David didn't like the implication of that, but that wasn't his problem at the moment. "A promise is a reflection on the one giving the promise, not the one accepting it. If I make a promise, I keep it."
"No matter to whom-or what-it's made." The red lights in her eyes flickered, disconcertingly, as if the monster behind them was assessing his answer.
"I'm making a promise to you." He closed that last space, touched her chin with his fingers. She pressed her lips together.
"Will you remove your daggers?"
"No, I won't lay aside the best weapons I have to protect you. Plus, you just threatened to kill me, and you haven't promised me anything."
"You don't trust me. You think I'm a liar." When her slim jaw flexed, he saw a glimpse of the unscarred part of her face.
"I know you're a liar," he said gently. "But I'm learning when to trust you. Where's the chocolate?"
She lowered her gaze in quick, mistrustful darts, then allowed herself a more thorough search of her robe when David kept his stance relaxed. "So, there've been angels who guarded you, that acted like those mermaids?"
She lifted a shoulder. "It wasn't Marcellus. He and his two pretended like they were guarding something inanimate, so they wouldn't have to talk to me. That suited me fine, except when they tried to order me about.
"Before that, a couple of them passed the time by speculating on names to call me, throwing pebbles and other trash to disturb whatever I was doing. They were bored, and of course they considered guarding me a waste of time." She freed one of the blue foil squares and stared at it, holding it loosely closed in her hand so it wouldn't float away in the water. "On that at least, we were in complete agreement."
"Is that why you turned Marcellus's wing into a bat's?"
"He was pompous, overbearing and he bored me." When she looked up this time, he was relieved to see the red hue that had flared in her blue eye was toned down, all but gone. "I figured if I goaded him enough, he would try to kill me. I could prove I could handle myself against him and wouldn't need any of you. He didn't try, though he looked angry enough to do so."
"Marcellus is honorable. Plus, he never would have defied Jonah that way."
"You answer to each other. You look at the world differently when you answer to no one." She took one square to her mouth. Made a face. "This is metal."
"A wrapper. A covering like the orange," he agreed. "Only man-made, and easier to remove." When he started to help her, she shrank back, did it herself despite some obvious trouble freeing the wet, closely wrapped foil from the candy. He had to command himself to patience. Rolling the foil in a ball, she tucked it back into the recesses of her cloak.
"Who were the two who threw things at you?"
"It doesn't matter. They're two of the four who died. They might not have died, but they didn't trust me behind them. They divided their attention."
"They were probably just making sure a Dark One didn't come up beneath you, or from overhead."
"No. They felt like what they were fighting was no different from what they were guarding." Raising the now naked square to her mouth, she bit. Blinked. Took another bite, slower this time. Then she appeared to roll it around in her mouth until it melted. "Wow," she said, matter-of-factly. David would have smiled, except her previous comment didn't make him want to smile at all.
"They shouldn't have picked on you like that, Mina. But they took their assignment seriously. They died for you."
"No. Angels fight Dark Ones. I was irrelevant, except that I was the unknown variable that split their attention and got them killed. Sshh. Don't talk during this." Rummaging for the other three pieces, she backed up to a rock and anchored herself with her tentacles to continue her consumption.
She had moved to the right of the defile. Her body language might not be as defensive, but she still didn't trust him enough to let him between her and her portal.
David waited, trying not to let the distracting vibrations coming down that tunnel cloud his thinking. Much as he didn't want to admit it, she was right. Because of the purity of their blood, angels were compelled to eradicate Dark Ones, unable to tolerate their unnatural presence.
Mina had enough of her mother in her that she didn't send that meter immediately into the point of no return, but enough of her sire that most angels were ready to write her off. Just now, when she'd stood before that corridor, her cloak floating around her, her eyes flat, purposeful, he'd seen what it was they all saw in her. In fact, if he'd been Jonah or Marcellus, he'd have seen enough to seal her Fate.
