Archangel of Mercy (29 page)

Chapter Forty

P
ALMS
flattened against the stone-tiled wall of the shower, Gabe glared at the floor as the water jets pummeled his back and shoulders. He’d been so sure Aurora would chose to stay with him. But the moment she knew she was free she’d wanted to go.

He could keep her here. She could never leave without his help. But what fucking good was that? For the past week she’d been imprisoned because freedom equaled capture by the Guardians. But the Guardians would not dare touch her now.

Do I have to hurt you?
Aurora’s teasing words floated in his mind.

I’d like to see you try.
He’d been so sure she never could.

Be careful what you wish for.

The steam rose, obscuring his vision, and he blinked rapidly, the moisture stinging his eyes. He’d feared the time when Aurora would grow old and die and he would be left behind. But he didn’t even have those few blissful years ahead. Because she wanted out, right now.

He knew she wanted him. Knew she still desired him. But it wasn’t enough.

He wanted it all.

She was his beloved. He would give her anything that was within his power to make her happy. But the one thing she wanted was the one thing that would destroy the fragile vision he’d harbored of them forging a future together.

—

WHEN HE ENTERED
the bedroom she’d already packed and was standing awkwardly by his bed. Something cracked deep in his chest. His heart, maybe. He’d always thought he no longer possessed a heart but Aurora had proved him wrong.

She’d proved him wrong about so many things. Gods, how could he let her go? How could he not?

How the hell was he going to survive?

“I’ve left your necklace on the bed.” She avoided eye contact and made a vague gesture with her hand. “Sorry, I just need to use the bathroom.” She sidled past him like they were strangers. She had no idea every word she uttered tore into his heart and lodged with agonizing intent.

He pulled her necklace from the pocket of his shirt and then picked up the one he had created for Eleni, so many centuries ago. He loved Eleni. Would always love Eleni. But now he also loved Aurora. And his love for Aurora did not diminish his devotion for Eleni. In a strange way he couldn’t explain the one love enhanced the other, as if they were entwined.

Tenderly he kissed the ancient angel wings before sliding it into Aurora’s purse. Maybe when she discovered what he had given her she’d understand how he felt. Understand why he’d let her go.

She came into the bedroom and he dropped her necklace back into his pocket. Against his heart.

It was a poor substitute for her love, but the only piece of her he could keep with him for all time.

—

HE TELEPORTED DIRECTLY
to her bedroom and it was hell letting Aurora go. She didn’t help by keeping her arms around him for a few seconds longer, as if she never wanted them to part.

“Are you going to come downstairs and meet my parents?” She looked up at him, her blue eyes as enchanting as the first time he’d seen her.

“Better not.” He dumped her clothes on her bed and tried not to imagine Aurora under the rainbow-patterned duvet. But he knew the vision would plague him for all eternity.

“Am I going to see you again?” She sounded defensive, and he briefly closed his eyes before turning to face her.

“Friends with benefits you mean?” He saw her stiffen, and he forced a dismal smile. Where was his archangelic radiance when he needed it? “Wouldn’t work, would it?”

“No.” She folded her arms and lowered her lashes so he could no longer drown in the haunting innocence of her eyes. “So this is it, is it? Just like a holiday romance after all.”

His jaw tensed. A holiday romance. “Something like that.” The words just about choked him. Why was she making this so hard? He’d given her what she wanted. Didn’t she know it would destroy him if they continued to see each other on a purely casual basis? If he knew she was seeing—
screwing
—other men? Didn’t she know how easily he’d hunt them down and pulverize their brains for daring to touch the woman he loved?

“Aurora.” A man’s voice, uncertain and questioning, called from downstairs. “Is that you?”

“My dad.” Aurora offered him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. If that wasn’t a cue for him to go he didn’t know what was. But he couldn’t leave without touching her one more time. Without kissing her one more time. And so he took her clenched fist, uncurled her fingers and kissed the palm of her hand before he teleported back to his island.

