Chapter 5 #4
“Who cares?” I parrot him. He probably tracked me down while I was at Sully’s university. I check where he goes, I expected him to do the same with me.
“Oh, I think you do, brother.” He smirks as we start crossing the garden. “The name you chose for yourself, Azrael, the angel of death, it suits your life path. But you simplified it to Ezra, which means to aid, to support, to…protect.”
“Do you have a point?” I bat away a lone bee. Fucking hate spring.
“I clearly made it.”
“You are just fucking with me,” I counter. “No Sariel?” My brother rarely leaves his boyfriend alone.
“Why? Do you want to watch him getting kidnapped again while doing nothing?” he grumbles. He’s such a fucking baby.
I shrug his accusation off. “I let Sariel get kidnapped to force Nine to show her cards. It was a tactical move.”
“And you got damn squat,” he reminds me.
“And you have something?” I scoff. “I won’t let Nine slip through my fingers like piss through the drain.”
“She wants vengeance, do you fucking know why?”
“No clue.” And I don’t actually care.
“You were in the same facility with her for years.”
“Just like I was with all of you before they moved me, but I never saw any of you,” I clip back.
“I’m fucking tired of being the middleman here, Ezra. You need to be in this with us,” he snaps.
I like to ruffle his feathers, but what’s the big deal here? “Why?”
“Even evil must have a home.” He touches his chest, then mine before waving his hand toward the garden.
What the fuck is he saying? That we are evil? I sniff, probably.
“A home?” What for? All we need is to eliminate the threat. “I’m working with you guys. Isn’t that what we need to do right now?”
“No. You work alone and only contact us when you need something. Stop fucking around, Ezra.” His words sound final. But I don’t give a shit. My way works and I won’t change it because of…a home.
As we round the gazebo, I have my first clear look of the training facility Raguel and Oliver built farther down the property.
It’s a three-story modern-looking building.
The first floor is all made of smart-tinted glass.
The closer we get, the bigger it looks. The second and third floors—where the bedrooms are located—are a mix of metal and gray stone, with an exposed steel frame supporting the angled roof and terrace on top.
Miles and miles of forest run over the property—handy for disposal of bodies—and every inch of it is covered by a top-tier security system.
We make our way inside—after more biometrics for authentication—leaving the kitchen and sitting area on the left. Uriel goes straight for the hallway, which opens to a very large training room divided into sections by glass walls, lined up one next to the other.
The first on the right looks like a gym.
There are heavy weights, pull-up bars, battle ropes, benches—and for some reason, some smashed coconuts on the ground.
Raguel is pulling on a thick metal chain—like an anchor rope—coming out of the wall with Ollie hanging on his back like a koala, cheering him on.
His biceps are popping and flexing, veins puffing, chest growing, face red.
“Did you finish up with the donor?” Uriel asks him.
That’s how they call the people they kill, since they turn into unwilling donors when Sariel and Michael use their blood, spinal fluid, and whatever else they can extract for their medical research.
The all-recycling idea is smart, but I don’t really see the point of it.
“He’s decomposing as we speak,” Oliver answers for him after narrowing his eyes at me. “Need to buy more acid, though.”
I ignore his ridiculous veiled threat and keep walking, but I hear Uriel say, “Why didn’t you use the cremator? You insisted on having one.”
They even have a furnace to burn the bodies. Talk about aiming high.
In the next section, the wall is covered in knives. Gabriel is tossing them at Lori, who’s tied to a wooden board like a silhouette target. His low-rise gray paillette shorts and the green glitter under his eyes make him look like a circus performer.
“Silly sausage! Sometimes things don’t make sense, like…the armadillo,” Lori suddenly states, not in the least afraid of being hit. “I mean, what is that? A rock? An animal? Maybe he did it!”
I find that trust and stupidity go hand in hand most of the time.
“It was Wednesday! Who else could have made a hole in our mattress if not your unhinged hen?” Bezaliel replies—Gabriel’s other personality—as he skillfully throws three knives in a row at the wooden board. Two cut the ropes around Lori’s hands, and the third around his neck.
“You’re a numpty,” he counters with a snort.
“You asked to be my live target, Little Wasp, I think we all know who’s the numpty here.”
“Take. That. Back. I’m safer here than walking on the street, plus seeing my men holding a knife turns me the fuck on.” Lori winks, then his eyes fall on me. “Oh, hello, evil twin and eviler twin!”
Evil…that word again.
Neither Uriel nor I reciprocates the greeting. Lori still has a rope around his waist and legs; hopefully Gabriel will hit an organ instead.
“Robin Hood, are you here to tell us something big?” He quirks an eyebrow at me.
“I’m going to resist the easy joke there because I’m an adult,” Oliver interjects from the other side of the glass wall.
Raguel makes a derisive sound as his husband wipes the sweat from his forehead. “Since when, kitty?”
“I told you to make soundproofed rooms.” Gabriel stares at Raguel.
“They can still see us if we fuck. Smart-tinted glass is what we need.” Lori’s words urge my feet to move, but I can still hear them.
“These are level eight glass panels, the pinnacle of bullet-resistant technology. They offer unparalleled protection against the most lethal threats. And that is all that’s important.” Raguel’s rumbly voice reaches my ears.
That’s actually interesting since I bought a place and I want to make it as secure as possible.
“Are they resistant to a Lori threat?” I joke. That guy really is a threat; loose cannons always are.
“Aww. You get me, Hawkeye.” He sends me a flying kiss. It wasn’t a compliment.
The next section has different kinds of weapons scattered around—throwing axes, guns, nunchaku, and brass knuckles.
But there’s nobody inside. Uriel looks around until his gaze halts on Michael and Raphael in what looks like an infirmary.
Michael is sitting on a doctor’s bed with Raphael, who is kneeling down in front of him, sucking his husband’s thumb.
“Is that necessary?” Uriel asks in a bored tone, looking down at his phone—texting Sariel.
“I cut my-my finger when I broke a… a beaker,” Michael replies with an unsteady voice as he points at the huge lab surrounded by more glass walls at the opposite side of the room.
His cheeks are red, eyes avoiding ours while Raphael doesn’t acknowledge us.
His whole attention is on his husband’s small wound as he squeezes the skin and licks the blood coming out. Growling possessively.
I see.
Raphael is the other psychopath under this roof. We tend to disregard each other most of the time.
“Get a fucking room!” Uriel ughs, confirming my thought. He moves away as I keep staring at them.
I’ve never found blood play entertaining while hooking up, but imagining the taste of Sully’s bleeding lip has a primal appeal.
“Are you popping a stiffy?” Ramiel asks from his hacker spot. He seems to be enjoying the relaxing moment, lying down on his chaise lounge, drinking from a shiny, rainbow-colored tumbler, while on the six computer screens in front of him, numbers and letters scroll down.
“Shut up, Rami!” Michael replies.
Raphael’s mouth lets go of his husband’s finger with a pop. “When you talk like that, my dick gets hard, babe, and you know what you like me to…”
“No!” Michael shouts, putting his hand over his husband’s mouth. “We talked about this! How many times do I have to repeat myself, you troglodyte! No sex talk in front of your family.”
“That’s a batty rule! I want to know,” Lori says, for some reason.
I look around and find Uriel standing in what looks like a shooting range area. Hunter is there too, talking to Ferdinand, the old butler, showing him a Glock 9mm with an ivory handle.
The shooting area is quite big. There’s the one inside with silhouette targets, a long counter with four partitions and shelves displaying various firearms; it continues outside in the backyard with moving targets.
Finally, something interesting, I think as I walk out.
Outdoor ranges offer more space and freedom, doesn’t matter the weather.
“Pool,” Uriel shouts. A clay disk appears from the left, flying rapidly into the air before getting pulverized by his twelve-gauge shotgun and disappearing over the forest trees.
Hunter and Ramiel whistle at him as they make their way toward a line of cans on top of a wooden crate.
“Wait, Grizzly!” I hear Ramiel say, before he goes and envelops his boyfriend in his arms. “Hug-o-meter recharge. Ding ding ding! Full.”
Without letting him go, Hunter raises his arm toward the wooden crate. The shots start, and one by one, the cans drop to the ground. Not bad for a PI.
“Why don’t you give it a try?” Uriel smirks at me. “Or are you afraid to lose again?”
I never lose. “You lost to me last time.”
I went along when he took a donor a month ago. The fucker tried to escape, but my bow stopped him, while his bullet just slowed him down.
My brother makes a tsk sound, then waves his hand at a long, plastic container on the table behind him, gesturing for me to open it.
I give it a wary look before flipping the latches and slowly lifting the lid.
Inside, there’s a bow, the latest Carbon Air Stealth SE.
It has True Carbon Technology riser, Flex Rod cable-containment system with RollerGlide, a Vibracheck-tipped string stop, and Vibracheck limb dampeners.
It’s a little too showy for me, but still a real beauty.