Warrior's Angel (The Lost Angels Book 4) (13 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Michael was certain the woman hadn’t seen him. If she had, she was exceedingly good at hiding it. But he’d seen her. And he’d more than remembered her.

Angel
. That was her name. That was what Hesperos had called her when the two of them had appeared on the outskirts of Central Park to assist him in his battle against the dragons and their monstrous companions. Something else he’d remembered was that she had
disappeared
from the scene just a few seconds before Samael had
appeared
on it.

And now she was leaving the warehouse with little Mimi in
tow. He wondered what it meant. And he wondered if Hesperos was somewhere nearby. In fact, he considered reading Angel’s mind to find out. Or Mimi’s; children were no doubt easier to read, not yet having had the chance to build those mental walls mortals were so apt at constructing over time.

This mind
reading thing was something he’d had to come to grips with right away when he’d learned what Sam had so gleefully turned him into. Azrael had the ability to read the minds of others, and just like that, only a few hours into his change, the same ability had come crashing in on Michael, along with a host of other talents, some of which even Az didn’t possess.

In essence, he’d had to make a choice. He could have ea
sily opened himself up to the myriad of surface thoughts around him, but they were so thick, they were almost like a maddening static. He had the ability, but not the experience Azrael possessed, and reading someone took energy he had no real urge to waste. He wanted to save his strength for his archess. She was a fighter. Just like him.

He had a feeling she was going to put him through the ringer when things came to a head. He was almost looking forward to it.
He smiled at the thought, fleetingly, and then the smile slipped away. A darkness passed over his features, a shadow of suspicion.

His eyes fixed on the back of Angel’s head.

Instinctively, perhaps on the same predatory or protective level that Az had come to grips with, Michael reached out with his mental feelers. But when they brushed up against his brown haired subject, they reached a buffer. It felt like brushing up against rubber for just a moment before bouncing, his own mental reach repelled, for lack of a better word.

Angel – whoever or whatever she was – continued through the double doors of the
studio and out into the alley beyond, her hand entwined with Mimi’s. Just before the doors automatically closed behind her, she glanced back at him. Their eyes met. Some unknown message passed between them, and she was gone.

Michael had no idea where they were going.

He ran a hand through his thick blond hair and looked up toward the rafters of the warehouse. His cop senses kicked in, made stronger by the talents he’d only recently acquired. His mind worked.

If Angel had helped him defeat the dragons at Central Park, then as far as he was concerned, she was on his side.
If she was on his side, then she was on Mimi’s side. To the cop in Michael, that meant whatever she was doing, she was doing it to protect the little girl. And if she was protecting her by taking her out of the studio, then that meant that trouble was on its way
to
the studio. And Rhiannon was here. It was why he’d bothered to try to read Angel in the first place.

Michael’s
blue eyes heated up in his skull as they scanned the shadows of the bare-bones building above, peering through the myriad of darknesses in search of phantoms, leeches, or wraiths. He, himself, stood off to the side, more or less in the shadows and buffered from the prying eyes of onlookers. If he’d wanted to, he could have melded with them completely, becoming one with that gray darkness through a gift of his Nightmare blood.

As far as Nightmares were concerned, Michael had the very strong notion that if Hesperos were in the warehouse, he would know it. He would
feel
it in that same blood.

So, no phantoms, no wraiths, no leeches, and no Nightmares. What was left? What was going to happen?

Michael’s gaze continued across the ceiling, down the support beams, and into the four thick walls that formed the outer barriers of the enormous building. They were strong, reinforced brick walls, sturdy enough to withstand the explosions Rhiannon’s pretend cover company regularly set off inside them to impress clients.

His gaze narrowed and refined, and then
just like that, something cut through his concentration, slicing through it and dispersing it like a drop of cold water in a boiling pot. It was a voice. It was
her
voice.

He turned, following the sound.

Rhiannon Dante emerged from a make-shift walkway between pretend buildings in a pretend mid-west town. She took a few steps as she stared down at a sheet of paper in her hand, then she stopped, ran a hand through her hair to get it out of her face, and touched her lips as she concentrated. Something in the paper she was reading had her concerned.

