Angel Eclipsed (The Louisiangel Series Book 2) (14 page)

He took it, and I pulled him out, using my hip to close the door. By the time I had glanced back up from locking his car, I realized he was just standing there, watching me. “What are you doing here?” he asked me.

I frowned. It was a good question, really, but the answer as simple. “I’m trying to keep you out of trouble. Looks like I was too late though,” I added, nodding at his lip.

Slowly, he ran his tongue over his lip, pausing slightly on the cut, all the while staring at my own lips. Then his eyes flicked up to meet mine. “You could kiss it better, you know.”

Trust me when I say, I really,
really
wanted to. But rules were rules. So I reacted in the only way I knew how to with Joshua. I swiped his forearm. “Quit with the flirting,” I scolded him.

“Ow!” he cried, rubbing his arm. “Have you been working out?”

“You deserved it,” I muttered. I may well be a supernatural being but I had barely touched him – I made sure of that. “Maybe we should go in?” I suggested. I offered out an arm as I stared at his swaying body. He took a step forward and then lurched at me, sweeping me up into his arms. “Joshua, put me down,” I ordered.

“Nope, not going to happen” he grunted at me with surprising determination.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked in exasperation as he carried me over to the stairs in a line which would never have passed a sobriety test. “You are going to fall and hurt yourself.”

“I’m not going to drop you,” he informed me as he fought against my squirming.

“I’m not worried about me,” I shot back at him

“Are you about to do that insecure shit girls do about being too heavy? Because you’re not.” As if to prove it, he jiggled me up and down a few times.

“At what point did this even start to sound like that?” I asked him as he started to climb the stairs. “Joshua, stairs. At least put me down while you’re climbing the stairs. I don’t want you falling backwards and cracking your head open.”

“I’m not going to drop you,” he repeated. “But you might not want to move so much.”

“Fine,” I huffed, crossing my arms. “You want to carry me; you go ahead and carry me. In fact, I hope you do fall and hit your head and then I can carry you up and put you to bed.”

“Why are you so desperate to get me into bed?” he asked me, wiggling his eyebrows.

I swiped at his chest. “Can you please just concentrate on getting up the stairs in one piece, please?”

Somehow, he managed it, although he didn’t set me down until I had unlocked the door and he had carried me in. I let out an exasperated sigh and turned around to face Joshua, jumping slightly when I discovered he was right behind me and staring at me with his bedroom eyes. “Joshua,” I said, giving him my best disapproving tone, even though my knees were suddenly feeling wobbly.

Then there wasn’t any distance between us. His hands slid around my sides, pulling me to him. I was about to push him away – I really was – but I caught the look of pure want in his eyes, and all of a sudden, I felt heady and I didn’t
want
to push him away. When his lips found mine, despite the fact I probably had the strength of ten men, I couldn’t push him away, even if I wanted to.

My hands took on a mind of their own, snaking up into his hair. He seemed to take it as a sign, and maneuvered me back to his couch. When the back of my legs hit the seat, I fell back with a gasp, the spell broken. Before he could see it happening, I had slipped out from his grasp and shot to the kitchen, placing the breakfast bar, the small dining table,
and
the couch between us.

“How the hell did you move that fast?” Joshua muttered, staring at the distance between us in disbelief. He started to run his hands through his hair, brushing his fringe back from his face, then suddenly his eyes widened. “Angel, I’m sorry,” he suddenly blurted out.

“It’s okay,” I muttered.

“You’re shaking. I can see it from here,” he said, running a hand over his jaw, the mortified expression never leaving his face. “I don’t know what came over me. I would never have forced myself on you – I thought you felt the same way too.”

“I know,” I hurriedly told him. “I should go,” I mumbled.

“Don’t,” he requested, softly.

I stared over at him, chewing sub-consciously at my swollen lower lip. Whatever had just happened seemed to have sobered him up a little. If there was one thing I knew about Joshua, it was that he liked to hide behind his feelings with flirting, particularly when it came to what I was. If there was one other thing I knew, it was despite how much he tried to hide behind that, his eyes could give him away. Right now, the remorse was darkening the blue, but the silver flecks remained.

“I promise to be on my best behavior,” he assured me, before letting out a long breath. “I’m sorry,” he apologized again. “I just feel better in your company.”

