Of Wings and Wolves (11 page)

She wanted to say that it was a man, except that she had never seen a man that huge. It was twice as tall as Nash, and easily a thousand times uglier. It reeked of melting flesh. Very few things smelled truly bad to Summer, but this stench made her skin want to crawl off of her bones.

And it was staring at her with murder in its eyes and Nash’s car crushed under one foot.

“Fuck,” Summer said softly.

She didn’t have enough time to change. She grabbed Abram’s arm and threw him into the house.

“Find Gran!” she shouted.

He knew better than to argue with her. He fled into the cottage, the door slammed behind him, and she rounded on the monster as it stomped through the forest. It crushed a sapling under its foot, tore through the branches, and burst into the clearing.

It swiped at her, and Summer threw herself under its grasp. The breeze of its fist ruffled her hair.

The monster was slow to turn on her, unlike the balam, which had been speedy little bees. This was more like the bear that Summer had fought in the cave: lumbering, but powerful.

It took a step toward the cottage, as if it hadn’t decided if it wanted to attack Summer or the building. She grabbed a heavy branch and wielded it like a baseball bat. “Look at me!” she yelled. “Come over here!”

Her shouts seemed to do the trick. It stomped toward her, faster than she expected, and swatted the branch out of her hands.

The contact sent Summer flying.

She hit the wreckage of the car. Pain lanced through her back, and she slid to the ground with a groan. The healing heat came over her, but not quickly enough.

Summer crawled under the wreckage of the car and tried to shift shapes as quickly as she could. She focused on stepping into her second skin, but it was suddenly about as easy as leaping from the sidewalk to the top of a ten story building.

Come on, Summer. Change!

But her body wouldn’t obey.

Metal and plastic groaned around her, and the car started to lift from the mud. Summer muffled a cry underneath her hands.

The front door opened, and Abram stood framed in the doorway. He had Gran’s shotgun against one shoulder.

Stepping onto the lawn, he jacked a round into the chamber.

“Get away from there!” he shouted. His voice was deeper, more powerful than she had ever heard it before, and it carried the weight of authority.

The monster dropped the car and faced Abram.

“No,” she whispered. He wasn’t any more of a fighter than Summer was. He would be pulverized. She wiggled out from underneath the car, emerging soaked in mud.

Abram squeezed the trigger. A gunshot thundered through the forest—and didn’t hit the monster. It was moving faster now, with less confusion and more purpose, and it easily dodged the attack.

One of its meaty hands struck Abram, driving him to the ground.

“Abram!” Summer cried.

A hand caught her arm before she could run to him.

Nash
.

Even though it was a rainy, muddy mess in the forest, Nash looked as immaculate as when he sent her into the house. “The gibborim hasn’t gotten you, has it?” he asked. She shook her head. “Good. Come with me.”

“Wait! My brother—you have to help him!”

Nash gave a dismissive glance toward the monster. “Why?”

She grabbed his shirt in both of her hands, jerking his face down so that they were eye level. He looked shocked at her strength. “You need to help him because he might die if you don’t!”

That argument didn’t seem to convince him either, but he gave a long-suffering sigh as he opened his shirt one button at a time.

“Very well. If you ask it of me.”

It made her feel like she was going insane to watch how slowly he prepared himself when Abram was wrestling with a monster twice his height. Nash shed his shirt, rolled out his shoulders, and faced the monster.

How could he care so little about her brother being in danger?

“Hurry!” Summer urged.

The wings didn’t grow from his back. They simply appeared with a flare of light, which was so bright that she was rendered momentarily blind. When her vision cleared again, Nash had already moved into the fight.

The gibborim turned to swipe at Nash, and Summer realized that its back was a ragged mess. There were open wounds where its wings should have been planted, and organs twitched inside its body—were those lungs?

Abram scrambled to the place he had dropped the shotgun. But the instant he picked it up, Nash landed next to him. “Stay out of the way, mortal,” Nash said. “I can’t have you shooting me accidentally.” He jerked the shotgun out of Abram’s hands and flung it into the trees before taking flight once more.

Summer darted across the clearing and snagged Abram’s hand. “That fucker took the gun!” he said, shaking her off immediately.

