And they both knew it.
“I’ll tell you where she is,” Sam continued. “She’s at home, in bed, alone.” He smiled a terrible, wicked, and beautiful smile, and lightning sliced through the dark of his eyes. “At least you hope she is.”
Michael regained the upper hand, empowered by the anger of the monsters that Sam had so selflessly turned him into, and by their sheer joy at inflicting pain upon their enemy. But it was short-lived. The scales tipped, and the archangels exited an alley like cannonballs to soar across a Chicago street and land atop a parked car, crunching it beneath impact. Car alarms went off, real lightning struck nearby as a storm built overhead, and two very powerful men continued to battle.
Michael felt himself grow weaker with each passing minute of bloodshed, magical attacks, and emotional derailment.
And the fight was just getting started.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The night turned around Rhiannon like a carousel, its lights and sounds distant and muffled. Every ounce of her body tingled, so much so that she could almost hear it, like pixie dust chimes. Her feet felt as if they rested, not on the ground, but several inches above it. She hovered there, lost in the embrace that had already been broken, but that she could still feel around her. It felt like Michael had left a ghost there to hold her in his stead.
Somewhere in the distance, someone was calling her name, but it was as muffled as the rest of the spinning, blurred world, and she was happy here. Too happy to come out just yet.
It hadn’t made sense, that kiss.
She had no idea who Michael Salvatore was. Not really. He had powers that sent her head into cartwheels, and she had a feeling those fangs of his were only the tip of the iceberg. She had no clue what kind of being she was dealing with. And she didn’t know what his intentions were. Did she?
Someone said her name again, off in the far away.
Absently, Rhiannon brushed her fingertips across her lips. They seemed to buzz beneath her touch, slightly swollen. A rush of heat moved through her when she realized… she wanted more.
He’d been strong and unyielding, demanding but gentle. His body radiated heat, his lips were cool, and he smelled like the night itself, like sandalwood and aftershave and leather and darkness. She’d never been kissed like that. Not in her entire life. Not even in her dreams.
“Rhee!” Someone pulled at her arm, and she stumbled a little, finally turning around. The carousel stopped spinning, and everything came into focus.
She blinked. “Mimi, what is it?” she asked numbly.
Mimi looked stricken. Her face was pale, and her eyes were very large. “I saw him kissing you! Did he suck your soul out through your mouth or something?”
Rhiannon’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve only been trying to get your attention forever.”
Rhiannon shook her head. “I’m fine. But what’s wrong?”
“It’s Strike. I can’t find him! He isn’t coming when I call him. I left him in your room before I went out to follow you, and now he’s not there!”
Rhiannon processed this. “You left him in my room?”
“Yeah, so that if anyone went looking for me, they could knock on your door and he could answer, you know, with a whine or a little bark or something. And then the person knocking would just think I was having a sleepover with you and they would go away.” Her voice was steadily rising in pitch as she became increasingly agitated. “But he’s gone, Rhee!”
“Mimi, listen to me, sweetie,” Rhiannon bent and took gentle but firm hold of her arms. She looked into Mimi’s eyes. “He’s probably in Alex’s room. You know how he likes to spend the night there because Alex gives him that premium dog food from that snooty little store across the street.”
Mimi seemed to consider this, and Rhiannon could feel a bit of the stiffness leave her little body. “That one that charges twelve dollars a can?”
“That’s the one.”
“But how did he get out of your room?”
“No doubt, someone went looking for him after I called Mr. V, or maybe they heard him barking and let him out.”
Mimi considered that as well, and finally she sighed. “Okay.”
“Now, let’s go inside and get you in bed before your aunt wakes up, okay?”
Mimi nodded, if somewhat reluctantly. The thought of meeting up with her aunt obviously didn’t sit well with her, because she paled a little and a few of her freckles got darker. Encountering her aunt would be admitting that she’d snuck out again, and that would be twice in the same day. No doubt, there would be grounding in the child’s future, perhaps the kind that meant a hiatus from Pokémon games on her Nintendo 3DS.
Rhiannon knew that would just about kill the girl.
