WingSpan (Taken on the Wing Book 1) (15 page)

“Shit, shit, shit,” she breathes as the bad angel comes for her.

New guy steps away and Jenn renews her struggles, digging her fingers into the arm around her neck but then she’s dropped to the floor. One of the guards turns on a lamp making the bad angel look even more terrifying. Four parallel slashes cross his bare chest and his forehead and nose are both heavily bruised. His wings are dark brown in the light. It’s also clear he’s furious and more than delighted. His wings spread, filling the room as Jenn’s eyes widen to take him all in. As her lungs fill to scream he grabs the back of her neck to take complete control.

Docile is the word which comes to Jenn’s short-circuiting mind. Her body is at least as it relaxes in response to the bad angel’s pressure on her neck. Jenn’s heart misses a beat as it slows.

“Shadow,” the bad angel whispers in her ear. He kneels above her limp body. “Do you know who I am?”

Jenn shakes her head, willing the movement then as his thumb starts to slowly rub her head nods of its own accord.

“Torrent,” she sighs.

He releases her but the happy numb feeling doesn’t go away.

“I’m only going to say this once,” Torrent tells her. “The rest of your life is mine.”

He’s not lying. Not like the week before when she’s now sure she really saw him. She grunts as he drops her on the bed.

“Like she was never here,” Torrent orders and one of the guards goes in the bathroom. The sound of her things being gathered up reaches her as her clothes are pulled from drawers. Everything is piled on the bed and Torrent goes through it all, stuffing everything but her razor in her pack.

Torrent pulls the collar away from her neck then lifts her shirt exposing her back.

“No,” she whispers.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he hisses as his fingers brush where Mark bit her months earlier. Jenn cries out in pain at the unwelcome touch. It never hurts when she or Mark touches it but Torrent’s hands are an acidic assault worse than anything else she can imagine them doing to her.

“Sit,” he orders.

Jenn complies. The weakness has worn off but she knows she needs to buy time.

Be good,
Jenn thinks.
Submission until you figure out what kind of left turn your life is taking.

There will be a chance to get away and stuck in her hotel room with her nightmare and his two big friends isn’t it.

“Dress.”

He’s left out her jeans, boots and winter wear and she quickly puts them on then he bundles her in two spare blankets from the closet.

“Lock up behind me,” Torrent says to the guards before he gathers her up in his arms. His wings fold up tightly behind him as he bounds out the sliding glass door and they dive off the balcony. Weightless, Jenn’s shriek fills her ears until the rush of air over his wings is louder and she feels heavy in Torrent’s arms as they climb.

“Silence,” his hand crushes the back of her neck and there’s nothing but blackness.

“I recommend you don’t stray far.”

Torrent lurks nearby. Jenn’s bundled up on a hard surface in the dark. It feels like she’s indoors and she hears voices in the distance, below she guesses. A rough oval of very weak light silhouettes his shape.

“Where am I?” Damn, even talking makes her neck hurt.

“You are in the Jasper Eyrie,” his bored voice tells her. “I’m obliged to say you face charges of treason for an unwarranted attack on the integrity and person of the Sire’s son.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“That will be added to the list of charges, female.”

Shit, he’s nuts. This is all nuts.

“Where’s Mark?”

Jenn jumps at a loud crack then a glow stick shakes vigorously, glowing brighter for a few seconds before landing in her lap. The green light makes Torrent’s skin look sickly when coupled with the bruising of his face. She doesn’t know what caused the bruising but is certain she had something to do with the cuts.

“Don’t stray far. Your chamber pot is to your left as is your bag. You will be fed this afternoon before you face judgment this evening. Outside your den is a ledge fifty feet from the floor of the cavern below. There is no way down without flight, prisoner. If you take wing you will be chained.”

Swallowing doesn’t clear the hard lump in her throat as Torrent stands, towering over her. He turns and walks out, disappearing past the limit of the glow stick when the sound of his steps stops and his wings rustle as he apparently drops from the ledge.

Treason?

It doesn’t make any sense. Attack does if her recollection of that night at Mark’s is even close to accurate. But that means Blondie has something to do with Torrent, doesn’t it? She sprouted wings before Jenn’s eyes and Torrent thinks Jenn can turn into an angel too.

Perhaps if she fell from the ledge she might.

And where is Mark? If what happened at his house was real then he was there and has to know what kind of bizarre trouble she’s in. Doesn’t he?

Her pack contains everything but the razor, as she remembers from her hotel room, including her wallet and her cell phone. It’s still off from when she left Mark’s so she turns it on, desperate to reach him. He’s the only one who can explain what’s going on. It obediently powers up but isn’t able to connect to the cell service. She gives up after turning it off and on again, shutting it down one final time and putting it away.

The chamber pot is as advertised: a pot and a roll of toilet paper. In the glow stick’s light she can’t tell if it’s dirty or stained and doesn’t care to find out. The den, as Torrent called it, is a stone cave as big as the living room of Terry’s apartment. The only notable feature is the door, a rough round opening about six feet high, and the space is furnished with a woven mat and the hotel blankets.

