Death Angel (Death Angel Series Book 1) (11 page)

Chapter Seventeen

“My apologies for my tardiness, once again,” Sebastian said as he stepped into Kasen’s office. He wasn’t used to making apologies, but when he was at fault, he would certainly take responsibility. Unfortunately, it felt like he was doing that a lot lately. He wasn’t going to tell Kasen why he was late, an unnecessary walk with Gabrielle. Unnecessary, but very much enjoyed. The more time he spent around her, the more he was certain and the more he became enamored with her. Which made this meeting with Kasen so much more difficult. He despised being anything but professional, and this situation that was growing between them would likely get very messy before things were all said and done. The best he could do at this point was ensure that he mitigated any damages to Gabrielle’s feelings.

“No problem,” Kasen said with his trademark congenial smile. “In fact, I must admit to getting here only a moment ago myself.”

“Well, good,” Sebastian said, containing his discomfort at hearing it. He knew why Kasen was late as well, or he could guess. He knew that he went out with Gabrielle the night before. The fact that he had probably been kept up late wasn’t a welcome thing for Sebastian to learn. It meant their date had clearly went well.

“You asked me here?”

“I’m afraid I’ve uncovered some troubling things,” Kasen said as Sebastian took a seat on the other side of Kasen’s desk.

“More anomalous missions?” Sebastian asked. He unbuttoned the jacket of his suit and made himself a bit more comfortable.

“Worse I’m afraid,” Kasen said, getting a bit more of Sebastian’s attention. “It appears these mission authorizations were all forgeries, as were the approval stamps of successful completion.”

“How is that possible?” Sebastian asked. “You must personally authorize each mission. And I personally stamp them approved once they are completed.”

“Indeed,” he said, his troubled look contrasting with the almost non-existent troubled expression on Sebastian’s face. “It took me a while to figure it out. I had to go back into my personal records. But I finally figured out these were all forgeries. Very good forgeries but forgeries nonetheless.”

“One of your subordinates?” Sebastian asked, assuming that Kasen had been thorough enough to do some digging into the situation before calling him here.

“Unfortunately I don’t think so,” Kasen said. He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his desk. “If that were the case, it would be easy to deal with.”

“I figured if you asked me to come here on the first day of the Death Festival there was a serious reason,” Sebastian said.

“These ‘missions’ were actually carried out,” Kasen said, throwing in an added level of concern. Sebastian sat forward in his chair. This was indeed concerning. To have the missions initiated but not carried out meant that it was possible there was a clear-cut case of incompetence or simple laziness on behalf of their subordinates. But if they appeared to be acted upon in any way, it meant that Death Angels were entering the Between and the living world without proper permission.

“Are you positive?” Sebastian asked. This was a serious problem. Not every trip to the mortal world was authorized, and for good reasons. If they affected the fabric of the mortal world too much, no one was entirely sure what the implications would be, though they were all fairly certain it would be rather traumatic. It was part of a White General’s job to assess the need for a mission, the riskiness, and outweigh the positives of it being carried out, versus the possible negatives. It was a Dark General’s job to ensure that the mission was carried out successfully and without incident.

“I’m afraid so,” Kasen said, looking gravely at Sebastian who was trying desperately to keep his cool.

“My men?” he asked, barely able to mask his utter rage at someone from his ranks so blatantly disrespecting his command. If he discovered one of his men was responsible, he would kill them. Slowly. Painfully.

“I believe the more serious issue is why they would want to do this,” Kasen said, keeping his tone calm to help keep Sebastian from getting more upset. “And to the extent that this has gone on for. There are dozens, hundreds of these phantom missions, spanning decades. Whoever is doing this is working on something big here.”

Sebastian reigned in his growing outrage to focus on what Kasen had said. He was right. It didn’t make any sense. What benefit would anyone have for going into the mortal world and the Between.

“Have you spoken to the Head General about this?” Sebastian asked, thinking through the next necessary steps in figuring out this mystery.

