Chapter One #2
Hawkyn had been assigned to the facility in Belgium, a
cold-ass castle with strict rules. Yes, he could have lived on his own after
his fifty years of mandatory fledgling training was complete, but he’d chosen
to stay...until Sheoul-gra unexpectedly opened up to
Memitim a couple of years ago.
Well, it had always been open to Memitim who wanted to serve
Azagoth, but Sheoul-gra had been a dark, grim, horrible place where few wanted
to be until Azagoth’s mate, Lilliana, came along. Now it was teeming with life
and activity and a thriving community of Memitim, Unfallen angels, and even a
few True Fallen angels.
“So she hasn’t seen what humans are
capable of,” Cipher mused.
“Exactly. She hasn’t been hurt. And I see her getting too
attached to her Primori.”
“You’re her sponsor. Can’t you talk to your Memitim bosses
and get her reassigned?”
Hawkyn barked out a laugh. “I don’t know why I even tried.
Got the standard ‘Primori are assigned to specific Memitim for a reason’
bullshit.”
“I heard you can ask for one reassignment per century.”
Cipher drained his water bottle in half a dozen swallows and tossed it to the
ground for one of the new trainees to pick up. There were few trash bins in
training areas for a reason, and as far as Hawk could tell, that reason was to
make trainees hate life. “You ever try to get one of your Primori reassigned?”
“Nope. Never.” Hawkyn had been assigned a lot of distasteful
scumbags in his hundreds of years of service, and he’d managed just fine.
But he had to admit that getting assigned horrible beings
who delighted in the pain and deaths of others wasn’t pleasant. At times it was
downright infuriating. He’d secretly wished for the excruciating demise of more
than one of his former Primori. He’d even celebrated when they were removed
from Primori status and finally met the brutal ends they deserved.
He might even have facilitated their brutal ends. But he’d keep that to himself.
“Razr’s coming back.” Cipher jerked his head in the other
fallen angel’s direction. “Better get your head on straight or I’m gonna kick
your ass again.”
Hawk snorted. “I was just warming up. Prepare for a
beating.” And then after he knocked Cipher around, he was going to pay his
least favorite Primori a visit and fantasize about doing the same to him.
Someday, he swore silently. Someday.
The best thing about grocery shopping at midnight was
that the stores were relatively quiet. As someone sensitive to life-force
energy, Aurora Mercer liked that. But sometimes the lack of activity wasn’t a
good thing.
Like now, as she walked her
groceries out to her car. Fog common to Portland, Oregon in the fall had rolled
in, obscuring everything farther than about forty feet out. She’d parked her
dark blue Mercedes close to the building and under a light, but as she opened
the rear door she was unnerved to see a black van pull
next to her, blocking her faint view of the store—and blocking employee views
of her.
The van’s windows were blacked out.
She laughed nervously. It was probably nothing. Serial
killers didn’t drive anything so obvious, right?
Right?
Still, she picked up her pace, not caring that she was all
but throwing her groceries in the back seat and food was spilling everywhere.
She could salvage the cherries on the floor when she got home, and raspberry
juice stains on cream leather wouldn’t look that bad.
Not as bad as blood.
She finished and slammed the door closed. But shit...the
cart corral was several stalls away. Her heart started racing at the thought of
getting that far from her car and the light. Screw it, she could leave the cart
here. She hated when people did that, but avoiding death was as good an excuse
as any to be lazy.
Hastily she pushed the cart in front of her car, secured it
over a concrete tire block—
“Fog’s bad, isn’t it?”
She spun around with a startled yelp. An attractive man,
maybe six-four with a Celtic cross tattoo on his neck, stood between her and
her driver side door. How had he gotten there so fast?
Stay calm.
Easier said than done, but she’d give it a shot. “Excuse
me,” she said firmly. “I’m in a hurry.”
He didn’t budge. “I’m sure you are.”
As casually as she could, she reached into her purse for her
keys and the attached canister of pepper spray, but as she fished around she realized she’d left them on her back seat. Her
heart skipped a beat and then pounded so fast and hard she could feel it in her
ears.
Deep breaths. You don’t have your pepper spray, but you
aren’t weaponless.
The man smiled as if he knew she’d come up empty of pepper
spray and was happy about it. “Problem? Something I can help you with?”
“No. Thank you.” She dredged up a smile of her own and
prayed it looked genuine and not like she was scared out of her mind. “If
you’ll step aside, I’ll just go—”
She broke off as, out of the corner of her eye, she detected
movement. Another man-shaped shadow stepped out of the fog behind the van, and
her throat constricted with terror.
Jesus, there’s two of them.
Never before had she used her
abilities in an emergency. She’d always wondered if she even could use
them. What if she froze in the face of danger? But now, as adrenaline careened
through her body, she drew on the ancient magic, and with a single word,
“maleseum,” she struck out with her most powerful weapon, one her people
usually reserved for only non-humans, like demons.
An intense, almost overwhelming pulse of ecstasy rocked her
from inside out, triggered by the activation of magic. It was a curse—or
gift—of her species, one that required them to either release their energy
through sex or magic, but either way, the result was pleasure, even,
apparently, during life-or-death situations.
Through the haze of the morgasm, as many of her
friends called it, a bar of searing light blasted from her palm, striking the
newcomer like a sledgehammer. He flew backward into a light pole and crumpled
to the asphalt with a sickening thud. But in the time
it took to neutralize the second man, the first moved on her. Pain shattered
her face as his fist cracked against her jaw. The parking lot spun as she
wheeled around and then hit the ground hard.
Despite the pain and the screaming inside her own head she
heard him mutter something like “Thank you for that” as he looped some sort of
rope or cord around her neck. She gasped for air, clawing at her throat, aware
that he was dragging her toward his vehicle.
Terror fueled her fight as she kicked wildly, but her
attacker was strong and she couldn’t stop him from throwing her through the
side door of his van. She landed hard on a metal floor, and before she could
even process the fact that her vision was dimming, she felt a blow that put her
into complete oblivion.
Her last thought before she lost consciousness was that she
would have been home right now if she hadn’t spent those extra ten minutes
debating between Cheerios and Frosted Flakes.