Chapter Fourteen
Chapter
Fourteen
The journey to Shrike’s place, mostly via Harrowgate
with a little walking, was silent. Shrike’s goons weren’t the talkative type,
for which Razr was enormously grateful. And Jedda...she just seemed broken.
Because of him. Because he’d made her hurt him and because
there was no point in trying to earn her forgiveness or make her feel better.
The angrier she was at him, the better.
But it sucked. More than having his wings bound by gold
rope. More than being flogged on a regular basis. More than being kicked out of
Heaven in disgrace.
On top of it all, he was going to lose her. She would
eventually move on to a new male, maybe some hot fucking Legolas from Pandora.
Or whatever.
Fuck.
He kept an eye on her as they approached the ballroom where
Shrike was playing a game of darts. The dart board was unique, though: a
demon’s crucified body, with no discernible point system. Well, Razr would spot
Shrike points for creativity, as well as a handicap for his mental disorder.
Ramreels with their unholy
halberds stood like statues at evenly spaced intervals around the room, their
piggy eyes watching Razr and Jedda’s every move. They were big bastards, over
seven feet tall with thick muscles under their fur. Or did they have wool? Razr
had never asked, even though he’d encountered hundreds over the years. Ramreels were sort of all-purpose demons, common and
plentiful enough to form armies but capable enough to act singly as bodyguards
or even butlers. Apparently, they were even good cooks.
One thing they weren’t, though, was subtle. Not when they
resembled giant rams, carried halberds, and stomped their hooves on the floor
in anticipation as they were doing now. They wanted to fight, and the tension
in the room only fueled their bloodlust.
“We have what you want,” Razr announced, getting right to
it.
Shrike’s lips peeled back from his straight, white teeth.
Dude had a good dentist. “I knew you’d come through for me. Let me see.”
Jedda had carried the horn in a black velvet bag to the
castle, but now she gave it to Razr. She’d said she couldn’t touch quartz
crystal, but she hadn’t said why. Doing so would have required more talking
than she was apparently willing to do.
He reached into the bag and pulled out the heavy crystal
sculpture.
“That wasn’t easy to acquire,” she said, following the
script they’d worked out before leaving the apartment. Shrike needed to believe
she’d found it and not that Razr had borrowed it from Azagoth.
Shrike’s eyes, locked on the horn, glittered with greed.
“That’s why I hired you.”
“Hired?” Fists clenched, she took a step toward him as if
she wanted to throttle him. That’s my girl. “Seriously? Hired?
You gave me no choice. You forced me.”
“Forced?” Shrike asked innocently. “Such an ugly word. I
gave you incentive. But I don’t go back on my word.
I’ll pay, of course.”
“Yes,” Razr said softly, “you will.”
He moved toward the fallen angel as if to hand him the horn,
but with every step he drew on the power of the Enoch gem, power that streamed
from Jedda in a shaft of light that was blinding to him, but invisible and
undetectable to everyone else. The energy building inside him churned and
swelled, filling him with a unique ecstasy he’d not experienced for a century.
Battle lust scorched his veins, and anticipation made his
fingers flex. He’d needed this for a long time. This was what he was born to
do, and he had a lot of fury to unleash.
“Wait!” A familiar voice screeched from somewhere in the
building. The sound of running footsteps pounded
toward them. Could it be...
A female in black leather pants and a silver crop-top burst
into the great hall at the top of the grand staircase, her short chestnut hair
curling around pierced ears Razr used to nibble.
He stumbled backward in shock, severing his link to Jedda. “Darlah?”
“Razriel?”
They stared at each other, and he wondered if she was as
numb as he was.
“Darlah?” Jedda eased up beside him. “As in, Darlah?
Your gem angel buddy? Your lover?”
“Ex-lover,” he muttered. By the look on Shrike’s face, the
lover thing was news to him, and he wasn’t happy about
it.
“Someone had better explain what’s happening,” Shrike
growled. “How do you know each other? Besides intimately.”
Darlah, her face pale, didn’t take her golden
brown eyes off Razr as she descended the stairs. “Razriel
was one of the Triad.”
Suddenly, everything clicked into place. Holy…shit.
Razr’s ex-lover was the reason Shrike knew about the Azdai glyph. The bastard had been meting
out the punishment Darlah required. Clearly, she was also his source of
information about the Gems of Enoch. But he hadn’t known everything, which
meant Darlah had been sparing with the details. She’d
been smart to keep some things to herself, but Razr wouldn’t expect anything
else from her. He might have been the team leader, Ebel the brute force, but
she’d been the strategist.
“Darlah, what are you doing here?” He gestured to Shrike.
