name?”he asked.
Those golden eyes of hers widened, but thank the blessed mages, she still answered him.“He’s my sire.”