“No,” Kasen said. He fidgeted a little in his chair. “I thought it best for us to keep this between us until we know a bit more.”

“There are only a handful of people in the Death Angel Society that can pull something of this magnitude off,” Sebastian said.

“And even fewer that have been here long enough to go back as far as these incidents do,” Kasen said, following Sebastian’s line of thinking. It was a chilling thought and he knew that neither one of them wanted to say exactly what they were thinking. It meant that everything they worked for, everything they stood for, was in jeopardy. It meant that no one, not even the two people sitting in this room were above suspicion. Sebastian said what they were both thinking.

“It has to be one of the Generals,” he said. They were both silent, staring gravely back at each other. They both understood the gravity of this situation. One of their own, one of the most elite members of the Death Angel Society was committing one of the most grave offenses, and right under their noses, for decades.

“If it wasn’t for Gabrielle, I don’t think we would have even discovered this,” Kasen said. Sebastian had to fight not to bristle at the way he said her name. It was soft, reverent, like he was already falling in love with her. It was the way that Sebastian wished he could say her name.

“She is…,” for a moment, to the surprise of both men, Sebastian was left speechless, unable to express what he thought about her. For that single moment, his guard was let down and Kasen finally saw something in Sebastian that he had fought to hide from everyone. Kasen’s face softened with understanding.

“Yes,” he said, understanding Sebastian’s feelings perfectly. “She is.”

Chapter Eighteen

“I think we should tell him, El,” Aracella said as she lay on Eliot’s shoulder, their naked bodies plastered to each other. She could hear him sigh. They had been over this so many times she didn’t even want to think about it. But it weighed too heavily on her conscience. She had to tell him. He knew who she was talking about.

“You think Sebastian would ever be ok with it?” he asked. His fingers stopped playing in her hair. “You’re his precious little sister. He has big plans for you. Not to mention the rules that we’ve been breaking.”

“Sebastian plans to marry me off to some stuffy old noble,” she said, sitting up with a huff. She looked down at Eliot. He was her commanding officer, and their relationship was breaking a very serious rule in the Society. It was heavily frowned upon for a General to fraternize with a fighter in his own ranks. The reasons were obvious.

“You haven’t even told him you don’t want that,” Eliot said, sitting half way up on his elbows. He looked up at her with a less than pleased expression on his handsome face. He had wavy brown hair that looked as sexy slicked back as it did tousled around his face. His eyes matched the color of his hair, but they were deep, radiating a wisdom and thoughtfulness that made him irresistible. His body was toned and muscular, denoting his alpha position as a Black General. She had fallen in love with him from the very moment she laid eyes on him. And from the day he picked her to join his ranks, she had worked hard to gain his attention. They had been carrying on this affair for the past year, growing more and more serious over that time.

“What am I supposed to tell him, El? I just don’t want to follow tradition? That I’d rather bring shame on our family than marry that old man? I don’t see that going over well with him,” Aracella said with a shrug. She turned away from him and held the sheet to her body. She was already feeling so exposed right now, and though he knew every inch of her body intimately, she didn’t want him to see it right now.

“He broke tradition,” Eliot said, very matter of factly. She hated when he acted so casually about their relationship. He had told her many times before how he felt about her, but still sometimes she wondered if his feelings were as strong as hers.

“He can do that,” Aracella said with a hint of jealousy in her words. “He’s the head of our family. And a General. He can do whatever he wants.”

“He just wants you to be happy, Ara,” he said. He sat up fully on the bed, bringing his knees toward his chest and resting his elbows on them. He was completely naked and completely unabashed about it. Aracella envied him that he could feel that way.

“I’d be happy with you,” she said sheepishly. She almost didn’t want to say it. She was afraid at what his reaction would be.

“Hey,” he said, his voice turning softer. He waited for her to turn around and look at him. When she didn’t he reached over and pulled her back into his embrace. She let him, falling easily back into his arms. “You make me very happy. You know that.”

