She needn’t worry. He’d be damned if he was going to let it happen again.
Leo sighed, knowing instantly that the attempt to brush up his indignation was false and therefore it fell flat. The truth was that he wanted to step forward again, to feel the touch of that energy, craving the feelings the act had evoked so unexpectedly. Not the arousal, though that was a part of it, he admitted to himself, but the fresh, innocent feeling of it. The feeling so pure and untouched by the difficulties and tragedies of adult life.
Not that his youth had been a blaze of contented ignorance. There was very little opportunity for innocence in a boy from the barrio, the son of a single mother trying to do the best she could to keep her children happy and healthy, while the world thwarted her at every turn.
Bringing his attention back to the room around him and the concerns of the present day, he watched as the angel’s wings curled forward past her shoulders, the left one passing briefly through Marissa before wrapping around Jackson. Leo heard Marissa draw in a stuttering breath, a sudden storm of emotions scouring across her features, one after another appearing for a brief flash of time. Bewilderment. Anxiety. Grief. Then quietness, reverence, and wonder as she found comfort in the next sensations marching through her.
And hope. The last was a welling expression of hope that made her sit back on her heels, the hands she had so tightly wrapped around Jackson’s pulling in slowly until she was pressing the jumble of fingers into her stomach, just below the solar plexus, cradling his hand against her as if it were a child in need of comfort.
Whatever the Angel felt from the contact was tightly masked in her face, not even a flicker of emotion touching her, unlike when he had been touched. Maybe because she had been prepared for it this time? Or perhaps it was because she did it purposefully in order to give Marissa solace? He didn’t know. And not knowing what her intentions were really bothered him.
Those graceful lines of blue energy wrapped around Leo’s best friend tightly, until she was pulled in to just about being chest to chest with him, her cheek resting over Jackson’s heart and her eyes closing. In another moment the lines that defined the shape of her wings became wider and wider, until there was no discerning one from the other and both she and Jackson were engulfed in a completely blue aura of energy.
Jackson body jolted suddenly beneath her, as if she’d given him a hit with defibrillation paddles. Leo tensed, his body going automatically tight with energy, the acrid taste of bile suddenly in the back of his throat. Jackson jolted again, this time his body locking hard in an arch of what could only be described as agony.
Leo lurched forward, wanting immediately to grab her and rip her away from him, but she threw up a staying hand in his direction, even though her eyes were closed and she couldn’t possibly have seen his movement or his reaction.
Why he hesitated, he didn’t know. Any other time, any other place, any other person and he would have shredded through the threat he perceived, neutralizing it to his satisfaction. But she stayed him, and somehow he obeyed, like a dog trained to its master. Not because the master was subjugating the animal, but like Jackson and his K-9 partner, with companionable understanding that each had to trust the other to do what they were supposed to do and believing that they would.
Having faith. Having trust.
He balked at the thought and anger raged through him. He clenched his already tight fists even tighter, his entire body equipped for defense…and now offense as well.
Then, as he watched, Jackson’s body seemed to blur beneath the black beauty, something inside of him spilling out around him, like a yellow aura within the energetic blue glow that she had wrapped around him. Together the colors combined into a vivid kelly green. Then the blurring aura seemed to split into two distinctive halves, each straining as if wanting to fall to either side of Jackson’s body. For an instant Leo recognized one half as Jackson, the man he had called brother from the moment they had first met, and the other half another man entirely, a stranger to him in almost every sense of the word.
He realized with no little awe that he was seeing the two distinct souls that were housed in Jackson’s corporeal body. Anxiety clawed with raw demand down his throat and into his chest. He felt himself starting to shake, and told himself it was from the sudden dump of adrenaline in his body. He lurched forward, reaching to grab for her, to rip her away from Jackson. But this time the hands that stayed him were physical. He felt one lock around his biceps on his right arm, the other clamping onto his left shoulder. He was jerked back away from the Angel, and he rounded on the interference with a savage snarl of fury.
