Hellsbane Hereafter (16 page)

Geez, I hated that. My dad, my real dad, the man who raised me, used to say,
no one said life was fair
. “Whatever. I just don’t think killing some college kid is the best plan.” I couldn’t do it, and not just because it would be like shooting Bambi. The kid was too innocent and clueless to even know he was in danger until it was too late. More than that, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I
shouldn’t
kill him. No one should.

“It’s not your call.” Michael turned his hands palms up in acquiescence. “Your access to the boy and your free will to use your power as you choose makes you uniquely capable of dispensing a justice we seraphim believe is necessary but aren’t free to mete out.”

“But what if you’re wrong? I mean, Jukar said Abram couldn’t accept his destiny until I embraced mine, and according to Jukar, my destiny is to protect Abram. I don’t know, it just seems too neat and tidy. The one person who’s able to kill him is conveniently placed as his protector? Something doesn’t feel right.”

Michael sighed. “Stop over-thinking it, girl. You’ll hurt yourself. Just do as you’re told.”

Do as I’m told? Ass.
I bit my tongue and pushed to my feet. I’d had enough of this conversation. I’d had enough of everything. “Maybe I should just kill Jukar instead. Without his manipulation, Abram would be a normal college kid. That
is
what I was born to do, right? And as an added bonus I’d get a semblance my life back, and you guys could take Eli home.”

He shook his head, licked his lips, then pinched them dry with one hand. “That arrangement is no longer possible.”

“Which part?” I dropped onto the bench next to him, my knees giving out.

“I told you, banishing your father will not return you to the ignorance and normality you once enjoyed. That possibility vanished the moment Jukar severed your connection to my sword and you took my brother into your bed.”

I looked away. “I know. But close to normal is better than nothing. Better than this.”

I couldn’t complain. I had known there would be consequences when I gave in to my feelings for Eli. What Jukar had done to me was just an extra ticket on the endless crazy train that had become my life. “Whatever. Killing Jukar would still be better than hurting Abram. He hasn’t done anything. He’s just a typical know-it-all college kid.”

“No.” His gaze became distant, as though he searched his own thoughts. “Killing Jukar won’t stop what’s already been put into motion. Whatever his plans, there’s no doubt this child of his is only the latest step. Besides, it would expose your cover, and I want you to continue reporting what you learn in his employment.”

“You can’t make me,” I said defiantly. “I’m still half human. I still have free will.”

“You’re right. Refuse if you like. I’ll find a way to push the little bastard to use his angelic powers and command one of my brothers to end him.” He stretched out his legs, resting his big feet on the bench below, crossing his ankles. “Abram will still be dead, and Eli will be the next Fallen hunted. Count on it.”

“You’d hunt him? Single him out, just because I won’t do what you want?”

“Yes.”

Angels were such assholes.

“And if I kill the kid? Will you take Eli back? Restore his grace?” I scooted closer to the angel. “No more trading info for his forgiveness. I kill Abram, and Eli goes home.” I just wanted to hear him promise. I wouldn’t take the deal—
probably not.

The archangel met my eyes, his mouth a flat, serious line. “Agreed. Provided Elizal sins no more, I will answer his prayers and bring him home.”

“His prayers?” I blinked at that, struggling to grasp what that meant. “Eli prays about returning to Heaven?”

“Why wouldn’t he?” He glanced at me and then looked away, chuckling. “Women. You’re utterly convinced every man’s soul is tethered between your thighs. There are greater things in Heaven and Earth to capture a man’s desire than the clutch of the female organ.”

“But Eli. I mean, he insisted he didn’t regret his decision.” I’d asked him a hundred times, and the answer was always the same. He wouldn’t have done anything differently. He’d do it again, be with me, love me, fall for me. Had he been sparing me the truth this whole time? Did he secretly suffer the loss of his brothers so much he would take back his fall?

I knew he missed his brothers. If I’d refused him, protected him, he never would’ve known that kind of pain, and he’d be safe today. His punishment was my fault. But Eli had never allowed me to take the blame, never hinted he wished he’d resisted his feelings for me. And a part of me had taken comfort in that.

“What else could he say?” Michael scoffed. “Of course he believes he loves you and believes his fall was his choice.”

