Chapter Nine #3
“Hey.” He shifted his weight, rolling onto his side but
keeping one hand on her back, massaging gently. “You
okay?”
How had he known? “Yeah.” She smiled and turned over. “I’m
just wondering what we’re doing.” Her face heated as she glanced at his
fabulously naked body. “I mean, besides the obvious.”
With a heavy sigh, he flopped onto his back and stared at
the wood beams in the ceiling. “I don’t know. I didn’t expect to be
so...enamored of you.”
“Enamored?” She grinned, basking in the compliment. But
something about the way he said he hadn’t expected to be enamored with
her left her unsettled. Maybe it was nothing. But what had he
expected? And why had he had any expectations of a stranger at all?
“Enamored,” he agreed, but he didn’t sound too happy about it, leaving her with even more misgivings.
“It’s strange because I only needed one thing from you...and this wasn’t it.”
He turned to her, his gaze locking with hers with such
intensity that it stole her breath. “You’ve taken care of me when you didn’t
need to. You protected me from Shrike when you didn’t have to. You even fed me
and trusted me to bring you here. Why?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I usually avoid your type,
but I was just...drawn to you, I guess.”
Plus, if she was going to get out from under Shrike’s dinner
party curse, she needed help, and Razr had offered. Granted, it might only be
because he wanted her to “find” the two remaining Gems of Enoch, but still. She
didn’t have any other allies at this point, one of the downsides of only having
human friends.
“My type?”
“Otherworldly,” she explained. “Demons, shapeshifters, weres, angels, fallen angels.”
He leveled an are-you-kidding look
at her. “Ah, I hate to break it to you, but you’re an otherworlder
too.”
“Elves don’t consider themselves part of your world. We
identify more with humans. More of us live in the human world than in the elven
one, in fact.”
“Why is that?”
Faintly, from somewhere outside, she heard a whistle and
someone yell, “Foul!” The Memitim playing some sort
of sport, she guessed.
“The elven realm is kind of...unreal. It’s like living in a
medieval dream.” She reconsidered that. “Well, a clean, cheery medieval dream.”
Razr gasped in mock horror. “Sounds awful. I can see why you
guys would rather live in the human realm.”
She laughed, enjoying this exploratory time with him. It was
easy to talk to him, something she’d never been able to do with her human
lovers. “What’s your favorite food?”
“What does that have to do with life in...what?
Middle Earth? Shannara? I don’t know...Pandora?”
Torn between annoyance and amusement, she settled for shaking her head in exasperation. “Just tell me your
favorite food. Maybe a dessert. Also, Pandora doesn’t have any elves.”
“The Na’vi have pointed ears,” he
shot back with a playful grin that tugged at her heart. “And salted caramel
pie.”
That did sound tasty. “Well, imagine your diet consisted of
only salted caramel pie. That’s it. Every day. And imagine having nothing to do
but look for gemstones. Everything around you is perfect and bright and people
rarely even argue.” Mostly, elves just vacationed in their realm or lived like
American snowbirds, people who summered in a northern state and wintered in a
southern one. “It’s nice to visit and recharge, but peace is tedious, and
living in the chaos of the human world is, in its own way, more rewarding.”
His expression turned contemplative. Maybe a little sad, and she wanted to hug him.
“I get that,” he said softly. “Heaven is kind of like that.
People argue––angels are hotheads––but for any kind of real challenge or
entertainment, you have to get out of there.” He
smirked, and her heart tugged again, harder. She loved the
playful side of him. “That’s why I know about Pandora and Dobby and
Shannara. Humans might be inferior creatures, but man, they know how to tell a
story.” Reaching out, he trailed a finger around the shell of her ear, and she
shivered with delight. “What do you tell them about your Spock ears?”
“Nothing. Their selective cognizance renders them blind to
our physiology unless we point it out or they’re already familiar with the
otherworld.”
“So...do you date humans?” He made it sound like he was
asking if she dated dung beetles.
“Since I live in the human realm, humans do tend to make up
the majority of the dating pool.”
Although she had dated a werewolf once. Just once. They were
grumpy as hell.
“So that’s a yes.” There was an underlying note of,
what...jealousy, maybe?...in his voice that both
flattered and annoyed her. “Are you dating someone now?”
The annoyance turned to anger, and she levered into a sit.
“I wouldn’t be here if I were, and if it bothers you, maybe
you should have asked before we fucked the first time.”
She started to swing her legs out of bed, but he captured
her wrist and held her back.
“Wait,” he said softly. “You’re right. It’s just that I
didn’t expect this to happen. I figured I’d meet you, have the gemstones within
a few hours, and I’d be back in Heaven by now.”
She felt like she’d been kicked in the gut. “Back in Heaven?
So you are an Unfallen? Don’t Unfallen have
to save the planet or perform some great heroic act or something?”
Lilliana had been clear about that. It wasn’t easy to get
back into Heaven, and according to her, only a handful of Unfallen ever had.
He flinched. The barest twitch of his facial muscles, but it
was there. “I’m not Unfallen.” His voice was gruff, as if he had to force the
words out, and an uneasy feeling tightened in her chest. Where was this going?
“I never lost my wings. They were bound when I was tossed out of Heaven and put
into Azagoth’s service, but I can earn my way back if
I complete my mission.”
The uneasy feeling solidified into a knot of anxiety in her
chest. “What…what is your mission?”
“To recover two of the Gems of Enoch.” His gaze locked with
hers, and she wondered if he could see the alarm in her eyes as clearly as she
saw the gravity in his. “Then I can end the torture of the Azdai
glyph and throw away that damned cat-o’-nines I carry around. But I need
the gems to do it, and only you can help me,” Jedda.”
It was her turn to flinch. She couldn’t help him. It was
impossible.
“Surely there’s another way you can earn your way back into
Heaven,” she said desperately. “I can help you with anything else. Anything.
You name it.”
“It has to be the Gems of Enoch.” His voice was as rough as
the floor of a mine shaft. “One of them, at least. The Ice Diamond. I need it.”
“Why?” Immediately she regretted the question, the tightness
in her chest becoming excruciating. She truly didn’t want to know the answer.
Dark shadows flitted in Razr’s eyes as he held up his hand.
The ring on his finger, the one that had previously sported what she’d believed
to be a black diamond, now shone with a familiar silver-blue light. His words
from back at her house when she’d asked him what he’d done to get thrown out of
Heaven screamed through her brain.
“I was part of an elite demon-slaying team. We got
careless one day, and our carelessness cost lives and property.”
Oh, gods. Oh, no. Oh, please, no.
But no amount of pleading or denial changed what, deep
inside, she knew to be the truth.
“Because its loss is why my wings were bound and my powers
were stripped. It’s why I have to be flogged half to
death and why I was kicked out of Heaven.” He spoke through clenched teeth, his
voice thick with emotion. “That gemstone is mine, and I want it back.”