Last Rite (15 page)

“Ready?” she asks.

“Ready,” I say.

She crouches and circles around me, and I counter, in a defensive position, not sure what to expect. When she lashes out with a kick, I block it, but I immediately know she’s no beginner. We continue to circle and I maintain my defensive stance and throw an occasional punch to feel her out. I keep my eyes open for her weakness. Everybody has one.

And then I see it.

She doesn’t stay low enough when she moves to her right. She circles to her left and throws a kick that grazes my ribs. I jump back but immediately regain my balance. She sends another punch my direction and I block it and drive her to her right with a kick to her hip. As she shuffles to her right, I unleash another kick, which she blocks, followed immediately with a punch to her shoulder, which connects and throws her off balance. I take the opening to lunge and twist her into an arm lock, throwing her to the mat.

“Aww!” she cries. At first I’m afraid I’ve hurt her and let go. But when she rolls toward me, rage etching lines in her face, I realize it was a cry of frustation. She takes a deep breath and pulls herself to her feet. Her face softens as she raises her eyebrows. “You’re ready,” she pants. “Let’s find John.”

I grab my duffel and we head across the empty center of the dank warehouse to the back corner, where there are three regulation-sized mats set up along the far wall. Two of them are occupied. An older guy with a belly spars with an athletic-looking African American woman in her thirties. Next to them, there’s no trace of John’s limp as he dances over the mat with a smaller man, exchanging blows. I stand for a minute, analyzing their choices, and I watch the smaller man make his fatal mistake. John’s kick comes in low and fast, and the smaller man isn’t able to deflect it. He loses focus—and his balance—just long enough for John to lunge in for the arm lock and slam him to the mat, pinning him.

“You’re up, Blondie,” he says as he releases the man under him.

I look around. “Me?”

“You,” he answers. “George!”

I follow his gaze to see a seven-foot mountainous man in his early twenties saunter out of the shadows in the corner. He’s in the traditional loose black pants, but he’s bare-chested and built, with auburn hair, dark eyes, and intricate black tattooing in a web pattern all across his right shoulder and down his arm.

“Rhen,” I whisper.

11

Forbidden Fruit

FRANNIE

“John. Be real. She’s like five feet tall,” Faith says, and I can see the fear behind the glance she shoots me. She knows what Rhen is.

I shake my head, my eyes locked on Rhen’s as he smirks at me from the other side of the mat. “It’s okay.” I’m shocked to feel a smile tug at my lips, but the thing is, I know I can take him. I have before. And best of all, he might even put up a reasonable fight as I kick the shit out of him and make him tell me everything he knows.

“Frannie! Be serious,” she hisses in my ear. “I promised Gabriel. We’re out of here!”

“No. He doesn’t want to hurt me.” Faith grips my arm, but I drop my bag and pull out of her grasp, stepping onto the mat. Rhen and I pace to the center and bow. I smile at him and ask, “George?”

A smirk flickers over his strong, handsome face. “I’m incognito…” He raises his eyebrow. “Colby.”

I roll my eyes. “So, what now?”

A lazy smile pulls at his lips as he lowers his bulk into a crouch. “I win, you make me mortal.”

“And if I win?”

“You make me mortal,” he says, his eye narrowing to slits.

“I’m not seeing the up side, Rhen.”

“George,” he corrects, no humor in his voice.

“Whatever,” I groan. “How about this? I win, you don’t tell anyone where I am.”

A slow, sharp smile flickers across his face. “You trust me to keep my word? Such a naïve girl.”

I have a sudden flash of Luc calling me the same thing before I knew what he was. It feels like a lifetime ago. I
was
naïve then, but not anymore. “What I trust is that if all Hell knows where to find me, you won’t get what you want. It’s not in your best interest to share.”

“If you two are just going to chat, there’s a Starbucks down the street,” John taunts from the edge of the mat.

I drop to a crouch and swing out with my leg, but Rhen deflects my kick easily.

“I’m rusty,” I mutter under my breath as he grins.

He counters with a punch to my sternum, but I deflect it and spin, connecting with a kick to his knee.

“How did you find me?” I ask as he turns and lowers back into his crouch. We trade a few punches.