“With this insane motherfucker. Everyone thinks you’re dead.”
Laughing bitterly, she stepped onto the landing. “Our
Celestial brethren dumped me in the human realm with no protection. This
‘insane motherfucker’ provides that. Or did you expect me to beg Heaven to let
me back in without my gem? Ebel found his and they still killed him.
Imagine what they’d do to you or me.”
“Bullshit,” he snapped, angry at this betrayal. She’d been
hiding all this time, and worse, she’d been hiding in a psychotic fallen
angel’s tacky lair. “Ebel is dead because his stone was tainted by evil, not
because he returned to Heaven with it.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “And how was he tainted by the evil?”
Razr threw up his hands in frustration. “Obviously, he must
have bonded with the host. And because she was evil, he went insane and...” He
trailed off, sickened by the implications of what he’d just voiced.
A glance at Jedda, at the trauma in her expression,
confirmed his suspicion, and now it all made sense. Ebel’s proximity to Manda
and the evil taint of the stone had released evil in him, too. He must have
raped her, sealing the malevolence in his soul. When he killed her and took the
stone, the evil went with him, and he’d had to be destroyed.
How much of that had Jedda witnessed? No wonder she’d been
terrified back in Azagoth’s treasure room when she’d
learned the Ice Diamond was his. She’d seen an angel behave in the most heinous
of ways. And Razr’s own behavior hadn’t exactly been exemplary.
“It doesn’t matter,” Darlah said. “I’m not going back. But I
do want my fucking stone.” She snarled at Jedda. “I was close. So close. But
your bitch of a sister had powerful friends.”
Jedda sucked air. “You know who I am?”
“Fool,” Darlah spat, her lips twisted in an ugly knot of
rage. He used to kiss that mouth. Now he just wanted to gargle with kerosene to
get the bad taste out of his own mouth. “That’s why we chose you to find the
gemstones. We figured you’d know where to find Reina.”
“And if Jedda couldn’t? Or wouldn’t?” Razr shot back. “What
then?”
Shrike tossed a dart, and it made a sickening squishy noise
on impact with the dead demon’s third eye. It really was an impressive shot,
Razr supposed.
“We were hoping Jedda could find the bracelet as well as the
matching gemstone.” Shrike swung back around to Razr
and Jedda. “But if not, we figured we could still get Jedda’s Ice Diamond.”
“The Ice Diamond is useless without my ring,” Razr pointed
out. “And you couldn’t have known I’d randomly show up at the dinner party.”
Darlah laughed. “I admit, that was a stroke of luck, but I
would have found you eventually.” She held up her arm to reveal her severed
hand, making clear that she’d have done the same to him to get the ring.
Ah, shit. This situation could go bad, and fast, because
clearly, they’d been prepared to kill Jedda to get the stone, and now they were
prepared to kill or dismember him, as well. Wasn’t
going to happen, though. No way.
“Well,” Shrike said with a dramatic sigh––because fallen
angels were fucking drama queens, “I admit I’m at a loss. I’m not sure where we
go from here. I’m guessing you didn’t bring Darlah’s
gem and bracelet.”
“Even if we had,” Jedda snapped, “do you think we’d give
them to you now? You were planning to kill me, you bastard.” She pegged Darlah
with an accusing glare. “Bastards.”
“Darlah,” Razr warned, “you know Heaven is going to find out
about this. They’ll never let you back in.”
“Good!” She threw out her arms and her bound wings popped
from her back. They’d been beautiful once, white with shiny mink tips. Now they
were trussed like a roast turkey, with thick gold rope strangling the feathers
and bones. Razr’s looked like that too, and seeing hers made them throb. “Let
them find out. Let them sever my wings so I can have the power of the Fallen
when they grow back. This is where I belong.” She made an encompassing gesture.
“This is where I will make my name. Here I can rule demons instead of serve angels.”
“I’ve heard that story before,” he said, as every tale of
Satan’s rebellion filtered through his mind. “It won’t end well for you.”
“No, my love,” she whispered. “It won’t end well for you.”
Suddenly, a flash of light and a massive swell of scorching
heat slammed into him, knocking him into a pillar twenty feet away. Jedda
screamed as she careened off another pillar and into a wall with a sickening
crunch. Another blast hit Razr before he could recover.
Fire seared his skin, and the stench of singed hair filled his nostrils. Every
muscle screamed in agony at the cellular level from the impact of the energy
wave.
Only Shrike would have been capable of using that particular fallen angel weapon, and with Razr’s power bound
by angels, he couldn’t fight it. He needed Jedda.
He reached out with his mind for the power of the Enoch
gem... But there wasn’t so much as a spark.