“Then why can’t we tell him? Why can’t we tell everyone?” she asked, her voice taking on a whining quality that she hated. This wasn’t how she wanted to spend this morning, but she couldn’t take things the way they were anymore. They had to sneak around to see each other, always having to find places to meet and watching their actions around other people. They almost never got to spend the night together and when they did, she was always worried that someone would find out. It was killing her. She knew that coming out with their relationship wasn’t going to be seen as appropriate in other’s eyes There would be punishments and repercussions. But at this point she didn’t care. She was torturing herself having to keep her relationship with Eliot a secret. It hurt her even more that he seemed to handle this so much easier than she did.

“Ara, you know why,” he said, his voice once again turning colder, more logical. “Sebastian is my colleague. That doesn’t mean he’ll be alright with me dating his little sister. You know how he is with you.”

“So you are afraid?” she said, spitting the words out bitterly. “You’re afraid of Sebastian, is that it?”

She knew it would eat at him, she was calling him a coward. The worst thing you could do to a Black General. But she didn’t care. She wanted him to hurt right now like she was hurting.

Eliot pulled away from her and got out of the bed. Aracella immediately regretted saying it. She had struck a nerve as she had aimed to, but it hadn’t made her feel any better. It had only hurt her more.

“I’m trying not to make things worse,” he said, his words short. “Sebastian doesn’t look kindly on any kind of inappropriateness. You know that. Do you think that me telling him that I’ve been fucking you behind his back is going to make him terribly happy with me? Do you think he’s going to allow me to marry you if I tell him that?”

“So that’s all this is? You just want to fuck me?” Aracella yelled angrily at him. She could feel the tears fill her eyes. She heard his argument and he was right. But she was still upset and she wasn’t ready to tell him that he was right, so she wanted to continue the argument.

“That’s not what I said and you know it,” he said, his jaw tensing. He was fighting to keep his temper in check and she could see it. She had nothing else to say to him. She had no argument left.

“Just leave,” she said, unable to look at him. She was angry and she just didn’t know where to place it, so she placed it on the only person she could, even though it hurt her even more to do so.

Eliot stood over the bed for a moment, looking down at her. Finally, he picked up his clothes off the floor, quickly and silently dressed himself and left her quarters without another word. As soon as she heard her door click closed, she let her tears flow freely. She cried loudly and angrily which eventually died down to a trickling self-pitying flow of sorrow as she hugged herself on her bed. Today was the first day of the Death Festival. A day that should have begun with the exchange of a gift to her boss, Eliot. She looked over to her desk, in a corner of her private apartment, where she had hid the small boxed present she had picked out for Eliot.

Her permanent residence was with her brother, but she had convinced him to get her this place, a small one bedroom in the ordinary worker’s quarters. She told him that as a woman she just sometimes needed her space. It hadn’t taken much convincing, especially when she started inviting girlfriends over to his home to visit her. Most of whom only wanted to go there to catch a glimpse of the famous General Black. He enjoyed his privacy as much as she did and she knew that would get him to relent.

Aracella wanted to go over to her desk and throw the small present into the trash. She had fights with Eliot before and she always hated them. But he had never looked so angry with her before. He had never simply walked out on her like that before. Her chest was painfully clenched and she found every breath was hard to take. She didn’t know if they would make up this time. She should have just kept her stupid mouth shut. She shouldn’t have called him out like that, accused him of being afraid of her brother.

She sighed and rolled over in her bed. She couldn’t force her legs to get her out of bed and walk over to the desk. A fresh round of tears began to roll down her cheeks. She wanted to get them all out now while she had time. Later today she would have to go to her Sebastian’s home for the opening celebrations of the Death Festival. She knew all the high-ranking Dark Fighters would be there to honor her brother with gifts, and Eliot would be there too. If she didn’t get all her tears out now, she wouldn’t be able to hold it together when she saw him.