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 face 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, Rhiannon,” 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 remaining 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, sharpening 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.
She 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 hand. 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 gargoyle 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.
And the bitch of it was, so was she. Her grin was as big as his.
Salvatore finished scanning the warehouse, taking in the wreckage, and assessing the damage, and then he turned to her. His grin didn’t slip a bit when he said, “That was fun.”
And neither did hers when she said, “Yes, it was.”
Chapter Fifteen
“He could be hurt.” Max curled his finger against his lips thoughtfully and paced once more across the Mansion’s living room. As usual, the Guardian was dressed in his brown suit and tie, and wi
re rimmed glasses graced his nose. “Or dead.” He stopped and looked at the others.
“He is no’ hurt. He wants to be alone.” Gabriel shook his head from where he sat on the couch beside his wife, Juliette, who had been the second archess to be found by the Four Favored archangels.
“If he were hurt, he’d call. And if he were dead, you would know it,” said Uriel, addressing Max. As their Guardian, Max was connected to them in ways inexplicable and intricate. If Michael were seriously in dire straits, Max would probably feel it in his blood. Hell, they probably all would.
He sighed. “You’re probably right.” He stopped at the massive hearth that more or less served as the heart of the Mansion. The Mansion was not just any house, constructed by man and erected on mortal soil. The Mansion had been a gift to the Four Favored by the Old Man. It followed them, was always there for them, changed to suit their needs, grew and shrunk for them, and its heart always beat. In other words, the hearth was always warm, the fridge was always full, and the cooler was always well stocked with beer.
Another purpose the Mansion served for the archangels was as a vortex of sorts, a transporter tunnel, more or less. All that any of the Four Favored needed to do in order to travel from one area on the globe to another in the blink of an eye was find a doorway. Any door would do, from car door to church door to bathroom door. Even stone archways over older, fallen doors would work, so long as they had at one point opened and closed. The archangel would open the door, think of where they wanted to go, and step through. The Mansion did the rest.
The archangel would pass through some area of the Mansion as it picked them up and carried them through space and time to their destinations. A second later, they would step through a door on the other side. From Firenze, Italy to New Orleans, Louisiana from Reykjavik, Iceland to Brisbane, Australia, from Hong Kong to New York City – just like that.
The Mansion was their constant companion, their sanctuary in a weary world, and Max, their Guardian, had come right along with it.
There had never been any other title for what he was, and it was, after all, a fitting description of the role he filled amidst the archangels. He was their immortal guide, their father figure, and their best friend.
He also acted as agent for both Azrael and Uriel, as they were both public figures of some renown. Uriel was the famous actor who played the vampire lead in the book-to-movie series adaptation of Comeuppance, and Azrael was The Masked One – the lead singer of a rock band called Valley of Shadow.
Of course, Max hadn’t always been an agent. Throughout time, his “mortal” roles had shifted and changed as the cultures and expectancies of the decades had demanded. But throughout it all, he was still their Guardian.
And he was still worried about Michael. He couldn’t help it; it was just who he was.
“Max, you look constipated,” Gabriel grumbled, his brogue lacing his words to take the edge off them. “I’m tellin’ you, ‘e just wants to be alone. Told me so ‘imself.” Gabriel, the Messenger Archangel, took a swig of the beer he had in his hand, and gave his wife’s thigh a gentle squeeze before he winked at her.
Juliette rolled her eyes and smiled at Max. “What Gabe is so gallantly trying to say is that Michael is the most….”
“Uptight?” Uriel provided.
“I was going to say careful,” corrected Juliette with a narrowed glare at Uriel, “one out of all of us. If something is really wrong, you know he’s going to let us in on it. He does things by the book, and he’s not fond of taking unnecessary risks.”
“Juliette is right,” chimed in Eleanore, who was Uriel’s archess. “I don’t think we should worry until we get a call from him that suggests otherwise.”
*****
It took the better part of an hour to get things straightened out explanation-wise at the warehouse. It would take quite a bit longer to get things physically straightened out.
No one had been harmed, which was an enormously fortunate factor that aided in Rhiannon’s cover story. After she and the detective had finished dispatching the last of the gargoyles, she’d approached the members of Samael’s team who had witnessed the commotion, and she made sure to plaster a very pleased smile on her face.
Twenty minutes later, they’d all been convinced that the show was carefully planned, that it had been done so under the table so that actor reaction would be very real, and that this was just a small taste of what Swallowtail Foundation had to offer in the realm of special effects.
