CHAPTER TWENTY
KENNEDY
The Firehouse isn’t exactly what I anticipated.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly isn’t this. The Firehouse is a dive bar that somehow manages to be both completely mundane and absolutely terrifying at the same time. From the outside, it looks like a combination biker bar and some faux-vintage fire station.
The moment Jenna and I step inside, I’m assaulted by a barrage of sights, smells, and the most horrific sounds imaginable.
“What the hell is that sound?” I ask as we push our way through the crowd. On instinct, I grab onto the back of Jenna’s tattered top. This doesn’t look like the kind of place I would want to get lost in.
“I’m going to guess someone or something fighting down in the Pits.
” Her answer is nonchalant as she points over to where a substantial crowd has gathered around the mezzanine banister to look down into the fighting area.
Although the moment she mentions the fighting pits, my mind races back to Reaver.
This is where he fought for his freedom.
“I need to see,” I announce as I pull away and run over to the onlookers. I push my way between two vicious-looking demons who sniff the air and growl as they look down at me.
“Human,” one tusked behemoth snarls, and my heart stops until he gives me what I can only assume is a smile before he makes room for me in front of him.
I give the monster a tentative smile. “Thank you,” I reply with a shaky voice.
Reaver said that he fought in the pits for his freedom.
I always pictured something along the lines of a gloves-off boxing match, but the scene unfolding below isn’t even close to what I imagined.
At best, it’s a blood-soaked massacre with a referee.
I watch, stunned, as one fighter rips an arm clean off his opponent and tosses it into the chanting crowd as if it were a foul ball at Fenway.
My hand quickly comes up to cover my mouth as I do my best to keep from vomiting. “Oh my God,” I mumble and jump as a hand comes down on my shoulder.
“What the hell are you doing over here?” Jenna scolds. “Are you looking to be made into some creature’s next meal?”
“I…” I stumble on my words. “I just wanted to see—”
She cuts me off before I can finish my sentence. “Gabe and Alastor are upstairs waiting for us,” she adds as she pulls me away from the railing. My ogre friend sniffs the air toward Jenna, and I watch as his upper lip lifts into a snarl.
Jenna pulls me through the crowd, weaving in and out between all manner of beings.
I can’t help but stare as we pass creatures I couldn’t make up in my wildest nightmares.
Unlike The Black Door Club, which requires all on the floor to at least visibly pass for humans, The Firehouse apparently has no such requirement, and I realize how foolish I was to run off to see the pits on my own.
The crowd in the main bar area is like something out of the wild west. Fights are breaking out, and I hear the smashing of a glass as it meets some unlucky soul’s head.
And just when I think I have this place figured out, we reach a set of pristine white lacquer stairs that wind up to the second floor.
There’s a velvet rope blocking the entry, and no one seems too bothered to go up.
Jenna pays no attention before stepping over it. I follow suit and catch up with her.
The moment we reach the top step, my mouth hangs open in shock.
If the main bar area is the Wild West, this is LA in the eighties.
Pink, green, and blue neon lights illuminate the walls at what can only be described as a retro eighties bar, looking as if it were plucked directly from the set of Miami Vice.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” I mutter, quoting Alice in Wonderland, because I have certainly gone way down the rabbit hole this time.
Gabriel is leaning against the illuminated lacquered bar, sipping a blue drink out of a hurricane glass, complete with a little umbrella.
He’s changed out of his tattered and threadbare clothing and now sports a pair of black leather pants and a skin-tight black T-shirt.
I hadn’t noticed much about his looks, other than he was skin and bone and on the brink of death in Pesta’s fortress.
But it appears that his immortal angelic DNA has done him good.
He looks like a bigger, scarier version of Jason Momoa.
Alastor, a man I’ve heard of but never met, plays bartender behind the bar.
“Ladies, welcome. Two Blue Hawaiians, the house specialty.” He’s already placing two more hurricane glasses on the bar.
“Asher and his crew will be here in a bit. You ladies might want to relax. You’ve both had quite the journey. ”
Jenna is already wrapping her arms around Gabriel, and I watch as he tenderly kisses the top of her head, whispering something to her.
Whatever it is, she blushes and gives him a wide smile before playfully hitting his stomach.
“Behave,” she scolds, and I can feel a surge of emotions rush through me.
