Eve of Chaos (15 page)

One thing at a
time. Sabrael. Eve. Himself.

Hand to his
stomach, Alec still felt the tearing of the seraph’s boots through his
entrails.

Black leather.
Spikes.

An idea formed.

He shifted to
another part of the building and paused, eyeing the lone blonde on the indoor
shooting range. Tucked away in the bowels of Gadara Tower, the range provided a
convenient place for Marks to hone their marksmanship. Silver bullets were
still the swiftest way to vanquish werewolves.

Sensing his
perusal, Iselda Seiler—Izzie, as the other Marks called her—turned her head and
met his gaze. She set her gun down and removed the glasses and hearing
protection that was less critical for Marks than mortals, but still necessary.
She studied him with a now familiar odd intensity that had taken him some time
to become accustomed to. There was an air of expectation about her, a sense
that she was searching for something in his speech or expression.

His gaze lowered
from the kohl-rimmed blue eyes, to the purple-stained mouth, to the spiked
leather collar around her neck.

Malice made him
smile. “I have a task for you, Ms. Seiler.”

Her eyes
glittered. “I’m at your service.”

Eve wished she
could cry. As it was, she felt as if her heartbreak was bottled up inside her,
building in strength until something exploded.

“Ugh.”
Abandoning the drawing table, Eve moved to the desk and woke her computer. She
logged into the Gadara Enterprises system and opened the file that contained
her report of the Upland incident. When she’d been told that the mark system
kept secular records as well as celestial ones, she had been shocked at what
she considered a security breach waiting to happen. But both Gadara and Alec
had assured her that a divine hand protected the information. God liked the
status quo.

As she refreshed
her recollection of the report, she noted the sidebar with various links that
ran along the right side of the main text. There were reports from Reed and
Mariel—both handlers who’d lost Maiics to the heithounds—as well as the guards
who’d been present, Alec, and Gadara himself. It was the latter she was most
interested in, so Eve clicked on it. A password prompt box appeared and she
frowned.

What would
Gadara use as a password?

Archangel.
God. Celestial. Mark. Christ. Jehovah. Bounty hunter Christnws.

Nothing worked.
Eve growled. A warm breeze moved over her skin. Her eyes closed.

Reed.

She reached for
him, into him, farther than was necessary, running the name “Raguel” through
his mind to see what stirred.

He who
inflicts punishment upon the world and the luminaries.

“That doesn’t
help.” she muttered.

Eve was drawing
a supporting column in her preliminary sketch when Montevista shouted from her
living room.

“Hey, Hollis!
Wanna play?”

She finished the
precise line before answering. “No, thanks. You two go ahead.”

“Aww, man,”
Sydney complained. “I’m getting tired of kicking his ass at Wii tennis.”

“Try the
bowling.”

She glanced at
the clock on the wall. Staying focused for longer than fifteen minutes was
impossible when she felt as if her world was falling apart. In her mortal life,
her brain would have overridden everything and allowed her to lose herself in
her design work. As a Mark, her body was a machine that no longer listened to
her brain. The mark tapped into her roiling emotions and channeled them into a
nearly overwhelming desire to run, hunt, kill...

Alec
dismissed me as
f
I meant nothing to him.

Quit
digging,
he admonished, with warm amusement.
I’ll be there
soon, and you can ask me what you want.

Breathing
deeply, Eve closed her eyes and reached out to Alec. She moved tentatively,
furtively, like a blind person searching through an unfamiliar room.

Until she was snatched
by thick, talon-tipped fingers and tossed into the darkness.

Alec’s mind was
like an ocean in the midst of a hurricane. Eve was tossed, battered. Dunked beneath
the surface, only to emerge gasping. How would she ever find anything inside
him? She couldn’t even find Alec.

What do you
seek?

She ceased her
thrashing. The voice was only vaguely familiar, yet alluring in a way only
Alec’s could be. Floating among the flotsam of his emotions, she waited with
bated breath for another word from him that might reassure her.

Ah, pretty
angel. You seek Raguel here?

Alec?
she queried, still wary. The voice was Alec’s, but the
inflection was not.

Who else
would it be? You want Raguel. One of the holy angels, who inflicts punishment
on the world and the luminaries.

Yeah, I heard
that already. Give me something new

Luminaries,
angel. Now come see me. Give me some gratitude.

You kicked me
to the curb,
she reminded, reaching
out to Reed for the leverage to pull herself free.

Makeup sex is
the hottest.

We haven’t
made up.

The sea of
madness churning around her rose up like a tsunami, dragging her with it to the
very peak.

Eve.
Alec’s voice at last, furious and frantic.

He threw her out
of his mind like a bouncer would a drunk at a bar.

Startled
upright, Eve opened her eyes. She punched out
luminaries
on her
keyboard.

The computer
screen flashed, “Good afternoon, Raguel.”

“Luminaries,
eh?” she muttered, hating that Gadara’s sojourn in Hell was the reason she was
able to snoop without fear of repercussion. The report opened and she leaned
back in her chair to read, her hands rubbing at the goose bumps on her arms.
How awful that Alec—the one man who had always made her hot—now left her cold.