Michael stood transfixed
. He was watching this woman go through the most menial motions, the most basic and everyday expressions and movements, and he was utterly captivated. The way the light hit her hair, turning it into rose gold, the way her long lashes left shadows on her upper cheeks when she lowered them, the way her very slight smattering of freckles disappeared when she was warm or embarrassed or angry, and appeared again when she was cold or tired or hungry, the way she nibbled at her bottom lip while thinking, or tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear in nervous habit – all of it was a study in choreographed perfection. She was a dance. He could have watched her get dental work done.

He moved away from the shadows and approached her from behind.
It was possible for him to move without a sound, but what would be the fun in that? A few steps away, his boots sounded on the concrete flooring.

Rhiannon looked up from her piece of paper and slowly turned around.
He saw her hand grip the paper more tightly and the color leave her face, even as the pupils in her eyes expanded.

“Miss Dante,”
he greeted smoothly. “We meet again.”

Rhiannon stared for a moment, seemingly incapable of speech.
He didn’t have to read her mind to know what she was thinking. The way her gaze skirted from his eyes to his hair to his shoulders told him everything he needed, or
wanted
, to know. He’d been a “human” male for two thousand years. He had enough experience reading women to recognize desire when he saw it.

There was fear there too, though. That was to be expected.

Not that it detracted from the desire.

Rhiannon
cleared her throat and plastered a nonchalant expression on her beautiful face. “Detective? To what do I owe this honor?” she asked, her normally sultry voice cracking just a touch under the stress of this surprise meeting.

He shrugged those broad
shoulders of his in the most casual manner, and looked around, taking in the details of their surroundings with a discerning eye. “City ordinances, fireworks, laws that dictate a contingency of the police force be present at all such demonstrations – that kind of thing.” He looked back down at her and smiled.

It was a
smile that said he had every right to be there, he was holding all the cards, and he damn well new it.

She knew it too.
He watched the play of nervousness skirt across her lovely features. She lowered her gaze, those long lashes brushing her cheeks again, and Michael’s gums began to ache.

He frowned, recognizing the pressure his brand new
vampirism was putting on his body, and gritted his teeth when his blood started to heat up in hunger.

Not now
, he told himself firmly.
Son of a bitch.

“I see,” Rhiannon
said, still looking down. “Then make yourself at home, detective, but I suggest keeping to the designated ‘safe areas,’ as we’re about to begin filming.” She turned away from him. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you where the nearest safe area is.”

“My pleasure,” Michael returned, allowing just enough innuendo to enter his tone.

Rhiannon’s shoulders stiffened a little, but he could imagine her cheeks were flushing too. His smile broadened, and the pain in his gums went from an ache to a throb.

“So, w
hat is it you see in him?” he asked as she hastily walked him toward some other area in the warehouse.

“Excuse me?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Your boyfriend.”

Rhiannon stumbled slightly in front of him, her stride
miss-stepping in what could only have been surprise.

“I followed up with Mr. Remington about your alibi for last Thursday,” he told her in his best cop voice. “
Denton Remington,” he mused out loud, making little of the man’s pretend name, “had a difficult time recalling the details of your date.”

Rhiannon was silent for a long moment before she finally asked, “Oh?”

“He says he picked you up at seven-thirty,” Michael went on, “but I believe you said it was closer to eight. You said it was Avengers you’d gone to see. Mr. Remington seemed to be under the impression you’d actually seen X-Men. Perhaps it was just a slip of the tongue on his part. Or yours.”

Rhiannon didn’t say anything, and he knew her mind was spinning.

“
Interesting guy, Mr. Remington. Well dressed. Nice hair. Massive cappuccino machine in his immaculate kitchen. Great reading material on his coffee table, including some very interesting magazines.
Element... Instinct
…
GQ
.”

Suddenly,
Rhiannon stopped in her tracks and spun around, her ice green eyes crackling with sparks of indignation. “Just what is it you’re insinuating, detective?”

Michael grinned. “
What is it you
think
I am insinuating, Miss Dante?” he asked softly, meeting that gaze head on and moving in to close the distance between them. He could hear her heart hammering. He’d just outed her pretend boyfriend for the sweet and considerate but extremely gay man he’d so obviously proven himself to be when Michael had gone to question him. Of course, it hadn’t been the man’s décor or choice of clothing that had solidly tipped Michael off to his sexual orientation, in fact Michael was making those things up. It had been the fact that Michael had read his mind.

