Fallen Angel of Mine (22 page)

"Am I travelling by Obsidian Arch?" she
asked as Jack hopped in the driver's seat of a black sedan parked
outside the manor.

"Usually, yeah, but not this time.
Strange anomalies have been popping up with the arches, so we
decided it'd be better for you to go by jet."

"Anomalies?"

He looked both ways before pulling onto
the main road and nodded. "Started a day or so ago. One of our
Gloom operatives reported that reality fractures are popping up all
over the place when someone tries to use an arch."

"No idea why?"

"Nah. The Arcane Council is
investigating after our people had to rescue three different groups
of travelers from the Gloom."

"Three incidents from different
arches?" Elyssa had never heard of so many at once.

"Yeah. Crazy, huh? I think the last
time anything close to so many was back when they were just
figuring out how to operate the things."

They rode the rest of the short
distance to the private airfield in silence as Elyssa considered
Jack’s words. Gloom assignment was something she never wanted. Even
the most careful operatives got lost in that screwed up place.
She'd heard stories of monsters and all sorts of horrible things
trapped in that in-between hell.

A shiny black jet waited on the tarmac,
its engines giving off a low rumble. She hugged her brother
goodbye.

"I'm proud of you, sis," he said,
winking. "I know you'll do us proud."

"Thanks, Jack." She kissed him on the
cheek and boarded the jet, keeping her upper lip as stiff as
possible. Regret weighted every step with leaden uncertainty. She
didn't even remember her mistakes, couldn't remember them now if
she tried. She thought back to the friends she'd made during
training. What did they think of her now? Were they whispering
about her right this very moment? Shaking their heads at the
failure she'd become? The thought made her sick with anger. She had
nobody to blame but herself.

"Welcome on board," the pilot said with
a grin. Elyssa wanted to punch the smile off his happy face. "Help
yourself to whatever you need from the galley after we depart."
With that, he went into the cockpit and revved the engines for
takeoff. At least Templar pilots didn't have to worry about setting
flight plans thanks to the jet's charmed hull, which kept it off
civilian radar.

Elyssa took a seat and buckled herself
in after grabbing a couple of blood ration packs from the galley
fridge. The blood was chilly and tasted disgusting. She activated
the heating spell on the bag with a swipe of her finger, bringing
it from slushy to a touch above body temperature within seconds.
She took a sip and sighed. Warm blood was so much better.
Especially with a bit of Godiva chocolate syrup or
Nutella.

God, what she wouldn't give for a
container of chocolate chip ice cream and a mindless reality TV
show right about now. Anything was better than brooding and
wondering about a past she could no longer remember.

Exhaustion tugged on her eyelids even
as the blood revitalized her tired body, but jumbled thoughts
plagued her every time she tried to rest her eyes. Staring out the
window at the darkness, she wondered where in Europe she was going
and why her father had decided now was the time to send her on a
remote operation. His shame over her poor performance must have
been even deeper than he'd let on.

A short woman with dark hair
and tanned skin peered through a sliding glass door beaded by rain
and fogged by humidity. She tapped against the glass and said
something, but Elyssa couldn't make it out. She wiped the surface
with her sleeve, but failed to clear it enough to make out the
other woman's details. Tugging on the door handle did nothing.
Despite the lack of locks or bars holding the door shut, nothing
she did would open it.

The woman banged against the
glass and appeared to be pointing toward the rolling banks of fog
behind her. Elyssa looked around the tiny room and wondered where
exactly she was. A single chair bolted to the concrete floor sat in
the center of the room. Behind it was a door. She walked to the
door and grasped the handle. It turned easily.

A great banging on glass
drew her attention back to the woman in the back. She slammed the
glass with the palms of both her hands as though frantic about
something. Elyssa turned to the front door and opened it. Sunlight
like beaten sheets of gold danced off a huge lake. A blue sky
brushed with lazy white clouds greeted her as a warm breeze filled
with the fresh aroma of spring tickled her nose.

Why was the weather out back
so much different than the front? And why would she want to go into
fog and rain anyway? Was the other woman crazy? Elyssa took a step
toward the sunlight. The glare increased, going from yellowish to a
stark white. Her foot halted an inch above the sidewalk as a
thought occurred to her. She turned toward the back door.
Considered the frantic woman on the other side. Wasn't it her duty
to save people? To help them? She couldn't abandon that poor woman.
Somehow, she had to open the door.

Elyssa slammed the front
door shut and strode to the back of the room. She crashed her
shoulder against the sliding glass door over and over again, but it
did no good. She tugged on the chair, hoping to use it as a way to
smash the incredibly tough glass, but the bolts held it fast. The
other woman stopped pummeling the glass and now stood with her
entire body pressed against it.

Something looked different
about her. Elyssa walked closer and looked. The woman's hair was
still dark, but her skin looked fair now. Even stranger, she looked
to have grown several inches and now rivaled even Elyssa's tall
frame. Violet light shone through the glass. With a start, Elyssa
realized it was the other woman's eyes. By the light she could
almost make out her—

A gasp burst from her mouth
as the face came to light. The face was her own.

Elyssa's eyes flew open. She flinched.
The startled pilot backed up a step, his hand toward her as if he'd
tried to shake her awake. "We're here," he said, offering a smile.
"I guess you were dreaming."

She sucked in a breath, feeling
mortified. "Yeah, I guess so."

"There's a vehicle waiting
outside."

Elyssa grabbed her suitcase and
descended the stairs to the tarmac. Stifling humidity greeted her
in waves as she strode across the worn surface and toward what
looked like a helicopter. She knew better. It was probably a
slider, tantamount to a magical flying box charmed with illusion to
make it look like its mundane counterpart. They didn't use them
much in urban locations—at least not during the day. The strict
regulations about flying in the city meant any unregistered
aircraft were likely to be reported by concerned citizens. The
pilot, a tanned man with black hair, sauntered forward and offered
his hand.