He smirks, then swings out with his leg, buckling my knee and dropping me to the mat. “Trade secret.”

He lunges for me, smelling blood in the water, but in one quick motion I roll backward over my shoulder and spring to my feet. I unleash a kick that connects with his ribs, rocking him back on his heels. “Tell me and I won’t embarrass you too badly,” I add, landing the backup punch to his sternum.

He stares hard into my eyes as he regains his balance. “No can do. But you know I’m on your side, mostly.”

“So you’re, like, a double agent,” I say, blocking a punch to my face.

“Something like that,” he says, missing with his follow-up punch as I duck to my right.

“Tell me how you found me,” I warn.

“Or what?”

I deflect his punch then swing my foot into his chest. “Or I’ll make you squeal like a little girl.”

Something passes over his face as he stumbles back from my blow, and I can see him contemplating whether to tell me—maybe remembering when I took him down in Luc’s parking lot the day we left Haden. He opens his mouth but then lunges for my arm. He tries to spin me into an arm lock, but he’s too slow. I rip his hand off my arm and throw him over my shoulder. He hits with a thud and looks up at me, startled, before bounding to his feet.

I could have finished him right there. It would have been too easy to twist him into an arm lock and pin him to the mat. But I have to admit, I’m having too much fun. This feels really,
really
good. My eyes flick to the small crowd gathered at the edge of the mat as someone hollers, “Crush the bastard.”

I’m pretty sure Rhen doesn’t want to kill me, and, even if he did, I don’t think he’d do it with witnesses. But getting back into my routine, breaking a real sweat, is doing wonders for my mood.

I raise my eyebrows at him as he circles to my right. “So?”

He breathes a sigh then sends a punch at my face. “While Marc was busy trying to blow you out of the sky, I opted for a better plan.”

I duck under his punch and he deflects my retaliating kick. “Such as?”

“Bribery,” he says with a grunt, unleashing a kick to my chest.

I spin and grab his leg, throwing him to the ground by it, then roll and flip him onto his back in a leg lock, pinning him. “Who?”

He leers up at me.

“Ha!” John yells from across the mat. “We need to find you some tougher competition.”

“Who?” I ask again in Rhen’s ear, tightening the lock.

He grinds his jaw and glares up at me.

Then John and Faith are standing next to us.

I untangle my legs from around Rhen and we both stand and bow. “Thanks, George,” I say, walking off the mat. I scoop up my bag and keep walking toward the door.

“I’ll be seeing you,” he calls after me, a smirk in his voice.

I glance over my shoulder at him. “Not if I see you first.”

*   *   *

“What did he say?” Faith asks when we’re tucked back into the Impala.

“Nothing,” I lie.

I need to figure out how to play this. How can I get Rhen to work with us instead of against us? Before we left Haden, he said there was an uprising in Hell. How can I help him, other than turning him human, which I’m quite sure I can’t do? And who did he bribe to find me?

I turn and look at the only person who knows we’re here. “Have you ever met that guy before?”

“The demon? No.” She shakes her head as she turns the key. The ignition chugs, then catches. “Gabriel is going to kill me.”

“Not if he doesn’t know.”

She shoots me a look. “You are seriously out of your mind, Frannie. You know he can read your thoughts.”

“He won’t go looking unless he thinks there’s a reason to, and I’m getting better at blocking him.”

She glances at me, and I’d swear she was fighting tears. “You can’t keep this from him. He’s trying to keep you safe. It’s all he cares about!”

The ache in her voice totally gives her away, and my heart skips as it hits me. “You’re in love with Gabe.” Jealousy kicks me in the gut, and instantly I hate myself for it. I have no claim to him. I have to stop acting like I do.

She continues to stare out the windshield as the rain pelts the roof of the car, but she doesn’t answer.

“If Gabe knows I’ve been found, we’ll leave.” I feel bad using my newfound knowledge to my advantage, but I need time to figure this out.

Her jaw grinds tight. “And you should.”

I stare out at the passing ghost town, then take a deep breath. “Faith, listen to me. That demon doesn’t want to hurt me. He wants me to make him human so he can lead an uprising in Hell.”

