Warrior's Angel (The Lost Angels Book 4) (20 page)

Then she lowered it again and stared out the front windshield. “Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Gregori,” he told her. Then he changed the subject. “I want to speak with you about your friend, Detective Salvatore.”

“
What
are you?” Rhiannon asked next. She didn’t ask rudely; she just wanted to know before she was baited into another subject, even though she also had to wonder how this man knew Michael.

Gregori cut her a look, but then returned his attention to the road. “The universe is filled with mysteries, Rhiannon. You can’t possibly solve them all. The day you do
, you will no longer desire to continue living. What humanity doesn’t realize is that existence is worthless without the pursuit of knowledge.” He smiled. “There’s simply no longer any point.”

Rhiannon processed that. It was
a beautiful piece of prose, and he was probably right. But it was also a nearly political way of telling her that he wasn’t going to give her the information she wanted.

She took another sip of her
root beer and waited in silence for him to tell her whatever it was he
was
going to tell her. About Michael.

“
A woman like you could have her pick of men on this planet,” he began. “I’m surprised you have decided to become interested in one like Michael.”

“Oh?”

“I’m sure you are as aware as I am that he is more than he appears to be.”

“So are a lot of people.”

Again, he glanced at her. This time, he grinned, and that grin sent a shiver of devastating anxiety through Rhiannon. It made her blood run cold.

“
Indeed,” he said. “In this case, however, what you don’t know may kill you. Michael Salvatore is no less than a fallen angel, Miss Dante. He is a man who was once favored by his maker. He was Michael, the Warrior Archangel, healer and leader of the Old Man’s armies. But he is also a man who, due to betrayal and selfishness, has since become no more than a monster.”

Rhiannon listened to these words as if they were alien
to her. She divided each syllable up in her head, swirled it around until she recognized it, and then processed it with terrible slowness.

“Part vampire and part incubus, he now walks the earth feeding from mortals and charming his way through female companions. Including you, Rhiannon.”

She tried to ask him how he knew all of this, but her voice didn’t work. Neither did her mouth. She tried again. She still failed.

But he seemed to understand what she wanted
to ask anyway, because he said, “You’ll have to trust me, Miss Dante. I know of what I speak. I do not share this to spare you. To be honest, I couldn’t care much less what becomes of you. I hope you don’t take offense to that. I’m telling you this because Michael Salvatore is the last of the Four Favored, the four archangels who have come to earth to find their lost mates. Their archesses. You, Rhiannon, are his lost mate. You are the last of the archesses to be tossed to earth so long ago. You are the last of the lost angels.”

Rhiannon continued to stare unseeing out the window in front of her. Little by little, Gregori’s words hammered their way through her skull and into her brain. But she was dizzy now. And the universe was turning around her.

“The story is a complicated one, and at the moment, I don’t have the time to fill you in on the details. Suffice it to say, if you accept Michael as your mate, all four of the favored archangels will have found their archesses. The hunt for the lost angels will be over. And this will bring the Culmination.”

The Culmination….

“The Culmination is the harbinger of untold destruction, Rhiannon Dante. And though they are unaware of it, its epicenter will be the archangels themselves. Of all who will perish at the Culmination’s hands, the Four Favored will go first.”

Why are you telling me this?
her spinning brain wanted to ask.

“
I believe that despite his failings, you are just fallible enough in your generous spirit to care what befalls Michael, to say nothing of the remainder of the planet. So be wary. You are the only living being with the power to prevent the Culmination from transpiring. Keep your distance from Detective Salvatore. For his own good.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Rhiannon found herself standing on the sidewalk in front of her apartment building, feeling considerably stunned.

Greg
ori had just pulled up to her apartment to drop her off. She hadn’t even told him where she lived.

The doorman had
opened her door and helped her out, and she noticed with a numb sort of awe that the car she’d exited was a Rolls Royce Phantom. She’d always admired that car. Who didn’t? She’d always really wanted to ride in one, had often considered purchasing one because, frankly, she could afford it. But they were conspicuous vehicles, and in her line of work, it was smarter to keep a lower profile.

Well, now she’d ridden in one.

Almost as if Gregori had known.

Oh, he knows
,
she thought as her fingers and toes tingled painfully like they’d fallen asleep and were just now getting their feeling back. She watched the majestic, shining car pull expertly from the curb into traffic.
He knew everything about me.

