Martinis with the Devil, Part One

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  An angel waited outside my door.

  I sighed. “Can I help you?” I could feel the laser pin-pricks of my sarcasm, but the angel took no notice.

  “The Holy Representative would like to see you,” she said, her voice a soft rustle like the bronze-colored silk she wore.

  “I’m pretty sure I just got fired by your Special Security Commander.” I walked past her and unlocked my door.

  “That has no relevance to his desire to see you.”

  “It’s like 2 a.m. Doesn’t the HR ever sleep?”

  She simply stared back at me. Not really the talkative kind. I sighed again. “Fine. But you’re driving.”

  The HR was having tea when I entered his garden pavilion. I couldn’t quite make out the scent. A floral note, like jasmine, and something else earthy like a root. Almost like ginger, but not quite. The HR didn’t ask if I wanted any, he simply poured an extra cup and handed it to me.

  “Thank you for coming, Zyan.” He took a sip of his tea and looked at me for just a moment too long to be comfortable. “I understand you had a disagreement with Elijah earlier.”

  “Word travels fast,” I responded. I let the steam from the tea curl up towards my face, the cup warming my fingers.

  “Angels aren’t perfect. You know that, don’t you?”

  I looked up. “Um, I guess I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  The HR nodded. “Most people assume that they are. It’s natural to do so.” Another sip of tea. “Angels, like all of God’s children, have flaws. You’ve of course heard the saying that without dark, there cannot be light. Nothing is truly without flaw, without contrast. Perhaps it can be said that a fully-rounded being, flaws and all, is perfect.”

  I waited, but he had lapsed into silence. After a full minute I said, “Sorry, but I’m not sure I understand why I’m here.”

  The HR smiled. “Elijah is young, for an angel, and sometimes impetuous. Please don’t dwell too much on his words this evening.”

  “I kind of think he fired me.”

  “Elijah cannot fire you. Only I can do that. And I don’t intend on doing that tonight.”

  I took my first sip of tea. This was certainly not where I had expected the conversation to end up. “Okay. So, what next?”

  “I am speaking tomorrow evening at the city hall plaza. I want to talk to the citizens about the riot. I need you there for my protection.”

  “Sure. What time?” I drained my tea, and placed the cup on a small table.

  “Seven. But we’ll be leaving here just after sundown.”

  I stood. “Okay, well, I’ll see you then.” After a moment, I turned to go.

  “Zyan?”

  I turned back around. I guess I should have waited to be dismissed. Me and my manners.

  “Be at peace.”

  “Um, you too. Good night.”

  The HR simply nodded in response.

  A few minutes later I was back at my apartment. This time, no one waited for me outside my door. I crawled into bed, burying my face in Malakai’s fur, and I slept like a baby.

  The next day it was Riley’s turn. When I woke up late in the afternoon, he was standing in the living room with an expectant look on his face.

  “Let me guess—a training session for my inner beast is about to go down?”

  Riley nodded. “You bet. Little witch isn’t going to have a monopoly on your training program.”

  I simply groaned in response and sat down on the sofa.

  “What are you doing? This is not a lecture. We’re heading out into the field.” Riley started for the door.

  “What?”

  He looked at me with his dark eyes. “Sitting in the house is not where you have a problem. It’s when you start to unleash your power.” He kept walking and I had to jog to keep up. “The last couple centuries since the incident with the village, you’ve only used the tiniest of bursts of your power, and mostly for simple, mundane things. Right?”

  I nodded. Not to sound incredibly immodest, but my looks alone could lure any scumbag I wanted with no magical powers whatsoever. I’d kept my power under heavy lock and key when it came to hunting. Until the other day.

  “So, what’s happened is that you’ve just suppressed your power so that it’s grown desperate like a starving animal. It’s not meant to be suppressed. You just need to learn a balance between nothing and everything. Let the racehorse out to run, so long as it understands that when you call it back, it’d better listen.”

  “Okay, enough with the animal metaphors.” I rolled my eyes.

  Riley ignored my comment and carried on. “You are the alpha, not your power. You just need to establish dominance.”

  “You’re talking like it’s a completely different person.”

  “It’s not a person at all. Your humanity is the person. Your supernatural side is the animal. They must work together.”

  We’d reached the street now. Riley headed south. “As you know, being a werewolf I’m extremely compelled by the moon. When I was younger, I had no choice but to change on the full moon. My inner wolf would completely take over. I had to stay out in the middle of nowhere, or I undoubtedly would have killed someone.”

  I nodded. That was all right out of the werewolf handbook.

  “As you also know, I was in a pack in my early wolf days, the pack my family had been in for countless generations. Our alpha taught me over time how to control my wolf side without suppressing it too much. But even now, all these years later, I’ve not mastered things completely. Though I can resist the change on the full moon if I really need to, once I go wolf it’s still always a struggle to keep my human thoughts. When I’m a wolf, humans are just another animal to prey on.”

