Angelic Sight (4 page)

“I swear to God if you don’t put that damn phone down I’m going  to insert it into your ass with the damn thing turned on vibrate and  watch you squirm as I call over and over,” Keer threatened from his  place beside him.

Brax looked up. “Well, that’s not very nice.”

“Pay attention, IT,” Axis said, amusement lacing his voice. Brax  looked at his feet, embarrassed.
 
Crap
. Axis’s attention returned to  Erik. “That’s great, Erik. How about you picture a weapon? Think of  all your video games. Any handheld one will do. Imagine it in your  fist.”

That had been really hard for Brax, too. He’d been more easily distracted then than he was now, and that was saying something.  Something started forming in the fire, growing rapidly, morphing into a big blue-white fireball of potential.
 
Come on, Erik. Come on. You can do it
. The silent cheering seemed to bring fruition. Slowly the blue flame hardened into a semblance of a geometric shape.

Erik’s aura fluctuated dangerously. “Axis,” Brax warned an instant before the world exploded. Brax threw up his shield but still

felt the heat come off the ignition. The sod they’d just gotten in the

backyard was so toast. Levi was going to kill them.

“Erik! Put it out!” Axis shouted. Brax couldn’t see. He was

blinded by a blaze of white heat. Spots danced in his vision.

“I don’t know how!” Erik yelled, panic thick in his voice.

“Think about blowing out a candle!” Brax bellowed. It had  worked well for him. The fire got brighter.
 
Shit
. Well, that had been  the opposite of helpful.

Marius’s voice cut in. “Erik!” The formerly fallen was about to  break formation. If he did that, there was no way they could contain  the fire.

“Stay in place, Marius,” Brax begged. The heat suddenly  vanished. Brax still couldn’t see, though. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Keer rumbled. “Can anyone see?”

“I’m okay,” Erik said weakly from somewhere to Brax’s left. “I  blew out the candle. Can’t move.”

Axis groaned. “At least the fire is out. He spent the rest of his power.”

Finally Brax was able to see, though the colored spots still danced through his vision. “How did everyone else fare?” he asked, looking around the circle.

The first thing he noticed was Marius’s thunderous expression. He turned on Axis, who was kneeling beside Erik in the center of a black scorch mark. “
Never
 
again. Do you hear me, Axis? Never fucking again. He learns at the facility in a safe room with safeguards in place or not at all. Nephilim power is too unpredictable, and we were ill prepared for it. Axis, this was half-assed and—Axis?”

Brax’s eyes widened as he noticed what Marius had. The right side of his shoulder and some of his neck was burnt from an ugly bright red to a scorched black. “In this one instance, Marius, I’ll agree with you on waiting for a facility,” Axis said through gritted teeth. He looked like he was in pain but was trying to hide it. No doubt he didn’t want their nephilim to know how bad he was hurt.

Erik’s whole body trembled. “That was crazy,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I thought it was good for a minute, but I lost it.”

“It happens,” Axis said. His voice was calm, but Brax could hear the strain in his voice. “I should’ve made you practice stabilizing your powers first before I had you manifest. I pushed too far. Let’s get you up and in the house.”

Keer stepped forward and scooped Erik up off the ground and carried him into the house with his long strides. Brax and Marius immediately went to their leader’s side. Brax hissed as he looked at the burns. His shirt was burned right into the skin of his shoulder.

Axis panted as the door shut. “Help me to the garage. We’ll cut off this shirt and try to clean it up a bit. I don’t want to destroy Erik’s confidence in his abilities.”

“Axis, you need a healer,” Brax said. He should’ve been paying  more attention. Maybe if he had, Axis wouldn’t have gotten hurt.

The Elite draped his good arm around Marius’s shoulders. “I’ll  see what we can patch up, and then I’ll shift. It should heal most of  the damage.”

Brax shook his head and followed after them. “That’s angel fire,  Axis. You won’t heal enough. You need one of Raphael’s healers. Or  let me call Scepta.”

“We don’t have the capital for a healer, Brax. Scepta is expensive,  and I won’t risk calling one of Raphael’s here. I’d have to file a  report, and we still don’t have enough excuses to be able to keep our  location from the hunters. If they know a bunch of Elites are shacked  up with nephilim, they’re going to ask why. I do not want to draw  their attention to Erik and Levi.” Axis gasped as Brax accidently  brushed his arm. Through gritted teeth he continued. “All right, let’s  get me into the garage and get this taken care of.”

“This isn’t how I wanted to see you shift,” Marius said sadly.  They’d been saving the shifting for the facility. They were planning  on going Sunday and giving Marius a show and a tutorial on shifting  before they started work Monday.

“It’s all right, beautiful fallen,” Axis soothed. “It won’t compare  to the display we’ll give you this weekend. All of us together are  something else. I promise.” Axis looked over at Brax. “Thanks for the  warning about Erik’s aura. I wasn’t focused on his mind, only on his  power. If you hadn’t shouted, I would’ve taken that fireball to the  face.”

Brax sighed. “Wish I would’ve been quicker.”

They stumbled into the door that led into the garage, and Brax went over and manually flipped on the lights. The garage was pretty empty for the most part. The bench they’d set up had a few tools on it, but that was about it. Thankfully, the bench did have a decent pair of scissors on it. Brax snatched those up and returned to Marius and  Axis. Axis had sat down on the lawn chair they’d stashed in here during the rainstorm a few nights ago.

“Let’s get the shirt off you,” Brax said. He gently started cutting.  Marius looked a little sick over the whole thing. “It’s going to be all right, Marius. Seriously. These kinds of things are expected. We’ve been injured much more severely when fighting demons. Trust me, hell fire is a lot harder to heal.”