But there was more to her. It was impossible for him not to see it as she curled up on the rock, savoring chocolate as human females had since the cocoa bean was discovered.
She was alone. No expectations about her life except what she herself or circumstances of survival imposed. Friends, family, a larger purpose-those were the factors that gave a life a path, an arrow, when choices arose. What if a life had no compass? What did one become if there was nothing and no one guiding her, except the insidious whisper of a doorway?
She insisted on keeping it open, but she continued to resist. Could she want to keep it open, at least partly, for that specific reason? Perhaps the only true meaning to Mina's life was saying no to that which most wanted her to say yes. For if she said yes, the tide of evil would take her, swallow her, and that would be the end of any sense of individual existence she'd ever had.
She was holding the last bite in her hand, and abruptly she looked up at him. "Did you want it?"
"Yes. But no." He couldn't smile. She wasn't generous. Did she force herself to offer that last bite, the one she would want most of all, because she viewed any temptation as an enemy?
At her curious expression, he summoned a shrug. "Angels don't eat, not in this sense. We consume a bread, what the human texts call manna. It comes from the Lady and nourishes us. Nothing else has taste for us, though older angels have some ability to experience it. But I used to like chocolate."
"Like. Not love." She put the last piece away, an obvious effort, and leveled that penetrating stare on him. "What was your favorite food?"
"I was fourteen. Just about anything that moved. Pizza was good. Chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven, those were the best." He stopped there. "I didn't have wings, though. Or really cool daggers."
When she cocked her head, he raised a brow. "What?"
"The way you said that. You sounded... like a fourteen-year-old. You meant to do that."
He gave a half smile. "I thought it might amuse you."
"Or yourself, so it wouldn't make you sad. Did you want to be an angel?"
"It's not like that. I am an angel." Pushing aside her intuition, which stirred up shadows too close to what the doorway had violated him to find, he searched for an explanation. "It doesn't really matter what you were at another time. It's there, just waiting. The first time I opened my eyes, felt the wings, felt it inside me, I knew. There were other things I had to work through, but I never had to work through that."
She shifted her tentacles on the rock, adjusting her hold there. "That's what I wonder about the doorway," she said, glancing at the dark opening. "If stepping through it would be like that. This feeling, all of a sudden, of being exactly what I was supposed to be."
"No." David glided closer, slowly. He didn't want to spook her, but she was too close to that damn door. He wanted to be within pouncing distance.
She tilted her head, met his gaze. "Every day I don't give in to it is another day that I have chosen my own path," she said, confirming part of his theory. "But each day, it gets harder. Everyone wants me to be evil, so they don't have to deal with me anymore." Her expression became more resolute. "You can't take this door from me."
"So that when it gets to be too much, it will be easier for you to join them?"
"So that when the angels or the merpeople or whoever decides my existence will no longer be tolerated, I have another option." She lifted her chin. "It's been here, every day of
my life. And every day I deny it. Even though it promises me a place where I'll be accepted. That's a lie," she murmured, before he could say it. "But it's a manageable option. And it's a nice lie-probably one of the nicest I've ever been told."
She studied him with that odd look she had, as if staring at things far beyond him. "When I was an infant, my mother had to keep me near it. Though it's sealed so they can't come through, I had to have the energy, or I would start screaming, try to hurt myself. It balanced the Dark One part of me until I got older and was able to do it myself. So, in essence"-she gestured-"you're sitting in my nursery. My mother made the first set of sea glass chimes for me, that blue and brown one. I made the others, hanging them in her chamber until she died of the illness the Dark Ones gave her, some type of wasting disease that eventually claimed her when I was seven."
"It doesn't mean you belong there, Mina."
She considered him, lingering on his wings. "What if you had opened your eyes, felt that sense of utter rightness about being an angel, but then you told yourself that wasn't what was written in the stars, or even if it was, you were going to defy it? Every day, even as it called to you until you thought you'd go mad."
"It's different."
