Angel's Blade (2 page)

Nathaniel sat up, thinking hard. “You
believe Samael’s death is a sign, don’t you?”

Orifiel switched off the stove and
carried the stew to the table, carefully setting it down on the iron trivet in
the center of the old wood. “Of course. How can it not be?” he asked, sitting
down and dishing food onto Nathaniel’s plate.

Nathaniel watched his father for a
long moment. “I don’t know, Dad.”

“Samael was evil. We all knew it,
but none of us were strong enough to stop him.”

“Until Gabriel,” Nathaniel said.

“Until Gabriel,” Orifiel agreed. “He
saved us. He saved the angels from their long, slow decline and made us into
what we need to be.”

“And what precisely is that?”
Nathaniel asked, toying with his spoon. He didn’t look at his father directly.
Sometimes Orifiel offered more answers when he didn’t feel like he was being
pressured.

“Warriors of God,” Orifiel replied
softly.

A sudden chill ran down Nathaniel’s
spine. “Warriors?” He frowned, not liking the direction of his father’s
thoughts. “I’m human, Dad. I’m not a warrior.”

Orifiel looked at him, eyes direct
and sure. “You will be.”

****

When the large wooden door opened,
Gabriel was the last person Zeke expected to see on the other side of the
threshold.

“Gabriel,” he began to say, then
had to clear his throat. It had been so long since he’d seen another angel, he
felt suddenly terrified. If his cousin turned him away…

“Zeke!” Gabriel’s face broke into a
wide grin. “Dear God, what are you doing here?” he asked, stepping back and
opening the door more. “Come in out of the cold. Why didn’t you tell us you’d
be coming for a visit?”

Zeke stood in the cold, unable to
move. How did he explain that he wasn’t just visiting? How could he make that
final step into the warmth and light, when he’d been so cold for so long?

“Gabriel? What are you doing
letting out all the warm air? You know how much energy it takes to heat this
mausoleum.” Gabriel’s sister, Ariel, came striding up. When her eyes landed on
Zeke, she fell silent, mouth opening in surprise.

“Hello, cousins,” Zeke said, voice
rough. He deliberately chose to call them kin, in order to remind them that he
was part of their clan, if not their family. He hoped they’d understand and not
kick him into the cold for his presumption. He had little hope that they’d
remember him from the few times their grandparents visited his, bringing the
children together.

“Ezekiel! Oh my God,” Ariel
exclaimed, then she flung herself at him, wrapping her arms tightly over his
stiff leather. “Why are you just standing there? Come inside, where it’s warm.”

Zeke blinked, tentatively hugging
her back. He struggled to act normal, but he’d never expected them to welcome
him so kindly. He thought he’d have to beg.

“Come on,” she said again, letting
go and dragging him through the doors unceremoniously. “You must be freezing!”
She grabbed his hand. “Hell, you
are
freezing.”

He glanced at Gabriel, feeling dull
with cold and disbelief. His cousin looked back steadily. Zeke saw nothing but
compassion on his Gabriel’s face. No anger, no recriminations. Zeke frowned,
even as he let Ariel pull him into the light. He didn’t want pity. He wanted a
home.

“You’re going to scare him away if
you keep shrieking like that, Ariel,” Gabriel finally said, almost as if he
understood exactly what Zeke was feeling. He swung the huge front door shut and
smiled, all traces of pity disappearing. “It’s been a hell of a long time,
cousin.”

Zeke swallowed, hard. “It has.”

“Take off your pack and your
jacket. Did you eat?” Ariel tugged at him.

Zeke couldn’t help himself. He let
her drag him through the foyer that had always intimidated him as a child and
off through a side door. To his surprise, they ended up in the kitchen where
two men sat bickering amiably over a table set with the remains of dinner. Zeke’s
stomach rumbled. The men left off their argument and stared as Ariel dragged
Zeke into the room.

The smaller of the two men stared
for a heartbeat, then stood up slowly, his light blue eyes bright with
something more than just the reflected light from the chandelier.

“Set down your burdens and know
that you’ve come home, Ezekiel,” the man said, reaching out his hand and
sweeping it across the room.