Marius nodded but still looked queasy. “Just brings back a lot of bad memories. It’s the smell, I think.” He shook his head as if to clear

it. “So demons, huh? I’ve ran across a few when I became fallen.

They’re like biker daddies on steroids. All attitude.”

“The ones on Earth actually aren’t too bad. For the most part they’re solitary, or at least not interested in causing too much trouble.  It’s the ones that have descended to hell that crop up as bands of rebellion that are the worst to deal with,” Axis said. It was good that he was talking. It probably distracted him from the fact that Brax was peeling off pieces of shirt and skin. “When they start taking over human populations and enslaving them, that’s when the Elites are called in. We’re resistant to hell fire, but it still is a bitch to heal.”

The garage door opened suddenly, the metal grate sliding up.

Crap
. Levi and Jade were back. The Range Rover pulled inside, and

Jade cut the engine. The frown on his face said that he knew something was up.

The two unbuckled their seat belts and climbed out from the car.

“What happened?” Jade asked automatically. “Hunters?”

Levi paled, beginning to shake. “Do we have to run again?”

Axis shook his head and schooled his expression to something  softer. “Not at all, angel. We were teaching Erik to use some of his  power, and we got a little slack about it.”

Jade opened his mouth and started lecturing. “You
 
know
 
better,  Axis. You can’t just halfway teach a new angel their powers. He has  hours of meditation practice before he’s ready for the harder stuff.”  He looked at Axis’s arm. “Angel fire? Seriously? Angelic weaponry  isn’t a beginning skill, Axis.”

“I know that, Jade,” Axis snapped. “His training hasn’t even  begun yet, and he’s well past the age he should’ve started learning.”

“That’s my fault,” Marius said softly, his voice a stark contrast to  theirs.

Brax shook his head. “No, Marius. You did the best you could given the circumstances. He already has pretty good control thanks to you. He’ll learn to be better.”

“He poked a hole in his aura,” Levi murmured, staring at Axis. “I see it. Burnt you bad.” He shuffled forward and raised his hand as if to touch the scorched skin. “Erik didn’t mean to. He pulled it back.  Blew out the light like a candle.” Brax shivered as Levi repeated what he’d said before but couldn’t possibly know.

“Levi?” Jade asked. “Do you see it, angel?”

Levi nodded, seemingly still lost in his own thoughts. “It hurts when they poke through that layer of aura and peel it back like that.  But Erik wasn’t being cruel. Angelic power is just like that. It wants you bare.” He looked into Axis’s eyes. “It’s not the last time you’ll be burnt like this. The next time it’ll hurt more.” His eyes went to  Marius. “Mar, can you get me some water please?”

The sink attached to the workbench was only a step away, and  Marius wasted no time in running some water into one of the extra coffee cups they kept on a shelf for him. Instead of drinking it though,  Levi dipped his fingers into the water. The water turned from clear to silver and shimmering almost instantly. It looked like the stars had been stirred into the liquid.

“You have to wash away the bad futures. If you keep this scar, others will join it. I don’t want you to be hurt, Axis,” Levi murmured, pouring his water over the side of Axis’s neck and shoulder.  Everywhere the burns were was drenched in Levi’s shimmering concoction. The glow brightened to blinding for an instant before it faded, revealing bare skin without a blemish on it. Levi smiled.  “There. The future is good again.” He turned to Jade. “Bring in the groceries and decorations for me?”

Jade nodded, looking stunned.

“Good.” With that, the little nephilim turned and walked out of the garage and into the house.

“Holy shit,” Brax whispered, touching Axis’s bare skin.

“Holy shit,” Marius echoed.

“I’ve never seen healing like that,” Jade muttered, looking thoroughly confused. “There was no ripple, no reformation.”

“He didn’t heal me,” Axis said. “He undid the event. He made it

so it didn’t happen.”

Marius shook his head. “I don’t understand.” Brax didn’t, either.

He’d seen some extraordinary things, but this was something else.

Axis stood. “It’s like he ripped time apart and rearranged it to not include the burning. I don’t know how to explain it. I felt it undo, like my body was taken out of the moment and put back seconds after so that it didn’t happen. I’ve heard of legends that spoke of such things, but I’d have to consult someone of Uriel’s line. The scholars would

know.”

Brax considered the situation. “Maybe it was because he was awakened before he came of age. I know the hunters that caught him

woke up his angelic powers so that he went through early  transformation. It’s not technically against their laws, though it is  frowned upon. Maybe that changed something about his power. I  mean, we’ve met his father. There is no way he got that power from  him.”

“Agreed,” Jade said. “Our lover is hiding much more than I  thought he was if he can do that.”

“Don’t mention anything to him for now. Brax, e-mail Daisis in  the morning and ask what it could be. The archseraphim should know  what direction to point us in,” Axis said. He walked over to the  Rover. “Unlock the back so we can get the groceries into the house.  IT, see what you can get from the online sources just in case Daisis  isn’t sure.”

Brax nodded. “No problem, Commander.” He followed Axis over to the back of the car and was surprised at the number of black and orange bags displaying the logo of the Halloween store that had set up shop in the plaza. “We’re decorating?”

“Levi wanted to. Since next Friday is Halloween, I figured it would be okay,” Jade said. “I made room for it in the budget.”

“It’s fine. He needs a little normalcy,” Marius said before anyone else could comment. “It’s our first holiday that we actually get to celebrate, so bring it on.”

“Couldn’t have phrased it better myself,” Axis said, gathering up bags. “Everyone take a few.”

Chapter Three

Marius would never get used to the absolute knowing that took place inside him every time he looked at his new lovers. There was a deeply animal part of him that said without a shadow of a doubt that they were his mates, and his other side, the part that was all angel, should just hush with the doubts and get with the program. That part of him was growing stronger with each passing day. It seemed to be driving him toward something, but he wasn’t sure of what.