Angel in Chains (The Fallen #3)(61)
Author: Cynthia Eden

And, of course, he did.

“You have to pay, too,” Mateo murmured. “So I’ll be taking that pound of flesh you offered.” A slight pause. “Good thing your kind heals so fast.”

But Az didn’t want Jade to watch him get sliced open. “You got spells protecting this place?” he asked Mateo.

“Always,” was the instant answer.

Exhaling, Az said, “Go downstairs, Jade. I’ll be there soon. Give me just a minute.”

She nodded and stepped away from him.

But before she left, he wanted her to understand . . . “I’m not going back.”

Her body tensed.

“I’m not using you as some trade-off for heaven.”

She turned toward him. Her hand lifted and touched the edge of his jaw. If he’d had one, the look in her eyes would have broken his heart.

But angels didn’t love.

Angels didn’t, but Fallen—

“Good,” she told him quietly as her hand slowly fell away, “because a trade with somebody like me—with all the things I’ve done—hell is more likely what you’d get in return.”

Then she was gone. The apartment door shut quietly behind her. Az realized his hands had clenched into fists.

“I guess it’s true.” Mateo came to stand in front of him. He held a knife loosely in his hands.

Az forced his hands to relax. “What is?”

“That every angel has a temptation.”

She wasn’t just a temptation.

“Maybe that’s the real challenge.” Mateo’s gaze was hooded. “Can you give her up? If you did, perhaps you’d get what you want.”

“You don’t know what I want.” What he wanted was heading down the stairs. He could hear the soft tread of her footsteps. “So just get to slicing and let’s hurry the hell up.” He had places to be. An angel to see.

A shifter to kill.

“If that’s what you want.” Then Mateo started cutting him. Az clenched his teeth, refusing to cry out as the witch carved into him. Mateo caught his blood in a cup, holding it close.

Az didn’t make a sound. He didn’t want Jade to see him like this, didn’t want her to hear his pain.

So he closed his eyes, ignored the hot slice of that knife, and thought of angels . . . and their deadly schemes.

She’d known he was too good to be true. Jade paced the dusty bottom floor of the warehouse, her arms folded over her br**sts. That first night—she’d known that fate couldn’t be so kind to her.

“Using me,” she muttered, and so what? Hadn’t she been using him, too?

So why did the knowledge of Az’s true intentions make her heart hurt?

Because you know he doesn’t want to stay with you. You know that when this nightmare is over, Az will find a way to get what he wants most.

And what he wanted most just wasn’t her.

Dammit.

The guy wanted to go home.

How could a girl compete with heaven?

She glanced upstairs. She hadn’t heard so much as a peep of sound since she’d walked down to the first floor. That was weird, but—

“Help me . . .”

Jade tensed at the cry. Faint, drifting on the wind. She hurried to the warehouse door. Putting her ear against it, she listened.

“Help me . . .” A woman’s voice. Desperate. Louder. “Please, help me!”

Jade jerked back. She grabbed the handle of the door. Yanked.

The damn thing didn’t open.

The woman screamed, the cry high and full of pain.

Jade yanked harder on the door. It wouldn’t open. She ran toward the boarded-up windows. Pressing close, she squinted and could just make out the form of a woman huddled across the street. The woman was holding her stomach, weaving on her feet. And there was a trail of blood in her wake.

Oh, hell. “Az!” Jade yelled for him. “I need you!” Because she couldn’t just stand there and watch that woman die. Jade spun around. She needed something, something—the chair. She rushed for the old desk and chairs, and her hands closed around the nearest chair.

She dragged it with her and rammed it against the window. The glass shattered. The wood that had been nailed into place groaned.

The woman’s cries were getting weaker.

“Az!” Jade shouted again. “Help me!”

The wind howled in the apartment as the magic flared. Mateo was mixing Az’s blood and the hellhound claws, pounding them up and re-forming them with his powers.

No furnace was needed to cast these bullets—Mateo used his own firepower to burn and shape them.

The howling sounded like a thousand voices screaming in his head, and even with the fire spinning just feet away, Az felt a chill ice his skin.

Some magic could give even angels pause.

And this . . . the powers that Mateo called, they were damn dark.

Az was glad that Jade was safely downstairs. He didn’t want this darkness touching her.

The wood cracked with a groan. Jade heaved the chair once more, and it flew through the shattered beams of wood. Then it was her turn to hurtle through the window. The woman wasn’t crying anymore. She’d slumped over on the ground, and she didn’t appear to be moving at all.

Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.

But Jade could smell the too-sweet scent of flowers, and that was supposed to mean that a Death Angel was close, right?

“Hold on!” Jade cried out as she raced across the street. “You’re not alone. It’s going to be okay.”

She fell to her knees by the woman. The blonde had turned away from her, sagging against the old brick building. Jade reached for her shoulder. “It’s going to—”

The illusion fell away. And that’s all it was, an illusion, one that couldn’t survive touch. Because Jade wasn’t clasping an injured woman’s shoulder. She was touching the hard strength of a man’s arm.

Her gaze lifted slowly, and she found herself caught in the too-bright stare of an angel bent on death.

“Demons aren’t the only ones who know how to use the power of glamour.” Bastion smiled at her. “Angels hide in plain sight all the time. Why do you think humans never see us?”

She could barely hear him over the mad pounding of her heart. Jade tried to jump to her feet and back away.

Too late. His hand flew out and caught hers. “I can’t let you get away,” he murmured. “Not this time.”

“Az!” She screamed his name as loud as she could, but even if he heard her, she knew he’d never make it to her in time.