Ivory Guard (3 page)

THREE

Raz looked out the window over green fields
that dropped into a black, storm-whipped sea. Nothing was more fascinating or beautiful to him than that small part of the earth the humans called Ireland. Especially during a storm. He loved seeing the wild energy - fueled by human fear, awe and feeling of foreboding - unleashed. But also cherished the peaceful quiet on less rainy days. That’s why he had chosen it as his home for whenever he wasn’t in the mood for heaven.

He felt the sudden breeze in the air a moment before Amber materialized in his living room. Turning
he faced her.

The
blonde angel looked around her, a smile spreading across her face. “Wow, nothing’s changed. Well, except for those,” she amended, motioning towards the stereo and flat screen. “How do you do that? I have to change apartments or at least the interior design every decade or so or else I go crazy.”

T
hey had worked on an assignment together a few centuries back and Raz remembered her having taken the same interest in his furniture like she did today. He didn’t know why. The house was simple. Some walls were bare, revealing gray stone, others were covered with wooden bookshelves. The furniture he had was old, but still good and comfortable, so why the hell would he replace it? His opinion on, and non-existent interest in, the matter must have shown on his face though, and Amber cut to the chase.

“Change of plans.
”

His interest piqued now
, Raz arched a brow. “How so?”

Amber slumped down in one of his leather arm chairs.
“Lillian called me. She wants us to pick her up in an hour.”

Raz was surprised.
Though the girl had seemed to accept what they had revealed to her earlier in the day, he had picked her to be the kind that would fight her fate tooth and nail, wanting back the cover of blissful ignorance. The bookworm showed more guts than he had thought her capable of. Raz wondered how long that would be the case.

“Good. The sooner we get her to a safe house and start training, the better.
”

“I agree, but still…I never get used to having to be the one that rips the blinders off.” She sighed. “Now I reme
mber why I don’t like Ivory duty.”

He
snorted. “You mean besides the babysitting?”

She frowned up at him. “Do you really think of it that way? We’re talking about kids here. Kids that have dreamed up a long and fulfilled future and have to trade it against a much shorter life without even really knowing what they got themselves into.”

Now it was Raz’s turn to frown. He hadn’t seen Amber in a while but remembered her as a woman full of light and hope, the absolute angel cliché. The woman in front of him had clouds shadowing her. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. It’s…” Another
exasperated sigh and frown. “I don’t know.”

“Come on, Ambriel, you’re the angel of communication and the touchy-feely stuff. You can do better than that.” Raz moved away from the window and crossed to the mini
-bar that wasn’t mini at all and got out a bottle of whiskey, filling two glasses. Handing her one he sat down in the armchair across from her.

“Thanks.” Amber looked at the glass in her hand, swirling the
golden liquid. Suddenly she shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Just a bad day, I guess. Plus I haven’t done this in a while, Ivory duty I mean. I talked to Lillian after she called me.” Throwing her head back and laughing she added, “Full of questions that one. But who can blame her. She got to me. She’s a good girl, Raz, and has a strong mind. Maybe seeing that mind trying to figure out the shit we dumped on her made me…sad. But on the other hand I like her and I’m kinda looking forward to training her, seeing her become an Ivory. You know what I mean? I always like that part, watching them discover themselves. And so I… I’m feeling guilty, Raz.”

For both their sakes he hoped she was talking about feelings on an angel scale not a human one.
“Okay, so it’s hard for them leaving behind what they know. No one claimed otherwise. But you know as well as I do that Ivorys are meant to fight, born for it. She wouldn’t feel right in her skin continuing her life like any other mortal.”

“I
know
.” After another pause she said, “My last Ivory died three weeks after I left.”

Trying to lighten up the mood Raz
smirked, “Ah, so that’s why they wanted me to work with you. Increased life expectancy.”

It worked, even if only for a brief moment. He had seen the flash of white teeth before she threw a cushion at him
and that was all that mattered.

“Ha ha.
Like I said, just a bad day.” With that she downed the whiskey in one gulp, grimacing as the fire burned her throat and hit her stomach. “Nothing more.”

Raz
still wasn’t so sure about that as he looked at her, taking in the smile that didn’t reach her green eyes, but before he could get more out of his partner a warm tingling of a sound vibrated through him. Amber didn’t so much as hear but sensed it as well.

“You in trouble?” she asked glancing curiously at him.

He snorted. “Who knows.”

“Tell
him about the change in plans while you’re up there, will you?”

“Sure.” Raz
stood, putting his empty whiskey glass on the table between them and motioning towards hers. “You can stay and have more of that if you want to.”

“
Thanks. I might do just that.”

After a nod of good bye Raz spread his wings and disappeared out of the room.

While hell was a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later kind of organization, heaven was running in circles in their bureaucratic machinery. As a result it seemed only fitting that the heaven he knew was an office.

Depending on Micah’s mood the walls and furniture could be blinding like soft, white clouds under a summer sun or boiling in all shades of gray as if a storm was brewing.
Today it was somewhere in between, the walls where mostly white but the desk and chairs in front of it where flashing from light gray to bluish white, their surface a living swirl of intertwining nuances.

The angel of the divine plan
stood up from his leather chair radiating the power of his office. Raz didn’t like him. The man could have come straight out of one of those glossy human magazines; his dark skin was covered in a black suit and white button down that only added to his already regal poise, and the too friendly smile pasted on his lips never quite reached his dark eyes.

“Raziel, how nice of you to come so quickly.”