Maybe he also knew
things she didn’t know. Was it possible he could very well be telling her the truth about who and
what
she was? Why she had these powers?

And
about Michael?

Out of t
he corner of her unfocused vision, Rhiannon could see the doorman, Mr. Fredericks, move to the doors to hold them open for her. But she couldn’t follow. Her body still didn’t want to obey her. She tingled too painfully, inside and out.

Fredericks noticed she wasn’t with him, and at once left
the entrance to return to her, no doubt concerned. “Miss Dante, are you –”

But she held up her hand
, thrilled that it obeyed her wishes, and she swallowed hard, making her throat work properly too. “I’m –” She broke off because she croaked a bit. Then she cleared her throat, took a deep breath, and tried again. “I’m fine, Mr. Fredericks.” She nodded. “I promise I’m fine, really. Just give me a second.”

He
knew enough to do as she asked. He left her side and returned to his post at the entrance to the apartment building.

In a few seconds, she managed to join him there, and he held the door open wide.
But there, she stopped and turned to face him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fredericks. I’m afraid I will be going back out tonight.”

Fredericks releas
ed the door carefully. “Shall I have Alex bring a car around for you, Miss Dante?”

Rhiannon
shook her head. “No thank you. I think I’ll be going out alone tonight.”

He nodded,
extracting a phone from his front pocket. In a few minutes, another Swallowtail Foundation employee pulled up to the curb with the car she normally used when she went out alone.

It
was a 2-door BMW 435. BMW’s were common in New York City. Anyone who could afford the parking for a vehicle could afford a luxury car to park it in, so despite the relatively high-end value of the car, she blended in. It was warm on freezing or wet days, and it was front-wheel drive with a lot of pick-up, so it was easy to control. It worked. Especially in black.

Rhiannon thanked both men, making sure to tip them, and got into her car. A few minutes later, she had the address she wanted
located on the virtual map upon her dashboard. Minutes after that, she was parking in the lot beneath Michael Salvatore’s apartment.

She sat there in the driver’s seat for
some indeterminate amount of time before she finally popped open her door and decided to go through with it. The number on the curb in front of her parking space said #228. She wondered who it belonged to and whether they would have her towed. She could only hope not. She truly wasn’t planning to stay long.

Michael Salvatore lived on the third floor. To her, that seemed strange. It felt like a cop would want to live on the ground floor, where all the action might be, and where he could leave in a hurry if he needed to.

A vampire could just fly out the window
, she thought as she climbed the apartment complex’s outer steps. His apartment was #314.

Rhiannon stopped in front of it and stared up at the number for a long, long time. Out on the street, horns honked a symphony, and somewhere several blocks down, a drunk person was yelling at someone else, probably also drunk.

At long length, she raised her right hand and took a deep breath. But when she brought it down for her first knock, the door nudged slightly forward. Rhiannon frowned. She placed her fingers against the wood and gave another little push. The door creaked inward, swinging slowly to reveal darkness beyond.

“Michael?”

There was no answer. But a shifting sound somewhere in that darkness made Rhiannon’s skin prickle. Her powers readied themselves for use. She moved slightly to the side to protect her body with the wall and shoved the door the rest of the way open.

That’s when she saw the detective lying on the floor, his back against the foot of the couc
h. His broad-shouldered form was mostly hidden. She only knew it was him because his eyes reflected back at her from the shadows, blue and familiar. They were eyes filled with pain. She’d come to recognize the look after so many years in her line of work.

Rhiannon reached inside and felt along the wall to flick on the light switch
. Lamps he’d hooked up around the living room switched on all at once, one on an end cap beside the couch, one standing lamp in the corner beside a healthy-looking Ficus plant, and one sconce lamp on the wall in the hall that led from the living room to the rest of the apartment.

The light was soft and warm
, but what it revealed was cold and harsh. Michael Salvatore had been thoroughly thrashed.

“
Jesus
,” Rhiannon whispered and slowly moved into the room.

Here and there, his clothing had been torn, and most of it was either dirty or stained with blood.
His lip was broken in several places, and his left eye was swollen. Bruises were forming along his throat and the parts of his arms that were exposed by his short-sleeved tee-shirt. His dark blond hair was noticeably darker with grime and more blood. Whether the blood belonged to him or someone else, she wasn’t sure. But his right arm was wrapped around his middle, and his right palm was pressed tightly and protectively to his left side. Blood seeped through his fingers to drip to the carpet beneath him. A widening puddle of red was forming. Rhiannon wondered if it might be leaking through the floorboards and into the ceiling of the apartment beneath his.

