Chapter Twelve
Chapter
Twelve
It was dark when Razr and Jedda arrived at her
apartment. At first, the time of day didn’t seem important. It wasn’t until she
turned on the TV that he realized they’d been gone
three days.
Her eyes, which had been bright with hope when they left the
elven realm, were bloodshot now, and her face seemed a
little drawn, hints of shadow in the hollows under her high cheekbones. He
wondered if travel between the realms took more effort than angelic travel,
sort of like jet lag for humans.
With a heavy sigh, she tossed her keys into a basket filled
with gemstones near the door. “I hate how time runs differently in the elven
realm.”
He was familiar with the concept since parts of Heaven and Sheoul operated with similar time anomalies, but he
generally avoided those places. They always made him feel like he’d missed out
on something, as if he’d wasted his life, and if there was one thing he’d
learned in his centuries of existence, it was that every minute was precious,
even for immortals. After all, immunity to natural aging didn’t mean one
couldn’t be killed, and no matter what, everything changed. He didn’t want to
miss the changes.
“Okay, so.” Rallying with squared shoulders and head held
high, she headed to the kitchen, her long hair brushing against the swell of
her fine ass with every step. He could watch that all day. “What’s this bond
thing Reina was talking about?”
“Ah. That.” Yeah, this could get a little sticky. Repressing
a groan, he scrubbed his hand over his face, partly because damn, he was tired
too, and partly to buy a little time to figure out how to explain this without
freaking Jedda out too much. Finally, he dropped his hands and got on with it.
“The human custodians of the Gems of Enoch went through a ritual that bonded
them to the gems. Then Darlah, Ebel, and I bonded ourselves to the humans.”
Halting mid-step, she looked back over her shoulder at him.
“You had sex with them? Isn’t sex between angels and humans forbidden?”
“Ah...yeah. I mean, no. We didn’t have sex with them.” Well,
Ebel had fallen in love with his human, but to this
day Razr didn’t know how intimate they’d been. “We exchanged blood. But
obviously, there are a lot of ways to bond to someone.”
“Can we break it?”
Razr flinched, inexplicably stung. Hers was a reasonable
question. Who in their right mind would want to be tethered to someone else for
life? For centuries. For all eternity, even. The idea should bother him, too.
But for some reason, he couldn’t dredge up an ounce of
give-a-shit. He’d been intensely attracted to Jedda before the sex, and
afterward, nothing had felt different. He’d known almost from the beginning
that he couldn’t harm her to get his gem back, and that had nothing to do with
any mystical bond. She’d been unique. Special. Decent. She’d proved as much
when she’d gotten him away from Shrike and helped him recover.
She hadn’t needed to do that.
Truly, it hadn’t been the smartest of decisions. Had
he been, say, Ebel, he’d have slaughtered her without a second thought the
moment he knew that doing so would release the gem.
“Razr?” Jedda turned fully around. “Can we break the bond?”
“Not while both of us are alive.”
Grief swirled in her remarkable eyes, sending another spear
of hurt right through him. “Well, that sucks,” she muttered, and his hurt
abruptly veered to anger.
“Don’t worry,” he snapped. “Once I tell my superiors that
the two remaining Gems of Enoch are unrecoverable without destroying you and
your sister and that I refuse to kill you or give up your locations, I’ll
probably be executed. Problem solved. The bond will be broken.”
Her eyes flared in horror, making him regret his show of
temper. Nabebe had taught him how easy it was to
needlessly cause pain with words, a lesson he seemed to have forgotten in the
years since the human’s death.
“Oh, gods.” Jedda closed the distance between them and laid
a comforting hand on his forearm. “Are you serious? They’ll kill you?”
“I don’t know,” he said grimly. “I don’t even know if I’ll
tell them.”
“What do you mean?” There was a
desperation in her voice that called to every one of his possessive
instincts, demanding that he assuage her fears, but he
couldn’t.
All he could do was reach out and cup her cheek, telling her
with a touch that, while this situation was a shit sandwich, at least they were
eating it together.