He found himself looking dead into the eyes of his torturer.
Kamenwati.
Leo wanted to explode, wanted to finally take the opportunity for some well-deserved payback, wanted to rip the fucking spine out of the man who had sicced that dog Chatha on him with such casual concern, as if checking off something on his to-do list.
Go to market
Go to dry cleaners
Fix sink
Have Chatha torture Leo Alvarez.
Check.
Leo didn’t care that Kamenwati had defected from the Templars. Or that a great evil was coming and they needed a man of Kamenwati’s power to defeat it…the evil that had already visited them not fifteen minutes ago. And he most certainly did not take into consideration that he was just a mortal human being and Kamen was one of the most powerful men of his breed.
He was going to kill the bastard with his bare hands. Leo wanted to see how he felt while being gutted, flayed apart, and filleted like the catch of the day. Only, the moment he put all of his weight into a lunge for the sick fuck’s throat, all of the strength and energy in his body suddenly rushed out of him, like someone had connected a vacuum to his head, flipped a switch, and sucked up all the energy in his body like lint on a carpeted floor.
His legs turned to Jell-O. His body buckled. And now, instead of pulling Leo back, Kamen was holding him up on his feet. Weak and helpless, there was nothing he could do as Kamen levered him onto an upholstered bench sitting at the foot of the bed.
He was blind with impotent fury as he found himself looking up into those cold, assessing blue eyes.
“If you interrupt her, your friend will die,” Kamen said to him. There was no emotion to the words. It was as eerie as being in the middle of the Bering Sea in a flat calm. An unnatural thing.
“Get your fucking hands off me!” Leo snarled, shoving Kamen bodily away from him, clawing at the hands that were touching him and making his stomach churn. It was all he could do to keep from vomiting on the other man’s shoes. Then again, maybe he should do just that.
Of course, he hadn’t been eating very much lately, so the gist of his stomach contents would be some Jack Daniel’s and a bag of Fritos. Breakfast of champions.
But his efforts to push Kamen off himself were ineffectual, his body so weak he couldn’t even form a fist with his fingers. If not for the bastard’s hands, he realized with anger, he would have fallen over onto the floor.
“I am sorry to have done this to you,” Kamen said, once again that flat, emotionlessness that kept him from sounding anything near contrite. “But you must leave the Night Angel to her business if you want your friend to survive.”
Then Kamen let go of him, and Leo had to fumble out with his hands, trying to cling to the bench and not ooze onto the floor into a puddle of ineffectualness.
“Don’t you ever touch me again,” he spat at the other man. “You hear me? Even if it’s to push me out of the way of a speeding truck, don’t you ever lay another finger on me or you’ll pull back a mangled stump!”
“I highly doubt that,” Kamen said. “But I will do as you wish.”
Leo felt his strength coming back to him, but not in any effectual way. Only enough to allow him to turn and see what was happening to Jackson. He was just in time to see those two blurring halves slowly draw back into Jackson.
The Angel sat up sl
owly, the movement a little bit graceless, as though she too were drained of strength. She put her hands out against the bed to hold her torso upright.
“His souls are contained, the damage to his aura repaired. But it will wear thin again and develop weakened areas unless his souls are tethered soon. They will bounce against his aura, like a helium balloon bouncing along a ceiling. Eventually the balloon will shrink and wither and finally fall to the ground. The same will happen to his souls. They will shrink and wither and eventually…” She trailed off. Nothing else was needed in any event. She had given them all a very clear picture of what the situation was.
“How do we fix it? What do we do?” Marissa demanded frantically. All of her composure was evaporating. Leo could see it in the slump of her shoulders and the wetness trembling on the tips of her lower lashes. Her blue-green eyes were begging and anguished. It made Leo realize that, one soul or two, Jackson meant the world to her. No matter that the time since they had come together was short and seemingly insignificant in the grandest scheme, there was sharp truth and even sharper desperation of need in what Marissa and her Bodywalker felt for Jackson and his.