"I'm Commander Christian Salazar," he
said with a light accent she could almost place. "Welcome to hell,
recruit."

"Hell?"

He grinned, showing neat white teeth.
"We're only a few hours away from some of the worst supernatural
scum you'll ever meet. Blood farmers, drug dealers, slavers, you
name it, they're down here."

A thrill of excitement
spiked Elyssa's adrenalin.
Finally, a real
challenge.
"When do we get
started?"

"We've already got an op ready to go,
Recruit Borathen. Now that you're here, you'll get to see firsthand
what Templars on the fringes have to deal with."

"And where, exactly, are we,
anyway?"

He bared his white teeth again.
"Colombia."

I woke up on a muddy concrete floor
with a heavy shackle around my leg. A chain ran from it to a thick
bolt in the floor. I wiped crusted goo from my eyes and tried to
focus on my surroundings, but a thick haze of grogginess beat back
my senses and nausea sent a chill shivering through my body. I
dry-heaved and banged my forehead against the rough texture of the
concrete.

"Ow, ow, ow," I said, rubbing the
tender spot and finding blood on my fingers.

Rolling onto my back, I was able to
discern a single light bulb on a cracked gray ceiling. Gray
concrete walls surrounded me on three sides and thick iron bars
gave me the middle finger from the fourth. A depression in the
floor revealed itself to be a rusted drain cover the same
circumference as a soda can. I rotated with laborious effort to my
knees and pushed myself into a kneeling position. The memory of
darts sticking from my chest staggered through my brain in a
drunken haze. I lifted my shirt and checked for puncture
wounds.

Little red dots remained
where the darts had struck me, and my muscles felt sore and
sluggish.
Strange.
They should have fully healed by now. And what in the world
was in those darts? That dude had pumped three or four into me,
probably way more than an ordinary person could handle. He'd looked
so confused. Panicked. He couldn't understand why I hadn't dropped
from the first dart. In all likelihood, he hadn't known I wasn't
quite human.

My hands trembled and another sickening
wave of nausea churned its way up my guts and into my throat. Warm
liquid trickled on my upper lip as I came up for breath after
another round of dry heaves. I touched it and found blood on my
fingers. Something was wrong. Really, really, really wrong. I was
still bleeding from smacking my head on the concrete and still sore
from the darts. Had it been hours since the incident? Days? I had
no idea.

I tried to stand and only managed to
totter on unsteady feet, hands held out for balance before my butt
planted itself on the concrete and pain rocketed up my spine. The
shackle dug into my leg, scraping skin already raw from the rough
metal. My incubus belly gurgled and complained as my senses fought
their way back from oblivion.

My sluggish brain pieced together what
was ailing me and why my supernatural healing had gone on hiatus.
The sheer volume of drugs pumped into my blood from those darts
probably would have killed an elephant. My superhuman ability to
quickly recover from trauma had been severely overtaxed, leaving me
with almost nothing in the energy banks. As the numbing effect of
the tranquilizer wore off, the ache in my stomach grew worse and
worse.

I stared past the iron bars and saw
another prison cell across from me. Was I in jail? Who in the world
was the guy who'd shot me in the first place? I staggered forward,
groaning like a zombie, and leaned against the bars, trying to get
a good angle to peer at the hallway beyond. More cells lined the
wall to my right. On the left, I saw a steel door set in a
cinderblock wall. If this was a prison, why did they have shackles
in the cell? I had a bad feeling they were about to open a can of
third-world whoop-ass on me.

Or maybe they knew what I was. Maybe
the guy who took me down was a Templar and I was in one of their
holding cells. I touched the shackle, taking in the rough
galvanized texture. If this was ordinary iron, it wouldn't hold me,
at least not when I was powered up. When Meghan had tied me down so
she could use my blood to save Stacey, she'd used something called
diamond fiber. Ryland explained later Templars used the stuff
because it was virtually indestructible, at least by most
supernaturals. If this place were run by Templars, surely they'd
use diamond fiber to hold me and not ordinary metal.

The door at the end of the hall creaked
and opened. A short Hispanic man in khakis, a yellow T-shirt, and a
gun holster strapped over one shoulder walked down the hallway with
a tray piled with rice, beans, and what looked like fried
plantains. My normal stomach wasn't in the mood for a meal at the
moment though my demon blood probed greedily for emotional
sustenance. Unfortunately, this guy wasn't giving off a happy vibe
or much of anything I could use. It took really strong positive
emotions for me to feed off a male, for some reason. Dad hadn't
explained everything to me, but he'd mentioned feeding off the same
gender required a perfect situation such as extreme happiness or
lust, whereas feeding off the opposite gender was child's
play.

The man set the tray on the floor
outside and pulled out a notepad. "What is your name?" His voice
carried a heavy Spanish accent.

I wondered why he asked me something he
could easily answer by looking through my wallet or maybe even my
phone. Then I remembered I'd left all that in my backpack in
Alejandro's truck. "Who are you and where am I? I demand a phone
call." Hopefully I could at least get out of the cell long enough
to find someone I could feed off of in this police station or
whatever it was. Any female would do at this point—even a
hooker.

He pressed his foot down on the tray of
food, squishing half of it. "You answer, or I step on
rest."

I really didn't care about the food,
but answered anyway. "My name is Philmore Butts."

He wrote it down. "Give me phone number
of family."

Oddly enough, I really couldn't
remember my dad's cell number. Why? Because it was programmed into
the contacts on my phone. I hadn't manually typed in a number in
ages--just like everyone else on the planet. I actually would have
gladly given him the digits if only because Dad would probably bust
me out of this crap hole. I tried to remember a number, any number,
and failed.