“Okay,” I said, reluctantly. “But only on the condition that you have a shower, clean up, and sober up.” He looked relieved as he nodded.

Joshua disappeared into his bedroom, leaving me alone. For the first time, I looked around the apartment, really taking it in. It was a mess. The counters were covered in a dozen different to-go boxes, and his coffee table was littered with empty bottles of beer. “What on earth have you been doing?” I asked the empty room.

The shower started up and I pulled open the cupboard under the sink, hunting out some trash bags. While Joshua showered, I set his coffee machine running and cleaned his apartment. I was just returning from taking two full bags of trash out to the communal waste area when Joshua stepped out from his apartment. “You’re still here?” he asked, surprised.

“Just cleaning up,” I said, stepping past him, back inside. I headed to the kitchen, turned the dishwasher on, and then located two clean mugs from a cupboard, pouring the freshly brewed coffee.

“You didn’t have to do this,” he said, accepting the mug. “You’re not my guardian angel anymore.”

Back to Gotham

I sighed and set my mug down, leaning back against the counter. “That doesn’t mean I stopped caring, Joshua. My job was to protect you, and I did a terrible job of it. You deserve much, much better. Sticking around, turning up at crime scenes, interfering in your work? That’s not helping you. That’s getting you in trouble: I heard Leon the other day. I shouldn’t have been at that crime scene.”

“He thinks you’re a psychic,” Joshua said.

I rolled my eyes. “Oh please, he doesn’t think I’m a psychic any more than he thinks that you’re going to be the next Queen of England. Now drink your coffee.” I watched him take a few sips and folded my arms. “So what’s going on with you?” I demanded.

“Nothing,” he responded, warily.

“Nothing?” I repeated. “You’re telling me that this is normal behavior for you? Your place was a dump, I found you on the floor of a bathroom, drunk; this is the third time I’ve had to come to your rescue and I’m fairly confident that even though the amount of beer bottles decorating your table would indicate you had friends here, you drank them all yourself,” I listed. “So, what’s going on with you?”

“Nothing,” Joshua repeated, more forcefully this time. “No one asked you to keep saving me. No one asked you to clean up my apartment. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. You have no need to anyway.”

“As I have
just
pointed out to you, just because I’m not your guardian angel anymore doesn’t make me stop caring,” I told him.

“I never wanted a guardian angel, and I never asked for one. You were just assigned to me,” Joshua snapped at me. “I was doing fine before you turned up, and I’ll do fine when you finally leave me alone.”

Internally, I winced: he was a mean drunk. Outwardly, I kept a poker face. “I tell you what,” I said, my voice calm. “You drink up that coffee and go to bed, and I will leave and go straight to Michael to turn Radio Joshua off.”

“Deal,” he snapped. He gulped the coffee down and then slammed the empty cup onto the side next to the sink. Joshua stomped into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him. I would have laughed at the immaturity of it, if it weren’t for the fact he was doing it to get me to leave.

I sucked in a deep breath and flung what was left of my coffee into the sink. Carefully I pulled the door to the dishwasher open, even though it was mid-cycle, taking care not to let the water splash everywhere, and quickly slipped both mugs in. I started towards the front door, and then stopped. With a long sigh, I changed direction and headed to Joshua's bedroom door. I rapped gently. When there was no response, I pushed the door open, poking my head in.

Joshua was already on the bed, passed out. Quietly, I sneaked in to turn his lamp off. The room descended into darkness. “What is going on with you?” I asked the sleeping form. “I would love to know…” I trailed off. There was a way that I could find out what he was thinking.

Whenever I had gone to sleep thinking about someone, I had inevitably found myself in their dreams. Maybe that was what was needed here. I knew I needed to leave Joshua alone, but I couldn’t do it until I knew he was going to be alright. Before I could talk myself out of it, I got myself comfortable on the couch and willed myself to sleep.

* * *

In front of me was Gotham City. I wrapped my arms around myself, already starting to regret this decision. It was the night Hurricane Tabitha made landfall. I was back here again. I didn’t even need to look down at myself to know I was in the same clothes I had been wearing that night. I could feel my hands start to shake – every cell in me was telling me to get out of there. I closed my eyes and took several deep breathes, trying to calm myself. If this was where Joshua was, I wasn’t going to run away again.

When I opened my eyes, I found Joshua in front of me. “What are you doing here?”

