Chapter 11 #2
“Not the best? That sounds positively perfect.” He glanced over at the tentacle-haired woman.
Her tentacles twined and lashed along with her glare. “You shouldn’t be allowed to live,” she hissed at me.
I shrugged. “That’s the weird thing about life.
No one allows or doesn’t allow it. It just is.
You can kill someone, but that doesn’t disallow life.
It just ends it.” I wrapped my arms around Richard’s waist and pressed my cheek to his chest. “Can you please take her somewhere justice will be involved? I don’t like her.
So judgy. And I need to take a hot bath and toss another dress.
I really liked this one. I might cry about it. ” I might cry about a lot of things.
He pressed a kiss to my hair and just held me for a few seconds before he pulled away and gave me a hard smile. “I can definitely throw her to justice. There’s an angel with that name. He’s an executioner, but I won’t tell you that part.” He wiggled his brows.
I snickered. “Thank you for not telling me. I really appreciate you being so sensitive with my feelings.”
“I’m notorious for being sensitive with people’s feelings.”
We grinned at each other and then he stepped back, grabbed the woman and marched her out of my cottage, leaving me staring after him with a twisting ache in my stomach.
My bath was glorious, except that my elbow kept pulsing. Not hurting so much as throbbing that seemed to fade, but not fast enough. Maybe the protection rune would last until the show was over. I could deal with that.
I should confront Richard and tell him that it wasn’t okay to rune someone without their permission while they were napping in your chicken feathers, but the longer I spent away from him, the more it felt like the entire situation was madness.
I couldn’t nap with someone, particularly someone as impetuous as him without him doing something insane.
And if he hadn’t runed me, I’d probably be dead at the bottom of the pond.
And then I’d rise a vampire and probably kill everyone.
This was way better. Almost logical. But he should have asked me first. And I shouldn’t have put down my guard with him.
Yes, he was SunRae, but he was also Richard the Lion who had problems dealing with his boredom in constructive ways.
Thinking about it in that light, it was a miracle that he hadn’t done something worse.
Really, what had I been thinking, napping with someone like him?
I hadn’t been thinking. I’d just been delighted to play with someone as crazy as myself and hadn’t thought about anything at all.
At least I knew what he wanted in an angel.
Someone who wouldn’t hate him if he lied.
He really shouldn’t lie, or rune people without their consent.
Seriously. The Scholar might put effort into killing him for something like that.
Then again, it had saved my life. Hopefully the spell faded quickly.
And hopefully people got tired of sending assassins.
It was all very well to say that he was indestructible, but he felt pain.
Probably. Maybe not. I’d have to do research.
And by me doing research, I meant Libby. She didn’t tell the Scholar every little thing, and to her, confidentiality was sacred.
I called her up while I was still in the tub.
Not surprisingly, it went to messages. She was probably working with a tricky tome and couldn’t get away.
“Hey, Libby. It’s me, the born vampire. I was wondering if you could look something up for me.
Specifically runes that could protect you from heavenly fire.
Specifically how long such runes would last. Also, do you know anything about a guild that would want to kill me because I’m so evil or whatever?
And how would you convince them that I’m not?
It’s either that or a big bad vampire who’s ancient and psycho.
Or maybe not psycho, but he does make a point of killing the families of every assassin who takes the job and fails.
Kind of lame if you asked me. But that’s—” My phone beeped.
“Mailbox full.”
I sighed and hung up. I should text Richard, but I’d do that tomorrow. I didn’t want to come across as needy. And I wanted information about the runes before I talked to him. Knowledge was power, or so the Scholar always said.
I did my beauty routines and went to bed early, tossing and turning while the memory of feathers and warmth haunted me.
In the morning I had a message from Libby, no posts or messages from SunRae.
“Hey born vampire. It’s the angel/demon/librarian.
I know a bit about heavenly fire, having studied it extensively.
Angelic blood is the only immunity to it.
Runes don’t work. You can hold up a shield spell for a certain amount of time determined by your amount of magic, which can be enhanced by runes, but runes aren’t protections.
Not that I know every rune mark, but I do know heavenly fire.
It’s the most dangerous stuff for a reason.
As for secret assassin societies, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.
That’s actually an idea. If I took the commission, then I could report you dead, and get paid, so we could track the payment.
Hmmm. I’ll have to talk to Michael about it.
Maybe some other people. Seriously, that’s a lot of hits for one person.
I can’t remember the last time a target was so popular.
Stay safe. Have fun. And avoid heavenly fire. ”
My phone beeped, message over.
I frowned at my inner elbow where it still pulsed and where I could still see the fire flower outline. It was such a delicate rune, very intricate and pretty. If it wasn’t to protect me from heavenly fire, what did it do?
I was going to have to ask Hallie. If Richard didn’t want her to know what he was doing, then he needed to talk to me about it. You couldn’t just rune someone without their consent. I don’t care how idiotic and suicidal you were, it just wasn’t done.