Her
stomach turned a little, as it always did when she was faced with the thick, red evidence of suffering, no matter how many times she encountered it. But she inhaled slowly, and steadied her nerves with practiced skill.

“What the hell ha
ppened to you?” she asked. Her voice trembled a little.

Michael laughed, and i
t was a harsh sound, like the laugh of a dying man. “You should see the other guy,” he rasped.

“I don’
t doubt it.”

Michael closed his eyes, a sign of trust o
r surrender.

She
moved further into the room and knelt down beside him. “You don’t look like a monster,” she whispered, gently brushing a lock of hair from his forehead. It was damp with his sweat or maybe blood, and her fingers shook when it revealed another gash across his handsome face, this one above his right eye. “You look like a monster’s regurgitated lunch.”

Michael’s eyes remained closed, but he
smiled, despite the fact that it re-opened the split in his bottom lip. “That’s the nicest thing a woman’s ever said to me.” He sounded exhausted.

Absently, Rhiannon noticed his perfect white teeth, and a part of her was thankful that at least those had been spared in whatever battle had seen him to this condition.

She leaned over to place her lips beside his ear, and the nearness of him as her body lowered to his was stifling in its electric heat. She could sense the hardness of him, of every angle, every muscle, even without touching them. It was like approaching a heated brick wall. “I can heal you,” she whispered, her gut clenching because she hoped against hope he would let her this time. If the inside of his body looked anywhere near as bad as the outside, he could be bleeding internally. She might be his only hope.

Not for the first time in her life, Rhiannon was unduly grateful that she hadn’t squandered her healing p
ower on anything else that night. She wouldn’t have had it when she’d needed it most.

He didn’t shake his head and he didn’t say no. He simply grimaced against some kind of pain that must have been work
ing its way through his system.

A
nd she took that as permission enough.

“Roll over onto your ba
ck. Can you do that?”

He grunted, but
moved for her, coming to land on his back with labored breathing. He rested his hands lightly across his midsection, and she appraised him carefully, taking in every detail from head to toe. Her mind felt boggled that he could be simultaneously so beautiful, and yet so utterly destroyed.

“Wh
at did you do, Michael Salvatore?” she asked aloud, but really only to herself. “Take on a tractor?”

He laughed. I
t was a horrible, wonderful sound, filled with both pain and humor; it grated deeply through his raw throat.

Rhiannon closed her eyes. She
tried to see him as he’d been before his injuries. It wasn’t hard. She had but to shut her eyelids for mere moments before his picture swam before her, whole and perfect and beautiful. It was always there of late, haunting the darkness that would have otherwise brought her peace. But right now, she was glad of it.

She closed her eyes, sat back on her haunches,
and placed her hands to the blood-soaked shirt against his chest. The blood had grown cold under the air conditioning, and it felt creepy beneath her palms. But she steadied herself with a deep breath, and pulled her attention inward to focus on that internal image of him, whole and unharmed.

She
imagined the tendons reconnecting, the bones melding together, the muscles mending. She imagined blood flowing confidently through veins once more whole, like tunnels of life-giving liquid. She thought of his skin, healed and un-marred. Then she imagined his heart beating steadily and strong, rhythmic and precious.

All sense of time
vanished, and Rhiannon had no idea how long she’d been sitting there with her life-giving hands pressed to Michael’s chest. She wasn’t aware of the physical world, not fully, until she felt his palm gently cup her cheek.

Her eyes came open
as warmth infused her face to sink and spread through her chest. He was sitting up now, one leg bent, one arm draped casually over his knee. His clothing still bore the evidence of his battle, but Rhiannon could both sense and see that the wounds he’d sustained underneath were completely healed.

Michael
held her gaze, his blue eyes like neon oceans. “I know what Gregori told you,” he said, his voice as whole now as the rest of him. With incredible tenderness, he brushed his thumb across her cheek bone, and for some reason, Rhiannon felt like crying. No one had ever,
ever
, touched her with such care.

Michael smiled. It was a smile as tender as his fingers against her skin. “Yo
u saved my life. I owe you everything. I always have.”

Rhiannon couldn’t say anything. She didn’t really have the breath to speak. Her chest ached. Her body felt flushed.

“The least I can do is tell you the truth.”