“I should be asking you that question,” I muttered.

“I’m trying to understand you,” he replied.

“Me?” I repeated in surprise. “Then why are you here? I thought you couldn’t remember what happened?”

“I can’t,” Joshua agreed. “But I do know that you’re acting weird, and this is where it all went wrong.”

I
was the one acting weird? I stared up at the structure mimicking Gotham’s City Hall and scowled. A large part of me wanted to tell him that it was a pointless waste of time. However, when I looked over, and saw those deep blue eyes watching me, hopeful, I instead took a deep shuddering breath and stepped forward. “Alright, let’s get this over with.” Without waiting for Joshua, I walked into the building.

The room was backwards. Joshua should have been tied to the chair facing me. Instead, the door opened up to a room where Joshua was sat with his back to me. I took a moment to get my bearings then, remembering this was Joshua’s dream, I realized that this would have been the view from where he was.

The first thing my eyes fell on was Joshua himself, bound to that chair with thin black cable ties digging tightly into his wrists. From here I could see what I hadn’t been able to that night – that the ties were so tight, they were chaffing at his skin, drawing blood. Pulling my gaze upwards, I focused on the woman standing in front of him. I remembered her being beautiful, but my last memory of Lilah was of the life leaving her eyes. It shouldn’t have bothered me half as much as it did, but the fact that Joshua had also remembered just how beautiful she was – how the silken fabric of the dress clung to her gorgeous figure – for some reason that bothered me. By my sides my fingers curled into fists. Regardless of the fact she had been inhabiting the body of an innocent girl, I really wanted to punch her.

There was a groan of pain from Joshua, and in an instant, I was behind the chair, reaching to break the ties free. Instead, my fingers went through him.

“You can’t change anything,” Joshua announced. It took me a moment to realize the voice wasn’t coming from the version of Joshua bound in front of me, but rather from the one standing just to my side. I looked over at him, frowning. “Trust me, I’ve tried,” he added. “The fact is what happened, happened.”

“I know,” I muttered.

Joshua gave me a sad smile and reached for my hand, tugging me back. Even in his dream, the warmth shot through me. I glanced up at him, catching him staring at my hand with a thoughtful look. When he noticed I was watching, he gave me a smile and nodded his head at Lilah. “I don’t know how long I had been unconscious for when I woke up here,” he explained. “But this is my first memory of what happened in here.”

I turned my attention to the Memory-Joshua and saw he was blinking, giving his head quick shakes as if to clear the cobwebs, and wincing from pain. All of a sudden he must have remembered that he was tied up, because he was struggling at his restraints, the muscles in his arms straining as he tried to break the plastic.

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

Memory-Joshua, Dream-Joshua and I looked up at Lilah at the same time. “I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but the NOPD won’t negotiate with you. And they certainly have better things to be doing during this hurricane,” Memory-Joshua ground out at Lilah.

Lilah gave him a smile which made my blood run cold. “You misunderstand,” she told him. “What I want is nothing that the NOPD could possibly provide me with, even if I did want to negotiate with them. And the reason this hurricane was brought to New Orleans was so the police would be so distracted that they wouldn’t notice that you were missing until it was too late.”

“Then what do you want?” Memory-Joshua asked, looking confused.

“Your girlfriend,” Lilah, informed him, flashing him a sickly-sweet smile.

“I don’t...” Memory-Joshua trailed off, his struggling stilling. “Angel.”

Lilah grinned. “Ding, ding, ding!”

Memory-Joshua leaned back into his chair, and grinned back at her. “Good luck with that one. Angel got out of the city with her aunt before the storm hit, and she doesn’t have a phone.”

Lilah leaned into him, and although her next words were said quietly, I could hear them clearly. “You’re a good liar, but we both know you’re not speaking the truth. There’s no way a guardian angel will leave the charge she’s protecting.”

Memory-Joshua’s eyes widened. “You’re the first,” he realized. “Lilah.” When she smiled at him, his eyes narrowed. “I will kill you before you lay one hand on her.”

“You seem to be confused as to who is in charge here,” she told him. Then she punched Memory-Joshua in his stomach.

As he slumped forward, gasping for breath, I tried to pull myself free of Dream-Joshua’s grasp – I knew exactly how much strength Lilah had because I had the same – but somehow
my
strength was suddenly lacking. “It’s a dream,” Joshua assured me, his grip tightening. “It doesn’t hurt.”

