He looked back down, his eyes slicing to the point. “Let me take you to dinner, Rhiannon.” He moved toward her, taking the few steps that brought them toe to toe. To her credit, this time she didn’t step back. “And I promise I’ll explain everything.”
Rhiannon swallowed hard as a wave of leather and after shave-scented masculinity washed over her, making her dizzy. He smells like night. It was an inappropriate and misplaced thought, riding on some sort of post-fight high. The man was intoxicating, whether he was a swaggering, know-it-all cop with fangs and glowing eyes or not. If she wasn’t careful, the next thing she knew, she would be doing him against the alley wall.
She could not go with him. Whatever she did, she needed to distance herself. He was getting under her skin, making her blurt things out that she would never have admitted to anyone otherwise. He was a complete stranger, changing her and making her weak. Don’t go to dinner with him, Rhiannon, she told herself firmly. He’s dangerous.
“Okay,” she said, against every ounce of intelligent reasoning she possessed.
Chapter Sixteen
He was worried about Mimi. Angel had taken her out of the warehouse with incredibly apt timing, but that was the last he’d seen of her. Had she witnessed any of the fighting? Had Angel taken her somewhere far enough away to keep her out of harm’s reach?
Michael had an inkling what the gargoyles would do if they knew how much Mimi meant to Rhiannon. He’d read the minds of a few of the gargoyles who’d attacked them. Reading thoughts embedded in rock was much more difficult than pulling them from flesh, but gargoyles were both. They transitioned from one to another with no more than sheer will, and Michael focused his ability so that it struck when the gargoyles were flesh.
Even then, the scouring was sluggish. It was like pushing through wet sand. He succeeded, however, and in doing so, he learned that the gargoyles wanted Rhiannon Dante as they had never wanted a woman before.
Somehow, they’d learned of her abilities – all of them. They not only knew that she could throw things with her mind and manipulate fire and lightning, they knew she could heal. And they wanted that ability, especially, for themselves.
Just like the bloody Adarians.
The gargoyles planned to breed her into their society in the hopes that their children would possess any and all of what Rhiannon did, combined with the flesh-to-stone abilities of gargoyles.
How they had come upon this knowledge was something he hadn’t been able to pull from them. It was hidden further down in their minds, as if whoever had put it there had guarded it well, specifically against him. But he planned to find out. Once he had Rhiannon safely back home, he was going to pay the gargoyle community a little visit.
It was an hour past sundown and he was executing a turn on wet city streets when Rhiannon received a call in the passenger seat beside him. He glanced at her as she pulled the cell phone from her inner coat pocket and answered.
With his hearing, he could make out every word said, of course. Hell, even a human could hear the caller on someone else’s phone most of the time; iPhones weren’t exactly eaves-drop proof. It was Mr. Verdigri. He was calling to let Rhiannon know that Mimi had been dropped off by Rhiannon’s friend, Angel.
Michael watched as Rhiannon’s expressions changed in rapid succession, going from relief to surprise and then to guilt and confusion.
“Crap,” she whispered as she hung up and re-pocketed her phone. “I forgot about Angel. I was supposed to meet back up with her for dinner.”
Michael’s ears pricked. “Who’s Angel?”
Rhiannon looked sidelong at him, her expression making it evident she didn’t feel like explaining it or going into it, but not because she was tired so much as because she felt ashamed. “A friend. A very good friend actually, though believe it or not, we never met face to face until today.”
Michael said nothing, allowing her to gather herself a bit and simply go on telling her story.
“We met online in a chat room about six or seven years ago. We were put in the same group because we both live in Manhattan. We have the same taste in books and movies and even music. Pretty soon we were talking every day, sharing stories and stuff. She confided in me that she’d been given up by her parents, and I finally felt like I could tell someone I was an orphan too. The more time passed, the more we realized we could have been separated at birth. Except that she’s two years older than me,” she chuckled softly, shaking her head. “Not that you’d ever know it.”
Michael watched the road, but every now and then, he glanced her way to take in the play of emotion on her face.
“Anyway, we’re both really busy women… you know how it is in New York. We’ve never met in person; there was always some reason. Until today. She came to the studio before the shoot. We were supposed to go to dinner after it was over, but….”
“But gargoyles happened.”
Rhiannon glanced at him. “Yeah. Luckily, it looks like Angel felt the need to play truant officer with Mimi long before the fighting started, so neither of them saw anything.” She smiled. It was the kind of smile that said she didn’t really trust him, not yet, but she was starting to and she was tired enough to be unwilling to put up much of a fight with her inner alarm system. It also said she had so much to ask him, she had no idea where to start. Which was probably why she’d just opened up to him instead about something as personal as being an orphan and meeting a friend for the first time in seven years.
He understood her weariness well. It was a weakness for the archesses that they became drained as they used their powers. Rhiannon had put on quite a display during their battle against the contingent of gargoyles at the studio. And she hadn’t limited herself to a supernatural effort, either. Michael had never witnessed anything quite so beautiful as she had been while in action. Each move she made against her enemies could have been choreographed. The power, the speed, the agility…. She’d bewildered him enough that he’d slipped up once or twice, losing himself while watching her when he should have been fighting. She was a warrior, in the truest sense of the word. She was stunning.
