Chapter Nine #2
“Ah, yeah.” He raked his fingers through his hair and looked
at everything but her. “That’s the thing. You can’t go to them.”
She pulled her macaroni and cheese from the microwave.
“Excuse me? Why not?” When he didn’t answer, she slammed the microwave door
closed and turned to him. “Well?”
She almost laughed, because it was pretty
clear he wanted to use the “long story” excuse again. Finally, he
gestured to the dining room table. “Maybe we should talk while you eat your...
What is that?”
“What, they don’t have frozen macaroni and cheese in
Heaven?”
“I have no idea,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve never been.
But it seems to me that you can’t call a place Heaven if it doesn’t have pasta
and cheese. And dogs.”
“Agreed.” She opened the silverware drawer. “But let me get
this straight. Your dad is ‘sort of’ evil and you’ve never been to Heaven. What
kind of angel are you, anyway?”
A nervous knot formed in her stomach as she palmed a fork.
What if he wasn’t an angel? What if he was lying? Oh, gods, who had
she let into her house?
And how effective were forks as weapons? As one of
Portland’s most in-demand masseuses, she had a detailed knowledge of anatomy
and could disable or even kill with one well-placed stab of a fork, but that
was assuming the target was human. Even if Hawkyn wasn’t an angel, he definitely wasn’t human.
He must have noticed her alarm, because he lowered his voice
to a soothing, almost lulling murmur. “I’m a special breed of earthbound angel
called Memitim. I was born here, raised by humans, and my goal, same as every
Memitim, is to earn my way into Heaven.”
She raked him from head to toe with her gaze, looking for
any sign that he was telling the truth, but he looked like a normal humanoid
male. Well, not normal. Or in any way average. Hell, as far as she could tell,
he didn’t have a single physical attribute that wasn’t utter perfection, from
his flawless tan skin and angular, masculine features to his strong jawline and
lush lashes that framed eyes the color of smoked emeralds.
Now she wanted to see all that perfection with his clothes
off. After all, if he was really an angel, he’d be perfect in every
way, right?
He probably wouldn’t take kindly to her asking him to strip
for proof, but surely he wouldn’t object to a very
basic demand he probably heard often.
“Let me see your wings.”
A smear of pink brightened his cheeks. “Memitim don’t have
wings,” he said, which sounded like a convenient excuse. “Not real ones. But I
have something similar.” Before she could ask what he
meant, a pair of misty, smoke-colored wings punched into the air behind him.
“These allow me to move invisibly when I need to.”
Her mouth went dry with shock. He really was an angel. She
was standing in the presence of a being she hadn’t thought was real. Heck, she
had always been *this close* to being an atheist, despite the existence of
demons which, some would say, proved the existence of God.
“Can I touch them?”
“You can try.” He shifted, allowing her access. “But your
hand will pass through them. They’re made of shadow.”
She reached out, expecting to feel empty air, but instead
her fingers felt...something. Something electric. He went taut as she stroked
the apex of one of his ghostly wings.
“I can sense your touch,” he breathed. “You can...feel
them?”
“Yes,” she said, in absolute awe that she was in contact
with a real, Heavenly being. Well, an earthbound Heavenly being, anyway. “They
feel like warm water with an electrical current running through it.”
Curious, she concentrated on absorbing some of his energy
through her palm, but nothing happened. She dropped her gaze to his perfect
ass. Maybe if she touched a more solid part of his body...
“I don’t understand.” He stepped away, his expression one of genuine confusion. “No one has ever been able to
touch them. This is the first time I’ve gotten any sensation from them at all.”
Huh. Weird. “What did it feel like?”
“Like...a caress. Like they were real wings and they were
connected to my—” He broke off and gave her a cheeky grin. “Never mind.”
Too late. Her gaze slid downward, and she drew an
appreciative breath at the impressive bulge behind the fly of his jeans.
So that was how you seduced an angel. Not that she planned
to seduce him. She was an Earth girl, fond of the human realm and human people.
Besides, she doubted angels fraternized with humans, let alone demons or
human/demon hybrids like her.
Clearing her throat, she snapped her eyes back up to his
face, but his amused expression said he knew she’d been ogling his angelic
junk.
“So...other Memitim don’t have
shadow wings?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound too humiliated. “Why do you?”
“As I said, my father is evil. Less so now than when any of
us were conceived, but back then, he was indistinguishable from a demon.” He
rotated his shoulders, and the wings melted away like smoke in a breeze. “He’s
a fallen angel or sorts, the father of all Memitim, so some of us inherit
unique traits and abilities from him.” He snorted. “Pisses off Heavenly-born
angels that we get fallen angel skills they can’t access.”
“Wow,” she whispered, trying to process this and failing.
“How old are you?”
“A little over six hundred years old. Younger than most of
my siblings. You?”
Six hundred years? Her people were long-lived, but not that
long-lived, and their lifespans were only getting shorter as they interbred
with humans.
“I’ll be thirty next month,” she said. “My parents are in
their eighties, but they look my age.”
She sat down at her vintage black and red table with her
pasta, but she was no longer hungry. She’d grown up in a human environment, in
a human neighborhood, attended human schools, and worked at human jobs. Her
parents and brother were, for all intents and purposes, human. She and her
family members embraced the powers they’d been born with, but she’d never
really considered them to be supernatural. They were simply part of her. Like
her hair and teeth.
So this...was unsettling. Hell, the
events of the last few days, starting with being kidnapped and tortured, to
waking up in a demon hospital, to sitting down at a table with an angel... All
of it was messing with her head. It had, in fact,
started to throb.
Bracing her elbows on the table, she rubbed her temples. “I...I think I need a minute.”
“You okay? Aurora?” He appeared
next to her, his hand on her shoulder. She hadn’t even seen him move. “You’re a
little pale.”
“I feel woozy.” The room was starting to spin, and her
stomach lurched like it wanted to empty itself of the nothingness inside. Shit,
this was happening because she was out of power, wasn’t it? She needed to
recharge, and fast.
“I’m taking you back to Underworld General.”
“I’d rather go to the police.” Whoa. There were bright
lights floating in front of her eyes now, and was she slurring her words? “Why
can’t I?”
“Aurora—”
“Tell me,” she snapped, her
patience worn down to a nubbin.
There was a slight hesitation, and then he said quietly,
“You can’t go to the police because Drayger is under protection.”
The lights were starting to dim and darkness was closing in.
“Whose protection?”
“Mine,” he said slowly. “My job is to keep Drayger safe.”
With those insane words, she welcomed the darkness.