“Don’t worry. He knows what he’s doing,” Summer said. Silently, she added,
I hope.

But her brother wasn’t listening. He broke free to search for the shotgun.

After watching Nash drive away the balam so easily, Summer had expected him to dispatch this creature with the same ease. But this thing—this gibborim—was so much larger, and so much stronger. Nash’s punches didn’t seem to have any real effect.

Summer had to change. She had to help him.

The gibborim’s hand closed on one of Nash’s wings and jerked him out of the sky. His shout of surprise pierced straight through Summer’s heart, breaking her concentration before she could even find it. All Summer could do was watch helplessly as Nash was pinned to the mud with a hand at his throat.

Abram emerged from the forest with the shotgun. “Get down!” he called to Summer, and she threw herself to the ground.

Double ought buckshot ripped through the gibborim’s wounded back. It reared and screamed—without releasing Nash’s throat.

His eyes slid closed. His wings flickered, faded, vanished.

The gibborim turned to face Abram with Nash in hand. The shotgun had no effect on it from the front. Summer had to get him to turn around again.

She grabbed one of the rocks lining Gran’s flowerbed and hurled it at the gibborim’s back. She struck the spine. “Hey!” she yelled, throwing another rock.

It rounded on her with a screeching cry. Two long steps, and it reached for her with clawed hands—

A gunshot split the air, and its face went slack with shock.

The gibborim fell to the mud at her feet.

Abram advanced on it, aiming the shotgun at its back. His face was calm as he squeezed the trigger again. Summer clapped her hands over her mouth and tried not to scream.

Once it stopped twitching, Abram kicked the gibborim onto its back. Silver fluid gushed out of its wounds.

“I think that did it,” he said, calm as ever.

Summer was safe.
Now
she could go into hysterics.

But the sight of Nash sprawled in the mud a few feet away managed to drive away her urge to freak out. She dropped by his side instead.

His wings were gone and his eyes were shut. He didn’t react when she shook his shoulder. His skin was slicked with silver blood, and she had no way to tell if it belonged to the gibborim, or because of some terrible wound she couldn’t find. She had to get him inside and wash him off.

Summer grunted as she tried to lift Nash.

“What are you doing?” Abram asked.

“What’s it look like? Are you going to help me?”

He didn’t move.

She was strong—stronger than Abram, in fact—but Nash was tall, so getting him off the ground was awkward more than difficult. But once she had him in her arms, she was surprised to find that he was as light as though he was hollow-boned.

Summer staggered toward the cottage. “At least open the front door,” she said through gritted teeth.

Abram didn’t move, but Gran was already waiting to let her in.

“You’re crazy,” he said as Gran rushed ahead to open Summer’s bedroom door.

“He did just try to save you,” Gran said. “You could show a little gratitude, Abram.”

“He didn’t leave me behind when I was healing from the balam attack, and I owe him.” Summer settled Nash on her bed. He looked strange and out of place in her room, which was cluttered with all of her knickknacks and posters.

“He’s the one who saved you from the balam?” Abram asked.

“Yes. And you can help me clean his wounds, or you can go bury the gibborim’s body. Your choice.”

“You have no idea what you’re getting into,” he said.

He left her room and slammed the door behind him.

nine

Summer watched Nash sleep for
a few hours. He didn’t seem to dream—his eyelids never fluttered, and he didn’t stir. Not even once.

She didn’t really worry about it at first. Maybe angels were just deep sleepers. What did she know? But when she fell asleep sitting up next to her bed and woke up to find that he was in the same place she had left him, tendrils of worry crept into her heart.

“This is the angel you were talking about, isn’t it?” Gran asked when she delivered breakfast the next morning. She was obviously feeling bad about the previous night’s argument, since she had cooked a giant steak in addition to the usual bacon. The beef had the barest imprint of grill marks. Just heated enough to keep it from being cold on the inside.

“Him,” Summer corrected, taking the plate. “Thank you.”

Gran’s eyes swept over his body. She didn’t show a hint of recognition, but a sly smile crept over her lips. “He is pretty sexy.”

“Gran!”