And she was probably knackered.
If he concentrated, he could hear her heart beating. It wasn’t beating the slow, even rhythm of pre-sleep yet, but it wanted to be. She was just too nervous to let it get that comfortable just yet.
“I can’t quite understand it, though. I didn’t even know Mimi was at the studio today. I mean, I guess Mimi was skipping. But how did she and Angel meet? And how would Angel know where Mimi lived?”
“As to how she knew where she lived, Mimi probably told her,” Michael offered logically. “And Angel probably just saw her there at the studio and introduced herself. She sounds like that kind of person. Maybe she thought a fireworks stunt for a movie was no place for an unsupervised kid and took it upon herself to escort Mimi home?”
“I should call her,” Rhiannon said, turning back to look at the road ahead. “I have her number. We never talk because neither of us like to get sucked into voice conversations. We’re both better with written words. We text all the time. Still, in this case, I guess should probably just call.”
“I’m sure a text would be fine,” he offered softly.
She smiled a relieved smile at him, and he found himself momentarily ensnared. His head felt balloon-like, as if it were floating off his shoulders. She was so beautiful to him in that moment, it was bewildering. Her smile was so natural, so heart-felt. It just really threw him.
He blinked and turned back to the road.
“I hope you’re right.” She pulled her phone back out and began pressing in letters. “I hate these itty bitty keys….”
Michael let her type for a moment in silence. Then he asked, as nonchalantly as he possibly could, “So what made you choose this career, Rhiannon Dante?”
Rhiannon stopped typing and looked over at him. It took her a moment, but she caught his innuendo. He wasn’t referring to special effects.
She swa
llowed hard enough that he could hear it, and he assumed she was just realizing that if there had been any pretense about her remaining, it was gone now. “You mean beating up bad guys, don’t you?”
Michael smiled.
Rhiannon sighed. “I didn’t choose it. It chose me.”
Street lights made blurred smears on the windows as the clouds overhead opened up and rain began to fall. He wondered if it had something to do with Rhiannon. Her expression was changing, her gaze growing distant through the windshield.
“Like I said, I was an orphan,” she began, absentmindedly looping her finger under her gold chain and bringing his attention to the gold rectangle pendant hanging from it. It was simple and matte and possessed a single word written across its surface: Fearlessness. Every now and then, he caught a flash of the back, which read, “Joyful Heart, Me & Ro.” He recognized the name of the foundation. It was a charity aimed at helping the victims of rape.
“I ran away from the orphanage at the age of nine. Started running with what you would probably call a bad crowd.” She closed her eyes for a moment, and he knew she was lost in the past. “But that would be both an understatement and a shallow, two-dimensional representation of the people in that crowd. Some were bad. But I wasn’t afraid of them. I can take care of myself.” Her smile was winsome, and he could imagine her using her powers even as a child to put people in their places. “But some of them were good. One, in particular, was like a big sister to me. She took me under her wing, taught me how to read – and how to steal. She also taught me how to dress in baggy clothes so the boys in the group wouldn’t notice I was growing up. It was something she struggled with herself because of her age. Her name was Willow.”
She lapsed into a long silence, and for the first time since meeting her at the warehouse, Michael was truly tempted to read her mind. But he didn’t. He watched the road and the traffic and waited.
“We lived in a bunch of adjoining rooms in a condemned apartment building. Willow and I shared the basement. One night, I came home to the basement to find her laying in a blood stain on her mattress. She was still alive,” she shook her head, “but barely. The boys in the group had done a number on her.”
Michael’s blood ran cold and his grip on the steering wheel tightened.
“I found someone on the street outside and they called an ambulance. Willow struggled for a week and a half in ICU. They let me see her because I told them I was family. They never asked for any kind of proof. I think they were just happy she had someone who wanted to talk to her.
“For a while, she was just asleep. I guess doped up to kill the pain, I don’t know. I was so little, I only knew her eyes were closed, but she was breathing and the machine next to her kept making beeping sounds, so she was still with me.
“On day ten, she opened her eyes. I had been reading to her. Don Quixote was her favorite. She opened her eyes and told me, ‘Rhee, read that part again. I like that part.’”
Rhiannon smiled now, this memory clearly less painful for her, and Michael’s grip on the steering wheel let up.
“I could tell the doctors were surprised when she pulled through. But she did. They told her there would be scarring and pain for the rest of her life. They didn’t think she would walk again at first either, but she proved them wrong there too.”
Rhiannon took a deep breath and released her necklace. “She’s a cop now, believe it or not,” she said, shooting a look his way. “In Detroit. She told me she was going to make damned sure she did her best to save other girls from going through what she went through.”
“And you decided to do the same.”
Rhiannon nodded. “Between the two of us, I had the ability to make more of a difference. I had no excuse for not doing all I could to make the world a better place.” She paused, and asked, “You know?”
Michael chuckled softly and felt a warmth in his chest. “Oh, I do.”
