Angelic Avenger (11 page)

“So whatcha want to do today, Lizzy? You don’t mind if I call you Lizzy, do you? It sorta suits you, little lady.”

She giggled under Ben’s teasing. I mouthed a “thank you” to him as she turned in her chair. He leaned against the doorway to the kitchen with that easy grin I liked so much, sipping his coffee. We shared a smile. Looking past him, I was surprised at the scowl on Gray’s face as he stood next to the stove. It set me back a moment. Even when I was alive, I wasn’t someone people felt proprietary over. I hadn’t been anyone’s ideal woman, lacking both true beauty and the sweet nature most men looked for. Now, I didn’t know how to handle it. My eyes dropped to the ring on my finger and I struggled to find something to say. Thankfully, the chatty child in front of me saved me.

“Can we go to the zoo? Mommy always promised to take me, but she was always too busy. I want to see the apes on the big poster by the highway.”

She wanted to go
out
? I so didn’t think so. I couldn’t protect her and all our secrets in the middle of the blasted zoo.

“Sure,” Ben said at the same time Gray said, “Yes.” And I said, “No.”

I looked at both men like they’d lost their mind.

“No. We’re not taking her out in public. It’s entirely too dangerous.”

“Lizzy, honey—” Ben glowered at me over her head, “—why don’t we let these two talk it out and come up with a plan. If we can’t make the zoo today, I
promise
you I’ll take you when this is all over.”

I felt like a heel. Why was I the only one being practical about this? Trust a couple of men to fall victim to that sweet smile and cave on all the important issues instead of sticking to their guns.

The wounded glance Lizzy gave me as she slipped out of her chair, obviously not interested in her pancakes anymore, made me feel even worse. Gray glared at me, too. I’d had about enough. Stalking around the table, I leaned against the doorframe. Taking a deep breath for dramatic effect, I decided on the logical approach. I should have known better. The man was a lawyer, after all.

“We can’t protect her out in the middle of hoards of people. There’s no way to contain the collateral damage if our mad stalker shows up.”

“She’s probably safer there than she is here.” His voice was sharp with anger, but his face was schooled to reason. I wondered if it was his court face. “He may be mad, but he’s not so far gone as to risk public exposure. Here, we’re sitting ducks waiting on him to show up and hope the plan works. There, we’ve got a little breathing room. At the moment, I think we all need a little bit of room.”

I didn’t like the look on his face when he said it. It was hurt and angry. In that moment, his resemblance to Gavreel was overwhelming. His eyes blazed at me from the sharp beauty of his face and I was at a loss as to what to do to make it better. Obviously, it was my fault, right? What had I done to deserve that?

Before I had a chance to flounder out of the quagmire of emotions flashing about the small kitchen, Foras arrived with his own mystical addition to the disaster. And here I thought it couldn’t get much worse. When I’m wrong, I’m really, really wrong.

“We’re getting this place warded against uninvited guests.” Gray’s voice was low and thrummed with anger, but it was suddenly a hotter anger than our disagreement justified.

“Unlike some I could mention, I have a standing invitation.”

The halfling and the angel faced one another and the air was suddenly thick with power. Foras crossed his arms across his chest and I took the moment to look at him. I mean
really
look at him in the light everyone was apparently thinking I already had. He was tall and well-muscled without being bulky. I’d seen him without his shirt on often enough to know the body was sculpted with the grace of a Greek statue. His inky black hair curled over his forehead, but was short enough to be considered conservative. Considering most of the angels preferred long hair, it made me realize all the ones I associated with tended to look more like celestial corporate types instead of the wild, rocker types. Something flashed in Foras’s dark eyes, so brown they were nearly black, as his gaze locked with mine.

Lord, they were right. It may have been naive on my part, but Foras’s intentions were anything but innocent.

“That can be changed.”

Gray’s words jerked me out of my thoughts. I’d thought the tension in the kitchen couldn’t get much worse, but it thickened to an impossible degree. I expected one of them to throw a physical punch. But then again, why settle for a human response when a magical one will do?