—

“WHAT IS THIS?”
Eblis sounded disgusted. “A fucking archangel retreat?”

Gabe glowered at Zad and Azrael as they strode into the dimly lit alcove. That had to be a first. He couldn’t remember either of them setting foot on Eta Hyperium before.

“You need to upgrade your security,” he said to Eblis. “It can’t tell the difference between archangel and demon DNA.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Zad, who rarely raised his voice or emerged from his façade of tranquil acceptance of the randomness of the universe glared at him. He looked ready to leap across the table and throttle Gabe.

“Getting pissed.” Gabe downed the remainder of his tankard and it still didn’t lessen the hard knot of desolation buried in the pit of his gut. It had been two days since he’d taken Aurora back to Ireland. Two days of constant drinking with Eblis. And still the alcohol hadn’t numbed any part of his anatomy.

“Got a problem with that?” Eblis sounded like he hoped Zad did have a problem with it. One that involved fighting.

“You look like shit, Gabe,” Azrael said. “Tell me it’s got nothing to do with that interfering human you picked up.”

“You abandoned her.” Zad glared at Gabe as if he had committed an unforgivable sin. Gabe gritted his teeth. Zad was one of the few archangels he’d never physically fought. Partly because of his connection with Eleni but mainly because Zad just never got that riled.

But one more fucking word—

“Tossed her out of your life as soon as you could. Left her to fend for herself—”

“Shut the fuck up.” Gabe shoved the table out of the alcove with his booted foot. “What’s it to you anyway?”

“Looks like he’s attached to this female himself,” Eblis said. “That right, archangel?”

Disgust and fury and raw, primitive possessiveness slammed through Gabe’s chest. He’d suspected Zad wanted Aurora from the moment he’d met her the other day. And now he knew.

“You touch her . . .” For a moment words failed him. To know that some day Aurora would take another man, might fall in love with another man—
bear his children
—corroded his soul. But the thought of another archangel having her was beyond intolerable. “I’ll fucking neutralize you.”

Instead of going for his throat, Zad looked bizarrely self-satisfied. Azrael, on the other hand, had a look of horrified disbelief on his face.

“Gabe.” Azrael’s tone was urgent. “She’s just a human. Nothing special. Right?”

Nothing special? She was his everything. And he’d let her go without telling her.

“You left her because that’s what she wanted,” Zad said as if that was a revelation and not a particularly welcome one. “You didn’t try and change her mind.”

“Change her mind?” Azrael slung Zad a look of outrage. “Why the hell would Gabe want to change a human’s mind if she’s ignorant enough to turn him down?” He flung himself back against the sofa, his wings partially extending. A frown creased his forehead. “Since when have
mortals
ever turned down an archangel?”

She hadn’t turned him down. Because he hadn’t asked her to stay. All she’d wanted was to check on her parents. And he’d taken that as irrefutable evidence that she wanted her life back, without any restrictions.

“Is this what you want?” Zad’s attitude was back to normal. Calm, almost indifferent. Except for the inexplicable glitter of intensity in his eyes. “The knowledge that for the next three score years or more she’s alive and you’re not with her?”

No.
It twisted his reason that he wasn’t with her. He wanted nothing more than to ignore her protests and take her once again to his island.

His prisoner.

How long would it be before her
want
and
desire
turned not to endless love but to resentment and loathing?

“Zad, what the fuck are you on?” Azrael glowered at the other archangel. “Gabe can find another human easily enough if that’s what he wants. One that doesn’t have an unhealthy obsession in meddling with the astral planes.”

So Azrael had figured out Aurora’s connection with the disruption in that realm. Not that it mattered. Gabe staggered to his feet. Shit, all that alcohol had affected him after all.

“I don’t want another human.” He looked at Zad. “Aurora is the only woman I want.”

Azrael leaped up, infuriated incomprehension flickering in his eyes as he grabbed Gabe’s shoulders.

