Archangel of Mercy (27 page)

He wouldn’t give her Eblis’s name, but he could project an image of the pirates he’d eliminated. It was a long shot that Kala would know of them personally but her connections in this Galaxy were legion.

If there was a tribe specializing in such abductions, Kala was his best shot in hunting them down. No matter how much she despised the people of the Andromeda Galaxies, she wouldn’t be inclined to go to war over something she had no personal involvement or investment in.

Unless the order had come from her direct. He wouldn’t put it past her but his gut feeling was she was as completely in the dark as he was. And beneath that icy exterior she was steaming mad that something of this magnitude might be happening in the Seventh System without her spies having discovered it.

“This child,” Aurora said, her voice higher than usual, disregarding the glare he shot her way, “was taken because she has angelic blood.”

Great. She’d now blown to hell any hope of Kala’s cooperation. No matter what tenuous connection Aurora might believe existed between an ancient necklace and recent abductions—or the insidious knot of doubt in his own heart—it had been millennia since any mortal possessed a trace of angelic blood. Kala would conclude he was pissing her about.

Kala turned to Aurora and looked her up and down as if she was a disgusting cockroach that had just landed at her feet. If he didn’t appease the demon right now she was likely to liquefy Aurora’s brain.

“Kala.” He’d play on her disdain for humans. And deal with Aurora’s inevitable fury later.

He never got the chance. Kala raised one hand in an imperial gesture, her gaze now fixed on Aurora’s face. “The Andromeda minor has
angelic blood
?”

Fuck. She wasn’t going to make this easy. “It’s one theory we’re considering.”

“Yes.” Aurora’s voice was breathless but her conviction rang through. “She does.”

“The Nephilim were annihilated in the Great Cleansing.” Kala looked back at him, an unmistakable gleam of malice in her eyes. He tensed, knowing the majority of demons considered the genocide of archangelic offspring was something to be celebrated. “They haven’t existed for millennia before my time.” She paused, and her wings undulated in a sensual play of power.
“Officially.”

Chapter Thirty-six

O
FFICIALLY?
Shock stabbed through his chest at her blatant implication.

“What do you know?”

“Never been proved.” Kala shrugged one shoulder. “But there’s an underground cult. It goes back generations and we’ve never given them much credence. They’re obsessed by the notion that Nephilim still survive. Fuck knows why. But if your minor really does have angelic blood, and they found out”—she paused and exchanged a significant glance with the guard who’d accompanied them—“then it’s likely they risked abducting her. And if they have I’ll personally hang them with their own entrails. No filthy pirate tribe goes behind
my
back.”

“Not before I’ve interrogated them. We need the girl back.”

After Kala gave orders for the cult leaders to be rounded up, Aurora stood beside Gabe as a deadly silence descended. It didn’t appear to affect either Gabe or Kala but it screeched along her nerve endings like fingernails scratching across a chalkboard.

Finally, after what seemed like eternity, the guard reentered the room.

“Primus. The accused have been located.” Oddly, she spoke in English just as Kala had. It appeared the demon wanted Aurora to understand exactly what was going on.

“Bring them in.” Kala jerked her head at Gabe. “My jurisdiction, Gabriel. Don’t interfere.”

The guard, after another significant glance at Kala, handed Gabe what looked like a glittering earpiece.

“For your pet,” the guard said.

Gabe’s jaw tightened in obvious distaste at her being referred to as his pet, before he handed the earpiece to her.

“It’s a translator.” His tone implied that was a bad thing. Slightly awed, Aurora picked it up between finger and thumb.
Was this her Babel Fish?

Ten warriors, male and female, marched in, herding a motley group of six, and arranged themselves between the prisoners and the doors.

Kala strolled toward the one who appeared to be the leader. He sank to his knees and the others followed. Kala kicked the leader in the face, and blood spurted from his shattered nose.

“Found any Nephilim lately?” She tapped her bloodied boot on the floor. Taken aback, Aurora glanced at Gabe to see how he was reacting to the interrogation but he looked as if everything was just fine.

