5 ONE FELL SWOOP
ONE FELL SWOOP
T HE DEMON STUMBLED, BUT HE DIDN’T LOSE CONSCIOUSNESS .
How did he not lose consciousness?
Angel blood was poison to demons, and even a small amount could put them under for hours. But not this demon. Sunshine had injected him with an entire syringe full of her blood, and he was still standing.
Worse, he finally seemed to understand that Sunshine was not a human woman looking to hook up and was in actuality a deadly adversary. Though drugged and clouded, his eyes flared with shock and, strangely, betrayal.
And then fury.
“What the fuck?!” he snarled, listing to one side. She went to catch him and flash them away, but somehow he found the strength to fight her. How is this possible?
He twisted out of her grip and shoved her away with enough force that she nearly lost her balance. Her back hit the brick wall, and his did the same to the wall on the opposite side of the alley. He stumbled again but didn’t fall.
An angel could teleport with another individual, sometimes two if they were strong enough, but those individuals had to be willing. Transporting someone who didn’t want to be transported was a nigh impossible feat. That was why she’d planned on having him unconscious for this.
The dose of her blood ought to have knocked him out cold for at least three hours. A demon with a resistance to angel blood was simply not possible.
Yet there he stood.
He blinked heavily, clearly fighting the effects of her blood. She began to believe that, if she waited, he would succeed. Which meant she needed to get him out of here as quickly as possible.
Gritting her teeth, she rushed him, attempting to take him down. As she reached for him, however, he struck her in the solar plexus. Hard. She’d underestimated his reaction time and left herself open.
Wheezing, she stumbled back. He struck her again on the side of the neck, where the sensitive tissue joined her shoulder. They were measured strikes meant to incapacitate more than cause harm—again, she marveled at his level of awareness.
Pain radiated outward, and she staggered. And then he transformed into a crow and tried to fly away.
“Tried” being the operative word. The bird’s erratic flight pattern had him hitting the walls repeatedly on either side of the alley.
But Sunshine was back on her feet and she’d had enough.
She’d recovered from her shock and was done underestimating her opponent.
Just before he cleared the top of the building above, she flashed in front of him and snatched him out of thin air.
He transformed into a man, his big body crashing into her.
They fell three stories back down to smack the ground, Sunshine taking the brunt of the impact, his weight crushing her to the concrete.
Dizzy, the back of her head screaming with pain, she wrapped her arms and legs around him and tried again to flash.
This time, it worked.
Disoriented from the fall, striking the wall repeatedly, and the energy used to shift twice, he was unable to resist her.
She teleported them straight to her rental apartment, into the Empyrean sigil trap she’d preemptively drawn on the floor. She had assumed injecting him in the alley was her safest option, since the sooner he was unconscious, the less time he would have to get suspicious and figure out what she was.
If she’d known he had a freak resistance to angel blood, however, she would’ve let him walk himself over while he still thought he was about to get lucky and then injected him when he stepped in the door to save herself the hassle.
But never in a hundred years would she have expected that.
Without bothering to take in his new surroundings, the demon attempted a hold to immobilize her, but no one could trap an angel that didn’t want to be trapped—at least not without powerful magic—and she simply flashed out of the sigil to safety.
Without her body underneath him, he landed on his stomach, cheek connecting with the hardwood.
He pushed into his hands, attempting to haul his bulk off the floor, but that was when his body finally gave out on him. Collapsing back to the ground with a groan, his eyes fell shut and he succumbed to unconsciousness.
Winded from the fight, Sunshine stood outside the sigil and stared at her captive, chest heaving.
His back was broad and built with muscle, so much so that it was clearly visible through the fabric of his black hoodie.
The pushed-up sleeves revealed strong forearms delineated with muscle and healthy veins.
His skin was dark, the highlights from the lamplight a golden bronze, the shadows an earthy brown.
And his eyes … They were closed now, but there was no forgetting that brilliant gold. Too bright to be human, it ought to have been a sobering reminder of what he was rather than another element of his beauty.
The longer she stared at him, the more her heart pounded. She couldn’t stop replaying what he’d done to her on that dance floor.