Zeke frowned. How did he know his
name? “Do I know you?” He asked uncertainly. He’d met so many people in his
travels he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t met this person before. What was this
angel doing welcoming him to Castle Archangel when Gabriel was supposed to be
Alpha? Was Samael still alive? God, he hoped not.

Gabriel came up behind him. “Zeke,
meet Raphael, our Omega,” he said formally.

Omega? Zeke glanced at his cousin,
confused. Overwhelmed. “A true Omega?”

Gabriel smiled. “Omega and mate to
the new Alpha.”

It took a few long seconds, but
then Zeke suddenly understood. The rumors were true. His cousin, the new Alpha,
had just told him that he was gay. Zeke took a deep breath, heart hammering in
his chest with relief. He didn’t give a damn if his cousin was gay or Alpha or
anything. He just wanted to be allowed to stay. He turned back to Raphael and
smiled, then held out his hand. “I’m very happy to meet you, Omega.”

Raphael smiled as if he hadn’t
doubted Zeke’s reaction for a moment, and shook his hand firmly. “Call me Raphael.
I can’t deal with the Omega thing all the time. It gets silly.”

Zeke understood. Raphael didn’t
want anything that distanced himself from the others. No true Omega wanted
that, because that kind of distance kept the angel’s healer from truly
understanding what healing was needed. “Of course, Raphael. Please call me
Zeke,” he said, voice only shaking a little. “My grandfather was Ezekiel.”

Raphael nodded. The man he’d been
arguing with had stood up and walked closer. “This is my brother, Suriel.”

Zeke held out his hand. Suriel
shook it firmly. A tiny spark of something pricked at Zeke and the muscles
along the back of his hand twitched as he let go. “Nice to meet you.”

“I’m a sorcerer. Sorry about the
little buzz,” Suriel said, sounding sheepish. “Sometimes it builds up and I don’t
notice. Like static electricity.”

“A sorcerer? That’s impossible. I
thought that was a myth?” Zeke asked, glancing at Gabriel for confirmation.

“It’s true,” Ariel said, smiling. “Suriel
is a sorcerer and my mate. I’m a sorceress, now, as well.”

Zeke looked from Ariel to the man
he’d just met, not sure if he should believe them. “My little cousin, a
sorceress?”

She nodded, sliding her arm around
Suriel’s waist. “Truth.”

Zeke almost closed his eyes, the
relief and joy that swept through him were so strong. “This is good news,
indeed.”

“No need to be so formal, Zeke.”
Gabriel clapped him on the shoulder. “Take off your pack, sit down. We have
cake tonight.”

“Cake and warmth and family,” Zeke
murmured, sliding the straps of his beat up canvas pack down his arms. “I’m
truly blessed this moment.”

Gabriel took his pack from him,
looking at the sword only a moment, then he set it aside, near the door. “Sit.
Have a drink.”

“Where have you been, Zeke?” Ariel
said, leading him to the table. “We feared you’d gone forever.”

He didn’t even know where to start.
“After my family faded, I travelled. I never really stopped.”

“Ten years?” Ariel sounded shocked.

Zeke shrugged and sat down. “What
else was I supposed to do? Samael was in charge. I had no family.”

“We were still your family,”
Gabriel said, sitting down near him.

“You were a boy. I was not.” He
shouldn’t have to explain this to Gabriel.

“Our parents would have taken you
in,” Ariel said, sliding her hand into her mate’s.

“I was grown. What would there have
been for me to do here?” Zeke ran a hand along the table’s edge. The wood was
warm. Welcoming. “It was time for me to find my own way, hard as that was.”

“And did you?” Gabriel asked,
cutting another piece of cake. He handed it to his mate and Raphael set it down
in front of Zeke.

“I found out that the world is much
larger than I thought,” Zeke said, taking the fork Ariel passed to him. Just
before he slipped a piece of cake into his mouth, he noticed Suriel studying
him. “What are you looking at?”

Suriel lifted a shoulder. “A very
weary angel.”

Zeke smiled around the first piece
of cake he’d had in years. “Truth.”