She had to remember where she was. Kala was a demon. Obviously this was the Fornax idea of justice.

The man babbled in an unintelligible language and Aurora tapped her earpiece. Wasn’t it working properly? Kala kicked him again, and Aurora heard the sickening crunch as his cheekbone splintered.

“Don’t address me in your barbaric lexicon.”

The man spat blood onto the floor and Aurora glanced away. She couldn’t work out how she felt about this treatment. If he’d really kidnapped a small child then he deserved everything Kala dished out. But she just didn’t want to witness it.

Kala appeared to be enjoying herself. Did that make the demon worse than her? Or did it just make
her
a hypocrite—wanting justice but not wanting to get her hands dirty?

“Nuh-nuh Nephilim,” the man spluttered between broken teeth and bone. “Leh . . . Legend.” The words were muffled but perfectly understandable even though Aurora knew, logically, he wasn’t speaking a language she had ever heard before.

Kala strolled to the next quivering pirate and gripped the female’s hair, jerking her almost off her knees in the process.

“We can do this the easy way,” she said, sounding deceptively pleasant. “Or I can hand you over to the archangel. If he gets inside your mind there won’t be anything left to salvage afterward.”

All the prisoners turned toward Gabe and their eyes showed their terror. God, what kind of reputation did an archangel have to cause such a reaction? Or was it because of the Nephilim connection?

Both?

“My Lady Primus,” gasped the captured female. “It’s our life’s work to seek out those descended from the cursed Usurpers of our forebears. To ensure justice for the wrongs against our ancestors. To stand up for—”

“If I wanted your manifesto I’d read your fucking literature.” Kala pulled a glinting stiletto from her ankle boot and casually sliced the tip across the prisoner’s exposed throat. A line of crimson appeared.

Involuntarily, Aurora gripped Gabe’s hand and he squeezed her fingers, probably to reassure her she was safe no matter what happened. But really, was this torture necessary? Why couldn’t Gabe just slide into their minds and extract the information they wanted?

Because this happened to be Kala’s jurisdiction?

The prisoner slapped her hand across her throat, eyes bulging with fear, and blood seeped between her fingers. Kala wiped her blade on the woman’s worn leather tunic.

“Where’s the Andromeda minor?” She released the woman’s hair and examined the tip of her stiletto as if searching for microscopic droplets of blood.

“We don’t have her, Lady Primus.” A third pirate shuffled forward on his knees and held on to the bleeding female. “For seven generations our lineages have searched for a Nephilim descendant. But it was never our intention to keep the creature. We searched by order of another.”

“Another?” Kala directed her blade within an inch of the male’s left eye. “Explain.”

He shuddered, but didn’t back off. “The Guardians.”

Gabe, still gripping her hand, was by Kala’s side before the male finished speaking. “You gave a child of archangelic descent to the Guardians?” His voice vibrated with incandescent fury. “You fucking piece of shit. You—”

Kala held up her hand. Incredibly, Gabe shut up. Aurora unclenched her free hand and tried to stop hyperventilating but her lungs wouldn’t cooperate. She’d been right about the connection. But now, as it was confirmed, she wished desperately that there had been another reason, another answer.

“Let me get this straight.” Kala sounded perfectly calm but her eyes glowed scarlet. “For seven generations your cult has been spewing the word of retribution for our demonic Fall from Grace. Right?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “But all the time it was a cover while you searched on behalf of the Guardians?”

“No. We’ve always believed in our Word. But the blood search, yes, Lady Primus. That was for the Guardians.”

Kala turned to Gabe. Her eyes were still red, her pupils slits of pure gold.

“They’re yours,” she said. “Destroy them now or take them back to the Andromedas. I’ll issue a hunt. Not one of their followers will remain alive in any of my Sectors. You have my word. Ensure it’s conveyed to the Andromedas.”

Gabe released her hand. He didn’t say a word, but the male who had just spoken suddenly collapsed onto his back, writhing in agony and clutching his head, foam bubbling from between his clenched teeth, blood trickling from eyes and ears.

