Out in Blue (2 page)

His form an indistinct smear against the blue sky, the poacher yanked a feather free and tucked it behind his ear. He fisted his leather-gloved hand and ground his knuckles into the gunshot wound.

Wren clenched his teeth and suppressed a scream. The agony pushed him over the edge, into oblivion.

Chapter Two

Two gunshots echoed off the mountains. Ginger, fumbling with her car keys, threw her head back in time to see Wren plummet from the sky, a streak of white. She shrieked and covered her face. She clenched her jaw, readying herself, and ran back into the woods toward the house.

She crept through the trees, keeping low in the thick vegetation. Branches clawed at her face. Damp leaves squished under her feet. Tears burned her eyes and throat. The least she could do now was make sure the poachers didn’t profit off Wren’s death.

They won’t get a single feather, Wren. I promise.

She reached the edge of the woods near the house and peeked through the thick branches of a pine sapling. Wren lay in the grass, two poachers standing over him. As Ginger wondered what to do, a large white van pulled into the driveway and lurched across the lawn. The poacher she’d first seen in the café got out, and together, he and his partners lifted Wren’s limp body through the double doors at the back of the vehicle.
Shit
. Now what was she going to do?

“Stay here in case that bitch comes back.” The café poacher knocked knuckles with his nearest colleague. “Trent, come help me get the gear out of the house.”

Ginger waited. The two poachers disappeared inside the Victorian. The third lit a cigarette and leaned against the idling van. He exhaled smoke and tilted his head back, staring at the sky. Twenty feet of overgrown lawn separated them.

“You’re insane, Ginger,” she muttered to herself. She grasped a large rock and stepped out of the woods. Approaching the man, she tiptoed around twigs and slowly sank her weight onto the crunchy fallen leaves, but the heavy scents of engine exhaust and cigarette smoke made her cough.

The poacher pivoted. Their eyes met. The cigarette fell to the ground and he reached for his gun, but Ginger ran the last few feet and swung the rock with everything she had.
The rock struck the poacher’s head with a sickening
thwack
that reverberated up her arm
.
He crumpled to the ground, moaning.

Ginger rushed around the idling van to the driver’s side, jumped in and hit the gas. In moments, the abandoned house disappeared in the rearview mirror. Tears fell despite her efforts to contain them. She drove down the road and back through town, until she reached her street ten minutes later. After parking in front of her house, she dropped her forehead to the steering wheel.

“Bastards.” She lifted her head and turned to see the archangel. He lay on his stomach in the cargo area, his wings crammed into the confined space. Blood soaked one of his wings, even his flight feathers, which were each as long as one of her legs. The coppery smell of the congealing mess made her stomach churn.

“I’m so sorry.” Her chest ached. She reached back and gently touched his head.

Wren’s shaking hand inched toward his face. Ginger sucked in a breath and pulled her hand back. He rubbed his face, his movements sluggish. Dark green eyes lifted to meet her gaze.

“You?” He slurred his words. “How did you—”

“You’re alive!” She covered her mouth. Her gaze returned to his injured wing, and her elation subsided. Blood still ran from the wound.

Ginger climbed into the back of the van and knelt next to Wren’s head. That was as close as she could get; his wings took up all the space.

She pulled her cardigan over her head. Heat rose to her cheeks. Kneeling only in her jeans and black lace bra, she folded the cardigan over the edge of his wing and pressed the cloth to both sides of the wound.

Wren fisted his hands as she applied pressure.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be.” He rested his head in his arms. “Thank you.”

“They drugged you?”

“Yes,” he said, his speech still slurred. “What happened?”

“I saw you fall.” She swallowed. “I thought you were dead. I went back and watched them put you in the van, then I stole it. I didn’t want them to profit off killing you.”

The tiny curve of his lips managed to touch his eyes, making him look more like an angel than his wings did.

“Thank you. Most humans wouldn’t have helped me. So thank you…?” His voice lifted as if asking a question.

“Ginger.”

“Ginger.” He closed his eyes. Sweat beaded on his brow, and he breathed in rapid, shallow gasps through his mouth.