Like he’d
surmised, sometimes mind reading came in handy, such as during police interrogations.

“Dent is a classy, sophisticated man with g
ood taste,” Rhiannon defended.

“Yes, he is.” Michael interjected, “He proved as much when he hit on me.”
That was a lie too. The man had been well trained and was perfectly chaste.

Rhiannon blinked several times in quick succession, her eyes wide, and her b
rows arched. She swallowed hard and her glare returned. Her mind no doubt found something to say to that, but she was saved from having to say anything at all by the sound of an actual bell that erupted from a sound system running through the studio.

A voice came on immediately afterward to announce the beginning of the first shoot and hurry everyone on to their proper stations.

Rhiannon continued to glare at him for several seconds after the announcement, and Michael made no move to stop her. The longer she glared, the longer she was looking at him, and there wasn’t a single molecule in his body that wasn’t enjoying that. Plus, the warrior in him enjoyed the challenge.

“I have to work,” she finally hissed through clenched teeth.
“
That
,” she said, pointing to an area where several other people with headsets and notepads were standing safely to the side behind a thick yellow strip of tape, “is the nearest safe area.
Go
there.”

Michael chuckled softly and turned to do just that – when something along the wall behind the people in the safe area slithered.

Michael stopped in his tracks and blinked. He frowned.

He looked down at Rhiannon beside him. She, too, was looking at the wall behind the safe area. The color had drained from her face.

“What did you see?” he asked – demanded, really.

“I… I don’t know,” she said softly, the fight having left her voice.

Michael turned back to the wall just in time to see it again. This time, it had moved a bit to his right, and it wasn’t a slither so much as a…
pressing
. It was as if the brick wall were composed of sheet plastic, and something behind it were attempting to push through.

Michael straightened, his warrior reflexes singing to life. “Gargoyles,” he stated with forced calm. “They’ve come for you.”

Chapter Fourteen

Rhiannon felt the wave of her stunned reaction go through her like a physical tide, jarring her where she stood beside Detective
Salvatore. It was the repercussion of several realizations hitting her at once.

Gargoyles.
Coming for her.

The detective knowing about it.
Knowing they were coming for
her
….

There was no time to process the
onslaught of revelations; the brick wall twenty feet away was coming to life. At the same time, explosions began going off further in the warehouse. The ground shifted beneath Rhiannon’s feet, and she looked down.

She jumped and barely sti
fled a scream when the very floor – the
cement
floor – slithered beside her boots just as the wall had.
It’s stone
, she thought frantically.
The floor is stone too.

“The floor
is stone too!” she said out loud, her mouth automatically copying her mind. There was no filter in fear. There were people everywhere, it was broad daylight, and monsters were about to attack. By the sound of things, her powers were needed on-screen right now, where she would use telekinesis to make things fly around, and spread fire without gasoline, and bring lightning from a cloudless sky.

Think, Rhiannon. Think!

“We need to get you out of here,” said the detective beside her. She felt his strong hand on her elbow, guiding her back the way they’d come and toward the doors on the other end of the warehouse.

“No!” Rhiannon stopped and yanked her hand free. “No,” she said hurriedly
, turning to take in her immediate surroundings. “I have to deal with this here and now. I can use the special effects to mask whatever happens.” There were boxes everywhere, wires all around, and already, the minor fireworks were igniting further in. All of it could work to her advantage.

She looked up to find t
he detective gazing at her through piercing blue eyes that hid unreadable emotion. She had no idea what he was thinking, had no idea how he could know about gargoyles or her involvement in them, and she had a hundred questions she wanted to
interrogate
him with, but a spot on the wall over his left shoulder revealed a stone-worked face, for just a split second, and her heart jumped into her throat.

“Very well,”
Salvatore finally told her, stealing her attention once more. “But we do this together.”

Rhiannon’s brow furrowed. Together? What was a cop goin
g to do against stone monsters,
shoot
them? She already knew first-hand that bullets didn’t work.

“And we do it my way,” he concluded. Something flashed in the blue of his eyes, lighting them from the inside as if they were blue glass windows. The light grew, and they began to glow.

“You’re not human,” Rhiannon whispered.

Detective
Salvatore smiled in quick affirmation, flashing long white, sharp fangs, before he spun – just in time. The wall behind him erupted like globulous, liquid rock, shooting toward him with horrible speed. It solidified into the shape of a tall, strong man as the detective raised his arms and the two met in hand-to-hand combat.