She backed off, wrapped her arms around her stomach. The other prisoners appeared frozen, the warriors watched with avid interest and Kala appeared utterly unmoved by proceedings.

And she’d thought Gabe’s method of extracting information would be less brutal than Kala’s? More civilized?

He wasn’t human.
He had his own moral code and it wasn’t hers, would never be hers. He was an archangel, and he was seeking vengeance for the abduction of one of his own.

She couldn’t watch. She turned away, disgust and sorrow and a bleak despair churning through her blood at this irrefutable knowledge of how fundamentally different she and Gabe were. But did it change the way she felt about him? Could anything ever change the way she felt about him?

Didn’t these pirates deserve all this and more for taking a small, frightened child and handing her over to those monsters?

From the corner of her eye a flash of violet split the room in half. She whirled around, watched in paralyzed disbelief as the jagged scar wrenched open and a familiar silvery arm slid through, enlarging the gap.

She opened her mouth, tried to call Gabe but her lungs weren’t working, her throat closed up and nothing emerged but a strangled gasp.

Its body appeared. Its arm extended. And then it froze, and its silver-gray body began to dissolve as if it was some kind glamour, and for one eternal, terrifying second she saw the creature beneath. Flicking in and out of her conscious vision, as if it was in two places at once, in front of the shadow of its solid image and behind, superimposed on her retinas and yet impossible to get a concrete grip on in reality.

But it was there, behind its mask. And waves of unadulterated loathing smashed into her, causing her to stagger, and then unbelievably the creature began to retreat.

For a second she couldn’t comprehend and then, without even thinking about what she was doing, she darted forward.

There was no mistake. The creature recoiled, spitting mental venom, a horrific screech across her psyche.

Adrenaline pumped through her, banishing the last straggling remnants of terror. Something had happened, something had changed.
The Guardians could no longer touch her.

“
No
.” Gabe’s roar of denial vibrated around the room, and he gripped her arm, jerked her back. She knew she had less than a second before he teleported her to safety and she pulled herself free, panting as if she’d just run the four-minute mile in full combat gear.

“They backed off.” She chanced a glance over her shoulder and the rift had vanished. “They could have got me, Gabe, but it was like they changed their minds at the last moment.”

“The Guardians”—Kala was clearly holding on to her temper by the flimsiest of threads—“are prohibited from my domain. That wasn’t a random probe. They’re searching for your pet, Gabriel.”

“What do you mean, they backed off?” Gabe glowered at her as if he didn’t believe her or the evidence of his own eyes. “They never back off.”

“Yet they did.” Kala’s wings shimmered in outrage. “The question is why?”

Chapter Thirty-seven

I
DON’T
know.” Aurora’s glance snagged on the prisoners sprawled on the floor and her heart jackknifed. Had Gabe killed them
all
? She dragged her focus from the broken bodies and looked back at the archangel in front of her. And despite the evidence to the contrary that littered the floor, she saw only the man.

She would only ever see the man.

“I’m taking you home.” The look on Gabe’s face told her that once he had her there, nothing would induce him to let her leave the island again.

She backed up another step.

“No. Wait. Don’t you see what this means? Your protection
is
working.” He’d told her she had negated his protection by breaching dimensions. But clearly that wasn’t the case, despite the way it hadn’t held back the Guardians on Eta Hyperium. She had no idea why the dynamics had shifted but, incredibly, it appeared Gabe didn’t either. “It means I can come with you into their—wherever it is they live—to rescue Evalyne.”

“Is this really a
human
?” Kala sounded torn between disbelief and fascination. “It behaves like a fucking goddess. I’ve seen the aura of archangels’ pets before but they’ve never looked like
this
one.”

“You’re going nowhere near the Guardians’ Voids,” Gabe said, ignoring Kala’s remarks. There was a savage gleam in his eyes and a chill snaked along her spine.
What had he discovered from the pirates?
“It’s too late for Evalyne. Too fucking late.”

No.
She wrapped her hand around his biceps, whether to give or seek comfort she wasn’t sure. “They killed her before handing her over?”