They drove in silence for a moment before Rhiannon broke it and asked, “And what about you? What made you decide to become a cop?”
Michael had no idea where to start. He hadn’t just been a cop. He’d had hundreds of different jobs over the years. But, if he thought about it, he guessed they were all similar. In each, he’d attempted to do exactly what Rhiannon was trying to do: Make the world a better place.
“It’s a long story,” he said, suddenly wanting to tell her every single bit of it.
“Well, I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night,” she said, smiling.
Michael gazed at that smile, and for the second time since they’d gotten into his car together, he felt light-headed.
Amazing, he thought.
The road demanded his attention, and he flipped on his turning signal and navigated another high-traffic, wet-street turn. But he wasn’t really driving. Nearly every ounce of his consciousness was on the woman beside him.
He’d been prepared to throw everything at her. He’d been ready to use every single one of his new-found abilities to force Rhiannon to his side. He could have sent her careening into an orgasm with no more than a wave of incubus will if he’d wanted. He could have scoured her mind for her likes and dislikes and pretended to share them. He could have simply subjugated her with a mesmerizing gaze or a piercing bite in the manner Azrael had no doubt perfected over the years.
But instead… they were talking.
It took him aback for a moment when he realized how naturally it had come. His entire existence had been a fight. He realized, then, that he’d been expecting nothing short of yet another battle in this. Michael began to feel hope. Maybe things were going to be just a little easier than he’d thought. For once.
Rhiannon turned back to her un-finished text to Angel, completed it at last, and again re-pocketed her phone just as Michael pulled into the parking lot of one of his favorite restaurants. “You like Italian?” he asked. He’d been coming here since it opened years ago. He loved the Insalata Pizza, and hoped Rhiannon would too. She needed some food. With his newfound powers, he was beginning to actually sense her growing weakness from the gargoyle battle.
Rhiannon looked through the windshield, and her jaw dropped open. She turned to him, her body pressed up against the door to put distance between them, her expression at once wary and accusatory. “What, were you listening to us? Have you been spying on me, detective?”
Michael’s eyes widened. “What?”
“This is Giancarlo’s! This is where Angel and I were going to come and eat! There’s no way that out of the thousands of restaurants in Manhattan, this just happened to be the one you coincidentally chose tonight!”
Michael sighed.
Things could go easier than he’d thought they would. Then again, maybe not.
Chapter Seventeen
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” he told her plainly as he put the car in park and extracted the keys from the ignition. “I happen to love this restaurant,” he gestured to the building through the windshield, “and I was hoping you would too. I had no idea you were already planning on coming here.”
The explanation was so simple, so under-detailed, and so straight-forward, he hoped she would realize that it could only have come from a position of honesty. He wasn’t trying to snow her. If he’d wanted to play her, he’d have done so from the get-go using powers she couldn’t even begin to imagine, and she wouldn’t have stood a chance.
But it did make him smile a little that just seconds ago, he’d been musing about learning all of her likes and dislikes so he could pretend to share them. As it turned out, pretending wouldn’t have been necessary. At least not where Italian food was concerned.
She stared at him long and hard, and he could almost hear the gears turning in her head. Did she trust him? Did she dare believe him? What were the odds?
What were the odds, indeed? She fought like him, she liked the same food as he did, and she wanted to make the world a better place.
You’d think they’d been matched up in some angel realm or s
omething.
“On the up side, if you had reservations, then I don’t have to bribe the maître d’ for a decent table at the last minute,” he quipped.
It was still a long while before she spoke, but when she did, it was with a sigh of acceptance. “I did.” She popped open her door and got out. He followed suit.
“By the by, you parked in a handicapped zone.”
“There are three other open spaces. If they fill up, I’ll move.” He clicked the lock on his keypad, locking the doors. “Cop’s prerogative.” Then he clicked the second lock, which would activate the alarm. Unmarked police vehicles had a lot of tempting equipment inside them for anyone angry enough, drunk enough, or the just plain young enough to try something cool like ripping off a cop car. It wasn’t that he couldn’t catch anyone who attempted to steal from him, but alarm came with a bright, red blinking set of lights that usually deterred people from even attempting the theft in the first place, saving him some trouble.
It was a human thing for him to worry about, he knew. But he was like that in a lot of ways. He’d been a cop for a long time, and his job was so entrenched in the ups and downs of basic human nature, they’d seeped through his pores and into his bones.
“If I hadn’t had reservations for Giancarlo’s, I highly doubt you’d have had to bribe anyone, detective,” she said, eyeing him over the top of the car. “I bet you never really have any trouble at all getting what you want at the last minute. I bet that Jedi Mind Trick of yours serves you well, Obi-Wan.”
“What Jedi Mind Trick?”
“The one you used on me at the masquerade gala.”
“I never used anything like a Jedi Mind Trick on you at the masquerade gala.”
Rhiannon’s eyes widened at first, and then they narrowed. And then she smiled. Got you, the smile said.
Shit, Michael thought, bewildered. What the hell just happened? He’d just admitted to being the man in the mask at the dance. Just freely admitted it. Holy hell. She should be the cop, not him.