"Is it? Then why can't I bear the touch of anything too good, David?" Crossing her arms, she floated away from the rock so they were almost eye to eye. "Why can't I bear anything but darkness and shadows? Why was I nursed on a doorway to chaos and evil I refuse to close? Why shouldn't I step through that doorway? What's stopping me? Why can't I just accept that I'm evil, the way you accept you're an angel, and let the world keep turning the way it's meant to turn?"
"Because I won't let you." David closed the gap between them now. She didn't stop him this time, just kept her eyes fastened on his as he pushed her cowl off her skull, revealing both sides of her, the frame of silk hair for it all. As he did it, he managed to move them farther away from the defile, easing some of the tension in his chest. He'd sensed the rising storm in her eyes, her voice, so he was surprised she didn't resist, but the energy running over her skin was not the energy of the Dark Ones. It was the witch. He could tell the difference and felt a fierce triumph in the knowledge. When his fingers closed on her, she swallowed, but didn't break his gaze.
"I forbid it," he said, low. "It is different, Mina. I've had the blood of Dark Ones on my blade, seen what's in their eyes, what drives them. Pure madness and evil. Whether some insane god or goddess created them, cruelly creating a race with no soul, no hope, no ability to laugh or love, it doesn't matter. You don't belong with them."
"I don't love anyone. I don't laugh. I don't hope for anything, and you're the only one who imagines I might have a soul." She lifted her hands, closed them over his wrists. "And no one forbids me to do anything."
"Want to bet? We've gone through this once. Don't keep testing me. You're a good fighter. But I'm faster, stronger, and I can stop you."
He should have anticipated it, but he'd been anticipating her retort with words, not action. Her ability to use magic without any verbal or energy warning was phenomenal, for the propulsion spell knocked him back and put her an unexpected length ahead of him before he spun to go after her.
He refused to think of what would happen if she reached that debilitating chamber. He didn't have to. He'd follow her through the portal itself, damn it all, where he was sure he'd die in some Dark One world. With her standing over him, that dispassionate look on her face that could tear his heart to shreds even faster than the crushing weight of all that evil.
Thanks to angels' faster-than-light speed, he reached the tunnel entrance first, hitting the outside with his shoulder hard enough to crack rock. As he snagged her cloak, she turned on him with a snarl and a swing of the pipe he recognized too well from their first encounter. In addition to the Inert spell he was too proud to execute, he needed to keep her naked all the time. She apparently carried the whole world under that hideous garment.
Knocking the pipe from her hand with a sweep of his arm, he followed up with a yank that twisted her around. Ducking under him, she forced him to release her or break her arm. When he got a new grip on her, he followed her in the spin, jamming both of them up against the sharp rock beside the tunnel entrance. She cried out, but managed to latch on to an outcropping of rock on either side of the opening as if she could shove herself into the corridor by the strength of her upper body alone.
Enough of this. Locking an arm around her waist, David yanked her back against him, both his wings stretched out to either side to hold them in stasis. For all she was skin and bones, she had a round, tight little backside that slammed into his groin and turned his thoughts decidedly elsewhere as she struggled.
Though angels were pretty carnal, they had unflappable concentration during a fight, which told him his reaction was part of the fight, the weapon he needed to win it.
No one forbids me to do anything.
If he was going to influence her, she expected him to prove he could do it. But he was going to do it with something other than violence, something that proved he could overpower her without pain and fear.
He activated the Inert spell at last, so when she tried to break his grip with magic, it bounced off him harmlessly. Then she went for a fierce hand-to-hand struggle, but she couldn't turn around. Wrapping her tentacles around his legs, she attempted to yank him away from her, but he'd fixed himself to this point in space, forming an immovable wall of air and water at his back. She wouldn't let go of the two sides of the entrance, still trying to pull herself forward. Her hands were not that strong. He could have ripped her away from it, but he didn't want her injuring her broken finger further. So he made the decision to stay where they were, the dull, sinister vibrations humming in front, even as her body stayed flush against him, her heart pounding frantically, a trapped moth.
