Angel Unleashed

She had heard something, though. The Knight had spoken to her telepathically. She’d heard him clearly because she had left a channel to her mind open. Another slip-up.

“Damn it,” she would have returned if she had been able to join in that conversation. “This is no game.”

They weren’t players on some gigantic chessboard. There was so much more at stake here than who might gain or lose a point. This was life. Hers. She’d been a fool to have been so intent on tattooed wings that she hadn’t done enough research about which of the Knights she’d potentially encounter if things went wrong in London. Being secretly attracted to this one should have kept her more aware of his travels, even though she’d been loath to remain so close.

It had to be you...

Swinging herself up the side of a building was just one of her many talents. Surprisingly, that also turned out to be a mistake, because the Knight’s scent lingered on the rooftop, preventing her from moving on. He must have watched her from here. Below this roof, the alley curved toward the tattoo parlor.

Some new stealth trick of your own, Knight?

Now, she had to regroup. He had threatened to find her, and would if she remained in this city. Leaving London, however, was not an option. A culmination of the search that had tied up her whole earthly life lay within her grasp. The importance of that could not be forsaken because a Blood Knight was on her trail.

Leave here. Leave him, her instincts warned. Before...

Before what? Before she forgot her early hatred for the Seven and their Makers who had caused her so much agony? This Knight was one of them, even if the way things had gone down at that blasted castle wasn’t his fault. Still, the beautiful bastard she’d kissed was guilty by association.

Mixed feelings were scary, and she was experiencing plenty of them. Without old hatreds to guide her, what was left? Which direction would she take? She wanted so badly to trust someone, but could not confess her secrets to one of the seven golden Knights.

Leave him.

Must stay away.

“You will never find me,” she whispered to her glorious Blood Knight. But those words made her heart ache. They made her feel sick. She added soberly, “Not without an invitation.”

Possibly she liked him too much to share the hurt she had suffered. Even more telling than her new turn of conscience was how desperately she longed to have another shot at that kiss—an action that had apparently changed everything after so many years of avoiding him.

* * *

Hissing sounds, like static coming over the airwaves, forced Rhys to address the next untimely distraction. There was no mistaking the stink of stale blood permeating the area. Over the years, he’d grown sick of the stench.

“It’s rather early for you to be partying, isn’t it?” he said to the bloodsucker tucked into a dark corner behind him.

Guttural noises accompanied the vamp’s rebuttal, as if the creature wasn’t used to speaking through its fangs. “You do not own this city, freak.”

Rhys grinned dangerously. “Freak, is it? Me? That’s rich.”

“I do not fear you.”

“You haven’t heard the rumors?”

“I have heard them,” the vamp snarled.

“Maybe you missed the fight minutes ago?”

“I did not miss it.”

“Yet you’ll confront me here?”

“Do you imagine I came alone?”

“Yes, actually. I can sense your kind, you know. It’s a gift. Or a curse. You’re the last vamp crowding my space tonight.”

The vampire didn’t take the bait of that taunt and showed itself.

“I suppose you’re drawn to the scent of this place.” Rhys waved at the tattoo parlor.

“As were you,” the vampire returned, with far too much insight.

“I’m not attracted to blood, you know. It does not sustain me,” Rhys said.

“What does?”

“Current goals. Old vows.”

The vampire floated out of the shadows—a middle-aged bloodsucker, turned in his fifties, Rhys presumed. Tall, thin and dressed in a tattered black suit, this child of the night smelled like he’d been in the earth a few years too long. This was no fledgling, after all.

“One cannot thrive on old vows alone,” it observed.

Rhys nodded. “I have also cultivated a taste for wine over the past hundred years.”

The vampire had no sense of humor.

“You came to her aid,” it noted.

Rhys applied new energy to his voice. The vampire had been watching that fight, watching his white-haired companion.

“For reasons you would likely not understand or want to go into,” Rhys said.

“Perhaps I would understand. I followed her here, too. I am not immune to what she represents,” the vampire returned.

“Would that be dinner?”

“The pale one would be a veritable feast,” the vampire agreed. “Whipped cream on a blood-red cake.”

Rhys said calmly, “She isn’t human, you know.”

“All the better.”

This bloodsucker had also tuned in to the power the woman radiated. Did the creep believe he could sink his fangs into an immortal and get away with it, when that would have been impossible?

“Trying something like that would be a misuse of your energy,” Rhys warned. “Your fangs won’t penetrate her skin, you know.”

And even if they could, her blood would make this creature choke. White blood, underscoring the colorlessness of her skin.

“Can’t hurt to try,” the vamp remarked.

“Looking for what? The fountain of youth? You do realize that’s a false rumor, and that no such thing exists?”

Agitated, the bloodsucker moved sideways. “Can you tell me this truthfully?”

“No fountain of youth,” Rhys promised.

Although the Knights had been resurrected by a blood gift sipped from a golden chalice, they weren’t vampires. Though they had fangs, the Knights ate and drank only slightly less than the rest of the world’s population. Their blood wasn’t a restorative that could heal a reanimated corpse. He and his brethren weren’t gods. All seven had been human once.

“I don’t think you understand,” Rhys continued. “The point I’m making is that this woman is not for you. Not any of your concern.”

“Is that not so for you, as well?”

Rhys wasn’t entirely sure how to reply to that. Like the vampire, he had left his human existence behind and accepted the invitation to exist forever. But he had done so willingly. He doubted this vampire had chosen his afterlife’s direction, or that many would choose to live off the life force of others.

The Seven had been called back to life by a higher power than the black hand of Death. That beginning set them apart. His heart had been restarted for a golden purpose. Only through the miracle of a chalice often referred to as the Holy Grail had his heart and soul been retained.

“I suggest you take your hunger elsewhere,” Rhys warned. “Quite honestly, I’m not always this generous with your kind.”

The vampire bowed its head. “I find that I’d like to see her again. I will stay out of your way, however, for now, since you’ve asked so nicely.”

With a flurry of kicked-up street grime, followed by the sound of loose roof tiles creaking over Rhys’s head, the cheeky fanged bastard disappeared. The way they had of doing things like that was creepy, even to an immortal with equal abilities.

Nevertheless, Rhys’s interest in the pale immortal he’d kissed had just increased tenfold. Other creatures had found her twice, for some reason, when their usual MO was to avoid him and his kind. The creep he had spoken with was too interested in her, and that wasn’t right. If vampires spread the word that a pale immortal female had taken up residence, other monsters might come calling for reasons Rhys didn’t fully understand.

Did they honestly believe the snowy-haired female could help to reinstate their former lives? Change their fate? Too many vamps appearing at once to test that claim might not bode well for anyone on London’s streets after dark.

But it suited Rhys.

Taking out a bunch of vampires at once would help those unsuspecting mortal souls stay safe.

It was late. He had taken too much time here. Pulling his coat tighter, setting his intentions on a new course, Rhys followed the whiff of scent and the barely visible ribbon of light that were the angelic immortal female’s calling cards, which took him to the alley where she had first appeared.

Glancing up at the building beside him, hearing her warning about not finding her without an invitation, Rhys smiled and muttered, “Who can resist such a sweet-scented warrior?”

* * *

He was coming.

Either her powers of persuasion had dimmed considerably, or this Knight’s abilities had grown lately. Due to the strength of the feelings for him that she had sealed away, Avery couldn’t allow herself to be caught.

The choices were to run or face her dazzling nemesis one more time. Keep her secrets, or tell him the truth and see what he would do.

Roll of the dice. Which is it to be? Go or stay?

It wasn’t much of a choice, really. The Knight was right. After finding her, having his hands on her, there wouldn’t be anywhere for her to go in this city that he couldn’t find if he tried hard enough. One kiss and an old blood bond had seen to that.

But she could not leave London. Leaving would mean losing the opportunity to search for the things so important to her after exhausting her search elsewhere. The things that had been hidden from her, belonged to her, called out with a distant, elusive hum, as if they also craved a reunion. Caution was needed, though. She had been fooled before.

Avery was aware of every step toward her the Blood Knight took.

“You don’t own the city, Guardian,” she whispered. “You might be its keeper, but you’re not mine.”

Too late now.

One more time, she told herself. See him just once.

She could handle that.

In a ruffle of night air, he was there.

“You keep turning up,” she said as he climbed over the ledge.

His appearance on the rooftop might have upset her confidence somewhat, because when viewing the entirety of this guy from a distance, the effect on her system was elaborate.

The third Blood Knight to have ridden forth from Castle Broceliande’s massive iron gates no longer donned the golden armor he’d once worn in honor of his Quest. He didn’t bear the Knights’ red-striped ebony crest of the Grail protectors. But he was always mesmerizing.

The modern duster coat and dark jeans suited him. So did the shorn hair that now only brushed his collar. Where she was white, he was bronze. His luster hadn’t faded the way hers had. At times, over the years, she had envied his polished allure.

“Yes. About that,” he said, coming closer. “You did leave a trail.”

“Impossible,” she argued.

“Fortuitous,” he corrected. “Because I believe we have some unfinished business to talk over that rules out distance for the time being.”

“Misguided persistence will get you nowhere,” Avery warned. “Neither will flattery, so don’t bother. The fact is, you have followed me again.”

“I did warn you that until I know what and who you are, this city might be at risk and I would be responsible.”

“I’m no predator. I would have thought you’d have figured that out by now,” she said.

“I don’t believe you are a predator. I’m just not sure what you are or why my soul recognizes yours in some way. I’m not sure I can rest until I know why.”

Avery took a wide stance with both arms loose at her sides. Inside, she was fluttering again.

“That’s quite a line about souls. Do women usually fall for it?”

“Mortal women sometimes do.” His tone was light. The situation wasn’t.

Avery stopped short of asking him how many humans he’d tried that soul-to-soul business on. She wiped risqué images of him in bed with mortal females from her mind quickly. This bastard was charm incarnate when he wanted to be, and he was turning that charm her way. However, it had been many years since she’d trusted anyone.

“Then I suggest you find someone more amenable to bedroom talk,” she said. “The night isn’t over. If you hurry, you might find a taker.”

After a pause, he said, “Can we cut the crap? I’m not attacking you. I’m merely asking a few pertinent questions.”

“I told you I’m not in the habit of telling strangers anything about myself and made it clear I owe you nothing. What don’t you get, Blood Knight? Why can’t you honor my privacy?”

“I think you have some responsibility to come clean. There aren’t many of us, or beings much like us. I can feel the power you possess. What I can’t do is place it. I need to know if you’re in any way like me.”

“Nothing like you,” she replied to get him off her back. That was the truth. She couldn’t lie. Not outright. Neither of them could, because of that touch of the heavens they possessed.

Her answer clearly frustrated him. His hands opened and closed, forming and reforming fists as if he might wring the answers from her that he needed. Power meant danger in his world, and as he’d said, she was an unknown. Yet understanding how he felt and doing something to help him, at her own expense, were things on opposite shores of a vast ocean she dared not try to cross.

“Your soul resonates on a similar frequency to mine, which leads me to believe we have some things in common,” he said.

Yes. We have that damn castle in common.

We also have the vows that made us into what we are.

You know nothing of my part in that.

“I’ve seen you before,” he went on. “I’m sure I’ve felt your presence on the edges of my existence in the past.”

That news surprised Avery. If he knew of her presence, she hadn’t held up her end of the vow she’d taken to never allow the Knights to find her or the truth of their origins until she was ready to spill that news. They might not have accomplished the goals their Makers had set for them if they had known the truth about her and what their Makers had done to assure that the Knights had significant power of their own. As it turned out, the Knights’ goals had been good ones, and still were. She couldn’t argue with that.

“Your Makers are long gone, I assume,” she said, without the probing tone the remark deserved. “Nevertheless, you carry on as though still bound to the oaths you once took.”

The eyes studying her flashed with blue fire. “What do you know of the Makers?”

“Rumor. Legend. Fantasy lore,” Avery replied. “Legends say the Blood Knights were created by three magicians who were also the earliest form of what we know of today as vampires. If that’s true, it would explain a lot about you.”

“Rumor is it? What would a bunch of old untruths say about me?”

Avery wiped a finger across her mouth to remind him she had seen the fangs. He watched her carefully with the eyes of a hawk.

“Does the term fantasy also explain you?” he asked.

“I’m sure the parameters of fantasy lore cover us both.”

“You had a Maker?”

“Oh, yes. An extremely powerful one.”

“So why are you in pain?” he asked.

The several feet of distance separating them had not been enough. Somehow he had picked up on the wicked pain that underlined every damn day of her existence and was assailing her now. Seeing this man added to her discomfort, the way seeing him always had. Her heart was beating fast. Speaking was difficult.

“Possibly I can help,” he suggested. “I’ve learned a thing or two about pain and healing.”

“You can help by leaving me alone to do what I came here to do.”

“Other than the tattoos, you mean?”

“Yes,” Avery warily admitted. “Other than that.”

She dropped the hand that again had automatically returned to her mouth to trace the lingering impression of their kiss, because this Knight missed little and was analyzing every move she made. She had to be more careful. That was a fact.

She didn’t press home the fact that he had fangs. Surely he would have wondered about that.

“We’re to pretend nothing happened?” he asked, confirming her fears about that kiss.

“Nothing did,” Avery said.

He walked into the light of a moon half covered by dark clouds. Shadows played on his features in an artistic tableau of light and dark. His vivid blue eyes were like searchlights.

Without having ever feared anyone, Avery stepped back. The pressure of being near this immortal was greater than she would have imagined. After circling these Knights for centuries, she had to stumble on this particular one.

Wanting to turn her anger into another kind of emotion wasn’t a good sign. Desiring what was forbidden between the two of them was the biggest surprise of all. She could see the outcome of this scenario if they remained in each other’s presence. She could taste it.

Avery liked to think she was better than this, stronger than the wayward urges pulsing through her that told her to walk straight toward this seductive male.

“I am no threat to you or anyone else,” she said. “I will promise you that.”

“You’re already a threat to me.” His tone was softer now, and much too convincing.

“Forget about me. Move on.”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s what I will have to do.”

Relief filled Avery, healing the cracks in her weakening resolve. Remorse was there, too, just as it had been from the start, after she had first set foot on the Earth’s hard surface.

Regret topped both of those emotions, coming at her in seismic jolts and due to the possibility of this guy actually fulfilling her wishes by letting her go when maybe he could have helped her, if she’d let him. If she trusted herself to let him. He might have understood what had been done to her, and want to correct old errors.

“More pain,” he observed with a keen, appraising gaze. “I can feel it overtaking you.”

“It’s nothing I can’t bear.”

He nodded. “Do I play a part in that pain?”

“Do you believe you’re so important?”

His head tilted to one side, as if in viewing her from a different angle he might discover something pertinent that would help him to read her. Damn if she’d let him.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll honor your request and be on my way. It’s a shame, though, when we were getting along so well.”

Wait, Avery almost cried out, biting her tongue to keep from repeating that ugly earlier show of vulnerability that had resulted in a kiss. For her, vulnerability was rare and dangerous.

When he turned from her, she let him. When he looked back at her over a broad shoulder she had seen many times in secret, from afar, Avery managed to keep her expression smooth. The look she gave him was the same thing as a lie, and also a cover-up. Things had changed. Meeting this Knight face-to-face had softened her stance on the future. Seeing him in person had affected them both.

There was no going back.

Wait, she wanted to say again, because he wasn’t the monster she had struggled to believe he was, while knowing better all along. Though he was intelligent and experienced, the man once known as Perceval knew very little about his immortal beginnings. He was continuing to honor Britain’s famous old king’s credo of using might to fight for what was right. His side was the epitome of doing good. How could she have hated any of that enough to have stayed away?

Damn you...

The desire to be near you threatens to outweigh all the rest.

She didn’t utter the curses that stuck in her throat. Not even the worst ones. Weren’t the two of them in the same boat, living on and on with no end in sight? Did this man wish his fate had been otherwise, just as she did?

We do have things in common.

Maybe some regrets also haunt you.

Perhaps pain is also your demon?

He had retreated to the edge of the roof and stopped there. “Name’s Rhys nowadays. Rhys de Troyes. If you need me, call.”

“I won’t need you,” she said.

He nodded. “One thing I’ve found in this crazy, overextended existence is that we never really know how to ask for what we need, even when we do need something. That’s the real curse we suffer from.”

In a shaft of moonlight, the flash of his golden-highlighted hair was the last Avery saw of the blazing-hot immortal she had wanted so badly to despise, but couldn’t. After all the arguing, he had complied with her demands and was going away...like the goddamn gentleman he had probably been before the word Blood had been tacked onto his knightly status.

Chapter 7

Moonlight, usually Rhys’s ally in his war against the monsters, seemed impossibly dull when she wasn’t standing in it. The overhead orb’s silvery shine didn’t matter to him at the moment. Neither did the possible return of the bloodsuckers.

Tonight, for the first time in a long while, he had experienced the kindling of a little thing called hope. And the reason at the core of this new emotion had sent him away. She had waved him off as inconsequential, perhaps too wrapped up in a mystery of her own to let a stranger share in that mystery.

He hadn’t gotten one straight answer from her, and he had so many questions.

Why the tattoo?

Why wings?

Chances were good that she wouldn’t help him out of this quandary, not if they met again, but when they did. Because he had every intention of seeing her again. In fact, he wasn’t going to let her out of his sight completely, in case she used some of that power to disappear.

“Why the kiss, and why would you allow it? Distraction? Moment of weakness? Attraction? Are you as interested in me, as I am in you?”

Given that she could hear at least some of his thoughts and remarks, maybe she’d hear those whispered words. She hadn’t gone away. Not yet. Weird as it was, he was able to see the light particles that stuck around this pale vision like the shadows stuck to the street. From where he stood, it was easy to see the faint glow on the roofline.

She was there, all right. She hadn’t gone away.

Other things that hid beneath the cover of darkness were moving in and around the square now, as predicted. Most of the creatures in the supernatural world that moved with unnatural speed left a noticeable residue behind in the infrared spectrum. Rhys supposed that he also left that kind of trail. Not the pure, shimmering white of starlight, like hers, though. Seems every damn thing about her was unique, as was his growing need to get to the bottom of her appearance in London.

He had no idea what caused the inner light she wielded and doubted if anyone else did, either. Not anyone living, anyway. As he had told her, some mention of it would have reached him if anyone had gotten wind of that.

The dead were another matter needing consideration. As he had feared, news of the woman he’d kissed under the streetlight must have spread. He sensed the creatures coming. London’s vampires might also have seen the light this newcomer projected and been attracted to it.

Being stuck underground most of the time, the dark side probably hungered for light of any kind, including the shine of the Divine. And in some small way, the woman he had met tonight did exhibit a few Divine qualities. Her fake wings might have made her believe she actually was Divine.

She hadn’t wanted to leave him back on that street. At least he knew that much.

Rhys’s awareness picked up a sudden foreshadowing of the future. His sigils were aching. Energy pulsed through the tentacles of inky symbols on the back of his neck, urging him to turn his head.

This was a sturdy reminder that there was a war on, and that more abominations prowled the area nearby. He was needed to help defray the aftereffects of that war and had to resume his post.

But he was torn.

The light on that rooftop was a heady draw and nearly impossible to resist. She, whose name he still didn’t know, was equally impossible to forget.

“Monsters first,” Rhys whispered, hoping he’d actually believe it, because chaos would rain down if humans became aware of what resided in the shadows. For them, ignorance was bliss, as long as somebody in those same shadows took the monsters to task.