  I glanced over at Riley as he spoke. Like me, he didn’t like to talk about his past too much. When I’d met him, he’d separated from his pack and was a loner. I knew his parents had been killed in some sort of pack fight, but he had never shared the details. We all had our secrets to keep.

  His eyes met mine. “The point here is that you can’t have perfect control all the time. When I’m out on a full moon running around in the forest, I always pray I don’t come across random campers. I could probably control myself. But there’s always that chance I won’t be able to. What I do know is that if I tried to never turn wolf, things would get out of hand quickly. I can’t completely deny my true self, and neither can you.”

  We’d been walking at a brisk pace, and I realized we were approaching Pike Place Market. I didn’t come down here too often, as it was packed with tourists. Not that I blamed them for their fascination; Pikes Place was like the Diagon Alley of the human world. “What are we doing down here?”

  Riley stopped and turned to face me. The drone of traffic and voices swept past us. “I want you to hunt.”

  My mouth fell open for a second. “I’m not going to eat innocent people!”

  “Who said anything about eating?” Riley shook his head. “I said hunt, not eat. Have you been listening? You need to learn to let your power out without losing control.”

  “So you’re just throwing me into the deep end with weights around my ankles? What makes you think I won’t end up draining someone?”

  “Because I’m here.” He smiled, arms crossed over his muscular chest. “I won’t let you hurt anybody.”

  My hazel eyes burned into his. “What makes you think I won’t eat you on accident?” I growled.

  “Please. Give me some credit. You’re not the only powerful one here.” And with that he let a blast of raw power wash over me. It felt like heat and blood and earth and sky all wrapped together in a pulse of nuclear energy. I staggered and leaned against one of the street lamps.

  “Fine,” I gasped. “We’ll do it your way.”

  Riley was mature enough not to look smug. Much. “Okay, so I want you to hunt. But not like you’ve been doing it. Do it like you used to. With Olga.”

  I shivered at her name.

&
nbsp; He nodded confidently. “You can do this, Zy.”

  Flashes of faces, the faces of my victims, and of magic and destruction, flickered behind my eyes. Riley hadn’t been there that day. He didn’t really know what I was capable of. But if I had any chance of defeating Alexander, I needed my full power. I just hoped that using it didn’t come at too high a cost.

  I began to walk down Western Avenue, through the thick of the crowd, calling on my power. It came surging to the surface with frightening quickness, and I felt myself clamp down on it.

  “Let it go. Let it out,” Riley said from behind me.

  My heart pounding, I pushed the doors to my reservoir of power wide open. It came rushing out, spreading out all around us like a glittery net. From within me a swell of wild glee sang out across the tops of the buildings. People began to turn their heads in my direction, unknowingly responding to my siren call, and inside each I could see their life force, their souls, pulsing like comets and starfire. I could almost taste them rushing into me, filling me to the brim with energy and life.

  A young woman began to walk towards me, early twenties with strawberry blonde curls, her blue eyes vacant as she stared at me, enraptured. Her soul was as pristine as a newborn angel, pure, silvery white and perfect. I turned away from her, walking past the fish market and down into the stairwell at the top of the Pike Place Hill Climb. She followed me without question.

  “Zyan,” Riley called. He seemed far away though, like he wasn’t right behind me anymore.

  I ignored him and stalked down the stairs, which reeked of urine and pot smoke. It wasn’t like I was going to eat the girl. He’d wanted me to release my powers and I had. And he was right. It was good to let my true side out. After two centuries of being on a leash, I relished the unrestricted flow of my power, the unlimited freedom stretching before me. Why had I kept this part of me shut down? It felt so good. So right.

  I reached one of the landings of the climb and turned into a side alley off the main path. The blonde approached and stopped, standing still before me in complete surrender. Beyond her, I saw more people coming towards us, drawn inexorably to the piper’s call. All these souls, all this light, right here before me, wanting to serve me. They wanted to feed me. All of them were willing to give themselves to me. I reached forward and brushed the girl’s soft red curls behind her ear, my fingers trailing down her cheek.

  “Zyan!” Riley barked. “Now it’s time to shut it down.”

  A flicker of fear tickled along my collar bone. I was still in control here. Right?

  The girl took another step towards me, and her body heat washed into me. I could smell her skin, and beneath it the pure, brilliant flow of her essence. Dipping my head, I pressed my lips onto hers. Just a little taste…

  Something heavy hurled into me and brought me crashing to the ground. My power flared out in anger. Lightning cracked across the sky, and the hum of traffic in the distance died. A fist connected with my jaw and I felt naked heat pour through me like lava, burning me from the inside out. Pain sliced through me and I screamed in rage.

  “Who’s in control Zyan? You or your power?”

  Consciousness washed back into me. My inner predator threw one last buck of power outwards, causing the glass in the nearest shops to explode outwards. Riley threw himself onto the girl, and the other people that had been closing in on us dove to the ground. With a shudder, I pulled my power back in and turned it off. Horror washed over me, thick and dark.

