Chapter 2
T here was something about slicing a heated blade through demon charmer bone that put an obscene amount of pep in Bronze’s step.
And wasn’t it a sad state of affairs that those were the fantasies he looked forward to as of late? Long nights on patrol with a whole lotta nothin’ doin’ when it came to hunting the soul-sucking bastards had given him more than enough time to analyze—and hyperfocus—on anything else other than what had been rattling around inside his brain for the past several months.
Normally, he’d be in Aurora with his brothers, volunteering for reconnaissance duty over the sleepy New Hampshire town that had no idea just how bad its demon problem had become. Charmers, despite their name, had about as much charm as a venereal disease and were about a thousand times more pervasive and exponentially more deadly.
Fortunately for Bronze, however, tonight was finally the fallen angel sentinel’s lucky night, and boy, did he need it. Well, need was a relative term because the need to sink his halberd into a breathing demon body was as strong as a swimmer’s need to claw to the surface lest their lungs give up the ghost. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had a kill. Had it been weeks? No, a month and a half at least.
The quiet concerned them all, for one did not stay quiet if one had something to say. For all the eons Bronze had fought the demon ruler, Cyro, and his charmers, he’d always known the bastard to have far more words than good reasons to use them.
Which meant the silence was a tactical maneuver, and Bronze was so sick of it.
“Always with the fucking games,” he muttered into the night air. “Just give me something to kill.”
Because if he had a task to occupy his mind, it would push out the irreverent words of a deity who had decided to publicly take him down a notch by hitting him with one of her prophecies.
All because he’d foolishly made a joke at her expense. A joke that, regrettably, didn’t go over as well as he’d hoped.
That’s what I get for sassing a goddess , he thought wryly, which brought him right back to the massive problem at hand: when his body wasn’t busy hacking charmers to pieces, it gave his head free rein to fuck with the rest of him. Right on cue, her words floated to the surface like a water lily parting the murky algae of his mind.
“Not all curses are created equal, sentinel. Some require more skill than luck to defeat them. One day soon, you shall meet a woman to challenge you in this regard.”
At that, his eyes lit up. “A woman, eh?”
“Yes. I wish you luck. Lycans are so very fond of their games.”
So, yeah, he really hated playing games.
Bronze twisted on his perch and was surprised that his ass hadn’t fallen asleep yet. The branch he’d chosen wasn’t particularly wide, but it was broad enough to ensure neither ass cheek fell asleep on the job. Only mildly proud of himself for selecting a halfway decent tree to scout from, Bronze took in the abandoned textile and cotton mill that protruded from the ground below in all its decrepit glory.
The former mid-eighteen-hundreds four-story brick building—former, because the poor thing had been relieved of a story or two thanks to some angelic fire power—abutted the Ellis River and had once been a hotbed of charmer activity. With all the recent demonic trails having gone cold, the sentinels had been forced to retrace their steps and ensure the rats hadn’t scurried back to their initial home once the predators had fixated on prey elsewhere.
If there had been a shittier place for the demon ruler to establish his original base of operations, Bronze couldn’t think of one. That had been the fucking point and the reason he was going to have to shave down his palm with a rasp later just to get the dump truck’s worth of splinters out of his skin. After driving Cyro and his forces from every pimple they’d sprouted from recently, the sentinels didn’t put it past the bastard to make what was once old new again, especially if Cyro thought it would be the last place they’d look for him. Lucky for Bronze, he’d drawn the short straw that evening, which left him scratching his ass and surveilling an old hideaway that likely wouldn’t?—
The faint, rhythmic whirring was all that preceded the shuriken’s arrival. Bronze jerked his head to the left just in time to absorb the throwing star’s vibrations from the tree trunk it sank into behind him. Gleaming silver winked from a honed point three inches from his chin, nearly turning his goatee into a one-sided walrus mustache that had looked good on no man ever, let alone the gingers.
But the thrill . . . Oh, the thrill that pumped through him as he eyed the deadly edges so clearly meant for one of his more vital bits was the drug he’d been too long without.
Sweeter than sex and just as addicting.
Tracking the trajectory of the weapon had been the work of a moment. There, on the far side of the building, settled on the north bank of the river, a pair of gold eyes flashed beneath the mill’s ancient wheel before descending back into the shadows.
That dangerous pleasure pumped into Bronze’s limbs until they were full to bursting, awakening what had always been poised at the ready. Mages, he lived for this. The chase, the capture. It wasn’t that he was a sadistic fuck who liked to toy with his prey, it was just that— Aw, hell, maybe he was exactly that. The problem was, after living as long as he had, there was little to recommend him for taking the high road. He’d seen just how brutally agonizing it was when a charmer unraveled a soul from its mortal, the flailing body, its limbs slowly dying one by one . . .
And then there were the other tactics employed by the demons that hit far too close to home. Intimately so. Rather than shirking the terrors, he draped those horrifying memories around him like a warrior’s cape and let them coax his celestial fire from his depths like a brutal lover only called upon to slake darker urges.
No. I’m not above anything my power wishes to take from them. Let’s have our dance.
Bronze leaped from the tree he’d perched in and flung his arms wide, chest parallel to the floor in the ultimate swan dive. Before gravity got it in its head to pull on his strings, he freed his power and his wings. Twin condor-length panels of shingled bronze feathers rippled from his back and caught the wind like a fighter jet, narrowing him toward a target that had no hope of hiding.
If Bronze had been anything like the majority of his brothers, he’d have palmed his firearms and shot the charmer full of angel-fire-fueled bullets. Sure, it was effective, as the sentinels’ fire was the only thing that could kill a charmer, but where was the fun in long-range combat, especially after one of those fuckers had tried to give him an even closer shave?
Nah. Not his style.
Bronze reached around to the small of his back and gripped his sickle sword. The blade itched to sink its edge into some demon flesh, or perhaps it was just the power of Bronze’s anticipation that set his weapon to humming in concert. A blur whipped along the river’s edge, then there was nothing save for the sparse patch of reeds that swayed in the opposite direction of the vegetation around it. Bronze banked hard, his angel fire curling up his spine and threatening to punch through the first meaty demonic thing it could. His power not only had teeth but a tightly coiled tension that couldn’t wait to spring. The heat of his celestial fire was a comforting heaviness around his soul, one he savored and acknowledged every time he called upon it.
For it never lasted nearly as long as he wanted it to. Not anymore. Unfortunately, his most formidable weapon was the sole celestial power that remained after he and his brothers fell from the Empyrean, Heaven’s highest realm.
A sharp whizzing rent the night air, buzzing along Bronze’s flesh in skittering tremors. Another shuriken. Bronze rippled into his metallic skin and angled sharply to the right. Sparks flared brightly in the inky darkness as his sword sliced three throwing stars out of the sky. As he batted the last weapon away, the charmer sprang up from his crouched position and beat feet along the river’s edge.
“Hey, where ya going? I haven’t given you your goody bag yet. You can’t invite me out and not let me return the favor. Bad form, my dude. Bad form.” Bronze dove low, recalled his wings when he was mere feet above the demon’s head, and dropped onto the charmer right as it got to the bridge above where the large wastewater pipe fed into the Ellis. The dilapidated overpass’ cobblestones had no problem showing off their age, giving Bronze a marvelous cheese grater-like surface to ground pound the charmer into. The demon collapsed under Bronze’s weight and skidded to a halt facedown against the brick.
Well, facedown with an angel sitting on his back, his head cranked toward the sky, and a sword kissing his exposed throat.
Bronze squeezed his thighs around the demon’s neck, making sure to hammer down on that carotid good and tight while leaving those pale ears free and clear. Mages, he missed this. The strain of holding his power back against his enemy when his angel fire was near to bursting through his muscles was the ultimate erotic act. Knowing he could smear the charmer writhing beneath him into a soot stain with no more than a thought was its own type of power. The endgame orgasm. The kind of high that elite athletes would sell their souls to achieve, just for the chance to chase the feeling down and lick its heels if they ever got close enough.
They would never be so lucky, of course.
Because they weren’t him.
“Uh-uh, if you try to fire up your portal magic, mystic, you might hurt my feelings. Make me think you don’t like my company.” Bronze slowly recalled his metal skin and was afforded a much better view of the scum beneath him. Teal and gold tattoos painted the thing’s face, outlining its golden eyes, and even swirled above the single gold band around the charmer’s neck, which signified its class as a mystic—a magic user.
The thing spat its defiance across the cobblestones, slickening the poor hunks of granite in its black blood. Bronze smiled. Good. He’d nicked something important in the takedown, then. Always a boon.
Through the struggle, the charmer managed to twist as much of its head upward as it could, doing its best to address its captor. Once that golden gaze was pegged on Bronze, the earlier familiar thrill caused him to puff out his chest again. It didn’t matter how many times he looked into those fuckers’ gazes. The stare-down was always what did it for him. Power recognized power, after all, and among immortals, a clash of the eyes was akin to a battle cry.
“We are many,” the mystic wheezed out. “And you are not.”
Bronze leaned forward, yanked the thing’s forehead back so the blade bit in harder to the soft flesh at its throat, and hissed, “Please let that be a threat. Oh, pretty pretty please with a cherry on top.”
“Facts are not threats. They just are.”
The thing was taunting him, playing with him like he was the damn fish on the hook with the boning knife at his throat.
Bronze’s fire punched through his core and raced along the edge of his sword in a sheet of blue flames. The instant the fire touched the charmer’s skin, the demon screamed and bucked against Bronze’s hold.
“Are you not reading the room, my man?” Bronze bit out over the wails. “I know where you all are now. I know you’ll return here. And I sure as shit know how big of a hard-on I’ll be sporting when every single one of you assholes is howling in such agony that you’ll be begging to suck down my fire just to end the suffering.”
The feel of the charmer’s neck against Bronze’s sword was far too comfortable, so much so that Bronze feared the sensation would evaporate before his power even had a taste of what it remembered the kill to be like. After all, there were nostalgic experiences, and then there were addictions.
With Bronze’s angel fire left to operate on a shift worker’s schedule, the line between nostalgia and addiction was fucking clear as mud.
He needed to drag this out, needed this kill to last as long as his power could hold out, because come morning, without recharging his energies, his fire would have no more strength than the shit stain on the cobblestones the sun would make of the demon if Bronze let him live long enough to see it.
Guess he might as well stretch out the intermission on the torture dinner theater?—
A pale green swirl flared to life out of the corner of Bronze’s eye. A twisting flick of the charmer’s fingers, murmured words Bronze hadn’t caught before he put the blade to its throat, and a bolt of vile magic that arced from the demon’s hand, cracking Bronze in the ribs.
The sickle sword sliced across the charmer’s throat in time with Bronze’s bellow. An underhanded blow, he had to admit, but an effective one, if somewhat uninspired.
Too bad the fucker wouldn’t stick around to blow out the candles and make a final wish.
With one hand pressed against his ribs and practiced boredom slowing the rest of him, Bronze stood and peeled his long legs away from the charmer. The thing flopped around like a fish on a boat deck as blue flames worked their way southward from its gaping neck wound and incinerated everything below it in a slow hungry sweep. Blackened ash painted the vintage granite with stucco-studded character, but Bronze wouldn’t stick around to see the final product.
He turned away from the light show, not the least bit interested in the finale, and inspected his side. Blood seeped from a gash that would take more than a few hours to heal fully, but if he got himself underground within the next hour, he should be good enough. Damn, that final hit was a bitch. Not unexpected, but like pain gave a shit whether the end user saw it coming or not?
Once the pile of demon detritus stopped smoldering and Bronze was finally able to inhale without his ribs sputtering in crimson protest, he dispersed the debris over the bridge with the sweep of his boots. He was just gearing up for a second pile to be shuffled overboard when a parched white swath of something floated along the riverbank. The sliver of pale moonlight offered a scant peek at the thing before it stole back its beams and plunged the water’s edge into darkness.
“What the hell is that?”
Sheathing his sword but double-checking that all daggers were present and accounted for in his chest holster, Bronze leaped down and trudged toward the shadowy space along the river that, once again, flashed a bleached wink at him before being swallowed up by the darkness.
He didn’t have time for this shit. He was bleeding all over his favorite graphic tee, and as the hour had just plunged past two in the morning, he needed to get underground and start the healing process. The minerals and elements imbued in the great mountain he and his brothers dwelled beneath were the literal lifeline for recharging his elemental energies and healing small wounds. If he left now, he could get in maybe three good hours of rest before the sun was up and at ‘em again.
His boots stayed put, and try as he might, he couldn’t pull his eyes away from that shadowy copse near the water.
“Fuck,” he breathed out, already regretting how the rest of his night was going to shape up.
Curiosity dragged him along like a toddler wearing one of those leash backpacks mortals put on their kids. As he drifted closer, his responsible brain screamed at him to get the hell back to the den and recharge his power. Screamed, stomped its feet, even did one of those I’m warning you finger-pointing maneuvers. He now had confirmation—fucking confirmation —that Cyro and his boys were showing their assess around their old stomping grounds, and what was he doing with this information? Socking it away in his cranial palace while he, of the injured and weakened state, went to go what? Turn over rocks to check for bioluminescent algae or some shit?
Bronze slowed his pace, grateful that there must still be at least one station for his logic train to pull into, but instead of turning around, he came to a halt not three feet from where he thought he saw . . . whatever it was he thought he saw.
There! The white swath appeared before him again, stealing away some of the shadows at his feet, along with his breath.
He hadn’t known what to expect, but he sure as shit couldn’t have predicted the cascading fall of white hair floating in the shallow water along the river’s edge, nor the unconscious woman attached to it.