“It was.” Eli loved me. Despite everything, all my doubts, I’d never doubted his love for me.

“Really?” Michael pushed to his feet. “You are the daughter of a fallen archangel, the child of wickedness itself. What hope did Elizal have to resist you?
You
. Of all women.”

The archangel walked down the bleachers slowly and confidently and stood on the brick floor. He turned and looked up at me. “Still, as alluring as you are, there isn’t a Fallen on Earth or in the abyss who wouldn’t trade anything,
anyone,
to return home to their brothers. Take my offer, Emma Jane. Do the right thing. Kill the boy and save Elizal.”

Chapter Thirteen

I spent the night at Sadie’s house. I just couldn’t stomach the idea of looking into Eli’s beautiful eyes and knowing he’d prayed to be somewhere else. The fact that he prayed for the very thing I’d been working for was not lost on me. I just wanted him to be honest about it. Honest with me and honest with himself. And now that he had good reason to leave me, my unsettled heart was even more intolerable. I wasn’t the woman he’d fallen for—not anymore.

He’d know I’d changed. He’d sense I was something else, something different. Michael had sensed a change in me, though he hadn’t actually said how much he knew. Angels had died to make me what I was. Eli knew me better than anyone. I wasn’t ready to risk seeing disgust in his eyes when he looked at me.

My business partner seemed surprised to see me standing on her doorstep and giddy as a teenager to have me as company. She had big news. A new guy.
Yeah.
Can’t begin to describe how happy I was to hear about her fantastic love life just when mine turned to crap.

I spilled my guts as honestly as I could without sounding like a crazy person, not that Sadie would’ve held it against me. It was nice to talk to someone about my love life who wasn’t already hoping my relationship with Eli would go up in flames.

“Screw him.” Sadie handed me a heaping bowl of vanilla ice cream.

I reached for the colored jimmies on the coffee table and drowned the medicinal comfort food with chocolate syrup. “It’s not his fault.” I tucked my feet under me again. “It’s me. I’m just no good for him. His friend told me Eli’s been, um…calling him, telling him he wished his family would forgive him.”

Sadie shook her head, spraying a small mountain of whipped cream over her serving. “I still can’t believe they cut him off just because he started dating you. That’s crazy.”

“Right?” I shrugged. “It’s a religious conflict. His family’s very devout.”

“Oh…” She nodded as though it made perfect sense now. “So is my boyfriend. I mean, we haven’t even…y’know…done it yet.”

I smiled at that. Sadie was such a free spirit, open and accepting. I envied that. “How long have you been dating?”

She swallowed a spoonful of whipped cream with a sliver of ice cream buried somewhere underneath. “Only a few weeks. But he’s very affectionate. He’s always holding my hand and touching my face…like he can’t get enough. It’s great. He totally respects me.”

“Wow. He sounds perfect,” I said.

“Yeah. Perfect.” She took another big mouthful. Compensating? “He’d be even better if he respected me a little less and made my eyes roll back in my head a little more,” she mumbled.

The rest of the evening kind of degenerated into an all-night bitch-fest. When the ice cream ran out, we baked chocolate chip cookies. Okay, we mixed the dough…and then ate it. Technically there was no actual baking involved.

All things considered, it’d been one of the best nights I’d had in a long time. Bitching about guys with my girlfriend was cathartic. I could almost forget all the freaky, scary crap that happened to and around me. I felt almost normal.

Almost.

“Let me do a reading on you.” I slouched in the cushy armchair, fighting off the drowsy side effect of my sugar crash.

“Really?” Sadie perked up, raising her head from the couch cushion. “I’ve been hoping you’d offer. Felt weird asking. Didn’t want you to think that’s why I wanted to share my shop with you.”

I pushed myself straight in the chair, then slid off the end to sit on the floor in front of the coffee table. “Don’t be silly. I love doing readings.”

I’d known Sadie for a while, but I’d been careful not to invade her privacy, to read her private thoughts. Not only was it rude to pry, but knowing too much about a person could make for some really awkward situations that were really only awkward for me. And only because I knew stuff I shouldn’t. It was just easier to keep my mind out of the thoughts of friends and family.

But talk of Sadie’s new guy had given me a weird feeling. Maybe I just projected my own sad, complicated issues onto her, but I wanted to be sure. And I wanted Sadie’s permission before I started snooping around in her head.