“Can you walk? We’re at my home. You can rest and your wing needs a real bandage… Oh, shit!” She bit her lip.

“What?”

“I left my wallet in my car, near the abandoned house. My driver’s license. My name, my home address…”

Wren’s eyes widened. “The poachers will find your car. And yes, they’ll pursue you. They don’t care for being thwarted.”

Ginger struggled into the driver’s seat. “Then we’ll go…somewhere.”

“We?” Wren took over holding the cardigan in place.

She watched him in the rearview mirror. “You’re hurt. I’m not going to dump you on the side of the road.”

“You should. Someplace in the woods. I’ll manage. You should go to the human authorities for protection.”

“You’ll
manage
? Even if I was willing to drop you off on your own like this, the police wouldn’t lift a finger to help me. I’m a—” She bit her tongue. If Wren didn’t trust the Guardians, telling him about her father probably wasn’t the best idea.

“You’re what?” The drug-induced slur faded from Wren’s speech and curiosity brightened his gem-green eyes.

She let out a long breath. “I was raised by a demon, after he found my human parents dead. He’s a Guardian.”

“A Guardian?” Wren’s voice took on a chilly edge.

“He’s in Alaska. I called him after I overheard the poachers, and he’s sending help from Sanctuary—”

“I don’t want their help,” he interrupted, his words clipped.

She nodded. “I know. Devin told me a little bit about what happened to your family. I’ll take you somewhere to heal, and I won’t tell my father where we are, all right?”

“You’d do that?”

“You can trust me.”

Wren went silent, suspicion in his narrowed eyes.

She pulled her keys from her pocket. At least she hadn’t left those. The poachers would be after her, but they had a long walk into town first. “I’m going to run inside and grab some supplies. Your wing needs a real bandage. Then we’ll get out of here.”

§

Wren glanced up and tensed when the door opened, then relaxed when Ginger climbed into the driver’s seat. She’d only been gone a minute or two, but had pulled on a new top—a blue short-sleeve blouse that matched her eyes—and filled a large duffel bag.

Shivering, he returned his attention to his injury. Blood saturated the cardigan, but no longer flowed from the wound. Still, appalling weakness gripped his body. A human would need a transfusion to survive so much blood loss. His kind were more resilient, but he would have bled out and died if the bullet had hit the major blood vessels of the wing. If the bullet had hit an inch to the left…

“Please tell me you’ll heal fast like the demons do,” Ginger said. She opened the duffel, climbed back, and knelt next to him with a plastic bag full of gauze and bandages.

“I’ll heal by tonight. It’s just going to be a miserable day.” He figured since she had been raised by a demon, she’d witnessed the process before. Demons and archangels healed fast, but the process was brutal, marked by high fevers and searing pain. Her tense expression confirmed she knew what he faced.

Ginger emptied the contents of the bag onto the floor. She pulled the blood-soaked cardigan away from the wound and dropped it in the bag.

“I’m going to thread the bandage through your flight feathers to wrap the wound. Is that all right?”

Not idiot enough to refuse her help, Wren jerked his head in a tense nod and braced himself. Excluding the poacher’s disgusting stroking a few minutes ago, no one had touched his wings in eighteen years.

Ginger packed piles of gauze over the top of the wound and held them in place as she ran the bandage down the back of his wing, between his flight feathers, and up the underside, where she applied more gauze to the exit wound. She worked with care, her manner clinical and her gaze free of the spark of greed he’d come to associate with humans.

Her long and delicate fingers brushed across his feathers, relaxing and even soothing him despite the agony that raged from the wound. He lifted his gaze to her face. Hair the color of ginger, her namesake, framed her blue eyes.

Lovely. He didn’t look away until she returned his stare as a blush rose to her cheeks.

She used several rolls of bandage before she taped the end in place.

“Thank you.” He pulled his wing tight to his body. A fresh wave of pain exploded from the injury as he moved, but he forced a straight face.