Jenn heeds Torrent’s warning as she walks to the opening, holding the glow stick out. After a few paces she can make out a stone ledge about ten feet away. Jenn gets on her hands and knees and crawls closer until she can stick her nose over the edge. Tiny fires light the void below and after a moment she decides they’re lamps, a lot closer than the camp fires she originally thought but still a long way down.

“Hello?” she calls down and there is silence below for a few breaths before the quiet chatter picks up again. “Can anyone help me?”

Jenn’s voice breaks as she crawls into the den and away from the drop.

Chapter Fourteen

Jenn drank some of the water that accompanied the plate of meat she left uneaten before leaving it outside the den. The black hours pass slowly with the exception of a brief visit by a smaller female who collected the dishes.

The thought of the trial after the raw whatever it was she guesses was dinner looms as heavily on her as the idea of being trapped in an angel cave. She’s come to understand she isn’t just underground. She’s deep underground which means these aren’t good angels at all like the one who’d come for Terry.

And Torrent thinks she’s one of them. Maybe her overdose had been intentional and this was the price; on her way to hell and away from Terry forever. And from Mark if she doesn’t keep her head together and get back to the real world. She could just explain she didn’t know about them and promise not to do whatever her crime was and they’ll let her go but with what? Penance?

Did bad angels do penance? Were they even qualified to mete it out?

And she’s sure the female she saw briefly in the green glow at her den opening had a tail. Bad for sure. Nothing that belongs above ground has wings and a long skinny tail.

Jenn sheds her coat and pulls off Mark’s T replacing them with a bra and a shirt of her own. Her phone says it’s well past seven in the evening and her stomach rumbles. There’s half a box of chocolates left over from her sulky hotel night in Saskatoon so she takes a couple and puts the rest away for later.

I could really use a drink,
Jenn thinks.
Or maybe three.

But that won’t do any good either. With the exception of the glass of wine at Mark’s she hasn’t touched the stuff since they met. The thought of liquor turns to fantasies of Talon and Shadow like some weird word association and from nowhere Shadow’s inner strength props her up.

And she needs to be Shadow to get out of here. If Shadow fits with Talon and that’s how the bad angels know him then Shadow it is.

The rustle of heavy wings outside the den gets Shadow’s attention as she tries to pick a caramel covered almond from her teeth. The now familiar presence of Torrent stomps in unannounced. A quick move of his arm and she’s hit by what feels like a pile of thick rough cloth. In the failing light of her glow stick she sees he only wears a pair of loose cropped pants; a twitching tail dangles between his calves. Its movement reminds her of a cat watching a bird out the window.

Definitely a bad angel.

“Change, prisoner.”

Shadow realizes he tossed her clothes so she stands on stiff legs and unfolds them. The pants appear to be very much like his only much darker and the top is a simple pullover tunic with two slashes down the back closed with buttons at the hem. She supposes they’re for the wings she doesn’t have. Both pieces are far too big.

Torrent turns his back so she wastes no time pulling everything off and putting on the garments. The fabric is rougher on her skin than it felt in her hands and she squirms a little without improving the scratching.

“Remove your footwear,” he orders when he turns so she does.

Torrent seizes her elbow and pushes her toward the ledge and she digs her feet into the cold gritty stone the whole way.

“Don’t fight me or make a noise,” Torrent’s breath is hot in her ear. “I’ve been hunting you for a week and it wouldn’t be unreasonable for me to drop you and say you struggled.”

With that he grabs her and steps from the ledge. Like when they left the Jasper hotel they fall free for only a moment before they circle the upper reaches of the chamber, Shadow’s heart in her throat as she waits for the floor to get closer. The lamps she saw earlier brighten until she can make out the ground. Several groups of winged angels have congregated beside what looks like a tunnel and it’s near there Torrent lets her go.

Shadow stumbles, her feet sting slapping the stone and her bad bone complains. It’s only from a couple of feet up but it’s enough to remind her he’s in charge. Torrent’s big hand again finds the back of her neck and the firm pressure saps the last of her resistance. As he pushes her through the angels they part. Several hiss menacingly and Shadow is grateful when they are past.

The tunnel takes them up and the minimal light from the large chamber quickly dims to nothing. Circling to the right the entire way Shadow counts her steps hoping to build a mental picture of the caves. She lost track of her den above the big cavern during the descent and has no idea how many tunnels lead from it. There’s no way to get up to the den anyway so if they take her back she’ll have another chance for a look around.

Torrent pushes them along and Shadow trips several times, hands out in front as she runs to keep up. The echo of their footsteps changes just as Shadow starts breathing hard and Torrent slows, stepping proudly into another much smaller chamber. Two large statues are visible, crouching on either side of a pair of heavy chairs, their wings folded at their sides. Clawed front legs rest on the ground before them and their tails curl around their feet. Their enormous stone eagle heads end in deadly curved beaks and seem to stare Shadow down though it can’t be more than an intimidating trick of their placement.