"Let go," she snarled. Whipping her tentacles from his legs, she thrust them forward, using her more powerful appendages to try to pull herself out of his grip so she could go to that chamber where she'd feed off energy that would whisper to her that she belonged to them. She was theirs.
The nicest lie I've ever heard... To hell with that.
Holding her fast about the waist, David shifted his weight, so she could feel his cock, which had gotten conveniently erect from her squirming. She froze, even as her undamaged fingers curled a little farther into the rock. Her head tilted, capturing him in the corner of her blue eye.
"Got your attention?" he muttered. At the same time, he used the other hand to trace the curve of her undamaged breast, tease himself with the weight of it.
"You belong to me," he said quietly in her ear, following his gut. He knew he might be going down the wrong path, because this was more than what his instinct was telling him to say. It was what he wanted to say himself, crazy as it sounded, primarily because it didn't sound crazy at all. "You're mine, not theirs. And if we have to fight about that every day for the next thousand years, I'm ready to do it. Especially if it gets me hot and hard like this."
Putting his lips closer to her ear so that he could taste the tender skin beneath, he felt her nipple harden against his palm, making his cock respond with increased insistence against her ass. "Are you ready to fight the way I can fight, sweet witch?"
Her fingers convulsed on the rock. He expected it to crumble as a hard shiver ran through her body. "You have different methods from"-she sucked in a breath as he used his fingers-"Marcellus."
"Sure as hell hope so." Because she wouldn't let go of the rock, it was easy to untie and pull the cloak free, with an abrupt, decisive jerk that left nothing but her bare skin pressed back against his chest.
Pushing her hair forward on her neck, he studied the almost perfectly straight dividing line that left a minefield on one side, pure, creamy silk on the other. He put his lips on that demarcation at the top of her spine, the nape of her neck.
It was that delicate, vulnerable point that gentled his touch.
"If I wasn
't so determined to have you right now," he murmured, "I'd find you a beach, where the sun is so warm on the sand it would banish any cold in your bones. I'd lay you on it, just like this, spread you open to take me inside you."
She shuddered again. He could transport her to such a place in a blink, but the first time he took her needed to be here, on this threshold. He had to win this battle, in order to win the others that would inevitably come.
Her left tentacle slowly let go of the tunnel lip, came back and wound around his leg, all the way to his upper thigh. The tip, the soft, brush like feelers, caressed the base of his testicles beneath the battle kilt, making him suppress a growl of response with effort. She could still set off another wrestling match, but her shift of focus seemed genuine. A tentative victory. He set himself to making it decisive, in more ways than one.
He was bruised, aching, and had never been harder in his life. Putting his hands over hers on the rock, he closed them over her wrists. A controlled, downward glide using his wings and the sensual weight of the water molded him against her back in a slow friction until he could caress her spinal column with his lips. He kept going, all the way down to the small of her back. Then back up, his legs tangled with her tentacles so his cock found the open channel between them. With one tentacle anchored around his leg and the other wrapped around a spear of rock, she was spread, ironically vulnerable. Trembling. Her fingers straightened, releasing the rock at last, her signal of surrender both inflaming him and giving his heart a hard lurch. When his mouth reached her nape, the broad head of his cock was stretching her tender mouth below.
"Mina." He laid his jaw against her temple now. One hand released her to follow the bones of her rib cage and the jut of her hips, a disconcerting thinness. Then up again to her breast, the aroused nipple. She jerked against him when he pinched it between his knuckles, feeling a dark satisfaction as it made her undulate against him again, even though the press of her buttocks broke his control.
As he moved to caress the other side in the same way, the scarred side, she stiffened. He didn't hesitate, though, that tension becoming something else as he ran his fingers over the uneven flesh where the other breast would have been. She was still trembling. Harder than before, even.