Impossible.
It was impossible, what Rhiannon was seeing.

But it also wasn’t, not even a little bit, and a very big part of
her realized she’d suspected, and perhaps even known, all along.

D
etective Michael Salvatore was the man from the dance floor at the masquerade gala, after all. Now she was certain of it. He was the man in the black mask who’d seduced her into a near stupor and left an impossible treasure chest full of gold in her bedroom.

He wasn’t human.
He had fangs. And right now, he was personally fighting the gargoyles who had come for her.

“Behind you
!” he was suddenly warning. Rhiannon jumped, and spun to come face to face with the very same gargoyle male who had carved his way into her quadriceps a few nights ago.

Behind him, the on-lookers who had been wearing head sets and carrying notepads behind the yellow line were now paying them full attention. However, they remained where they were, behind that line, and hope sprung to life within Rhiannon. Maybe they thought this was part of the show.
After all, there were plenty of supernatural baddies in
Comeuppance
. If they just kept watching in ignorant fascination, that would be a blessing to count for sure.

“You’re one
little female,” the gargoyle told her, his expression a mixture of leering impatience. “We number in the thousands. You’ve been marked, and this will go on until you give in.”

“Or until one of us is dead?” Rhiannon said, making sure to mouth it loudly enough for her audience to hear. She was going to play it up; right now, it was her safest bet at getting away with magic in plain sight.
The female lead in
Comeuppance
had red hair, so maybe Rhiannon could slide by as her body double.

“
If I die, I will be replaced. On the other hand, if
you
die,” he said, lowering his tone and stepping menacingly toward her, “my kin will only seek out a replacement for you. Our number are dwindling again. New blood will keep us from extinction. Would you wish your fate on another woman?” He took another step, and Rhiannon found herself backing into a wall of boxes behind her. “One less capable? Less
special
?”

Rhiannon had no idea what to say to that. In fact, she was starting to think that the time for talking had passed. It was time for something else now.

“Everything faces extinction sooner or later,” she finally retorted. Then she faked a trip on some wires at her feet and a stumble to the right. As soon as he reached for her, she lashed out with an upper cut that popped his jaw shut and snapped his teeth loudly together. It sounded like two rocks colliding. “Now’s as good a time as any for yours!”

She followed through with a kick to the abdomen, and a final full-body slug to the left side of his f
ace that sent him spinning away and left her ankle and knuckles throbbing.

Someone grabbed her by the shoulder and whirled her around. Rhiannon readied with a strike position, but stopped short when she
wound up staring up into blue eyes.

“Use your powers, Rhi
annon,” he hissed, his face mere inches from her own. “Distract the crowd!” He motioned with his chin to something behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder to see several more people gathering where before, there had been only a few.

Rhiannon shelved any remai
ning reservations and reached out with her abilities, imagining the city beyond the warehouse’s walls, and then the sky above that city. She saw clouds building in that sky, thick and dark and swirling. From those clouds, she envisioned water molecules growing and condensing, rising higher and higher into the atmosphere as the clouds became anvil thunderheads and a strong wind began to blow. In a nearby alley, a trashcan lid whipped from its can and crashed against an adjoining wall, and she knew she had the storm she needed.

She pulled the lightning straight through the building’s ceiling. Years of practice had honed that ability, sharpenin
g the bolts like blades so they could move through solid material like hot knives through butter.

A bolt struck an empty space twenty feet away
. The cannonball of light contacted with such force, it exploded the floor into flying chunks of rock and left a crater in its wake. Rhiannon’s practice over the years had allowed her to learn how to literally lower the decibel volume of her lightning by slowing the impact of air upon air as it collided. She did this so that she wouldn’t go deaf from using it time and again. Nevertheless, the bolt was loud enough to bring a ringing silence to the universe. In that stunned silence, people ran for cover and screams were muffled, but attention was no longer on Rhiannon, the detective, and their enemies.

Time slipped, slowing down as Rhiannon’s fighter mode clicked into place. She could almost hear it:
Click
. A heartbeat later, boxes, speakers, and electrical equipment were sailing telekinetically through the air, and fireballs were forming from the flickering lightning crater. She sent the heavier boxes slamming into a fresh wave of gargoyles who were only now detaching themselves from the brick wall along one side of the warehouse. The fireballs, she sent searing through the air in true
Fire Starter
fashion right after them, effectively attacking with a one-two combination of deadly proportions.