“No.” The word sounded like he’d wrenched it from the pit of his being. “I saw everything when I invaded that pirate’s mind. They handed her over three months ago.”

It was horrible and she didn’t even want to imagine what terrors that poor child had been through, but why was he so sure they were too late to rescue her? “But you can’t know for sure she’s dead.”

“A
human
,” Kala said, “is questioning the word of the Archangel Gabriel and is still in possession of all its faculties? What’s going on?”

Gabe bared his teeth but didn’t respond to Kala’s demand. He kept his focus on Aurora.

“The Voids are devastating to archangels. We can’t enter and survive. If Evalyne truly possesses our blood then she died weeks ago.”

“What?” Had she misunderstood? “You mean you’d
die
if you tried to rescue Evalyne? How is that possible?”

He gripped her arms, pulled her close. “Through an agonizing process of disintegration until there’s nothing left.” He turned to Kala. “Let me know when you’ve exterminated the cell responsible.” And with that he teleported them back to his island.

—

GABE HELD ON
to Aurora after they arrived home, as if by releasing her she might somehow vanish. She didn’t try and escape, didn’t question why his grip was so hard she’d likely have bruises later. She simply kept her arms around him, her head against his shoulder, her body warm against his.

He closed his eyes and her scent sank into his senses, a soothing balm for his outrage against the pirates. But nothing could soothe the frantic thunder in his mind or the ugly fear that gripped his heart.

The Guardians had come for her again. And he, intent on exacting justice from the guilty, hadn’t been aware.

Ice shivered through his veins and he slid his arms around her, holding her so tight against his body that he could feel her heart as though it was his own. One frenzied thought pounded through his brain.
He could have lost her
. And would have lost her, if the Guardians hadn’t backed off.

In that second when he’d turned, when he’d seen the violet fracture, terror had exploded through his heart. He’d put Aurora in danger by taking her with him. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—lose her in such a way. And bound inextricably with the terror was a soul-destroying truth.

If he lost her to the Guardians, if she died because of his negligence, the fabric of his existence would unravel.

But it was more. He knew it even as he fought to deny it. Because it wouldn’t only be guilt at having failed to protect her that corroded his existence. It was the horrifying prospect of simply
losing her
that clawed through his heart and ate into his reason.

He didn’t need to question why the Guardians had retreated. He didn’t need to shift perspective and examine her aura in order to see what Kala had seen. He knew why the Guardians could no longer touch Aurora. He knew Kala had seen the glowing halo of love and devotion in her aura; something the demon would never have come across before. Archangels took mortals as lovers and gave them their protection, but not for millennia before Kala’s birth had an archangel . . .

Fallen.

The only way Aurora could be safe from the Guardians’ clutches outside his island was if she was an Immortal’s beloved.

Eleni was his beloved.

There was no ancient decree written in blood, but he’d always believed archangels could have only one beloved. Wasn’t that the way it should be? Archangels didn’t fall lightly. Surely such a love could be given just once in their long existence?

But it didn’t matter what he had once believed. Because against all the odds he had fallen again. For Aurora. And by so doing had given her the ultimate protection.

His love.

Guilt scored through him despite Zad’s assurance, that by loving Aurora he did not betray Eleni. Yet at the same time a deadly resignation unfurled. Buried deep in the black abyss of his heart, he had known of this outcome from the moment Aurora had tried to save him back in Ireland.

Why else would he have put up with her endless questions and refusal to accept his authority? Why else had he told her things that he had never told another living being? It was because, at primal level, he’d recognized she was his equal.

But he couldn’t tell her. Not yet. Not until he’d had time to come to terms with it himself. Telling her would force home the knowledge that she was mortal and he an archangel, and unlike his Eleni Aurora didn’t even have the advantage of archangel blood to extend her fleeting, fragile existence.

Vertigo stabbed through him, vicious and raw. This was why he’d denied it. Why he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it.

Because Aurora would die, and he would once again have to endure.

Except she possessed a soul
. That fact punched through him, a faint pinprick of light in a dank tunnel of eternity.
She could be reborn
. And he would search for her, life after life, eternal.

