Renegade Angel

Raum jerked his gaze away and pulled her into his chest, wrapping his wings around her as he got to his feet. The pain in his hands had lessened to a dull ache, smoke still coiling lazily from the raw skin, but concentrating on holding Ember pushed it to the back of his mind and made it more bearable. They would have been healed already, had it been anything but fire. That fire, in particular. Still, the damage should be gone by morning, though they’d be misery for a while yet.

Ember hadn’t yet wakened, but she curled into him, nuzzling her face into his chest. She sighed softly, and Raum felt a strange tug somewhere in the dark and blackened vicinity that supposedly held a heart. He had a sudden, overwhelming desire to protect her, to keep her close ….

“Well,” said a voice, “this is a new one, even for me.”

Raum hunched his shoulders defensively in reaction. He wasn’t at all in the frame of mind he liked to be in when confronting the almost always unhelpful Reapers. And this one, Jarrod by name, had thwarted him before. Raum made sure his hands were well-hidden beneath his wings along with most of Ember, determined not to let the Reaper see the damage he’d inflicted on himself. Then he might ask questions, and Raum was in no mood to answer them.

“What are you doing here, Jarrod?” Raum grumbled. “Your services aren’t needed.”

“Apparently not,” Jarrod replied, quirking a brow. The Reaper was clad as the rest of his kind always were, all in black, and with a long coat that had been known, on occasion, to hold wonders. Not that they shared, Raum thought, glowering.

The Reaper stretched his neck, trying to get a better look at what Raum was holding on to. “What have you got there?”

“None of your business,” Raum snapped, wrapping his wings more tightly around himself. Why, after millennia of Reapers avoiding him like the plague, did this one have to show up now?

“Well, I was minding my business, now that you mention it,” Jarrod said. His fair skin shimmered faintly in the darkness, a marked contrast to his severe clothes. “But see, then I was called by a woman’s departing soul, so here I am, ready to guide her into the beyond, and instead, I find a Fallen angel who thinks I don’t realize he’s hiding her under his wings. Right. There. In front of me.” He cocked his head, amusement and curiosity glittering in his dark eyes.

“You’re not needed here, Jarrod. Go away.” Raum pulled an arm free and waved him off with an irritated jerk, then remembered his hands.

Shit.

“You’re burned,” Jarrod said softly, his surprise evident. “Did you … ?”

The question, only half-finished, hung in the air between them. Raum considered denying it, but though he was adept at lying, anything he said was going to sound ridiculous. All he could hope for was that the truth got rid of the Reaper faster. He fixed Jarrod with a steely glare that greater beings had withered beneath.

“What if I did? It’s no business of yours.”

Jarrod looked nothing short of stunned, an expression Raum didn’t think he’d ever seen on a Reaper’s face before. The other man was silent a long moment, though he made no move to leave. Then he said, “I’d heard you were one of the defectors, you know. But I didn’t actually believe it was true.” His dark eyes narrowed slightly, considering him with unnerving intensity when Raum said nothing, which he knew the Reaper would take as confirmation enough.

Then, Jarrod said softly, “This is not the place for you right now, Raum of the Fallen.”

Raum stared. It was the first time he had ever received any information that might be remotely construed as helpful from a Reaper, who were stubbornly neutral. Jarrod’s face betrayed no emotion, though he continued to watch Raum with that look of frank assessment.

Finally, Raum said, “I know about the Nexus. We’re not going to let it happen.”

Jarrod’s smile was thin. “That’s a switch. But you’re up against more than you know.” Then he walked toward him, his stride purposeful. Raum took a step back, glaring.

“Don’t be greedy, Raum. Let me see the woman.”

“Piss off.”

Jarrod stopped and folded his arms across his chest. “She’s not so far from the borders of death yet, Raum. I want to see if you’ve done your job right.” He shook his head. “At least, I’m assuming that saving innocent humans is part of your job now?”

“Not really,” Raum grumbled, unable to let it go. He had no interest in word getting around that he was trying to get back into the white-winged contingent when it was so entirely untrue.

Jarrod stepped forward again. “Then all the more reason for me to have a look. You probably screwed it up and I’ll have to take her anyway.”

Raum bared his teeth. “Try it and lose an arm.” But he relented at last, parting his wings to reveal Ember’s unconscious form. He remembered that she was naked from the waist up, and turned her into him so that Jarrod couldn’t get a good look, gripped by another wave of unreasonable possessiveness. He could tell from the odd look the Reaper gave him that he’d noticed, but for once, Jarrod kept his opinion to himself.