Fighting back the tears that are threatening to spill out of me, I march over to Alastor, who seems to be oblivious to the situation.
“Relax,” I scold, slamming my hands on the bar.
“Perhaps you’re unaware that Reaver has gone to sacrifice himself to Pestilence.
Who happens to be one of the four horsemen of the fucking apocalypse!
” I scream, not caring who hears me, not that anyone could over the blaring sounds of Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
Alastor has the audacity to hold out the fruity drink. His amber eyes fix on me, and I resist the urge to shrink back. There’s something predatory in that gaze, something that reminds me these men—no matter how human they appear—are weapons designed by Heaven itself.
“I’m aware.” His voice is stern with an accent I can’t quite place. “Cain has already filled me in, so sit, have a drink, I’ll get you some clothes, and you can take a shower. When Asher and everyone else get here, we’ll discuss our next steps.”
I’m about to argue when a wet nose nudges my leg. The thought of what it might be has me about to jump out of my skin when I look down to see a cute, skinny and scruffy floppy-eared dog.
“Ohhh, hey there,” I coo, bending down to scratch it behind the ears. “What are you doing here?”
“She’s Reaver’s,” Gabe answers from behind me.
“What? What do you mean she’s Reaver’s? He doesn’t have a dog,” I add, more for myself than to Gabriel.
“Apparently, he found her on his way to rescue you. He made it, by the way. But you know, Reaver… he’ll bargain his life for everyone else’s.”
“I give him a sad nod. “Yeah, I know Reaver.”
A shower and some new clothes later, I feel much more like myself, except I’m dressed like some warrior princess about to take down the Heavens and possibly start the apocalypse.
“Do you want that drink now?” Alastor asks with a smile as he hands me a Blue Hawaiian before I can even think of refusing.
“Do you have anything stronger?” I inquire. “Somehow, I don’t think this is going to cut it,” I add, taking a long sip through a pink straw.
“Of course, he does, but that shit will kill you.” I hear a familiar voice from the stairwell. I turn to see Michael, and right behind him, my oldest and dearest friend in the world, Salem. She doesn’t waste a second before running across the room and grabbing me in a hug.
“Oh my God! I thought…” Her voice cracks as she holds me tighter. “I can’t believe…” Her voice is muffled beneath her quiet sobs. “Thank God you’re here. How did you escape?”
I’m about to introduce Jenna when Michael spots Gabriel and Jenna wrapped around each other at the end of the bar.
“Well, fuck me sideways!” the usually reserved Michael yells across the bar. “They’ll let anyone in this place.”
Gabe looks up with a smile. “That’s the only reason they let you in.”
Over the next hour, The Firehouse slowly fills with the most terrifying collection of beings to ever walk the earth, or wherever the hell we are. And considering I’ve spent the last few days in the seventh level of Hell, that’s saying something.
Jaxon arrives next, a massive Blood Angel with dark hair and arms covered in intricate tattoos. He takes one look at Gabriel and immediately pulls him into a bear hug that lifts the other man off his feet.
”You stubborn son of a bitch,” Jaxon says, his voice thick with emotion. “Do you have any idea how unprofessional it is to just drop off the face of existence without so much as an email?”
“My deepest apologies for the inconvenience,” Gabriel replies dryly, and I’m starting to see glimpses of who he was before Pestilence tried to break him.
Zachriel arrives next, and for a moment, visions of his poster on my college dorm room walls flash before my eyes.
I knew Zachriel not only from his music but also from hearing his name around The Black Door Club.
When he sees Gabriel, he simply nods once, a gesture that somehow conveys more emotion than any words could.
Asher walks in with a woman I recognize —Sloane, his wife. She’s human, which makes me feel slightly less out of place. Asher’s reaction to seeing Gabriel is similar to the others’ disbelief, followed by fierce joy.
These men clearly love their fallen brother, even after so long apart. “This is insane,” I lean in and whisper to the group of women who have joined me over by the floor-to-ceiling windows. We all have drinks in hand as we watch the reunion unfold. “They’re acting like—”
“Like they’re getting the band back together?” Salem finishes with a grin, and we all laugh. “You ready for this?” she asks.
Taking another long sip from my drink, I shake my head. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here. How can I even help rescue the man I’m stupidly in love with from one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Just saying it out loud sounds insane.”
Salem snorts. “When you put it like that, it does sound a bit insane.”
“A bit?”