The cameras throughout the building had, against all reason, continued to roll through the ordeal. This was due in part to the fact that Rhiannon had long ago made it clear to Mr. V that special cameras were going to have to be set up that wouldn’t fry out every time she filled a room with lightning. He’d had his men take care of it.
It was also due, in part, by sheer dumb luck.
And the footage was stunning. “Mr. Lambent is going to be very, very pleased,” the liaison for Lambent’s enterprises gushed. He was a nervous man in khaki pants and a white button-up, with a nametag that read: “Niles Prichard.” He was fidgety and a little sweaty due to the extravagance of Rhiannon’s “show,” but he was sweet, and he was pleased. “When he sees this footage, he is going to want to sign you on for good!”
A short amount of time later, Alexander appeared on the scene in his suit and a pair of dark glasses. He placed a hand gently on Rhiannon’s back, gave her a reassuring nod, and began taking over in the cleanup.
She’d been officially dismissed from the scene. It was pretty obvious that Alexander could tell this hadn’t been a normal scene filming. He’d been to enough of them to be able to tell the difference. And the piles of rubble here and there were a sure give-away that gargoyles had been involved. Alexander and his cleanup crew no doubt wanted to get to work right away.
Mr. V was the first person he communicated with any time there were developments of a suspicious nature, especially decidedly supernatural ones. Rhiannon wondered what he was going to tell her employer about this one.
She moved out of the warehouse and through the double metal doors that led to the adjoining alley. They closed loudly behind her, leaving her alone in the quickly darkening path – with Detective Michael Salvatore.
He was leaning against a brick wall at the end of the alley, one leg bent, his boot braced against the rock behind him. His thick muscled arms were crossed casually over his broad chest, and his gaze was easy, but his eyes were as bright blue as ever.
He watched her walk toward him, and she could feel that gaze scouring every single inch of her body as if she were completely naked. But she made sure not to show any discomfort or embarrassment. She especially made sure not to let herself blush.
“Okay,” she said frankly when she approached him and stopped a foot away. “So, what are you?”
His brow rose. He pushed off the wall and turned to fully face her.
“I saw fangs,” she said, being brave. “I know I did.” She shook her head. “But you can’t be a vampire because you’re out during the day.”
He didn’t say anything, and that silence filled the space between them with more questions.
She pursed her lips and went on. “Your eyes were glowing, and you crushed a gargoyle’s stone throat like it was glass. No mortal can do that. So, come clean. What are you, detective?”
“Please,” he said softly, tilting his head to regard her thoughtfully. “It’s Michael. And as to the rest of what you said, I’m not sure you would believe me if I told you.” His voice was wonderfully deep and resonating.
“Believe you,” she repeated, shaking her head as if to clear it from the magic in his tone. “Like I should believe you when you come to my apartment and give me the third degree for blowing up a warehouse that I know you know was owned by really bad men, and that I also know you are fully aware was being protected by gargoyles? Believe you when you say you were here today in an official capacity? Like I should believe you claim that Denton actually f
lirted with you? I’ll have you know that man has been faithfully married for fourteen years! Yes, it might be to another man, but he’s still faithful!”
Oh… shit.
She blinked a few times and took a step back. She’d just given herself completely away.
But to her great surprise and even greater relief, the good detective did not immediately begin reading her rights to her. He didn’t radio in for backup. And he didn’t break out his cuffs and try slipping them on her.
Okay, so maybe she was slightly less relieved about that last one.
The detective sighed and uncrossed his arms. “We have a lot to talk about. And I’m hungry.” His gaze flitted to her neck, and Rhiannon’s blush finally broke free. So did a bit more of her suspicion about his fangs. “Let me take you to dinner and we can talk it all out over a bottle of wine.”
Rhiannon thought for several long moments. She turned her back on him, which was not the smartest move in the book, but she needed to break free from the inextricable pull of those blue, blue eyes. She needed to clear her head, and he was poisoning her with nothing more than his gaze and voice.
“Detective, please understand that I truly appreciate your help back there in the warehouse,” she said, referring to the battle against the gargoyles. “But you’re confusing the hell out of me. One minute, you’re interrogating me for crimes downtown.” She turned to face him, her gaze narrowed. “And the next, you’re bowling with gargoyle pins and inviting me to dinner.” She paused, and assessed him again in silence. Her voice was lower when she asked, “Which of you is the real Detective Salvatore?”
He smiled – no fangs this time. “It’s Michael,” he reminded her softly. He put his hands in his pockets and allowed his gaze to travel up the alley walls as if, even now, he were scoping them out for trouble. “And truth be told, they both are.”