Instead, he leaned over her, eyes intense. He reached out one long-fingered hand and brushed a lock of gleaming hair away from the side of Ember’s face, and Raum felt his fists clench. That was followed by a wave of nauseating pain, payment for moving his abused hands without thinking.

“Well?” he gritted out when the Reaper continued to examine her silently. Jarrod raised his gaze to him, and it was as black as a starless night.

“Why did you save her?”

Raum blinked. “What?”

“Why did you save this woman?” Jarrod repeated. “Be cause that’s what you’ve done. And considering what, and who, she is, I’m a little confused. I don’t know what it cost you, exactly,” he continued, his voice dropping, and Raum saw his eyes go to his smoking hands. “But I’m going to guess it was quite a bit.”

Raum paused, torn between the truth and keeping up appearances, though the latter would mean the end of this bizarre conversation with the Reaper. He’d never looked at the agents of Death as much more than a necessary nuisance, sometimes entertaining to bother, completely useless when it came to information. But Jarrod, with whom he’d engaged in the occasional war of words with over this soul or that, seemed to want to tell him something. And the days when he could afford to blow such an impression off were gone.

“It … she was guarded. Stupid nefari was meant to protect her and turned on her as soon as it got excited.” He shrugged. “I should have been more careful. She’s important to this Nexus business, and … Uriel doesn’t want her hurt.” It was as close as he would come to the truth, to his own interest in protecting her.

“But why you?” Jarrod asked, and he seemed genuinely perplexed.

“Because I said I would. Because this is the sorry state my existence has been reduced to.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Because it’s my fault she got hurt. Why does it matter to you anyway, Jarrod?” The words sounded foreign to his own ears, rolling strangely off his tongue. When was the last time he had admitted to anything resembling guilt? And yet it was true, all true.

He suddenly felt ill.

Jarrod seemed to sense this, and his gaze softened, though Raum didn’t appreciate it. He had no use for pity, and wanted none. Still, the truth got him what he’d wanted.

Or thought he wanted.

“You really don’t know, do you?” Jarrod asked, still looking puzzled. Then he shook his head, seeming to accept the situation. “It’s ironic, that you’ve unwittingly given a part of yourself to the daughter of your enemy. A noble gift I wouldn’t have expected you to give in a million years, don’t get me wrong. But this is going to infuriate him. You may want to get out of here until you can muster some backup. Otherwise … “ he trailed off for a moment, his gaze dropping to Ember’s face with a look of sympathy, “there’s no way you’ll stand between him and what he wants. Not alone.”

Raum’s eyes narrowed as he grappled with Jarrod’s words, trying to discern any meaning but the one he feared. But his longstanding feud was well known even to midworlders like the Reapers, and he knew, in his gut, exactly what Jarrod had meant.

“Mammon?”

Jarrod gave a single nod. “He watches his daughter, and waits for the right time to unleash her power. The darkness is growing thicker here. Don’t you sense it? The Nexus is ripe for breaking.” He lifted his head to scan the sky, breathing in deeply, as though he could scent the gathering evil in this place. Raum could only stare.

“Mammon’s daughter,” he said, struggling to reconcile the warm creature in his arms with the foul, grinning, glad-handing demon who had engineered his downfall. But it was so obvious, now that he looked: her unusual strength of mind, her power … she even had her father’s red hair, and the rare beauty that could only mark her as high demon. There was no nefari in her. Ember carried the blood of the Fallen … and it made her far more dangerous than Raum had ever thought.

“Why are you telling me this?” Raum asked hoarsely, his thoughts hopelessly tangled in the wake of this news. His kind rarely impregnated human women, who were almost always too fragile for such a thing to be possible. And yet of all the Fallen to have produced a creature with beauty, power and a coveted, indestructible soul …

Mammon. His mortal enemy. Her father …

“I told you because you treated a human life as though it had value. It seems only right that I help you retain yours.” Jarrod took two steps back, then offered a lopsided smile. “You surprise me, Raum. Do yourself a favor and get the seraphim here, then take Ember Riddick where Mammon can’t find her until Nexus has been sealed. Leave the fighting to the angels and demons.”

“But I am a demon,” Raum protested.

Jarrod cocked his head at him, still wearing his half smile. “Are you?”

“Wait,” Raum began, holding out one stillsmoking hand to stop him. But it was no use.

In the irritating manner of all ethereal beings, the Reaper had already gone.

And Raum was left in the darkness with nothing but the steady sound of Ember’s beating heart.