I glanced back at him. “No, but I can tell it did.” In front of me Lilah grew blurry, and I allowed Dream-Joshua to pull me back to him as I watched her. When she came back into focus she was holding a dagger. I couldn’t help but wince as she leaned forward and grabbed Joshua by his hair, yanking his head up. I had witnessed this part from outside as I had watched from the window, and I glanced over my shoulder expecting to see me there. I wasn’t: Joshua hadn’t seen me.

“I have a mission tonight,” Lilah started to explain, drawing my attention back to her. “And I will succeed in it. But I’m going to have some fun in the process.” She gave a twist of her hand, causing Joshua to gasp in pain. “I think I will start with you.”

I knew what was coming next but I couldn’t look away as I watched Lilah stab that dagger into his shoulder. His cries had me tightening my grip again. It was a good job this was a dream as I was certain Dream-Joshua should also be in pain from how tightly I was clutching at his hand.

Still standing over him, Lilah smiled. “That sound sends tingles though me,” she said. “Do it again.” Memory-Joshua gritted his teeth and I watched in horror as Lilah took her time twisting the blade, his anguished cries cutting through me as much as the dagger was through Memory-Joshua.

The scene froze. Breathing heavily, I turned to Dream-Joshua. He was watching me carefully, and it took me a moment to realize he was also tracing circles with his thumb over the back of the hand he was holding. “I didn’t think it would be this hard for you,” he said quietly.

I met his stare. “At what point did you ever think I would be able to watch this and it not affect me?” I asked him.

“I’m sorry,” he responded. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

I stared back at him, studying him. He looked torn; he wanted to know what had happened, and yet I could tell he was getting worried about me. I glanced back at Memory-Joshua, finally shaking my head. “Let’s do this,” I muttered.

He gave my hand a squeeze before he resumed tracing circles. “This is where it starts to get hazy,” he admitted as the scene in front of me started to move again.

He was right. Before my eyes, Lilah turned blurry. The blur started pacing back and forth in front of Memory-Joshua, and then she froze. At first I thought Dream-Joshua had frozen the scene again. Then I saw that Memory-Joshua’s attention was focused on the main entrance where I was standing.

I glanced over at Memory-me, and ended up doing a double take at the image in front of me. I remember that night clearly. I had been outside in the hurricane for hours before I had gone running around an abandoned theme park. In the process, I had driven one of the convent’s SUVs into a ticket kiosk, destroying it. The accident had given me a nasty cut to the forehead – the rain had constantly been washing the blood down my face – and climbing out of the wrecked vehicle through a broken window had given me more cuts and tears to my clothing. I’d seen myself in the hospital afterwards, before my wounds had completely vanished from my supernatural healing ability, and even faded, it was easy to see I had been a mess.

Memory-me was far from being a mess. Although I was clearly drenched, the suit was clean and in one piece; my hair hung around my face, rather than being plastered there; and instead of resembling the walking wounded, I seemed to be glowing. With my bow taking aim at something behind Joshua, I looked like some kind of warrior.

Without really realizing I was doing it, I took half a step towards Memory-Me, staring in bewilderment at what should have been a mirror image. The suit clung to me like a second skin and instead of showing that I was a few pounds overweight, my figure looked incredible. Especially my cleavage, which was definitely more on show than the suit actually revealed.

I’m not the most confident of girls when it comes to my looks. Don’t get me wrong, I would consider myself pretty, but the way Joshua saw me was certainly not what I saw when I stood in front of the mirror. Judging from this, he thought I was... hot.

Feeling my cheeks heat up, I kept my attention focused on what was happening. I could feel Dream-Joshua’s eyes on me, but I refused to look at him. Memory-me was firing an arrow. It took me a moment to work out that the reason I was suddenly blurry was because I was moving so fast, rather than because Joshua was having trouble remembering what had happened.

From behind Memory-Joshua, a black blur suddenly appeared and fell to the ground. Apparently Joshua hadn’t been aware that anyone had been in the room with him and Lilah until that point. Memory-me already had another arrow trained on Lilah, but her attention was directed at something behind Memory-Joshua. All of a sudden, the second of Lilah’s henchmen appeared just behind Joshua. “You take another step and she won’t have a head.”