As if he had much of a choice. If he hadn’t answered the heavenly call, the ringing in his ears would have increased in volume with every passing minute. Saying that it could be rather annoying was an understatement; that stuff made your ears bleed, literally.

Raz only gave a sharp nod with his head
in way of greeting. “Micah.”

The angel sat
again, leaning back into his chair and relaxing into that buddy-buddy pose superiors liked to assume to make their employees feel safe although they weren’t. Raz didn’t know whether to feel insulted at such failing, and obvious, subtlety or laugh.

“
Everything going as planned with the Ivory in Montana?”

“
Yeah, we’ll be heading for the safe house in an hour actually.”

“
Oh good, good. That’s why I summoned you. Sariel had some troubles in Washington and they lost theirs. Seems the Ebonys are hot on our tails this time. We’ll try to shut them down, but be careful you two. Okay?”

“Sure.”

Another false smile. “Great.”

Knowing when he was dismissed Raz nodded and got the hell out of heaven.
The moment his feet touched ground, the pain hit him like a sledgehammer. Amber.

After one last glance at it
, Lillian folded the letter and placed it on her bedspread together with a small, gift-wrapped box. It held the lighter she had bought for her Dad’s birthday.

A glance at her wristwatch told her that it was nearly time for the angel
s to pick her up. Twelve minutes.

With a
nervous sigh Lillian sat down on her bed and looked around her room. It held so much, and yet not. There were traces from the little girl she had been; the old clown, his colors faded with time, that she had shared her bed with as long as she could remember. The pink wall paint her small self had loved so much had changed with the years and been replaced by a light, bluish violet. The hard core pubertal phase had left her walls covered in posters and books, fortunately only the books remained. Some of them, those her parents had read to her when she was a child, were boxed and stored in the attic. ‘For your own kids’, her mother had once said. The memory stabbed her heart and hammered home that her parents had hoped for her to have a normal life. God, kids. She was eighteen years old and hadn’t thought of having a family just yet. Only had a vague idea of it and even that had been taken away from her. Now that, too, had to go into the box of forgotten dreams Lillian had put in the absolutely farthest corner in the back of her mind.

Somewhere in the house a wooden plank
creaked. Usually Lillian would have thought nothing of it but then a shiver, like cold fingers playing on her vertebrae, ran up her back and she was alert, her senses stretching out. Her ears strained to hear anything but her suddenly racing heart, and her body was ready to move. To pounce. She had never felt so alert…or stupid. Inwardly she shook her head at herself. Those angels and all their talk about fighting and training had really gotten to her.

Another creaking sound
. Shit. She wasn’t imagining things, someone was in the house. Downstairs. Somehow she knew it wasn’t the angels.

Then her mother screamed.

In a heartbeat Lillian was up from her bed and running down the stairs, towards her parents’ bedroom. Her heart stopped as she saw two creatures that her eyes couldn’t even begin to understand holding her parents. What she noticed was their brown and red scaly skin and the horn-covered arms that wrapped around her parents’ necks. Her mother was crying and bleeding from a corner of her mouth and her father was wide-eyed with shock.

Her mind stopped working, her body froze.

“Well, hello there.”

It took Lillian a moment to rip her gaze away from her parents and to focus on the owner of the voice talking to her.
Turning she took in the man standing in the hallway that led into their living room. He was nothing like the other two creatures. Only a few years older than Lillian, clad in black jeans and shirt, the guy was dark heat, sex and ruggedness wrapped in one tall, ripped package. With his tainting aura of evil as the black bow on top of it.

“
Thanks for being so cooperative.” A wicked gleam entered those mesmerizing eyes of his. Though the color of honey, they seemed unnaturally lightened from within him. And they made her want to run. “Though I have to admit I had hoped for a little cat and mouse.”

The sudden fear flooding her, had her heart galloping in her chest and replaced the numbness that had had kept her mind from working.
It wasn’t crippling but a healthy shock to her system. She still wanted to run, but not without her mother and father.

“Let my parents go.”

“Now where would be the fun in that?”

Right.
Where indeed? “Who are you? What do you want?”

He tsked, “No names, sweetheart. Don’t want to give power where it isn’t properly appreciated.”
Hands in the pockets of his jeans he approached her, a predator enjoying playing with his prey. “Given your reaction, namely
not
running away screaming, I take it the angels already clued you in. Well, in their oh-so mysterious half-assed way that is.”

Out of the corner of her eye
Lillian gazed around her. Besides the two creatures…demons, she amended, still restraining her parents there were two more of them, slowly approaching her from the sides. One small step at a time.  Damn it. She had to find a way out of this, and fast. The angels, she suddenly thought. How much time had passed? It seemed like forever and yet it might have been only seconds. Would they pop in at any moment now? She couldn’t risk betting on it. Amber had come to her when she had called. Out loud. But would it work if she called for the angels in her mind? Only one way to find out.

Amber! Raz!
Demons in my house. Holding my parents. Goddamn it, this better works. Amber!

Laughing coldly he continued, “By the devil, they never change. How many
Ivorys do they have to lose before they give up their do-goody policy of letting you guys say good bye? Gives us even more time to find you… ” A smile curved one corner of his mouth, “…and kill you.”

Lillian’s mind was racing as she realized the angels probably hadn’t heard her and tried to come up with a way to stall. What could she say? What could she use as a weapon? What would
be
a weapon against demons? Holy water? Inwardly she kicked herself. Even if it worked, she was a little short on that. Crosses? The same applied here. Not really religious folks her parents. She hoped she could find the time later to laugh at the irony in that.