Ginger twisted around and pulled another plastic bag out of the duffel. “If you feel like eating…”

He wasn’t about to admit that he’d been living off apples and garbage for weeks, but his stomach made a traitorous noise at the sight of the fresh tuna sandwich, crackers, and cheese she pulled out of the bag.

“I thought so.” She grinned and added a bottle of water, a cheese knife, and some painkillers to the spread.

“Thank you,” he said again, at a loss for words to express the true extent of his gratitude. But it must have shown in his voice, because she paused and another blush colored her face.

“You’re welcome.”

“Where are we going?”

“A friend of mine is on a cruise with her husband for their anniversary. I know where their spare key is hidden.” Ginger climbed into the driver’s seat. “Her place is about an hour away. Will you be all right that long?”

“Yes.” He dug into the sandwich.

She pulled the van onto the road and floored it.

“Don’t get pulled over,” he said lightly.

“No backseat drivers allowed,” she quipped.

“I don’t drive.”

She took an audible breath. “No, I imagine you don’t.”

He read the dosage on the painkillers. Two capsules, twice a day. He took three and went back to the sandwich. Food never tasted better.

But he couldn’t relax. The poachers had Ginger’s name, and they excelled at holding grudges.

Chapter Three

Ginger eased the huge van along the narrow road that led to Claire’s home, a secluded property on thirty wooded acres. She drove the van behind the new garage because she didn’t have the device to open the automatic doors. A wooden staircase led from the lawn to the second floor deck.

The space above the garage had been converted to a furnished studio apartment for visiting relatives. Perfect. Wren would be more comfortable in the spacious studio than in the two-hundred-year-old colonial house with its small rooms and doors.

“Can you walk?” She twisted in her seat. Wren met her gaze, his face as pale as his wings. Even for an archangel, he had lost a lot of blood. But he focused on her, his eyes bright.

“Yes.”

“Stairs?”

“Anything to get out of this van.”

She nodded, jumped down and opened the vehicle’s back doors. Wren eased out, his crowded wings and his injury hindering his movements. He stood, swayed on his feet, and leaned against the van.

“It’s this way.” She pointed toward the stairs. “Let me help you.”

She snatched the apartment key from under a stone, hurried back to Wren, and ducked under his arm, in front of his uninjured wing. Feathers brushed her skin as she reached around his waist.

Wren didn’t move. He stared at her, his face inches from her own. His breath warmed her cheek.

“What?” She squirmed under his intense, scrutinizing gaze.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just been a very long time since a woman has been this close to me. Hell, since
anyone
has been close to me.”

“How long?” she whispered.

“Ten years.”

An ache spread across her chest and she tightened her arm around his waist. She kept her voice light. “I seem to recall you carrying me off like a hawk a couple hours ago. We were close then.”

His lips twitched. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I wasn’t scared.”

“You may have bruised my neck with your death grip. Afraid of heights?”

“I was surprised, that’s all. It’s not every day I get hauled off my feet by an archangel.” She lifted her chin. “I’m not afraid of heights.”

“Most humans are.”

She scoffed. “I’m not most humans.”

“True enough.”

Ginger took a step forward, coaxing him with her arm. “Let’s get inside.”

He moved slowly but didn’t lean on her much as they negotiated the stairs. She unlocked the apartment with her free hand and opened the glass sliding door.

The single open space before them had a kitchenette on the far wall and lots of windows. A large bed dominated one side of the room, a cozy living area the other. An open door displayed the spacious bath. Claire loved her relatives,
but not enough to want them to stay in the house with her and her new husband
, thus the appealing extravagance.

Wren stepped away and headed for the bathroom, unsteady on his feet, but keeping his chin up at a proud angle.

“Shower,” he murmured, glancing at his blood-soaked wing.

“It’ll take a moment for the water to heat up. I’m going to call Devin and tell him we’re not dead, but I promise I won’t tell him where we are.”

Wren turned on the shower and hovered in the doorway, his arms folded as he watched her.

Ginger took her phone out of her pocket. She had turned it off earlier and now listened to several messages, all from Devin, all variations of paternal panic.