“You
love
her?” He made it sound something obscene. “How could you do that again, Gabe? It all but destroyed you after Eleni. Don’t you understand? She’s mortal. She’s destined to die. No matter how many times you find her in the future she’ll always fucking
die
. And each time your heart will die as well.”

Did Azrael think he didn’t know that? It was the reason he’d fought his love for Aurora. But it made no difference if he acknowledged it or not. He loved her, even if she didn’t love him back. And he was a deluded fool if he thought he could’ve stayed away from her for the rest of her life. What price was his pride? What use was his ego? If he told her how he felt, told her what he wanted, she might refuse.

But if he gave her the choice . . . she might just accept.

“It’s a small price to pay, Az.” Yes, it would destroy a piece of him every time she died. But the love would survive.

“How can a few fleeting years possibly compensate for that kind of heartache?”

“Shut your mouth, archangel.” Eblis stood, unfurled his wings. “Before any more shit comes out of it.”

“What the hell do you know?” Azrael said. “You’re a fucking demon.”

“And you,” Eblis said, contempt dripping from every word, “have never fallen.”

Chapter Forty-one

I
T
had been two days since Gabe had dumped her. Aurora sat on the edge of her bed and stared sightlessly at the half-packed case at her feet.

This afternoon she was returning to London. To her post-graduate studies and the house she shared with three others. She’d stayed on in Ireland an extra day in the pathetic hope that Gabe might change his mind and come back for her. Or at least visit her.

But there had been nothing. The previous week might just as well have been a fantastical dream. The only proof she had that it had been real was the constant ache in her chest, reminding her that despite her good intentions she’d given Gabe her heart. And allowed him to trample all over it.

Her dad had wanted to know all about the psychic fayre she had supposedly gone to, and because she felt so awful about lying she’d been deliberately vague. But for some reason her dad had honed in on her
single
mention of Gabe and now appeared to think she was in the middle of some great love affair.
If only.

She heard her mother at her bedroom door and futile guilt washed through her. Far from remembering their email exchange her mother didn’t appear to realize Aurora had gone missing at all. It was as if the last few days had been gently airbrushed from her consciousness.

And that was that. She’d failed in her dearly cherished hope of helping her mum regain her memories. And after everything she’d learned during the last week there was no way she’d risk trying to cross dimensions again.

Her mother leaned against the dressing table that had been passed down through countless generations and idly fingered Aurora’s bag.

“It’s been nice having you home,” she said.

“Mm.” Aurora pushed herself to her feet. Her packing wouldn’t do itself. From the corner of her eye she saw her mum begin to poke through the contents of her bag and she sighed. She’d long ago stopped keeping anything too personal in her bag when she came to visit. Her mum didn’t seem to comprehend that what she was doing was an invasion of privacy.

“Well, that’s strange.” Her mum sounded surprised. “Why aren’t you wearing your necklace? You always wear it.”

Instinctively her fingers went to her bare throat. She hadn’t put her necklace back on after returning to her parents. The urgency to have it next to her skin had died. Somehow, after touching the real archangelic token of devotion, she couldn’t bear the thought of an inferior, human-crafted imitation.

On her knees she glanced over at her mother as she pulled the glittering chain from her bag. Her mum frowned and peered at the pendant cradled in the palm of her hand as if she had never seen it before. Oh, god. Was her mother’s condition worsening further?

“What is this?” There was an odd note in her voice and Aurora dug her nails into the palms of her hands. There was no point getting upset. There was nothing she could do about it.

“You know what it is.” She forced herself up and went over to her mum, who was now looking at the necklace like it was a rattlesnake readying to attack. “Here, do you want to put it on me?”

“No, I don’t know what this is.” Her mother’s voice was firm. She sounded as lucid as she had in that recent email. “I know what it
looks
like, but that’s neither here nor there.”

Aurora pulled her mum’s hand down so she could see. And her heart jackknifed.