“I’m old, not blind. Don’t worry, babe. He’s not my type anyway.”

“Why? Because he’s male, or because he’s not human?”

“I ain’t got no biases against preternatural critters. You know that.”

“I don’t know how much I really know about you at all anymore,” Summer said. She picked at a piece of bacon, unable to meet her grandmother’s eyes. “But thanks for the breakfast.”

Gran sighed. “You’re welcome. Need anything for the bird boy?”

“Gran…” Summer said warningly, but her grandmother’s expression was innocent. “No, his injuries were gone by the time I washed the blood away. I have no clue why he hasn’t woken up.” She nibbled on the bacon and gave Gran a sideways look. “You’re not going to warn me away from him, like Abram did?”

“Not a chance. You’re a grownup now, babe. Try to have fun.” She winked and left.

Being left alone with Nash in her bed was kind of awkward, even if he was asleep. It was the first time she’d had a man other than Sir Lumpy in her bed, and Sir Lumpy was not nearly as sexy. Her eyes roved over his bare chest, his arms, the vee of muscle that disappeared into the hem of his pants.

As if he could feel her watching, his eyes opened. “Summer,” he said, his voice heavy with the grogginess of sleep.

“Hey, sleepy,” Summer said. “Feeling rested?”

“Very.” He sat up, and the blankets pooled in his lap. He looked down at his uninjured chest, and then his eyes moved to take in the entire room, from Summer’s island poster, to her workstation in the corner, and the large glass doors. “Where am I?”

“This is my bedroom.”

“Really?” Nash said, and he looked around again with renewed interest. When his gaze fell on her dresser and stayed, she realized that she had left underwear hanging out of one of her drawers.

She pushed the panties inside and closed it. “You healed awfully quickly. I thought I was the only one that could do that.”

Nash pushed the blankets off and ran a hand over his jaw, which was shadowed with stubble. Summer had assumed that his perfectly smooth skin was an angel thing, but it must have been a really good razor. A little beard growth suited him.

“It takes much more than damage to our physical forms to leave a mark,” Nash said. “How did you survive the gibborim’s attack?”

“Believe it or not, Abram and I are perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves. The gibborim was easily distracted. I caught his attention, and my brother…” Summer trailed off and swallowed hard. She still wasn’t comfortable remembering what Abram had done. He was all but a pacifist—for the love of all that was good, he was a freaking vegetarian. Yet he hadn’t hesitated to pull the trigger and blast the gibborim’s skull open when it came down to the wire.

“I’m impressed,” Nash said.

Summer’s gaze traced over his bare arms, and the way that they flexed as he leaned his weight on one of them. Fine veins traced the muscle. Her mouth suddenly felt very dry. “I’m not. Neither of us ever wanted to kill someone. Something.” With a groan, Summer dropped to the bed beside him and rubbed her hands over her face. “It was like Abram moved on instinct. He was amazing.”

“I expect he was.”

The bare skin of his upper arm caressed hers, and Summer was suddenly acutely aware that she was sitting with a shirtless man—a man who was staring at her like she had just delivered herself to him as breakfast in bed. Nash’s body heat was magnetic.

The door opened, and Abram himself walked in, carrying one of his spare shirts. Summer wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he had been listening from the hallway. He was sneaky like that.

He tossed the shirt to Nash, who had to sit up—and away from Summer—in order to catch it. Nash gave her a small smile before tugging it over his head. She tried not to feel disappointed. “If it seemed to you that Abram attacked on instinct, then it’s probably because he did,” Nash said. “From the first time I laid eyes on him, I identified him as a kopis.”

The corner of Summer’s mouth twitched. “Bless you.”

“I could fire you for impudence, intern.” His head popped out of the shirt. Summer couldn’t help but giggle at the sight of his hair sticking up with static.

“You’re not going to fire me. What’s a kopis?”

“Shortly before I was…” His jaw tightened. “Before I came here, the angels worked in alliance with the kings of man to establish a new class of warrior called kopides. We were attempting to separate demons and angels from the much feebler human species to prevent xenocide, and kopides were designed to safeguard the survivors.” A smirk. “Kopides are somewhat less feeble than the average mortal.”