Chapter 5

When it hit, the goblet shattered the looking glass into a thousand pieces.

“Hellfire!”

Mammon’s roar filled the Chamber of Glass, echoing off the infinite mirrors of all shapes and sizes that covered walls soaring upward into infinity and beyond sight. He hovered in the air for a moment longer, the enormous black wings that sprang from his back holding him steady, and stared at the shattered glass where only a moment before his daughter’s face had been.

He had come here to gloat over his progress with her, to toast himself with the finest wine Hell could offer. A handful of the Fallen nobility had sired children with humans over the centuries, but half-breeds truly of the blood were rare. And none, Mammon knew, compared to his Ember. She was a beauty, of course, with his fiery hair, his perfect features. But more importantly, she had such potential, such power, and with the strength to keep it from driving her mad.

An unexpected gift, a key to tear open the Nexus and wreak Hell on the unsuspecting human world. It had been far too long. But he and the Council had had years to plan their next, greatest assault. And with him, the perfect guide to stoke the darkness within her, Ember would soon be commanding legions of her own.

Mammon had never seen her equal in an eternity littered with insane half-breed offspring whose violent natures had little intellect to hone them. Ember was the fruit of a one-night dalliance born of boredom, with a pregnancy as the surprising result. Even more surprising was that Dina Riddick, judgmental whore that she’d been, had managed to carry the tempestuous little brat to term. From a distance he’d watched, interested despite himself in the only child he had ever sired. Still, Mammon had expected little Ember—a name he himself had selected and pushed into Dina’s mind, though the woman still hated it—to be nothing more than a tool, a toy to be quickly used up and thrown away. Good for a single burst of horrific violence, perhaps. But Ember had surprised him as he’d visited her dreams, watched her grow.

So in her sleep, he began to train her. Even now, un sure as she was, his daughter had a great deal more ability than she was consciously aware of. And one day, he decided, when Hell on Earth became a reality, she would sit at his side. His demon child, made immortal. And she with a soul, that precious gift that could never be destroyed, not even in the fiery river Phlegethon that would turn angel and demon alike into nothing but dust. She was perfection. The perfect embodiment, as he was, of beauty and death. No she-demon had ever risen so high. And she was his.

Until that wretched traitor had swept in and run off with her, that was. He had seen it, watched with impotent fury as the nefari set to guard Ember had turned on her as soon as Raum had burst in. Raum, with his precious Ember in his arms, vanishing into the night, cloaked in the protection of his kind that made it impossible for Mammon to see where he had taken her … his daughter, with the bastard’s unworthy hands on her!

Filthy traitor, fit only to burn.

The Prince of Avarice gave one more furious snarl before he descended to the ground, his boots touching down gently on the marble floor. He folded his wings behind him, then whirled and stalked from the room.

“No,” he growled, heading for the Throne Room. “I will not have it. I will not allow it. She is mine.”

As he walked, his scattered thoughts of vengeance began to coalesce into a plan of attack. A thin smile curved Mammon’s lips, and with great relish, he began to plot in earnest. The wheels for the final triumph had finally been set in motion. Ember, his Ember, was only the beginning. He would get her back, he soothed himself. She would break the Nexus wide-open, and this invasion would make the last one seem like child’s play. The Balance would never recover.

But first, it seemed he would have to show one foolish prodigal Fallen angel what happened when you tried to steal from one of your own.

It was always better to rule in Hell, even if that rule ended with the soulless death that awaited them all, than to serve the Light. Raum had forgotten that lesson, it seemed.

It would be a pleasure to refresh his memory.

Chapter 6

Ember awakened to find herself strapped into the passenger seat of a sexy black Corvette, slumped to the side and with her mouth wide-open. Since that was her usual mode of travel sleeping, it wouldn’t have been a really big deal, just kind of embarrassing.

Except that she also felt as if a truck had driven over her recently. And she didn’t normally travel in mismatched pajamas with strange men who sometimes turned into birds.

She swallowed hard as she tried to sort through the hazy, fun-house memories of the night before, and the adrenaline began to pump again through her sluggish, sleep-addled system. Seemed as if there was plenty to be afraid of, all of a sudden. And that was a switch, since she was usually the scariest thing in any given place.

At least, that was what she’d always thought. Now, Ember wasn’t so sure. About anything. And there was only one person available to ask. She cleared her throat softly, and hoped that her rapidly beating heart wouldn’t be given away by a shaking voice.

“Wh-where am I?”

