Chapter 2
N eela could explain the fear that had her slammed against the tow truck, sure. The tears, on the other hand? Those were a big fat surprise, given the circumstances. She had such little experience with the occurrence.
Then again, what about her current situation did she have experience with? She’d never been caught before.
The puffer coat was a bonehead move. An impulse purchase that half a dozen of her favorite fashion content creators swore was one of that season’s quintessential New England necessities. Sure, that was all well and good for the perma-camera-ready waifs who didn’t already come preinstalled with a hefty amount of lower body lining and unfairly proportioned curves. For all of the coat’s smooth lines and precision stitching, it was absolute shit in the stretchy-enough-to-run-for-your-life department. And the insulation sucked to boot. Might as well have been a mosquito net for all the good it did keeping out the chill from the frozen slab of steel at her back. Or blocking the scorching ire from the firing squad to her front.
Shit. How the hell did they find me?
Too late to figure that out now.
She swallowed back the acrid taste of desperation that threatened to clog her throat. She’d made it too damn far only to be dragged back like some pet who had absentmindedly wandered off when trying to find a spot to relieve itself.
She was no pet, not anymore, but if she didn’t find a way out of this, the cage she knew all too well was exactly where she’d end up. Again.
Neela dug deep to find the voice she’d carefully honed in private. The one fueled by rage, indignation, and the possibilities of a world she’d only ever been allowed to peek through the window at. The voice she imagined a stronger version of herself using time and time again as naturally as a bird would use its song to greet each new day.
Or maybe a raptor.
Before she could heft that voice high and scream its release, a thunderous cry stopped her heart and stole her breath.
Then the first gun went off.
A strange web jettisoned and twisted through the night air before smacking her in the face. It took her all of half a second to realize the cage that had landed on her. A trapper’s net.
One-inch mesh pulled against her skin, wrapping her body in a tightly coiled prison. Neela flailed and screamed like any animal would and tried to kick out of it, but she only succeeded in hitting the ground that much faster. Another pop rang out, then the weight surrounding her doubled as a second net anchored her more fully to the blacktop. Her legs were caught under her, and she roared out in pain when she twisted harshly and her knees crunched against the frozen asphalt. Wetness obscured what little she could see through the holes in the cargo net, but she managed to make out yet another goddamn funnel pointed toward her.
A third net. A surefire capture.
Then that strong voice inside her soul had gone silent with the cold stillness of a death row inmate the second after the injection had been administered. With nothing left to fight with, she closed her eyes and tucked herself as tightly as she could before the launcher was fired and the net imprisoned her for good.
I can’t go back. I just can’t.
The gun went off, and she braced for the impact, but something entirely different assaulted her instead. A roar. No, a bellow. One she thought she’d heard bouncing off the parking lot right before the nets took her to the ground.
Only when her muscles could no longer take the strain of the tension did she crack an eyelid and nose around until she found a clear opening through the net. Her brain almost shorted out as it struggled to make sense of what her eyes were tracking.
“What the . . .?”
Wings. Two silvery-white wings blurred beneath the moonlight and shredded the approaching net in midair like a falcon diving for its prey. Then the blurs turned into a strange duel of sorts, or maybe a dance. One commanded by something—a creature?—that slashed and spun around the netting, until bits of nylon confetti fell from the sky, peppering Neela’s hair and blanketing the rest of her. Neela clenched her teeth and managed to reposition herself to take in more of what was happening, but that only led to more questions.
The wings were attached to a man —a man carved in brutal shadows who hovered above the ground and held two sickle-like weapons. A man with a face so calm and silently ruthless that it made her grateful for the netted barrier between them.
A chilly awareness speared through her gut.
The others who had scrambled from the tree line were running toward them at full force, unsheathing weapons, but the winged man paid them no mind. Did the dude not hear them, or was he too focused on ratatouille-ing the net? God, he was like some gladiator who was so focused on carving his name in the sand that he had zero time or interest in the lion about to rip his head off. Though, to be fair, if she had his power—or any power, for that matter—she couldn’t say she’d feel any different.
Neela squeezed her eyes and shook off the fantasy of what-ifs. They’d never done anything for her, and they sure as hell weren’t about to here.
Instead of swinging his attention to the three running for him, however, the winged man dove toward the three armed attackers closest to her and hooked the muzzles of two guns into the nook of his unusual weapons. With barely a tug from him, the firearms were sliced in half, while the third gun met a similar fate before the flying man’s boots had even touched the ground.
Heavy grunts grew louder behind her.
“Look out! There are more coming!” she cried, still trying to free herself, but the mesh was so heavy and her limbs were pinned at such harsh angles, it was like trying to shrug out of a coffin.
The man ignored her, and as he continued to fight, it made sense why. Short of a nuclear bomb, Neela didn’t think there was anything that could distract him. She’d even bet her latest morning glory night blooms that pediatric neurosurgeons had less focus than he did. His combat movements on the ground were a seamless extension of what he wrought in the air. Though Neela never thought such a concept would make sense, there was a definite beauty to his brutality, so much so that she couldn’t look away even if she wanted to. He may have been outnumbered, but his size and strength alone were unmatched. His arms whirled around in seasoned swipes, but never in the same direction. He was too fast, too efficient for his opponents to pick up on his routines. When one kicked right, he would duck and arc left, slicing through highly open and way-too-vulnerable ribs. The contact and gruesome sounds would have made her cringe if there’d been enough space beneath the net to do so.
Trapped and alone, she could only lie there and watch as the winged man swirled in and out of shadows, hacking away at the others like a machete-wielding survivor in the rainforest trying to reach the one and only helicopter back to civilization.
She should have been grateful. She was grateful, but something about the man sparked an entirely different set of warning bells to start jingling.
Behind her, the others’ approaches grew louder, and her heart kicked into her throat. Then she remembered her position, just who was chasing her, and why.
Shit. She needed to get the hell out of there. Fast.
She tried twisting in her bonds when an arc of blue flames flew across the parking lot and pierced the forehead of the small triad’s leader. Electric fire kindled upon impact, then quickly churned across the rest of the flesh, devouring all that healthy muscle and tissue like cancer. He fell flat on his back and, with arms and legs flailing and cries being choked off by flames, dissolved into a pile of ash before her eyes.
Fear clogged her throat, paralyzing her. “Holy?—”
Three sets of boots touched down in the parking lot. Boots belonging to men with, yup, more metallic wings. Wings and flaming-blue weapons.
Neela tracked her eyes up and up and up . . . God, they were the largest men she’d ever seen! Despite all their wings being similar to the first man’s who’d swooped into the fight, only two looked like, well, men. She had to blink a few times to call her certainty to the surface, but when she narrowed her eyes on the final man in front of her, the only explanation for what she saw had no choice but to solidify.
The third one was most definitely and completely covered in metal, from the charcoal-gray hair pulled back in a bun to the wide gleaming cuffs encircling each meaty wrist. Never mind the dangling mace and battle ax coated in a blue fire that never seemed to burn him or any of the others.
Yeah, the dude was metal all right. With every small glimpse Neela managed through the netting, men with wings seemingly made from various types of elemental alloys assaulted both her senses and her attackers.
The rest of the parking lot fell away into some form of an arsonist’s wet dream. Electric blue flames arced across bodies in a dazzling display of horror. Even the falling snow seemed to read the warning on these men’s faces, wisely jumping out of the way of the flames.
Then there was a slight tug at the corner of the netting holding her head down. Before she could turn around fully, that strange sickle-shaped blade flashed in her periphery and the rest of the mesh fell away.
“Run. Touch nothing.”
Neela kicked the remainder of the nets free and was about to bolt when the voice by her ear nearly stopped her heart.
That voice.
Somewhere, primary parts of her picked out the bits of timbre that made sense, the notes that rang with a gentle familiarity, while moving to the side the parts that didn’t.
The hint of a tenor’s raspy whisper. Vowels that almost fell away from the tentpoles of stronger consonants. Fragments. Nothing but the essentials. Urgency. All of that floated to the surface, far above the foreign darkness that seemed to coat what, for so long, had been spoken with a haunted sort of tenderness.
It can’t be . . .
Neela scrambled to her knees and spun to find the man with blindingly white-silver wings holding that sickle-shaped weapon in one hand and a shredded net in the other.
And that was when the rest of the pieces clicked into place. It had been too dark before, the streetlights too dim and her vision too obscured. Up close, however, yes, she could see it. Though her brain had to work overtime, it managed to slowly morph the gaunt lines and haunted angles of the man from her memory into the powerful package before her. Through the haze of the past, the scraggly beard had fallen away, revealing a rough-hewn jaw hardened with tension. Strength compounded on strength as he squatted before her, with his muscular thighs hugged by black denim supporting a frame that didn’t make sense with the one her mind called forward.
He’d been sick. Close to death. Not . . .
Then those umber eyes searched out hers, and she nearly fell back on her ass.
Many things could change about a person. Hell, she could write a freaking ten-book anthology on that subject. What never changed, however, was their soul, no matter how much one wanted it to. She’d been alive long enough to know that. And beneath the perfectly cut body capable of not only freeing her but also, apparently, flying, that same soul held out a direct line to her own.
“Axtar,” she breathed.
Recognition flashed briefly in the depths of those carob-colored eyes, along with something she couldn’t quite place. Fear? Confusion? He opened his mouth to speak?—
A bullet exploded through his tucked wing and pierced clean through his right shoulder. Blood peppered the air, misting Neela’s white coat with its gruesome spray. The man roared in pain, clutched his shoulder, and tried to turn around to see who had fired at him. Horror seized the last breath from her lungs as he faltered, his legs giving out beneath him. He toppled forward, and she caught him as best she could. Though he still tried to use his right arm to prevent himself from crushing her, the effort was largely worthless. If any part of her was still uncertain about the amount of strength he wielded, it was quickly jettisoned from the ship. All two-hundred-plus pounds of the man fell on top of her, effectively pinning her against the side of the tow truck.
“Rhode!” The largest of the winged men, the one who had been in a metallic form but was now flesh and bone like the others, sliced his ax through the only remaining body that hadn’t yet been reduced to ashes. The final head separated from its owner, and blue flames had gotten to work eating away at the rest of it—including a hand that held yet another gun she hadn’t seen before. A gun that was still smoking.
Rhode? Who’s Rhode?
Neela stretched her arms wide around the man’s broad shoulders and did her best to roll him over and lay him flat on the blacktop. Her thighs burned with the effort, but she eventually had him supine enough that she could inspect the wound.
Wounds, at least, she could handle.
“Go . . .” The hoarse whisper that fell from his full lips was nothing like the demand from earlier. All confidence had been stripped away, only to reveal a sad desperation that offered hints of something far sadder.
Did he . . . ? No, he couldn’t want this , could he?
“No, I’m not going to leave you,” she said as she shrugged out of her coat. “Help! Someone help me!”
Heavy footsteps pounded the pavement around her, but she didn’t bother to look up. Because by the time she’d wadded up her coat enough to place it against the bullet wound in his shoulder, her hands stilled.
Several buttons had been lost on the silk shirt he wore, allowing for the edges of the garment to fall free in relief to expose the wound left behind.
A wound that no longer seeped blood, as Neela expected, but one that had turned all the skin around it into large crumbling flakes of rust and was spreading nearly as fast as that blue fire from earlier.
Nothing. There was nothing in her arsenal of wound care knowledge that could even come close to explaining away what she was seeing. And she knew the moment he realized it, too. That was why his sadness was so permeating, why the finality of the word he’d spoken to her betrayed the regret they both felt.
Because he’d lost hope.
His lids dipped, providing a final shroud of dignity to shield the haziness of his last moments while the rust crept higher over his chest and up his neck. His throat bobbed quickly, and his gasping breaths faded into rattled wheezes.
“Move. Out of the way. Now!” The large male with the man bun grabbed her by the shoulders, knocking her off-balance. Neela tried to catch herself but fell forward, bracing her hand on the shriveling bare chest of the man who’d saved her.
None of them were prepared for the eruption of white light that enveloped both her and the man whose heart had, a second ago, stopped beating beneath her fingertips.