And wasn’t that all kinds of romantic? Cupid, he
was not.
But then, Cupid was a mischievous prick who got off on
making inappropriate love matches, so maybe it was best that Razr was nothing
like the misunderstood angel.
“I mean that I can lie indefinitely about searching for the
gems,” he replied. “No one has to know about you and your sister.” Azagoth and Hades knew the truth about Jedda, but they
wouldn’t squeal. And Jim Bob knew that the Ice Diamond was in storage with the dhampires, but seeing how he wasn’t exactly being upfront
about who he was or what he was doing visiting Azagoth
in secret, Razr doubted he was much of a threat.
“So you’d just live the way you’ve
been living? With your wings bound and subjected to torture for the rest of
your life? That’s bullshit. Isn’t there another way?”
He shrugged, unable to come up with any other way that made
sense. “I could come clean, but that would put you at risk. Even if they don’t
execute me, they could take my ring and give it to another who will hunt you
and your sister down.” Damn, he was screwed. “No, I think it’s best to never
tell them. As far as I’m concerned, the gems are lost and will never be found.”
She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, the phone
rang. “Hold on,” she said in a stern voice that reminded him of one of his old
battle coaches. “We’re not done talking about this.”
While she answered the phone, he considered their next move.
They had to get Shrike out of the picture, both for Jedda’s safety and to make
sure the fallen angel’s interest in the Gems of Enoch came to a permanent and, with any luck, a painful end.
Maybe if they––
From out of nowhere, pain wrecked him. He doubled over in
sudden agony so intense he looked for blood and a
spear wound to the gut. Clenching his teeth, he checked the back of his hand.
His Azdai glyph was lit up like a
neon fucking sign as days’ worth of pain-free time caught up with him.
“Razr?”
He heard Jedda drop the phone, and then she was there beside
him, her arm around his waist as she helped steady him against the back of the couch.
“Need...to get...to Azagoth,” he
gritted out. “Hurry.”
The nearest Harrowgate was close, barely a block away, but
it was going to feel like miles.
Jedda guided him to the door, effortlessly bearing his
considerable weight on her diminutive frame as he leaned on her through spasms
of pain. Even through the searing agony, he had to admire her strength and
determination. He’d always been attracted to athletic, fighter-type females
like Darlah, but Jedda proved that one didn’t have to be big and brawny to be a
warrior.
Keeping him braced against her side, one arm wrapped around
him, she reached for the door with her other hand and tugged on the knob.
“Um.” She tugged again, this time more forcefully, but it
wouldn’t open.
“Is it...locked?” He felt like a jackass for asking, but
sometimes the obvious got missed.
Fortunately, she didn’t take offense, simply shook her head.
“It doesn’t feel stuck, either. More like––” She broke off with a curse. “Stay
here.”
As if he could do anything else. His bones felt like they
were melting and taking his muscles with them. As she gently pulled away, he
sagged against the wall.
She hurried to the window and let out a string of angry
words in what he assumed was Elvish. He also assumed they were creative
obscenities.
“We’re trapped,” she said, still glaring out the window.
A groan rattled his chest. “By what?”
“Shrike’s minions.” She flipped the bird at
said minions. “At least a dozen. They must have been watching for my return. I
think they’ve trapped us with wards.”
Every breath scorched his throat, as if he was breathing
whips of fire. “Can you...get us to...ah, Rivendell?”
“It’s Filneshara.” Diamond dust
filled the air, shredding his already compromised lungs, and he knew they were
in real trouble. “The travel stones to my realm only work from faeways.”
Her voice was pitched with alarm, and he couldn’t blame her,
but now wasn’t the time to panic. As he told his Memitim
students, stay active. No matter how much shit you’re in, do something,
anything, to stay focused.
“My pocket,” he rasped. “In my pocket.”
Quickly, she fumbled around in his jacket and pulled out the
cat-o’-nines. Which she promptly dropped on the floor
with a hiss.
“You can’t be serious. I can’t, Razr. I can’t. Please don’t
make me do it.”
He inhaled, riding a relatively mild wave of pain as he
straightened. “You have to. If we can’t leave, you need
to.”