How her body had responded.
Stop that! She could never think of it again. She had done what was necessary to retrieve her target, and the rest was just … an unfortunate side effect. That was all.
Demons were sensual, seductive creatures, and to lure him in, she’d had to play his game. But she was above such base instincts and the need for sexual gratification. Desires of the flesh did not rule her.
It didn’t matter that the little bundle of nerves between her thighs still tingled with excitement. Nor did it matter that her heart had raced at the look in his eyes when he’d promised hours more of similar wicked delights.
When he awoke and found himself trapped in that sigil, the only promises he would make were those of her demise. But she was ready for that. A demon’s hatred, she could handle.
And she had a few promises of her own to make too.
Raum fought through the intense throbbing of his head to pull himself back to the world. It was hard to remember what he was doing or why he was unconscious in the first place, but the need to stay alert never left him, and the harder he focused on it, the more his body came back under his control.
Finally, he managed to blink his eyes open.
He was on his stomach, face turned to one side.
When his vision focused, he saw dark-stained hardwood floors covered in chalk lines that spiraled around his body—a sigil.
An Empyrean sigil, judging by the pale-blue glow of the lines, which meant there was no hope of him breaking out of it.
Temporal magic—the Earth magic of humans and witches—could be overcome if the caster couldn’t match the demon’s strength. Empyrean magic, not so much.
Farther away, there was a small kitchen with stainless-steel appliances. The light in the room came from pot lights in the ceiling, dimmed to a soft glow. Everything was chic and modern, and there were no signs of life. No dishes, groceries, stacks of mail, or car keys. Not even a fruit bowl.
He moved his head and saw a window. It was still dark, which hopefully meant he hadn’t been out for long.
Orienting himself triggered the rest of his awareness, and the alarm that filled him gave him the energy to get up. He slid his palms under his shoulders and shoved, and even though it felt like his body weighed a thousand pounds, he managed to lever himself back onto his knees.
The world spun, and all he wanted was to sink back into unconsciousness.
The first thing he did was pull out his cell phone, even though he already knew it wouldn’t work inside of a sigil like this. The magic blocked any signal from coming or going and often short-circuited electronic devices.
Sure enough, the screen was black.
Pocketing it again, he closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and ran a hand over his skull, allowing the sensation of his close-cropped hair against his palm to ground him a little more.
When he dropped his hand and opened his eyes, the angel was standing in front of him.
“Greetings, demon,” she said.
He’d figured out what she was too late. Like a fucking moron, he’d been too busy gawking at her voluptuous body and shiny hair to notice the signs. He’d seen her stalking him all week—casing her target, evidently—and thought it was some kind of fate pushing them together.
Worst of all, he might as well have been trying to chat up a fence post. Angels weren’t sexual beings. They were celibate, and the ones that didn’t want to be became Grigori.
He hadn’t shared desire with her at the club. They hadn’t shared a goddamn thing. She’d put on an Oscar-worthy performance faking that orgasm, but it was still faked.
I’m an idiot. A class-A fucking idiot.
He might have wondered if this angel was a Grigori if he hadn’t already figured out exactly who she was.
What’s your name?
Sun—Sunny.
He’d thought the name was cute. As cute as her. So god-damned stupid. If he hadn’t been thinking mostly with his dick, he’d have remembered that Eva’s father, Dan, had a friend who was an angel—not a Grigori like him, but a legit heavenly angel—named Sunshine.
This was that friend. The angel who had searched the Empyrean Library for information on how to remove Mist’s enslavement brands. Lily had taken control of the brands when she pushed Mist’s former mistress into a pit of monsters, but they still remained on his body.
Dan hadn’t outright said that he’d lied to Sunshine about why he wanted the info, but it was implied.
No angel in their right mind would help a demon.
If Dan had been honest, she would have shown up with the cavalry and taken them all out.
Much easier than removing Mist’s brands was to simply kill him.
And seeing as they were rogues, it was completely within her rights to do so.
Sunshine had evidently become suspicious on her own and tracked them down.
The question remained, however … How much did she know? And perhaps more importantly, why wasn’t Raum already dead?