“Whose sword do you carry?” Suriel
asked, glancing at the pack near the door.

Zeke swallowed the sugary dessert
and put the fork down. He hadn’t tasted anything so divine in years. “The sword
is mine, but it’s flawed.”

“How so?”

“Every blade I create shatters with
use. I can make a human weapon, using human technology, with little difficulty,
but when I use the techniques my father taught me, nothing goes right.” Zeke
hated to say these words. They tasted like ashes in his mouth. He’d wanted to
come here and offer his talents, but he had nothing worth giving to these
angels.

“You know how to make angelic
weapons?” Raphael asked, surprise in his voice. “I thought we’d lost that art.”

Zeke shook his head. “It
is
lost. I know everything my father and grandfather knew, but at the final
moment, the blades shatter.” He sighed and pushed the plate of cake away.
Seemed a shame to waste it, but he couldn’t eat now. Not when he had to admit
his failure to the only family he had left. He looked at Gabriel. His cousin
watched him steadily, face neutral. No hint of what he was thinking showed.
Zeke gathered the last of his courage and said what he’d come all this way,
after all this time, to say. “I come to beg a place as one of your guard,
Alpha.” Instead of waiting to see what Gabriel would say, he bowed his head and
put a fist to his heart.

Several long heart-stopping moments
later, Gabriel replied. “Of course you may stay. But, Zeke, we live in
dangerous times. Demons walk among us once more.”

Zeke glanced up. “Demons have
always walked among us.”

“We fought to close two portals
these past several months. One of them was in the depths of Castle Archangel
itself,” Ariel offered quietly. “Do you really want to stay, knowing that it
isn’t safe here?”

She didn’t understand. None of them
did. He’d already faced demons inside his own mind and lived to fly out the
other side. “I would rather die here, at your side, protecting you than go into
the wilderness again, alone. I have nothing left.” He sensed them exchange
glances.

“You can have your grandfather’s
old chamber,” Gabriel finally said.

A tension Zeke didn’t even know he
carried eased inside him. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, Zeke.” Gabriel
laughed shortly. “As of now, you’re my guard captain, weapons master, and
weapons maker.”

Zeke looked up. “Captain?”

“Do you know how to use the blades
you make?” Gabriel asked.

“Of course.” Zeke didn’t
understand. Gabriel already knew his father had taught him everything,
including the martial arts of the angels. Why ask him a question to which he
already knew the answer?

Ariel laughed. “You don’t get it,
do you Zeke?”

He shook his head. Maybe the warmth
and the sugar were getting to him, but he failed to see what was so amusing.
All of them were smiling.

“By the time Samael died, the
angels who had been guards had either left, faded, or died. We have a
bare-bones council, a few of the older folk to advise us, and we have younger
angels, teenagers, living here. That’s it. You’re the only other mature angel
here at the castle,” Raphael explained quietly. “There are clans of angels
scattered across the country, but here, in the heart of our people’s ancestral
home, there is only us.”

“Died?” Zeke whispered, disturbed. “Your
parents?”

Ariel nodded sadly. “Our mother
lives, as does Suriel and Raphael’s, but the rest of the men, those who
supported Samael as well as his most outspoken opponents, either died or faded.
Our people have been slowly disappearing, as if God has taken their souls back.
Are you sure you want to stay with us?”

Zeke stood up, feeling suddenly
certain. More certain than he had felt in the last ten years. “I am sure. I
have nowhere else to go. And if I am needed, well, how can I refuse my strength
to your aid? It is what I wanted, anyway.”

“Then stay, and be most welcome,”
Raphael said quietly. “We are happy to have you.”

Zeke nodded, his heart hammering in
his chest. Their words had the taste of ritual to them, as of old, when angels
did not lightly commit themselves to a cause. “I won’t let you down,” he
murmured, needing to speak the promise aloud. He bowed his head. Honor and
strength were all he had left to offer his People. He hoped Gabriel understood
that. When he looked up again, his cousin’s face had smoothed into a sort of
pained neutrality, as if he were hiding too much regret and pain to truly be
calm.