Chapter 5
I t had been some time since Rhode had been scooped out so hollow to the point where very little was up for discussion when it came to his faculties. It wasn’t a foreign feeling by any means, just one he blessedly hadn’t had an opportunity to visit since he’d been topside. But now that he was no longer on his back on top of a stone slab with chains weighing down his dignity, the true terror of that vacuum slammed into him like a Mack truck.
Logic, emotion, and even that damn fire he’d somehow managed to wield were all ejected from his body and overall consciousness. Because in what world would he have ever raised a weapon, let alone one laced with a power seraphim had no history or capacity of brandishing, to Chrome? His former intelligence master, who had been at one time his truest brother in every sense of the word that mattered?
The answer to that and all of his torments, as it had been for so many agonizing years of his life, always— always —began and ended with the same singular group of beings.
Charmers.
No sooner had the chair’s ashes fallen at his feet than his finger found its next target. It was the only thing that his trembling body and addled brain could make sense of. Not the roar of angels around him, nor the strong arms that yanked on his shoulders, pulling him away from whichever of Chrome’s responses was liable to lead to the destruction of far more than a single wicker chair. Rhode heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing, except the magnetic pull toward the woman across the room whose very presence urged his insides to riot and rage.
Through the shouting and mélange of muscles, one very large, very imposing figure broke free and placed his barrel chest right in front of Rhode’s outstretched finger. Tungsten—the prime sentinel, with his shoulder-length mane of golden hair vibrant enough to equal, if not outshine, the hair of the very woman he was blocking Rhode’s view of—pushed forward until Rhode’s finger had no choice but to bend at an angle that had it backing down. It wasn’t long before Titan, Tung’s second, and Iron had flanked their leader, choking off any view of the female entirely.
And then, with one swift jerk of his chin, Tung commanded what was left of Rhode’s beyond-divided attention. “We are going to have a conversation. And you are going to sit down and be a part of it.”
“In front of that thing over there?” Rhode flicked his chin toward whatever part of that demon was still on the other side of the mountain of angels blocking his view.
It had been the exact wrong thing to say.
Tung’s eyes grew stormy with pewter flames, and the banked fury of the prime sentinel caused Rhode to take a step back until he had no choice but to plop onto the nearest hard surface that would support him. “Listen well, Axtar .”
Rhode gritted his teeth. “Don’t call me that.”
“Then give me a reason to call you otherwise, because right now, you have not earned any right to keep your own name or head, let alone make demands of me. You attacked one of your own, one of my sentinels, your own goddamn brother, and damaged our hostess’s property.”
Rhode snapped to his feet and shrugged off Titan when he tried to urge him back down. “He’s not my brother!” Rhode raged, no longer able to quell the fire or keep from screaming what his heart had longed to rail into the world. “ I am not your brother,” he said, pounding his chest. “I am a seraph. Was a seraph. We are different as much as we are the same, and you of all beings know you cannot be forced into a mold by sheer will or association alone. Or should we ask Tamara her thoughts on the subject?”
Every single voice in the room was snuffed into silence. Shouts collapsed into shattered sighs of disappointment, while other words were choked off by sucked-in breaths.
Tamara, or Tammy, was Tungsten’s soul bond and twin sister to Titan’s soul bond, Rose. Like Rhode, she too had been abducted by charmers, but that was where the similarities in their experiences ended, for unlike Rhode’s eternal imprisonment, she had been rescued after six months.
He, on the other hand, well . . .
Only he knew what parts of him had truly made it out alive, which was why the blow he’d just dealt was the kind reserved only if you wanted to make damn certain there were no bridges left to burn.
Tammy’s relationship with Tung had been one of intense turmoil, with each one fighting against fate to secure their own form of self-preservation.
As Rhode had been told, it had been a miserable time for the prime sentinel, as well as the others.
And he’d just ripped open that bag and poured it all out for everyone to get a fresh view of, spoiled parts and all.
Including the curious woman who still sat silently at the far table, professing not to only be a demon charmer but the offspring of the very one who could claim credit for innumerable suffering souls, the least of which, though still living, crowded out the restaurant’s small dining room.
Tungsten bared his teeth, giving Rhode a raw glimpse of the quiet rage that had the best chance to match his.
Good. Parts of him, the portions that had grown in bulk without cause or direction, screamed for a fight, for anything to tear into so they might feast on something else’s suffering for a change.
As Rhode stared at the prime sentinel, the leader of the Empyrean’s eternal guards, for the first time, he wondered . . .
Would the angel truly do it? Would Tung take that next step? Mages knew Rhode had given him every reason to do so, even as his gaze traced the lines of the one angel who everyone thought truly had boundless patience.
But did that theory extend to what Rhode had become? And why the hell did he wish to test it so?
Rhode sank into the prime sentinel’s stare and searched for the answers hidden in the swirling depths of eyes that once held such compassion and understanding. Figured it was about time he chased that away, too.
A cascading crash resounded through the back hallway. “Fuck him, and fuck this. I’m done!” Chrome swept an arm out wide, and another rack of drinking glasses met their end in shards at the angel’s feet.
Brass stepped in before the others and swept a fuming Molly out the front door right as Bronze and Steel managed to muscle Chrome into the back hallway that led out to the alley.
Through the cages of their arms, his former intelligence master found Rhode and shouted, “We’re done. You hear me? Whatever’s going on in your head can fucking spin itself out on its own. No one needs this shit, Rhode. Not me, not Drea, and sure as hell not the rest of us. Got that? No one needs you ! So have a nice goddamn life, ‘cause I’m done having you take up such a huge part of mine.”
Both doors slammed shut, simultaneously sealing him in with the consequences of his actions.
The heavy silence that pressed in around them moved through the air like sludge through a sewer, and some quiet part of Rhode knew that he’d never breathe freely ever again. It wasn’t that he expected Chrome to behave in such a way, but . . . well, what was the expectation, exactly? How did one tell their oldest friend that the past was nothing more than a collection of memories for those lucky enough to still recall them? And luck had never cast its favor on Rhode for all the years he’d begged for it. Screamed for it.
No, what few memories he had were nothing short of sensory imprints, but they were more than enough to put even night terrors to shame.
At least night terrors ended eventually.
Rhode whirled away from Tung and slammed his fist into the wall, pulverizing a patch of decorative hand-pressed lavender that had been caged into something against its will. “Dammit!” But when his forehead settled against the cool surface of the drywall, the relief, like always, was promptly wicked away.
“For what it’s worth, I’m Neela, not a thing .”
Shit. He’d forgotten about her. The demon. Wonderful.
But for the first time since Rhode had decided to leap off a building, he wasn’t entirely ungrateful for the others’ presence. Well, those who’d stuck around, anyway.
Tungsten, ever the damn diplomat, would soon take over. Any moment, the prime sentinel would ask Iron and Titan to seize the woman, then they’d finally be able to have that little conversation with her that Tung had alluded to earlier, one that would involve no shortage of cross-examination and angel fire.
Slowly, the gnawing tension fled from his shoulders, and the hard surface against his forehead started to register more suggestive pressure than pounding pain. Thank the mages for small mercies.
Yes, there was at least one disaster Rhode would be able to get to the bottom of, the least of which would be finding out just how the hell a female charmer existed in the first place, let alone one who claimed to be an heir to Cyro. What had she been doing in that parking lot? If she was truly who she insisted to be, why on earth would other charmers be chasing her, never mind trying to apprehend her?
And most importantly, just what the hell did she do to him?
With each question unraveling from the tightly coiled yarn ball of neural synapses in Rhode’s mind, more of that collective calm settled into his muscles, easing that strange burning in his core where the alien angel fire from earlier seemed to originate. The flames were gone, barely a simmer in the pit of his soul. Whatever had erupted out of him had thankfully been depleted. He felt almost normal, familiar, with that same hollowness returning to settle low in his gut and weigh his conscience down.
He never thought he’d be so happy to feel so dead inside. But dead was good. He could work with dead.
Instead, Iron and Titan took up residence at each of his sides, neither of the angels touching him but also strategically blocking the sole avenues to the exits.
And just like that, his muscles twitched with unrestrained warning. When Rhode slowly turned around, the scene was not one of a prisoner being apprehended, nor of a demon being threatened with a fire-fueled dagger at its throat. Any of those would have made sense.
What he saw, however, had his hands flying for his kamas. All they caught was air.
“Nope. None of that.” Titan held up the bundle of weapons in his fist and leveled a sad this is why some people can’t have nice things glare at him. “It’s a safe bet that Brass is going to melt these puppies down after the shit you just started in Molly’s dining room. Either that or he’ll give ‘em to Molly so she can take a swing at you. Whatever the case, consider them on probation.”
Rhode heard the angel’s words, but while his brain was slowly processing the repercussions of his earlier actions, it had no juice left to make sense of what Tungsten was doing across the room.
The prime sentinel grabbed a chair, placed it next to the wide-eyed woman, carefully settled his bulk into it, and said, “Before we speak further regarding the circumstances of tonight, it is incumbent upon me to inform you that no harm will come to you here, by my hand or any of my angels.”
Rhode blinked through a shock that did a stellar job of stealing his words. Once he’d found them again, he said, “What? How can you say that?”
Tungsten’s expression was equal parts grim and illuminating, the kind of face a head coach adopted when she had to inform her Olympic competitor that they had just won a place on the podium—but for a bronze medal. Then the prime sentinel hoisted every ounce of karma into his heated stare and promptly blew Rhode’s world apart.
“Because no Empyrean warrior shall ever harm a soul bond of our brethren, whether that angel be sentinel . . . or seraph.”