  Riley got up and the girl stood, a blank look on her face. “What happened?” she moaned.

  “Don’t know,” he answered. “Looks like maybe an interdimensional flare or something.”

  She nodded and looked down the length of her body, checking for damage.

  “Just a couple cuts,” Riley assured her.

  I remained huddled on the ground, shaking. The other people looked fairly unscathed as well, and they all shuffled off. It looked like the power had gone out in a whole city block. Sirens could be heard in the distance.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” Riley said, helping me to my feet.

  “I told you. I told you this would happen.” My voice was dead and lifeless in my ears.

  “And I told you I would stop it. Which I did.” He sounded fairly nonchalant, but in his eyes I saw a flicker of fear. I’m sure there’d been a moment there when he thought he couldn’t get me back.

  “I caused a blackout. I almost cut those people to shreds.” We headed down the stairs toward Alaskan.

  “A little more collateral damage than I was hoping for,” Riley admitted. “But the only way you’re going to learn to control your power is to trigger it.”

  “People could have died,” I said with gritted teeth.

  “But they didn’t. And the important thing is, you did reel your power back in at the end.”

  I started to argue, but realized he was right. There was a moment in which I knew I could throw him off with my own power after he’d blasted me, but then I heard his words and came back to myself. A minor success, considering I’d lost control of my power in about two seconds flat to begin with, but better than the alternative. I shivered again. “Holy fuck.”

  Riley laughed. “Yeah, you caused a shit load of damage. Imagine what you can do with your power when you learn to use it for good?”

  “I’ll make a donation to the city preservation foundation,” I said, ignoring his second comment.

  Would I ever be able to control myself? It had taken no time at all to end up almost right back where I had been two centuries ago.

  “Sounds good.” Riley grabbed my hand, his dark fingers intertwining with my moon-pale ones. “And, maybe let’s not tell Quinn about this, hmm?”

  “Deal,” I said.

  The HR rode in a gray sedan, even though it would have been safer to travel with one of the angels and slip through the dimensional roads. We passed the front of City Hall on 4th Avenue and drove around to the back, where the local police had gathered to form a protective wall for the HR’s entrance. Not that I trusted any of them, who could easily be glamoured, or simply bribed. I got out of the car first, and the HR followed me, flanked by two angels. All of my senses were alert to danger.

  I blinked as we stepped into the bright light of the building. Several angels escorted the HR to a waiting room while me, a bunch of other angels, and the police headed out front to set up a perimeter around his speaking area on the steps above the plaza. Quite a crowd had already gathered, with lots of hand-painted signs with messages like, “Human Rights Come Before Monster Rights” and “Go Back To Hell Where You Belong”.

  “Mmm. A friendly crowd tonight,” I remarked to one of the angels. It stared back at me impassively. Apparently humor was just not an angel thing. In fact, it seemed Eli was one of the few to show any emotion at all. I wondered where he was. Not that I wanted to see him or anything.

  I visually checked everything to make sure all looked as it should. Technically, I wasn’t in charge of the overall security; the angels and Seattle PD were taking care of that. But what can I say, I have trust issues. When I felt like things were as good as they were going to get, I went back inside and got the HR. He seemed as serene as he ever did, despite the fact that he was about to speak in front of thousands of people, angry people who just wanted to yell at somebody. Not that I could exactly blame them.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  He nodded and followed me out into the waiting crowd. Behind the microphone he seemed to possess an almost heavenly glow, though the HRs were human. It made me wonder, though. I took a position two feet to his right and slightly behind, hands clasped behind my back like they do in movies. Of course, in movies their hands aren’t behind their backs to be closer to their swords. So, I had a good reason for my pose.

  The crowd quieted substantially, though there were a few raised voices. The HR waited until even those had died down. “Thank you all for coming tonight. As you know, I’m here to discuss the riots that occu
rred two nights ago. What happened was tragic, and my prayers go out to all those that were injured and killed. It was a sad evening for us all.” He paused, head bowed for a moment. “So many things have changed in the last decade. We’ve discovered new races living among us, and realms other than Earth. I am pleased that these changes have occurred peacefully for the most part.

  “As one of the representatives of the realm of Heaven, I want you to know that we are doing all within our power to work with the government to resolve any conflicts peaceably. We are putting all possible resources into this effort. Whether human, vampire, angel, witch, shifter, faerie, or any other supernatural being, we all share this planet together.”

  A murmur of approval floated up from the crowd. I cast my eyes around, watching the sea of people. The wind whistled in my ears. Except… usually I could smell leaves, or asphalt, or salt on the air. I glanced up at a nearby tree. The leaves were still. My gaze whipped skyward, just in time to see a dark shape slicing through the darkness towards me. I rolled to the side, pulling my blade as I did, putting myself between the HR and the assailant. Someone in the crowd screamed.

  A thump sounded as the figure hit the pavement, and from out of the shadows stepped Alexander.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN