eleven
He’s the archangel. The creature before me is not just an angel, but the one who leads them all. The most powerful and terrifying; capable of salvation and devastation alike.
I can’t help but laugh as I try to process that information. I know which category I’d lump him in.
We’ve heard countless rumours about him at the AIA. Mostly that he is a brutal warrior, more powerful than any being we have come across. He’s the one who leads the angels in this war, the one responsible for the slaughter of half of our population.
And he wants to make a deal with me.
Nathaniel. His name rolls through my mind like a gentle caress, making me shiver. Nathaniel. Nathaniel. Nathaniel.
My breaths grow short and choppy. The archangel.
Though his name is branded into my mind, I don’t speak it. I don’t acknowledge it. I don’t pretend he is anything more than a stranger to me. He is the archangel, nothing more. Acknowledging his name will only give him power.
He looks at me as if he’s waiting for me to say it, as if he itches to hear his name roll off my tongue. Instead I tuck it away deep within my mind, burying it with the image of Archer’s dead body, and shake my head in disbelief. “I’m sorry, you want to make a deal with me?”
The archangel nods lightly, his face the perfect picture of cool indifference.
I let out another small laugh. “I’m sorry – you, the archangel, need the help of me, the ant? I believe that’s what you called me earlier.”
He grins at that last part, clearly amused. “Insect, actually.”
I roll my eyes. “What on Earth could you possibly need from me?”
The archangel walks forward and circles around me, looking me over with an intensity that sets my skin on fire. He stops in front of me. “You are one of them?”
He nods towards the logo on my vest.
My brows knit together. “An AIA agent? Yes…”
His question makes me uneasy. What could the archangel want with the organisation that was created to defend against him?
“I’m looking for someone. An angel. I haven’t been able to locate him for a long time. I believe your agency has the resources to see what I can’t.”
Finding humans is what we do, but we have never been able to track the movements of an angel. There are no cameras in the sky. “What do I get out of this deal?” I ask.
He raises a brow and places one hand on the tree behind me. “You get your life spared, human.”
He says the word as an insult, a sound dripping with utter disdain.
“I told you I won’t beg for my life. That includes bargaining for it.”
Despite the confidence I force into my voice, my breaths are short and quick as the archangel’s eyes narrow on me.
He sighs, leaning in further. His breath tickles my cheek, and my gaze drops to his lips as he whispers, “I will help you survive the night. If you help me, I will offer you protection until sunrise.”
My eyes widen. Before the war, many myths and legends of angels painted them as guardians, but those are not the creatures that we know. In reality, angels are cold-blooded killers who only protect themselves.
“You know you won’t survive without it.”
His lips brush the shell of my ear and I shudder. “There are far worse creatures than daemons beyond those borders.”
My eyes snap back to his, the coldness in them never wavering. If that’s true, then the AIA has no idea what they’re doing sending agents back into the field. If it’s true, then the angel is right – I won’t survive without his protection.
This deal would give me a fighting chance to find Jeremy, and even though I don’t trust him… I don’t have much of a choice.
“Okay. On one condition.”
My eyes narrow, my words a low warning. “Stay out of my head. You understand?”
The archangel sighs and looks as if he’s going to debate my very simple request. “But it makes you so much more agreeable.”
“Plenty of men say the same thing while justifying taking advantage of inebriated women.”
The words come out of my mouth before I can stop myself.
The archangel cringes, a look of disgust forming on his face. He pushes off the tree and takes several steps backward. I see the veins in his neck flex as his hands ball into fists. Then he looks back towards me, sincerity taking over those cold eyes of his.
“Okay. I understand.”
To my surprise, he doesn’t argue any further.
I hold out my hand to shake, but he looks down and frowns with confusion. I scoff and grab his wrist. His flinch makes me freeze, but then he lets me put his hand in position. “If I help you find whoever it is you’re looking for, you help me survive the night?”
He nods and shakes my hand firmly.
“My name is Amara.”
The archangel’s lips twitch. “I prefer Slayer.”
“I don’t.”
“So, Slayer, are you ready?”
I open my mouth to call him a number of profane names, but then he moves so quickly that he disappears before my eyes. A small gasp escapes me as one of his arms slips under my knees and the other around my upper back, and he lifts me off the ground.
Before I can protest, my head spins in a blur of white and silver as he lifts into the air with effortless movement. Wind wraps around us so fiercely that my hair whips me in the face. Brushing it out of my eyes, I look down.
Oh, that was a mistake.
We soar above Lincoln Park, which now looks minuscule below us. My hands instinctively wrap around the archangel’s neck, holding on for dear life.
I can’t discern if the feeling rushing through me is fear. I mean, it should be fear, right? I should be scared. I should fear that he’ll drop me or I’ll fall. The fact that he could crush me in an instant should paralyse me with fear. But it doesn’t. I hate that it’s because I’m in the arms of a monster, but I can’t help but love the feeling of flying. As the initial shock wears off, I smile at the sensation.
Dipping low and flying towards the street the AIA sits on, the archangel spreads his wings to slow our descent. The wind should have frozen my skin by now, but the archangel’s touch is like the kiss of a fire on a winter’s day.
I grow light-headed as we land, the effect of the whipping wind around me too much for my body. Humans weren’t exactly built for flight.
The archangel waits a moment before releasing me. My feet hit the earth and his warmth leaves me, snapping me back to reality.
I step out of his arms quickly, putting as much distance between us as I can, then turn towards the AIA building. It appears unfamiliar at night, the cement walls near-black in the darkness. The letters that sit above the entryway are shadowed by distorted branches, each one looking like a reaching blade.
I turn back to the archangel. “So who am I looking for?”
“I will tell you when you come across him.”
He moves towards the building.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa —”
I step in front of him and place a hand on his chest to stop him, but the fierce look he sends me makes me drop my hand immediately. “You can’t go in there.”
He raises a brow at me. “Naive of you to think you can tell me what to do, human. I am the archangel. I can do whatever I like.”
My eyes roll nearly into the back of my head. “Listen here, archangel. I know you think you can do whatever you like, but so far all you’ve done is slaughter half of mankind and not win this war. So perhaps, for once, you should try listening to someone else and see if it gets you somewhere.”
The archangel takes a step towards me with a lethal look in his eyes.
“I cannot walk into the Angel Intelligence Agency with an angel,”
I say. “The angel of all angels, in fact. It’s what we humans call a security risk.”
He lets out what sounds like a low growl, a primal sound meant to send me begging for my life. For a moment I think he might just kill me, deal be screwed.
A long moment passes and my hand slowly moves towards my belt, itching for a weapon.
“The angel of all angels.”
His lethal gaze turns to playful and he looks away. “I like that title.”
I scoff, letting out a sharp breath. “Sorry, I should have said the ego of all egos. Would’ve been much more accurate.”
The archangel chuckles, and the deep sound sends a shiver through me. It’s not a joyful sound, rather… menacing. “I am not letting you go in there alone or you might just run off on me. So I suppose I will have to go in as a human.”
“We didn’t exactly evolve with wings growing from our backs. You’d have to get rid of them. I can cut them off for you if you’d like?”
The thought of seeing the monster who’s responsible for the past five years of devastation brought to his knees, wings dismembered, brings a smile to my face.
His smirk fades, but I can tell he’s amused. The blue in his eyes dances with fiery emotion. The wings that were folded tight to his back begin to disappear. Feather by feather, they dissipate into nothing.
“What the f—”
Before I can stop myself, I walk around the angel to look at his back. The wings are gone, the sword and scabbard along with them.
Reaching out, I wave my hand through the air where his wings used to be, expecting to make contact with them, but it’s just empty space. They’re not invisible; they’re just gone.
I touch the spot of skin above his armour, where his sword used to sit. The simple touch sends a shiver down my spine, and for a moment I think I see him tremble. A rush of warmth runs through the tips of my fingers as they make contact with his skin.
The archangel doesn’t protest, but he stiffens under my touch. Taking that as a warning, I remove my hand and move back to face him. “How in the worlds did you do that?”
I cut him off before he has a chance to respond. “And where did they go?”
My nose scrunches as an image of the wings squished in amongst his organs crosses my mind.
His expression remains cold as he asks, “Do you really think this is our first time on Earth? That we’ve never walked amongst humans before? That we chose an unknown world as our battlefield?”
I stiffen.
The angels have been walking amongst us for years. Worse, they chose to have this war on Earth. I suppress the anger that accompanies that revelation, reminding myself that I need the archangel to survive.
“Can a human tell the difference… feel the difference?”
I clarify, wondering if I’ve ever had contact with an angel unknowingly.
“No. They cannot. We have been amongst your kind for centuries.”
“We really don’t stand a chance in this war, do we? Everything we’ve hypothesised over the years, all the information we’ve gathered at the AIA… It doesn’t even scratch the surface.”
It’s phrased like a question, but it doesn’t require a response. My brows knit closely together as I look around. “You need to change. You can’t walk in there dressed like that. Without your wings it just looks like a costume.”
There are a few cars littered on the street, as if their owners abandoned them in a rush too close to curfew. The first is a red Camry; the driver’s door hangs partially open, and I imagine the owner had to run inside with little time to spare. It’s not uncommon to receive a knock on your door between five fifty-five and six o’clock from a stranger begging to come inside.
Sometimes, it turns out just as bad for those people as if they hadn’t made it indoors in the first place.
The Camry is empty, nothing but a discarded coffee cup on the passenger seat. I notice a blue truck out of the corner of my eye and recognise the custom plates. Sam. I know he lives nearby and often walks home in order to, in his words, “get his steps up”. Ugh. He’s the worst.
Unsurprisingly, Sam’s car is locked, but I can see his gym bag through the window.
“Sorry, Sam.”
I pick up a large rock and throw it through the passenger window. I only feel slightly guilty for the act, but I call it payback for years of torment. There’s a grey T-shirt that smells relatively clean, a pair of jeans, and Sam’s combat boots. Sam is slightly shorter than the archangel, so it’ll be a little snug, but it’ll do the job.
I turn around, nearly walking straight into the monster who stands only an inch away. My heart leaps in my chest. “Worlds, can you not?”
His bored expression doesn’t waver as he takes the shoes and shirt from my other hand. He puts the boots on first, leaning over to slip them over his bare feet. Then he begins to take off his armour, one piece at a time.
He raises a brow, and I realise I’ve been staring. I duck my head and turn back towards Sam’s car, chucking the bag back on the passenger seat. I notice the archangel in the reflection of the side mirror, unbuckling his chest plate and bending over to place it on the ground carefully.
When he’s stretched over like that, I can see every single muscle in his back. The moonlight emphasises the definition in an inhuman way that’s both mesmerising and terrifying. I look for any scars or signs of wings, yet there’s nothing but smooth skin. I feel a chill rush down my spine as he slips the shirt over his head.
His eyes meet mine in the mirror, and I turn around quickly. He lifts a brow, watching as my cheeks turn pink.
“Thank the worlds for that shirt,”
I mutter, and walk away before he can say anything in response.
We hover at the doors as I look up at the security cameras. The only people with access to them are Xavier and Captain Moore. Though I know Xavier would never rat me out, Captain Moore is unlikely to be as forgiving of me bringing an angel into the AIA. If he were to look at the footage, I’d be fired and most likely arrested for treason.
I look into the retina scanner at the door, placing my index finger on the fingerprint reader. The door unlocks and I push it open, stopping in my tracks as a thought crosses my mind. “The things you see in here, any information you gain on our resources – promise me that you’re not going to use it against us.”
I look back at the archangel, who only scoffs, as if offended by the insinuation. “Slayer, we already know everything there is to know about humans – much more than you know about us.”
“Maybe so, but I’m breaking all kinds of laws bringing you in here, so I need to hear you say it.”
He sighs, but nods. “I promise.”
Knowing that’s the most reassurance I’m going to get, I step into the building, making sure the archangel closes the door behind us.
I’ve officially brought the enemy into the only place where we have a sense of control.
Xavier is going to kill me.