Sadie slid off the couch like a boneless rag doll and crossed her legs under the coffee table next to me. “What do you need me to do?”

I stretched my arms out across the polished table, palms up. “Gimme your hands.”

My trusting friend did as I asked, slipping her hands into mine. I closed my eyes. “What do you want to know? Ask me a question?”

“Does Thes find me…sexy?”

I opened my eyes. “I can answer that without using my powers. Yes. Of course he does.”

“No. Really. I want you to tap into…whatever you tap into, and really see the truth,” she said. “I know he cares about me, and he likes the way I look. But…I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if maybe, maybe I’m not his type or something.”

I sighed and closed my eyes again. “Fine. You said his name’s Thes?”
Weird name.

She nodded quick and eager. “That’s right.”

“Think of him. Picture him in your mind, his face, his eyes, his body…” Like sliding open a jail door inside my soul, I let my power slip free of its cell. I could almost see it in my mind’s eye ghosting over to Sadie, seeping into her mind, oozing through her thoughts, projecting them back to me. Except there was nothing to see.

“Sadie?”

“Yeah?” she answered.

“Are you picturing him?”

“Uh-huh.”

I pushed harder, like stretching out the wrinkles of a blanket, searching through thoughts overlapping each other—images of her shop, worries about a full schedule tomorrow, guilt over the ridiculous amount of junk food we’d eaten. But no matter how hard I pushed, how thoroughly I searched, I couldn’t see Thes’s face. I couldn’t find him in her thoughts.

And then I realized. It wasn’t that she wasn’t thinking of him, or that she thought of other things. It was simply that he wasn’t there, like a void in her mind, an empty spot I couldn’t see.

“What’s wrong?” Her hands tightened on mine.

I opened my eyes and smiled. “Nothing. Everything’s fine. Just keep thinking about him.”

She closed her eyes, her sweet smile pinching her cheeks. “No problem. It’s hard not to think about him.”

I pushed my power into her again, this time looking for what I couldn’t see. I found a memory, Sadie at the shop. I could feel her happiness, like fresh air filling my lungs, and the sun warming my face, the emotion was uplifting, fulfilling, but I couldn’t see what created the feelings…or who. She was alone.

I could see the shop as she saw it, the salon chairs, the tall mirrors with the counters like shelves along the wall beneath. She turned, and I could see the front window with the neon heart light hanging at the center and the shop’s name spelled out on the glass above. I could see the front counter, the door, everything. Sadie was alone in the shop, but the feelings she’d experienced were a kind of completeness that came from finding that special someone. Where was he?

“Um… Oh, yeah. He’s totally into you,” I said. “But he’s hiding something.”

Her fingers clenched around my hands. “What do you mean? Is he married? That’s it, isn’t it? He’s married. I knew it.
Shit.
I knew he was too good to be true. I can’t believe it happened again.”

Sadie attracted married men the way honey attracted flies. It was like hating spiders and no matter where you went, spiders found you. The one thing Sadie could not forgive was a cheating man. She’d been married before and knew firsthand what it was like to be the wife walking through the grocery store of a small town when everyone but you knew your husband was screwing around.

For her sake, though, I hoped it was something as mundane as a cheating husband. But my gut told me whoever this Thes guy was, he wasn’t your average Joe. It had to take some serious power to hide his face from me in Sadie’s mind. Like he knew someone might look for him there.

I opened my eyes. “First, ouch.” I looked from her to our hands, and she let me go. “Second, I don’t know what he’s hiding. Maybe he cheated on his taxes. I don’t know. I can’t tell. But there’s something off about him. Just be careful around him. And I’d like to meet him. Y’know, just to feel him out.”

“Absolutely.” Her huge smile suddenly went flat. “But if you figure out he’s married, you gotta promise to help me bury the body after I kill him.”

“Of course.” I shrugged. “I know the perfect spot. What else are friends for?”

“Exactly.”

…

Sadie had a full booking of appointments the next day, so she went in early. My first client wasn’t due until one forty-five. So I slept until eleven thirty and rolled into the shop around noon. I’d sent a mental message to Eli the night before and told him I was okay but I needed space. Then I promptly closed the connection before he could say anything that might make me change my mind.