Raum looked frighteningly intense with his hands on the wheel, piloting the sports car smoothly along at well over eighty miles an hour. She didn’t know what he’d been thinking about … wasn’t actually sure she wanted to know. He jumped a little at the sound of her voice, though, as if he’d forgotten she was even there.

Then his eyes met hers, just for a quick instant, and Ember felt a hot sizzle of connection that had nothing to do with fear. Her heartbeat slowed a little, but the fear was replaced by an angry tug of possessiveness that was disconcerting in its strength.

Mine, she thought, and remembered thinking it right before she’d fallen into his arms. When the poison had begun to work on her. And his touch had been so much gentler than she’d expected. She knew she should be afraid. But knowing that this man, supernatural creature, or whatever he was, had saved her life prevented her from being much but grateful that he’d been around when she’d needed him to be.

“You’re awake,” he said, and there was a slight edge to his voice, as though he wasn’t quite sure what to do with her, either. To have at least that in common was oddly soothing to her.

“Awake,” she agreed, trying a small smile. “And alive. Thanks to you.”

Ember fully expected that this would be the opening to a detailed conversation about why, exactly, her house had been invaded by something that looked to have come from the seventh circle of Hell, not to mention why Raum had been looking out for her.

She did not expect that he would continue to drive, silently and way too fast. Or that he would look kind of pissed off, which she thought was an inappropriate reaction to her continued existence, at best.

“You don’t need to thank me,” Raum finally said, and the surly tone of his voice told her that yes, he was in fact kind of pissed off.

“Okay, I’ll be angry that you saved my life,” Ember said with a frown. “Would that suit you better?”

“You could just forget about it. That would be my preference.” His rich, warm voice slid through her, waking up nerve endings that had no business being awake right now. Her eyes drifted for a moment, and Ember noted for the first time that his hands, gripping the steering wheel, looked red and raw. Painful.

The old and familiar guilt flooded her immediately.

“I didn’t do that, did I?” she blurted out, and without thinking she reached out to brush her hand against his. It was her greatest fear, hurting people. Especially when they had done nothing to warrant it. It seemed she hurt anyone she got too close to; God knew her own mother had gotten scars from her when she was too young to know better, only one reason why the woman wanted next to nothing to do with her only child. And a big reason, despite the widely recognized fact that Dina Riddick had never wanted and still did not want responsibility for anyone other than herself, that Ember had let it go. Let her go.

But every once in a while, that deep and denied need for a bit of human contact got the better of Ember’s com mon sense. She felt it only for a moment when their hands touched, that hot and tingling rush when their skin connected, before Raum jerked his hand away with a furious glare. Ember let her own hand linger in midair for a moment, staring at it as it continued to tingle with tiny aftershocks.

“No,” Raum growled. “You didn’t do this. Now, sit still. We have a ways to go yet, and you don’t need to be crawling all over the car. You already know I’m not going to hurt you.”

Ember pulled her hand back and looked away, angry and embarrassed all at the same time. She knew what he’d meant: crawling all over ME, he might as well have said. But she knew he’d felt it, too. She just didn’t know why he found it so repulsive, when to her it held the promise of something like Heaven.

Ember ran a hand through the unruly tangles of her hair, winced as she pulled through innumerable snags. Then she sighed and again looked over at her big, grim-faced chauffeur. Her reaction to him was no less powerful than it had been last night, but this time it was tempered with annoyance. It didn’t stop her from wanting to crawl into his lap, but it did allow her to hang on to her wits this time. Or maybe her body was adjusting to a new, erotically charged baseline.

“Raum, if that really is your name,” she said, and saw by the slight turn of his head that he was listening. “I really don’t feel like I should have to ask, but what the hell is going on?”

He paused. And at least this time, when he answered her, he didn’t sound as if he wanted to fight. It was progress, of a sort.

“I’ve been trying to figure out a way to explain this that doesn’t end with you throwing yourself out of the car,” he said. “So I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you just ask me the things you want to know? And start small.”

She nodded, inadvertently amused. He really did seem to be a man of few words. But as long as he was answering, she could work with it. “Okay,” she said. “Agreed.”

“Good.” He took a deep breath, and Ember realized, suddenly, that Raum was as knotted up as she was. Somehow, knowing that made it easier to start.

“What are you?” she asked.

He considered this for a moment. “Start somewhere else.”

Ember blew out an irritated breath. “Okay, fine. What am I? I’m assuming you’re not unaware of the fact that I was growling and snarling right along with everyone else last night.”

“At least you have a sense of humor about it,” he said. When she just glared at him, waiting for a response, he relented.