She didn’t need to touch it to feel the ethereal pulse. Didn’t need to open the wings to see the magical rainbows or gold dust from a long-destroyed City of Angels.

Gabe had given her his beloved’s necklace. And kept hers for himself.

She clutched her mother’s arm before she collapsed onto the floor. There was no way in hell this was a mistake. Gabe had deliberately given her his treasured necklace.

Why would he do that?

“Give it to me.” Her voice sounded reedy, as if it didn’t belong to her. Her mother ignored her and opened the pendant, and Aurora’s breath escaped in a silent sigh.

There was only one reason why Gabe would have given her something so precious. But why hadn’t he said anything? Stupid, stubborn man.
Archangel
. How was she supposed to contact him? How was she supposed to tell him how much she loved him and wanted them to spend whatever time they had together?

Why hadn’t she told him back in his kitchen, when she’d wanted to?

“This isn’t yours.”

Aurora unhooked her nails from her mum’s arm. “No, it—it belongs to a friend of mine.”

“A friend?” Her mother looked up at her and silence spun between them. “You mean that man who came here and collected all your clothes?”

“What?” Her mother remembered? “Uh, yes. That’s the one.” Did her mum remember that Gabe had teleported in front of her? She hoped not.

“He vanished right in front of my eyes.” Her mum sounded accusing. “I don’t mean he jumped out of the window. I mean he vanished. People don’t vanish like that in this world, Aurora.”

In this world?

“No,” Aurora said, her voice so faint she wondered if her mum would hear it. “He—he isn’t from these parts.” That was putting it mildly.

Her mum tilted her hand so that the rainbows and gold dust glittered, as if they were illuminated by their own tiny sun.

“I spoke to him.” There was a faraway quality in her mother’s voice.
“Why did I forget I could do that, Aurora? I’ve missed you so much.”

Aurora’s heart twisted. Her mum was sliding away from her again.

“But I’m right here,” she said. “And I’ll—” Belated comprehension slammed into her and she stared, slack jawed, at her mother. “
Mum?
” Tentatively she asked the question in her mind.
“Can you hear me?”

Her mother’s eyes were glazed. But not as if she was slipping back into her own safe world. She looked as if she was trying to remember . . .

“This is what I was afraid of.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “That you’d find someone the same way I found someone. That one day you’d leave this world the way I left mine. I couldn’t face that, Aurora.
I tried to forget, so none of it was real
.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” It had never occurred to her that her dad’s greatest fear was also her mother’s. By trying to help her mum regain her memories, she had attempted to do the one thing her mother had feared above all else.

“You were too young. And then . . . it was too late.” Her mother’s fingers closed over the angel wings. “You’re going to leave with him, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question. “You’re going back to his dimension.”

“Listen to me.” Aurora held her mother’s hands. “He’s from this dimension, mum. Just not from this world. I won’t ever leave you, but I need to be with him. If I can find him again.”

Her mum pulled free and once again gazed at the necklace. Then she straightened her spine, seeming to come to a decision.

“You’ll need this.” She fastened the clasp around Aurora’s neck and then cradled her face between her palms. “You know where to find him, Aurora. The same way you did before.” And then she whispered, mind to mind.
“He’s in your heart.”

—

AURORA RETURNED TO
the same place Gabe had made his unorthodox entry into her life.
Seventeen steps east of the ancient oak, three steps north
. Logic told her it made no difference where she was. Gabe would either hear her or not. But her heart knew differently.

This was how she would reach him.

She sank to the ground, heart thudding against her ribs. She wasn’t going into trance. She wasn’t going to enter the astral planes. She was going to try and connect her mind to Gabe’s.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing now?” Mephisto’s infuriated voice suddenly sliced through her concentration and she glared up at him. He towered over her, his midnight wings fully extended like an avenging angel of death. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble?”

She pushed herself up. Mephisto still loomed over her but at least she didn’t feel quite as vulnerable as she had while sitting at his feet.