But he still didn’t want her to die.

Aurora stirred and with deep reluctance he loosened his grip on her. She eased back just far enough so she could look at him and her eyes enslaved, just as they had enslaved him the first moment he’d seen her.

“How do you know about the Voids, Gabe?” Her voice was soft as if, somehow, she knew the answer to her question.

He had told her so much of his life. As his beloved, she had the right to know everything.

Even if she didn’t know what she was to him. And whether she knew or not how long could he delude himself that she was anything less than the reason for his existence?

He didn’t want to talk about it. But knew he must. “After Eleni and . . .”
Helena.
He should tell her about Helena but he couldn’t. Because he still couldn’t come to terms with her death. “After she and the others perished, I lost my mind. Rampaged through the universe. Finally ended up on an obscure planet in the Fornax Galaxy just so I could plague the hell out of an obnoxious demon called Eblis.”

Her eyes widened. “Eblis?”

“I won’t bore you with the details of our decades-long feud. But during this time he was involved with a mortal who had a small daughter. Eblis was besotted with the kid. Anyone would think she was his own—except demons aren’t renowned for their great parenting skills.”

“What happened?” Trepidation filled her eyes and he knew that she had partially guessed.

“The Guardians abducted her. It was random. They had no idea a first-generation demon watched over her and even if they did it would have made no difference. She didn’t possess demon blood, Eblis hadn’t given her his formal protection, so in their eyes she was fair game.”

“So the ancient protocols apply to both archangel
and
demon?” The look on her face suggested that hadn’t occurred to her before.

“Yes. The big difference between us was every Nephilim birth was a rare and precious gift. Whereas demons rarely fell in love and the males more often than not had no idea how many offspring they’d spawned.”

“Did Eblis try and get her back?”

“He wasn’t there. But I was. Stoned out of my skull as usual. This little kid—she was cute for a mortal. Seeing her dragged into their teleportation device—the violet lightning—turned my guts. I could barely see straight but I plunged after her with only one thought in my mangled head.”

“To save her,” Aurora whispered.

He slid his hands along her arms and threaded his fingers through hers. So much of what had happened during those early centuries after he’d failed Eleni and Helena was a drug- and alcohol- induced blur. But he remembered leaping into the Voids. He’d never forget the time he’d spent in that hell.

“I fought the Guardians for her. Not something I’d recommend. But they finally relinquished their grip and I tossed her through the rapidly shrinking fracture. Right into Eblis’s arms. Then the fracture closed up and I was catapulted into the center of their cursed Voids.”

“Christ, Gabe.” Aurora sounded horrified. “You were trapped in there with them? What did they
do
to you?”

He knew what she was thinking. She was wrong. “Nothing. They can’t touch us, remember? Old protocols. They wanted me out. I was polluting their domain but here’s the thing. I refused to leave.”

“But what—I thought—”

“Within seconds of entering the Voids my skin started smoldering. But that’s nothing to what that place did to my wings. It was like acid seeping into the root of each feather, corroding it from the inside. Agony like nothing I’d ever imagined. And I embraced it.”

Her fingers tightened around his, trying to give comfort. Did she know that just being here, listening to him, was giving him more comfort than he’d known in millennia?

“With Eblis’s help, Zad, Mephisto and another archangel, Az, finally managed to track me down. It’s not easy breaking into the Guardians’ realm. By the time they found me I was half mad with the pain but still refused to leave. But they’ve always been stubborn bastards.”

“But you recovered.” He heard the anguish in her voice. He pressed her hands against his heart and offered her a tired smile.

“I was a mess. Not just physically. I’d gone beyond anything our archangelic powers of rejuvenation could handle. In the end they took me into the astral planes. The ultimate realm of healing and renewal.”

“The astral planes healed you.” Awe threaded her voice.

“It was a long shot but nothing else had worked. It took years. My soul in the astral planes, my physical body here, on this island, absorbing the healing vibes through the spiritual connection. Eventually I healed enough to return to my body but there’d been an unexpected side effect.”