Foras stood away from the wall and wings flared into corporal form behind him. I’d never seen him with his wings. Up until last night when Lizzy had seen Gavreel’s wings when they’d not been in form, I’d never really thought about where they went when I couldn’t see them. I suppose they never truly went away. It was a quandary for another day. I stared at the inky feathers in awe. They were so dark they glowed with a bluish sheen reserved for the true black, but each feather looked as if it had been dipped in gold. Foras was an archangel. Granted, I knew that, on an intellectual level, but seeing him standing there with wings so dark they made his hair look brunet instead of true black, it slapped me in the face. It was really an impressive sight, I had to admit. His gaze was still locked with mine as he calmly replied to Gray.

“Maybe that’s true, but you’re not the one to make those decisions, are you?”

Something inside me snapped. I’d had about all the male posturing I could stand for the next decade. I don’t know what I would have done a week ago if I’d realized how dark and sexy the Devil’s General was. Today, the realization made me mad.

“You’re right, Foras, he’s not. If you both don’t cut it out, I’ll have the place warded this afternoon.”

Gray’s smug smile made me even madder.

“I’ll make sure to have it warded against
everything
. It really wouldn’t do to isolate a few of my
friends
, now would it?” The words dripped with innocence, as if I were clueless as to the little power display that had happened in front of my eyes.

Suddenly, I had both of their attention and the magic flowing through the room was gone as if it had never been. I stared between them before shaking my head and returning to business at hand.

“Foras, we’re really a little busy right now. If you popped in for a visit, now’s not really a good time. Gray, Ben and I are on Guardian Angel duty, unless you’ve come to help?”

Why was I justifying Gray’s presence for breakfast? Because I felt guilty. Strange as it was, I felt guilty because I’d been oblivious to Foras’s interest in me until after he caught another man with a sleepover. Granted, it wasn’t the sleepover in the romantic sense, but still…he had spent the night in my bed, even if I hadn’t been with him.

“Actually,” Foras purred back at me, “that’s why I’m here. To help.”

Surprise must have shown on my face because a flash of hurt flitted across his before it was hidden behind his customary half-smile. I smiled at him, wishing I knew what in the world to do. And here I was thinking I was out of depth with the child in my apartment.

“Turel has been declared rogue.”

That
snagged my attention. Hey, things were looking up.

“Great, so where’s my army to come fetch him? That’s the way it works, right? Council declares them rogue and you guys swoop down and drag them off before they can do any more damage…right?”

His eyes slid away from mine and I suddenly didn’t like this very much.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“Council hasn’t met to declare him rogue. The Order did.”

Okay, the Council is the governing body of angels that generally act as the legislature for supernatural beings. All of us non-humans answered to them. It was made up of equal parts of the three Orders: Light, Dark and Neutral. Turel was apparently a Dark Angel like good ol’ Foras, here. It was a bad, bad sign that the order had enacted a hunt order on Turel instead of the Council. It meant he had flipped a switch inside that even his peers weren’t willing to let slide.

“So I don’t get a mystical army to keep him away from me and the little girl he’s hunting?”

“I’m afraid not. I tried to arrange protection; however, it was determined I was too close to be objective. If we sent a legion to protect you, the Council would realize how far the situation has gotten beyond of our control. The balance of power is too fragile to admit to the truth of it right now.”

Foras’s voice was soft, but the anger in it came through. The vote had gone against him and he didn’t like it.

I could sympathize. There seemed to be a lot of that going around. Maybe we were both too accustomed to getting our own way about things.

Chapter Ten

The zoo was pulsing with life. Children were laughing and playing while harried parents were trying to restore order. I could have told them it was useless. I was beginning to realize small children are the embodiment of chaos. I’d reached that conclusion in less than twenty-four hours, most of which she’d been asleep. Imagine that.