“I wasn’t trying to cross dimensions.” She hated the defensive note in her voice. “I was just trying to contact Gabe.”

Mephisto took one step toward her. Oddly, she didn’t find it threatening despite the wild gleam in his eyes.

“If you love him, E,” he said, “set him free. Don’t let him find out who you really are.”

E?

“He knows who I am.” A trans-dimensional child. An anomaly of nature. “And he doesn’t care about that. If he loves me what’s it got to do with you?”

For a moment the archangel stared at her as though she’d just said something unbelievably stupid. And then a strange expression crossed his face. A combination of disbelief and incredulity. As if her words had suddenly taken on another meaning.

“You really don’t know, do you?” He folded his wings and raked a condemning glance over her. “You’re as in the dark as Gabe.”

An eerie shiver trickled along her spine and she curled her fingers around the necklace, drawing comfort from the ethereal sensation of life that pulsed within. And for the second time she had the strangest sensation that she and Mephisto had confronted each other numerous times in the past.

Had her fragile hope been true?
Mephisto had called her E. Did that stand for
Eleni?

The earth rumbled and as she staggered a violet streak of lightning appeared and a dozen foul Guardians emerged.

Mephisto gripped her arm and slung her behind him. She gasped and terror snaked through her. What were the Guardians doing here?

“Explain.” Mephisto’s voice was low. Deadly. He did not speak in English. He spoke the language of the ancients.

And she could understand him.

A horrific screeching hiss scraped through her nerves but deep in her brain she could
feel
dormant synapses reconnecting, primal pathways reactivating. And then the hisses and shrieks formed substance and cohesion and ancient words clawed through her mind.

It belongs to us—

Anomaly of nature—

Outside your jurisdiction—

“No matter what the parentage,” Mephisto said. “You touch the beloved of an archangel and you risk war against all Immortals.”

Shock slammed through her. It was one thing to guess Gabe had fallen in love with her. It was something else to learn that he had elevated her to the status of a beloved.
That
was why the Guardians had backed away in Kala’s suite.

That was why he had given her his precious archangelic necklace.

Section 188, Sub-Section 52, paragraph nine point three hundred of the—

“Don’t quote the protocols at me.”

We have the right to take all anomalies in order to maintain the integrity of the universe—

Such abominations cannot be allowed to survive—

The anomaly must be given to us for neutralization—

Slowly he turned and looked at her, his wings outstretched, as if protecting her from the Guardians’ sight.

“I don’t believe it. Nothing’s straightforward with you, is it? Not only did you come back but you had to be the one thing outside of an Immortal’s protection.”

Fear stabbed through her. “What do you mean?” And instantly she remembered how she’d torn her arms, left traces of her blood in the Voids when they’d rescued Evalyne. Was that how the Guardians had discovered her dual heritage? “Because of my
parentage
?”

Mephisto’s eyes turned scarlet with rage. But for once the rage was not directed at her.

“Isn’t it fucking always?”

—

AS GABE PULLED
on a fresh shirt in his dressing room a sudden, disconnected image of Aurora flashed through his brain. He froze. That image didn’t come from him. Had Aurora created a telepathic link with him? But even as the thought formed he discarded it. No matter how strong her telepathic ability, no one could forge such a link with an archangel. The link always had to be initiated from their end.

And then he remembered her mother and his conviction crumbled.

He picked up her necklace and slipped it into his shirt pocket and vertigo slammed through him. So sudden, so violent, he staggered against the wall and doubled over, panting as if he had just had the oxygen vacuumed from his lungs.

Primal terror struck him, twisting his gut and squeezing his heart. He tried to analyze the terror but it was formless. For a split second he saw the repellent shadows of the Guardians in his mind’s eye. It didn’t make sense, because
his love protected her
, yet a certainty ground through him that it wasn’t over and it would never be over. Aurora, his beloved, was in deadly danger.