“I do not have that power,” the Angel told her.
She couldn’t have possibly kicked Marissa’s puppy harder. Sobs began to fall out of her, tears now dropping in earnest.
“Pl-please,” she begged in staccato bursts. “Do something! You have to do something!”
“Not I,” the Angel said gently, moving a hand to cover the ones Marissa still had clutched around Jackson’s, still pressed into her body as if it were a tether of its own and she had to hold tight or risk losing him. “But there are those who can. They are a select few and will be very difficult to find.”
“I’ll find them,” Leo said sharply. It seemed to startle both of the women, as though they had forgotten he was even there. “It’s what I do best,” he said a little more gently. “I hunt people down.”
It was the truth. He had hunted down thieves and warlords, cartel leaders and lieutenants. Tinker, baker, candlestick maker. There was no one he couldn’t find.
No human, he realized as the women looked at him doubtfully. He was a human in their supernatural world and they knew it. They knew the truth that had been chapping his ass from the start of this mess: that he was almost completely insignificant among them.
“You cannot find these creatures easily,” the Angel warned. “Certainly not with your limited human abilities.”
Well jeez, lady, tell me how you really feel, Leo thought bitterly.
She narrowed her eyes on him and he had a feeling she was reading more of those words on that light thingy that she was apparently able to see. “I will go with you. I can go where you cannot. See what you cannot. But you have…other skills that might be helpful, however minimal.”
“Gee, thanks. You’re just a font of encouragement now, aren’t you?” Leo said dryly.
“We need to find a Djynn. A Marid caste would be the most ideal, but there is no way we would ever be able to find one without a specific introduction. So that means finding a lower caste of Djynn, like a Djinni or Jann. They are usually far easier to find than a Marid and far less dangerous than the Sheytan.”
“SingSing!” Docia blurted out, suddenly reminding Leo that she was in the room. “We know a Djynn named SingSing. She’s umm…Djinni level. At least I think that’s what she said. It’s hard to remember. She talks very fast and is a little…eccentric.”
“Do you know where to find her?” Faith asked, the intrigued tilt of her head making him suddenly notice that her ears were gently scalloped at the lobes. It was so light a difference that it could be easily missed in the blackness of her skin. He didn’t know why, but the aberration fascinated him.
Leo frowned the moment he caught himself indulging in the thought. There was nothing for him to be fascinated by, he reminded himself. He was surrounded by these things with power he couldn’t comprehend, power he couldn’t fight. That wasn’t fascinating, it was utter stupidity. He’d spent years going headfirst into dangerous situations that he voluntarily put himself into, but the difference was that those situations were the devil he knew.
These people were the epitome of “stranger danger,” and definitely a devil he knew nothing about.
“No,” Docia said, deflating into a frown. “She just left saying something about going on vacation. Someplace warm.”
“Do you have something of hers?” the Angel asked. When she spoke, Leo could see the reddish pink of her tongue behind the white of her teeth, the contrast fascinating to see, even though it was another reminder of just how inhuman she was.
“No. I don’t think…” Docia stilled, and Leo, who had known her all of her life, could see her mind working hard. She tended to look down at the ground when she was trying to access her memories. It was something so Docia, something so incredibly unique to her, that it made him forget about the other thing inside of her just for a moment. “Wait. She gave me a scarf before she left. But that’s a gift, right? So it’s technically mine and not hers.”
“That depends on the state of her mind when she gave it to you,” Faith said. “Bring it to me and we will see what we will see.”
Docia raced for the door so fast that she tripped over her own feet, bumping and pushing through the throng of others crowded into the room. Ram. Max. Ahnvil.
“I shall hunt for the Djynn with you,” Kamenwati said to the Angel. “My skills will be invaluable.”