Her face contorted in misery. “I
don’t want to hurt you.”
He hooked a finger under her chin, lifting her gaze to his,
hating that this was hurting her. His pain didn’t matter. It was hers that was
tearing him apart right now.
“I’m used to it.” He struggled to talk through fierce stab
of pain. “And I heal fast. You’ve seen it.”
“I’ve also seen you pass out. And I saw how you looked just
before you did.” She turned away, her breaths coming in panicked wheezes. “I
can’t.”
His skin was starting to blister, and inside his body, a
firestorm of agony ripped through him as his bones began to fracture with
audible cracks.
“You can do it lightly,” he said, desperately trying to keep
his voice level so she wouldn’t know how much this was making him want to
scream.
Except that he was silent in his pain.
He always had been. Keep it inside, his father used to say after a
harsh training session. Which was all of them. One of the hazards of being born
to two high-ranking, militant battle angels who expected their offspring to go
down as legends, he supposed.
They’d been pretty disappointed in
him, given the whole fuck up an elite team and lose all their magic
gemstones thing. They hadn’t even visited him in prison. Not once.
Jedda shook her head. Her entire body trembled and dammit,
he couldn’t make her do this.
“Okay,” he croaked. “Get one of Shrike’s guys in here.”
Something inside him popped, and he stumbled, catching himself on the fireplace
mantel. “Hurry.”
“I’m not letting some psycho stranger hurt you!”
He coughed, spewing blood. She cursed, came around him, and
stripped off his shirt. She tossed it to the floor and started on his pants,
which he would have enjoyed if he wasn’t in agony and she wasn’t about to
torture him.
Something else inside him snapped––a rib, he thought, as he
dropped to his knees. Shit, he was in so much pain right now that the cat in
Jedda’s hand would feel more like a loving stroke than a vicious rake.
“Listen to me.” He coughed up more blood. “Any second now,
an angel will pop in her to administer the blows. They’ll kill you. You have to do this now.”
She hesitated, and he had to clench his teeth to keep from
screaming at her to get on with it. But then the straps came down on his back
so lightly he would have laughed if he’d had the breath to do it. It hurt, but
what pained him more was the cry that tore from her at
the sound of the leather striking his flesh. He was so preoccupied by the
misery he’d caused her that he almost didn’t notice that all his other pain
unrelated to the cat-o’-nine was gone now that the
punishment was being executed.
He sagged in relief. “Again, Jedda. Five more.” His voice
was as shredded as his back was going to be.
“No,” she whispered, her agony thickening the air, but a
moment later she slapped the cat across his back. The blow was gentle, which
somehow made it even worse. She was trying so hard not to hurt him.
“Again.”
“I hate you for this,” she cried out as she brought the
straps down.
He hated himself, too. But it would never happen again. Once
they took down Shrike, he’d take his sorry ass back to Sheoul-gra
and let her have a normal life. One where she didn’t have to hurt him or see
him hurt.
One where he didn’t have to watch her be hurt.
“Again, Jedda. Harder. The more painful it is, the more time
I get between sessions.” Usually. Sometimes the intervals were utterly random,
as far as he could tell.
“No. I––”
“Do it!” he shouted. He needed her to be harsh. Make it
hurt. Give him more time. And if he had to piss her off to get it, he would.
“Dammit, Jedda, fucking hit me!”
She did, a little harder. But barely. Then again. Her cry of
pain tore through him, reaching all the way to his soul, and when she struck
again, for the first time in his life, he screamed. Screamed not for himself
and his shredded back. He screamed for her, for hurting her so deeply.
“Oh, gods, I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, hitting the floor in
front of him to gather him in her arms. He clutched her close as the tink of tiny diamond tears hitting the floor played like background music.
“No, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I am so, so sorry. Please
forgive me, Jedda. Please.”
When she didn’t say anything, he knew, and the dull ache
that compressed in his chest became the most horrific
torture he’d ever endured.
She didn’t forgive him. But maybe that was for the best. It
would make leaving her so much easier.