S
he didn’t let up. More lightning cascaded from some great beyond in the sky over the warehouse, sizzling its way through the building to provide the sparks she needed for her flames. She gathered those, building them up with the heat of her mind until mini-infernos smoldered throughout the warehouse, hovering and waiting for her to hurl them toward unsuspecting opponents. The fire didn’t do much damage, but it confused them and slowed them down.

Detective
Salvatore spun away from her, apparently to face off with another gargoyle, and someone grabbed Rhiannon’s wrist, momentarily diverting her attention. She looked down at the gray, cold fingers encircling her arm, and then looked up at the matching gray face that had not yet fully formed into a human façade. This gargoyle had come from the ground beneath them, growing and solidifying before her in monstrous fashion. If the cameras were still rolling, this footage was going to be worth ten times what Lambent had paid.

Rhiannon
prepared to blow the gargoyle to smithereens with another rogue bolt of electricity when a loud crash just to their right drew their attention.

Rhiannon
glanced in time to watch a gargoyle go flying through a set of boxes, through a city high-rise façade, and into the outer wall of the warehouse, where rubble broke free from the bricks before the gargoyle once more melded with the stone.

Salvatore
turned away from his temporarily defeated opponent to face Rhiannon. His gaze slid to the offending hand around her wrist – and he moved.

Salvatore
’s movement literally blurred as he reached toward them and ripped the gargoyle’s grip free from her arm. Rhiannon was drawing on a lot of experience in comparing him to lightning. That was how fast he’d moved.

The sudden release left her slightly bruised,
but free. Not that it mattered; the detective had his hand around the gargoyle’s throat and was squeezing. Rhiannon felt her eyes go wide when the creature’s neck made a cracking, shifting sound, the way she imagined an earthquake would sound to a Titan. The gargoyle rippled, its skin sliding from flesh into rock and back again in weakening, slowing waves until at last, it was simply stone.

The detective gave the throat one final squeeze, and the gargoyle’s neck shattered, sending splinters of limestone or brick
, or whatever it had been made of, flying in all directions.

Rhiannon shielded her eyes, blinked rapidly in both shock and defense, and then focused her attention once more on the task at ha
nd. Whatever the detective was, whatever powers ran through his veins that would give him such strength, she would figure it out later. Right now, there were at least a dozen other gargoyles yet to deal with, there were hovering fireballs to dissipate or utilize as weapons, and the storm that raged overhead wasn’t going away until she told it to.

Rhiannon rolled back her shoulders, located the nearest gargoyle, and pinned him with a gaze that told him in no uncertain terms she was ready and willing to very much put up a fight. The gargoyle scowled and rushed her. Rhiannon smiled and met him half way.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, the air was filled with ashen debris, the storm rumbled steadily overhead, and precariously perched boxes that had been slammed here and there slid into their final resting places. Rhiannon’s breaths came hard and fast, her cheeks and chest were flushed, and her red hair was wild with the remnant static electricity in the air.

Rock and brick rubble lay in piles throughout the warehouse, the garg
oyle corpse remains of vanquished enemies. The air was warmer than normal, heated by wayward fireballs and lightning blasts. The film crew, doubles, and electricians of the Swallowtail Foundation were huddled in the corners of the warehouse, silent in shock and unmoving but for their quick breaths. They were unharmed.

Beside Rhiannon stood Detective Michael
Salvatore, his boots planted firmly apart, his blue gaze glowing, his dark blond hair mussed and smudged with ash. There were gashes in his jacket, no doubt carved there by the talons of gargoyles. Another gash marred his left cheek, deep and red, but somehow only managed to add to his warrior-like appeal.

Rhiannon found herself completely taken by him in that moment, her
eyes glued to his figure, her heart hammering in the aftermath of the fight. But what she noticed most of all was that despite the chaos, despite the pain of battle, Michael Salvatore was smiling. His fangs were gone, she noticed. Either that, or he’d never had any, and she’d imagined it in the first place. But fangs or not, he was smiling as if he had honestly and thoroughly
enjoyed
the fight he’d just won. He was grinning as if he’d just had an absolute
blast
.