“Ego, much?” Leo snapped. “No. We don’t need you. And you’re supposed to be under house arrest, if I understand it correctly.”
“Please,” the Templar scoffed softly. “Regardless of Menes’s and Hatshepsut’s power, I could leave here any time I wish to. And they both know that. I remain here of my own free will.”
“Feel free to not any time you like,” Leo said darkly.
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Kamen said, clearly not taking it under any advisement in the least.
“How about you take my foot up your ass under advisement?” Leo spat, pushing himself to his feet and remaining upright by some miracle. Score one for the home team! Then, because he was damn near feeling frisky, he stepped up into the other man’s face. “Come on, pendejo. Let’s see what you’ve got without all that paranormal bullshit you like to throw around. Or are you going to just play god and push all us peons around like pieces on your cosmic chessboard? You know what they say about absolute power?”
Kamen took a step back, but it wasn’t in any kind of retreat. Leo had a feeling it was just to give himself more rarefied air.
“I don’t need you to tell me how far I’ve fallen,” Kamen said quietly. “I’ve discovered it quite on my own. And I will not ask your forgiveness because I neither think you will give it or think I deserve it. Suffice it to say, my absolution is going to be a long time into the future, if it ever happens at all. My punishment for myself is to remain here on this earth, breathing and living this life. I don’t expect you to understand, but it is by far the worst thing that can ever be done to me. So you needn’t worry about me getting my comeuppance. It’s well in hand.”
“Let me know if you need any help,” Leo said darkly.
“You’ll be the first,” Kamen assured him.
“I am sorry,” the Angel said getting to her feet, “but you need to remain here,” she said to Kamen. “You are the only protection this house will have. You and Ramses. As you see your Gargoyle protectors were insignificant to the imp god, as was just about everyone else. But together at least you can do enough to bring this house to some sort of safety. But be warned, you cannot move him unless absolutely necessary,” she said indicating Jackson. “Every movement will be like water in a glass, each step risking a spill. Movement could open his aura again, allowing his untethered souls to spill free and then there will be nothing I can do for him. To be honest I am amazed I was able to keep him intact. The damage done to him was severe.”
The understa
nding sobered everyone in the room. It smoothed down Leo’s bristles, subduing his anger. Focus, he lectured himself. Focus on the task at hand.
The Angel turned toward the door, the sudden movement making her list and Leo instinctively reached for her arm. He caught her, holding her up against himself. It was like the weak leading the weaker. He was barely steady on his own feet, but he did it just the same and it felt like a victory when he succeeded. Then he realized she was leaning flush against him, that her smooth black skin was against his palm and that she was a great deal warmer than he had expected her to be. He didn’t know why. Why had he expected that noir color to be something slick and cold? Instead, it was soft, feminine, and warm.
For the first time he caught the scent of her. Again, he was surprised. Cinnamon and nutmeg. It was a bright combination and something about it was like liquid sunshine poured into his soul. His mother had made the most incredible desserts, their kitchen redolent with delicious smells on a constant basis, and it had smelled just like this Night Angel. It was as familiar and comforting as a pair of well-worn slippers. It made him smile in spite of himself. He couldn’t even try to throw up a wall of suspicion and defense in the face of it. And that realization was what disturbed him all on its own. He didn’t like being disarmed like this. He was already at too much of a disadvantage.
“Let’s find this scarf,” she said softly, looking up into his eyes. She tilted her head, her gaze vibrant and assessing. It was then that he realized there were flecks of gold and green in the lemon yellow of her eyes.
It reinforced within him the understanding that she was indeed very pretty. There was a soft innocence to her that he hadn’t noticed initially. It had to be an illusion of some kind, he thought curiously. She had been anything but sweet and delicately ingenuous since the moment she had arrived. But then again, he had seen a great deal of innocence forced into roles of maturity in his time. He had seen nine-year-olds with machine guns, and five-year-olds used as land mine detectors while tethered to the soldiers walking a safe distance behind them.