She dialed and pressed the button for speaker phone so Wren could hear. His darkened expression confirmed that her relation to a Guardian remained a very delicate issue.

“Why go so far to help me?” His green eyes smoldered. “You’d be safer under the Guardians’ protection. Why risk—”

“Because I want you to trust me. We’re safe here. There’s no way the poachers or the Guardians can track us.”

“Don’t be so sure about that.” Wren glanced around the room as if he were ready for an enemy to spring from the shadows.

“Ginger!” Devin answered the call out of breath. “What the hell is going on? Where are you?”

“Sorry Dev, I had to turn off the phone. I’m all right. Wren and I are both all right.”

Her father drew an audibly shaky breath. “Where are you?”

“I’m not at home. I had to steal the poacher’s van, so I assume they went through my car and found my wallet.”

“
Why
did you take their van?”

“The poachers shot Wren in the wing, drugged him, and loaded him into the cargo area of the van. I had no other choice. He needs a few days to recover, and I’m going to stay with him.”

“Where,” Devin demanded.

“We’re safe. I promise.”

“You’re
not
safe. Sources have reported the poachers who attacked Wren this morning work directly for Lark.”

“Who?” Ginger lifted her gaze to Wren. Fury burned in his eyes.

“Lark is the former Guardian who killed Wren’s parents. You have to stay hidden. Don’t go out for anything. Don’t talk to anyone. I’m on my way. The trip will take a couple days. I insist you tell me where you are, so I can send Guardians to collect you. You both need to be brought to Sanctuary.”

She arched an eyebrow at Wren. He glowered at a random point across the room for a moment. With a frown, he met her gaze and nodded.

Ginger relaxed and gave the address. “We’re in Claire’s apartment, above the garage. She and her husband are on vacation.”

Relief filled Devin’s voice. “The Guardians will be there in an hour or two. Love you, honey.”

“Love you, too.” After she hung up, she approached Wren. “Thank you, but why did you change your mind?”

“My issues with the Guardians are my own. I won’t see you put in danger again over me.” He stepped into the bathroom and shut the door.

§

Wren let the shower rain down on his wings, the warm water an exquisite luxury after bathing in rivers and ponds for months. Specks of light danced across his field of vision. He leaned forward, hands on the wall, and let the water cascade down his body.

Heaven.

He focused on washing the blood from his wing. The shower, while probably roomy for a human, restricted his wings as he worked around the throbbing injury. He shoved the shower curtain out of the way and cursed as water spilled onto the floor. A few minutes later, soft knocking drew his attention.

“Yeah?” He extended his uninjured wing to cover himself.

“I found a towel and pants in the house,” Ginger said through the half-open door. She reached in and set a bundle of folded clothes on the hamper. “You and Claire’s husband are about the same size. And I have more bandages to replace the wet ones later.”

“Thank you.”

She peaked around the door and down at the tiles, now thoroughly drenched with bloody water, but no annoyance colored her face or voice. “I’ll get more towels.”

The door shut, but her image remained in Wren’s mind. He recalled the honest concern in her gaze when she had warned him about the poachers’ trap…the light weight of her hands on his wing…the contrast of the black lace bra against her ivory skin as she’d tended his injury. He wanted…

Wren shook his head and shut down that train of thought. Hard. He didn’t have the luxury of being smitten with a human. Even a Guardian’s daughter.

Hell,
especially
a Guardian’s daughter.

Wren stepped out of the shower and flicked his uninjured wing to expel moisture from his feathers, soaking the glass tile walls. He toweled his skin, and more tentatively, his injured wing, dry.

The painkillers, which had only dulled the agony in the first place, were wearing off. Wren pulled on a pair of black drawstring pants and covered the floor with the pile of towels left on the hamper. He stepped out of the steamy room and shivered in the cool, dry air of the apartment.

Ginger sat on the edge of the bed with a fresh pile of bandages. Wren sank down on the sheets on his stomach—unable to stay vertical a second longer—and extended his wings to either side. He studied her every move as she unwound the old bandage and rewrapped the wound.