She turns to look at me with “you’re crazy” plastered all over her face. “That makes no sense. How could you turn a demon human?” Her eyes shift back out the windshield as she swerves around a pothole the size of a crater in the center of the road, but can’t miss the smaller one just beyond. “And what good would that do him even if you could?” she asks, her voice jarring as we bump through the hole.

I pull my hair out of the ponytail holder and scratch my head, debating if I’ve already said too much. “How much did Gabe tell you about us?”

“About the two of you?” Her eyes flare as she shoots me a look, and I wonder how much she knows.

“I really meant me,” I say with a grimace, trying to block the memory of kissing Gabe this morning. “Did he tell you why we’re here?”

She stares out the windshield, her hand tightening on the steering wheel. “He said you were his first priority, and he brought you here so he could protect you.”

“Did you know that Luc is a demon?”

“Luc is
not
a demon,” she says, incredulous. “I’d be able to tell.”

“You’re right, he’s not—anymore.”

Her expression becomes suspicious, creases forming at the corners of her eyes as they narrow. “Are you trying to make me believe that you turned him human?” Her gaze flicks to me. “Because that’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? You’re sure?”

She turns back to the road and is silent for a minute. “Okay, so, even if I believed you could do that, how would that help this George demon with an uprising?”

I shrug. “He says that no one has ever been able to stand up to Lucifer until Luc did it. He thinks something in Luc’s infernal wiring short-circuited when he was human or something.”

“You lost me.”

I breathe an irritated sigh. “Just take my word for it. Please? Rhen doesn’t want Lucifer to get me. As a matter of fact, I think he’d work with us to be sure He doesn’t.”

“Who’s Rhen?”

I roll my eyes and groan. “George.”

“This is so confusing,” she laments, clicking the windshield wipers up a notch as we pull onto the highway.

I slump into the seat. “So, are you gonna tell or not?”

She hesitates too long.

I sigh again. “How long have you been in love with Gabe?”

A bitter snort escapes her. “Forever.”

I glance her direction. “And you never told him?”

She shakes her head. “When I died, he was…” she trails off and I wait, but she doesn’t continue. Instead she stares out the windshield, her jaw clenched and her hand white on the wheel.

“How did you die?” I finally ask.

“I was murdered.” She shoots me a tight glance. “By my stepfather.”

I feel suddenly cold, and a shiver races up my spine as all the blood drains from my face. Why did I ask? Did I really want to know that? “How old were you?”

“Sixteen. He knew I was going to tell, so he…” She trails off and looks as though she’s fighting tears.

Anger flares to life inside me, first a flicker, then a blaze, imagining what she must have gone through. How could no one have helped her?

She breathes in a long, slow breath and holds it for a minute. “When you get to Heaven, they sort you into your group. I guess, because of all the years my stepfather…” She trails off again and swallows hard. “They put me with the guardians,” she finally finishes.

“That’s how you met Gabe?”

She nods. “I was terrified and he was so kind. And patient.” Her gaze flits to me, and, despite her moist eyes, there’s just the hint of a smile in them. “I screwed up a lot, which is why I was in training so long.” She looks miles away. “He taught me so much … starting with the fact that what happened to me wasn’t my fault. And eventually … I realized I was in love with him.”

I find
I’m
fighting tears when I swallow and feel the wet lump in the back of my throat. “Whose guardian were you?” I ask.

Her eyes go dark again. “No one’s. I didn’t make it that far. I fell before I ever finished training.”

I feel something twist painfully in my chest as the pieces click together in my head. “You fell because you loved Gabe,” I say.

She nods, even though it wasn’t a question.

Her eyes flick to me and hope flashes there. “You said you made Luc human.” She turns back to the road. “Could you make Gabriel human too?”

The memory of being wrapped around Gabe in my bed the night of Taylor’s funeral intrudes on my thoughts. At that moment, I would have given anything for him to be mortal. But now, knowing what Faith gave up for him, I can’t believe how selfish I’ve been. “No.” I sink deeper into the seat and close my eyes, listening as the hammer of the raindrops on the roof starts to slow.

When we sputter to a stop in Faith’s driveway, I open my eyes and find the rain has nearly stopped. I climb out of the Impala and gaze across the beach at the angry waves, threatening to take the beach with them as they roll back into the gray ocean.