Eve quickly
scanned the brief text. It was only a few pages and focused more on Reed’s
uncustomary behavior than on the actual documentation of the events surrounding
the discovery of the mask and tengu.

...
argued extensively about assigning Evangeline Hollis
before training..

…lack of
objectivity..

…too
emotionally attached..

…overreached
his position and approached Sara kiel for use of her personal guards...

Eve’s fingers
dug into the flesh of her thighs. Reed.

He’d made a deal
just as Alec had. But for what purpose? For her? Or for Sara, who’d been his
lover for many, many years? Sara had benefited from her team’s support during
the raid that night, with added prestige and expanded duties. Gadara believed
Reed had done it for Eve.

The true dilemma
in her relationships with both Alec and Reed wasn’t monogamy or honesty,
although she most often cited those. Really, it was trust. She didn’t know how
much of their wanting her was ambition and how much of it was desire. As long
as the two brothers continued to clash over her, she was a valuable pawn to
more than just Gadara.

The feel of firm
lips pressed to her nape made Eve jump in her chair. The flick of a tongue sent
a shiver along her spine. She hit the key on her keyboard that pulled up her
e-mail screen and concealed Gadara’s report.

“How are you
doing?” Reed murmured, his breath a gentle caress over her moist skin.

“Fine.”

“No, you’re
not.” He spun her chair around. “You can’t lie to me. I feel you. I’m sorry I
bailed on you earlier.”

Eve tilted her
head back to look up at him. He’d shifted her home, then taken off immediately
afterward. “Don’t apologize. I know you have twenty other Marks to worry over.
I’m just glad you came when you did.”

“I’ll always be
here for you.” Reed caught her wrist and tugged her up, pulling her toward the
futon she kept against the wall. He sat and gestured for her to take a seat
beside him. “Tell me what happened.”

“Don’t you
know?”

 
“You shut me out.”

“Really?” She
twisted sideways to face him. “And I wasn’t even trying.”

He mimicked her
pose, tucking his right leg onto the seat and tossing his arm over the back of
the futon. Her gaze was caught by his Rolex, because of both the beauty of the
white gold against his olive skin and the surprise of an immortal concerned
with the passing of mortal time.

“Cain pissed you
off.” It was a statement, not a question.

She made a
careless gesture with her hand. “No. He told me to get lost. Apparently I’m
boring when I’m not putting out.”

There was a beat
of silence, then, “He
broke up
with you?”

“That’s a kind
way to say it”

Reed’s gaze
roamed the length of her and paused on her ripped waistband and belt loop. He
grew dangerously still. “Did he hurt you?”

“Not in the
physical sense, no.”

“He breaks
things, babe. That’s what he’s always

done.”

“There’s
something wrong with him.”

“You’re just now
figuring that out?”

“Be serious.”

Reed’s
fingertips touched her cheek. “I am.” Eve stared at him for a long moment,
waiting for some sign that he was playing with her or being less than serious.
There was none. All she saw were warm brown eyes filled with compassion. He
wore a graphite gray shirt today, open at the collar with rolled-up sleeves, as
usual. He was an impossibly handsome man, physically perfect. But it was his
imperfections that really did a number on her.

She leaned into his touch. “What do you know
about archangels?”

His hesitation was nearly imperceptible, but she
was looking for it. “Are you digging for anything in particular?”

“Is there any part of the change that would
make someone more aggressive than usual?”

“Cain. Is. A. Dick. Period.

“Listen to me. Don’t judge.”

“Fine.” He couldn’t have sounded more disgrun
tied.

“I know Alec
Cain. But Cain the archangel.
. .
I
don’t know him at all. They’re not the same guy.”

Reed’s lips
thinned, then he exhaled harshly. “You’ve known Cain three months total, with a
ten- year gap in between. Why won’t you consider that he was on his best
behavior for a while and now the effort is wearing thin?”

“Time has
nothing to do with intimacy. You can be around someone for years but not really
know them at all. The reverse is also true.”

“I think he’s
fucked you into believing whatever he wants.”

Eve bit back
harsh words. Reed wasn’t trying to be an asshole, he was simply tactlessly
blunt. “You can learn a lot about a person when you’re making love to them.”

He snorted, and
she realized he might not know anything about that.

“Making love is
for girls,” he said coldly, confirming her suspicions. “Guys fuck. We’ll do
whatever it takes to get into the pants of a woman we’ve got a hard-on for.
Cain is no exception.”

“Then do this
for me. Dig into ascensions and see if any possible explanations jump out at
you.”

He froze, his
nostrils flaring. “Damn, you’ve got balls.”

“You can’t tell
me you don’t feel the mess inside him. We’re all connected. There’s something
in him that wasn’t there before.”

“He’s the same
as he always was’ Reed bit out. “He just has more power and less reason to play
nice.”

“You talk a good
game,” she shot back, “but that’s all it is. I want to know what’s inside him.”

“I don’t think
you do.” He held up a hand when she opened her mouth. “Say no more. I’ll ask
around.”