The object of my thoughts was bouncing ahead with her brown hair swinging in a sad excuse for a ponytail. It was the best I could do. After the fourth try amid the laughter of the men, I’d given up. Lizzy had Ben by the hand and was chattering in such an excited babble, I couldn’t understand half of it. He didn’t seem to be having any trouble at all. It made me realize I didn’t know that much about him. Our dinner conversations had been fun and lighthearted, lacking personal details on both our parts. I made a note to rectify that when this was all over. It would be a nice change of pace from the two brooding men strolling along half a pace behind me.

Foras had decided to tag along, in case our friendly wild stalker was too far into his madness to be swayed by the public venue. Personally, I thought it was an excuse to get on Gray’s nerves, especially after he’d stared long and hard at the ring on my finger. Despite the explanation, he was determined to be difficult. A man being difficult because of his own insecurities, who would have thought?

Of course, Gray wasn’t being any better. He was stalking along as if I’d stomped on his heart. I didn’t believe it for a minute. His pride was hurt. We’d not known each other long enough for either of our feelings to be entrenched in this trumped up engagement.

How did I end up in this mess, again? Oh yeah. Favors for angels. Never again, I swear.

The only people enjoying our walk through the panda exhibit were Lizzy and her Prince Charming. I obviously wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have been because I didn’t see Alex Cabot until he was very nearly right up on us. He’d cleaned up his act, a little, since the last time I saw him. Then, he’d been coming out of a bad life and trying to rebuild. He was a small, slight man with a lock of black hair falling over icy blue eyes. They were the same icy blue when they stared out of his black wolf’s face, too. Of all the shifters I knew, he was the one that always made me shiver when I looked at him. Not a sexual shiver, mind you, just a shiver of awareness of
what
he was and exactly what he could do to you. In a lot of ways, I think the wolf side of him ruled his heart and that made him very logical in survival situations.

“You’re slow on the uptake today, Bella.”

I smiled at his lazy drawl and watched him shove his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Rocking on the balls of his feet, he shifted his gaze uneasily behind me and rolled his shoulders forward a bit defensively. The angels made him nervous, but I really couldn’t blame him. They weren’t exactly known for mercy. Fairness, yes, mercy, no. Granted, the Council pretty much left the shifters alone unless there was the threat of exposure. Keeping the existence of non-human races from the humans was the first rule. Unfortunately, Reapers were in charge of enforcing those Council decrees, so shifters generally didn’t like us very much, either.

Go figure.

“It’s been a long day, Alex. I’m surprised to see you here, though. I didn’t think your sort approved of zoos.”

I smiled at him to soften the words, but don’t think he saw it. His eyes were too busy darting around like a cornered wolf. His nostrils flared like he was scenting for trouble and that made me more than a little leery.

“Well—” his glance slid over my shoulder at Foras and he shifted uncomfortably on his feet, “—let’s say I wanted to talk to you and thought a public place was safer than knocking on your door these days.”

Lord, did
everyone
think I was shacking up with the Devil’s General?

“My door is always open, if you guys need it. You know that, right?”

Had I been so unapproachable they didn’t feel safe enough to come to me for mediation? I thought back to the last time I’d been asked to mediate a dispute between the factions, but couldn’t pinpoint it. I was still relatively new to the job, though. That much I could remember.

Alex’s tongue flicked out to wet his lips and he cocked his head toward me. Something in those icy blue eyes made me hesitate and think. Wait. He had said he needed a public venue which meant he’d known we were going to be here. How had he known? Something was up and I knew I wasn’t going to like it.

“Yeah, I know. Can I have a minute? Over there?”

I followed the direction of his nod and saw benches lined up by the wall to the Panda exhibit. There were enough children playing in the courtyard that there would be enough noise to shield our conversation from even an archangel’s ears.

“Sure.”

“Bella—“

I went on as if Foras hadn’t said a word.

“You guys wait here, or go on through the exhibit with Lizzy and Ben. Alex and I’ll be right over there when you’re done.”

I didn’t wait for them to agree, but began weaving through the laughing children toward the benches. Alex fell in beside me, his relief obvious with every step that distanced him from my impromptu escort.

“Thank you,” he whispered. I knew it was for more than granting him a private audience.

“You’re welcome,” I whispered back as I sat down. “Now, spill. Why are you following me?”