“It’s like you’ve done this before.”

She shook her head. “I’ve never even seen an archangel before today.”

“Even as a Guardian’s daughter?”

“Devin keeps me at arm’s length from his work.”

“Understandable.” He watched her work, her hands as sure as a medic who had patched hundreds of wings. “All the way across the continent is more than arm’s length, however.”

She taped the end of the bandage in place. A dry laugh whispered past her lips. “Devin sent me away from Haven when I turned twenty so I could have a normal human life. I came to Vermont to work for a pharmacist who provides medical supplies to Sanctuary.”

He studied her face. “No other aspirations? You’re human; you can do anything you want with your life.”

“I
am
doing what I want.” She met his gaze, no hesitation in her expression. “The pharmacist lets me help with his donations to the colony. My job makes me happy and gives me purpose.

“I haven’t found any other meaningful pastime outside of the colonies. I’ve never felt at home in human society. Even people who weren’t blatantly hateful toward demons withdrew from me after I told them about myself. And what’s the point of having friends if I have to hide who I am?”

“At least you have the option.” He flicked his good wing.

She shook her head. “Pretending to be someone you’re not is depressing and demeaning.”

“What about the owner of this property? You called her a friend.”

“I keep up the pretense of being “normal” for Claire because we work together every day in the pharmacy. She doesn’t know what our boss and I do on the side. She is a good friend, but the boss warned me she’s squeamish about demons. As much as I hate the charade, I don’t want to risk things getting awkward, or worse, between us.”

“Your boss knows who you are. He must be a good friend, at least.”

She chuckled and shook her head. “He is, for an eighty-year-old man. He’s a great person. Everything he does for the colony he pays for with the money he should have used for retirement.”

Wren sighed. “We—Sanctuary, that is—never needed medical support when I was young. My father took care of everyone.”

“He was a doctor?”

“No. Has Devin made you aware that some archangels have psychic talents?”

She nodded, her eyebrows high.

“My father was a gifted healer. He could mend any sort of traumatic injury in a matter of seconds, no healing fever required. Demon children die occasionally during healing fevers, even if the injury is a simple broken ankle, so he saved many lives, as you and your boss are doing now.”

Wren paused. Why did he feel so comfortable talking to this near stranger?

She leaned forward. “You were just a child yourself when you left the colony. Where have you been all this time? No way you’ve been hiding out in abandoned houses for so long.”

“No. There was a barn, too.”

Ginger frowned. “Seriously. You don’t look like a hermit.”

Wren shifted his injured wing as the throbbing pain heightened. “Where is that bottle of painkillers?”

“They actually helped?”

“A little is better than nothing.”

She got up and went to the kitchen area, where she poured a glass of water. As she dug around in the duffel bag, which she must have retrieved while he was in the shower, he said, “When I ran from Sanctuary as a child, I went to the safe house.”

She handed him the glass and the pills and resumed her perch on the edge of the bed, one ginger eyebrow arched.

Wren continued after he swallowed and set the water on the bedside table. “My parents had a safe house near the Canadian border that even Lark didn’t know about. When my mother—who came from a wealthy human family—gave up her old life and moved into the colony with my father, she sold her home and used the money to buy the safe house under a false name. Father would fly her up there every year to maintain the place, and they brought me. I traveled on foot when I fled the colony, but I managed to find my way.

“My parents had stocked the place with enough non-perishable food for three people to live on for some time, as well as clothes, books, and videos. Most importantly, Mother’s cousin Karin—also a secret from the Guardians—paid the bills and taxes from an account Mother had set up.”

Ginger nodded. “So you weren’t all alone there?”

“Not entirely, no. Karin took care of the necessities, thankfully. She also visited frequently and brought fresh food, but she didn’t hold the same view toward archangels as Mother did, and kept her distance from me.”

“Then, how could you trust her?”

“I took my chances with her, a relative, over the Guardians. Despite her clear anxieties, she did care. She insisted that I study every day and made certain I was eating well. But Karin died when I was fifteen, a traffic accident. I read about it in the paper.”