“Is that you, Emma?” Sadie called from the shampoo room.

“Yeah. Just got here.” I checked the pile of mail she’d left at the reception desk.

“Oh, good,” she said. “I’m running late, honey. Thes is going to be here any minute. Could you keep him company while I finish up this color?”

“Sure. Where are you guys go—” My heart skipped, and a kind of soothing warmth hugged through my chest. I looked up just as the door to the shop pulled open and a seraph walked through.

The tall angel stopped, his body still halfway over the threshold, his hand on the open door. His pale blue eyes met mine, and the long, defined features of his face lifted in surprise.

“The demi-arch,” he said on a surprised exhale. “What are you doing here?”

“Me?” I laughed, too stunned to say anything more clever. “Let me guess. You’re Thes?”

“I am.”

There weren’t many seraphim who kept their hair as brutally short as this angel. But even with its skull-shaping cut, I could still see the soft, red color, the unearthly shine, the silky texture. He had the same long hands, long face, and flawless skin I’d come to expect of angels. But he was dressed in a cocoa-brown delivery uniform that showed off muscled legs and clung distractingly around a well-defined chest. Who was he kidding?

My hand went to the small of my back on reflex, and the angel moved forward in a flash. “How dare you defile these humans with your presence?”

I didn’t call my sword, remembering at the last instant there was no hilt to grab. Shame chilled through me, but I swallowed it back and flexed my hand, keeping it hidden behind me. “What do you want?”

His gaze shifted past me toward the back of shop. “I…” He looked at me again, and the uncertainty in his sky-blue eyes vanished. His back straightened. “I’m protecting these humans from the demonic uprising in the area.”

“Good news then. I’m not demonic. This is my shop…well, part of it.” I glanced over my shoulder and back again, lowering my voice. “I don’t want any trouble. Not here. These are good people. I don’t want them hurt.”

His chin lifted. “Neither do I. Sadie is…Sadie is very dear to me. I just want to keep her safe.”

“Same here,” I said. Good. At least we had that in common.

“Thes.” Sadie emerged from the backroom, her client following behind with a hot-pink towel draped over her head.

Panic flashed through the angel’s pale eyes for an instant before he shut it down and regained his composure. I watched a smile force its way across his lips, adding much-needed color to his cheeks. His brows rose, transforming him from irritated angel…to adoring boyfriend. “Good afternoon, Sadie. Are you ready for lunch?”

“Almost,” she said. “I’m running so late. I just have to dry and style Kelly here, and then we can go.”

I stared at the seraph for several seconds and then blinked. “You’re in love with her.”

He looked at me, brows tight. “No. I care about her. She’s…special.”

“Right.”
Crap
.

He opened his mouth to deny it again, but Sadie interrupted. “Thes, you could come back here and sit if you want.”

“Absolutely.” The angel made his way around the front desk back to Sadie’s station.

He leaned in and pressed a kiss to the platinum blonde’s rosy cheek, lingering for a moment to breathe her in. Then he took the swivel salon chair next to Sadie’s client, his smile wide, cheery, and genuine.
God, he’s so screwed.

I turned around—I just couldn’t watch—and I nearly screamed when I caught a glimpse at our front door. I managed to gulp it down. “Amon.”

He stood outside the glass door, waving me to him. I checked that the angel, or anyone else, hadn’t noticed and went around the desk and out the door. “What are you doing here?”

“Sorry.” The athletic blond demon glanced past me to the people at the back of the shop, shifting on his feet, not really giving anything much attention. “I have to talk to you.”

“Sure. Where’s Liam?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I know he’s tracking down a witch who’s supposed to know how to make us invisible. Last I heard he was in Italy.”

“Invisible?” I asked. “You mean invisible-invisible? Like…see-through?”

“Yeah.” Amon gave a quick nod like it was a perfectly normal question.

“You okay? You seem, upset.” Something wasn’t right. I wasn’t sure how exactly, but he wasn’t himself.

“I’m…I’m okay. I’m fine. I got it handled. But listen. You can’t kill Jukar’s son.”

I blinked, my brain stumbling to a sudden stop. “What?”

“I know about your half brother and that Jukar wants you to protect him,” he said. “And I know the seraphim want him dead. You can’t kill him.”