She gently placed a comforting hand at Mimi’s back, and the two walked into the building together. Rather than attempt to go to any of the rooms, Rhiannon headed directly for the atrium. If anyone was worried about Mimi, or Rhiannon for that matter, they would gather there. It was not only the meeting room for Mr. Verdigri, it was Crisis Central, a place of companionship, comforting tea, lemonade, butterflies, and things that otherwise calmed frayed nerves.
Just as they both feared, Mimi’s aunt was amongst the people waiting at the tables in the gazebo when the two arrived on the walking path. Her face was white and drawn, and no doubt she’d awoken to find her suite empty and had flipped her proverbial lid.
Now, Mr. V had reassured and calmed her, but there was a veritable steam cloud around Bess that told Rhiannon she’d been fuming.
“Oh no,” Mimi whispered.
Rhiannon felt for her.
“Take it like a girl,” Rhiannon told her. It was a joke of sorts between them. Rhiannon had once shown Mimi a video of two expert boxers who had gone up against each other in a strength competition, one woman, one man. The girl had hit harder. Now any time either of them faced something that took a certain amount of constitution, they reminded each other to face it like a girl.
Mimi took a deep breath, rolled back her shoulders, and nodded.
When Mimi’s aunt saw her approaching, she leapt out of her chair and stormed the child on quick little feet. The woman was tiny; at the age of nine, Mimi had less than an inch to go before she’d be as tall as Bess.
Rhiannon moved away, giving them space. She tried not to listen to the exchange between guardian and child, knowing anything she did would only make the situation more difficult.
She turned her attention to the gazebo and its other occupants. Mr. Verdigri was there, along with Alex and a few individuals that Rhiannon had seen here and there; employees of Mr. V’s. They were all dressed in suits, they all wore unreadable but serious expressions, and they were all watching Rhiannon.
She approached them, and Mr. V rose slightly from his seat to gesture to the chair across from him. Rhiannon sat down as Mimi and her aunt made their way back down the path and away from the gazebo. Rhiannon could have been wrong, but she was pretty sure she caught the word “Pokémon” as they were leaving, briefly followed by a groan from Mimi, and a reprimand from Bess.
“What’s going on?” Rhiannon asked, directing her attention to her employer.
“I’m assuming young Mimi surprised you again tonight?” Mr. V asked first, a twinkle of mischief in his eyes. He would never admit it to Mimi’s aunt, but there was a part of him that admired the girl’s shenanigans, perhaps because they were always further evidence of the child’s precocious intelligence.
“Yes. But I think you need to know the reason for her escape the second time. She came to see me because she saw a gargoyle. She said she mentioned it to you and you brushed it off.”
Mr. V sighed heavily. “I did. I was hoping she’d imagined it. But even as I was hoping so, I knew I was wrong. She is a special child, Rhiannon. She notices things.” He was quiet for a moment, introspective. “I’m going to have to keep a closer eye on her, I think.”
Rhiannon let that go in silence. He was probably ri
ght. And with what Rhiannon faced on a day-to-day basis, it couldn’t hurt to give the kid extra protection, too.
After a moment, Mr. V looked back up, and raised his hand to signal to one of the men behind him. “I’m afraid we aren’t gathered here solely due to Mimi.”
“I figured,” Rhiannon answered softly.
The man behind him placed a manila folder on the table before Rhiannon. “This is the information you’ll need for a priority one assignment. I’m afraid you’ll have to head out tonight,” the man told her.
Rhiannon stared at the folder, and then up at her employer. “Mr. Verdigri, I’m afraid I can’t go out tonight. I need to….” She drifted off as she glanced at the other employees. Mr. V understood at once. He signaled for the others to leave.
When the two of them were alone, Mr. V leaned forward over the table. “What Mimi said about the gargoyles was only part of the story, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Rhiannon confirmed. Then she told him about the fight in the studio that afternoon. She left a little detail out. Mainly the stuff about Michael Salvatore and the kiss. But she shared enough that Mr. V understood the reason she didn’t want to go out on a job this important right away was because she needed enough sleep to regain the bulk of her abilities.
“I understand,” Mr. V said when she’d finished. Then he sat back in his seat once more and absently scruffed his beard. “This brings new information to the table, most certainly.” He thought things over for a while in silence, and finally sighed. “The targets in this assignment are set to catch a flight at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning. They are a family consisting of a single mother and four little girls who are scheduled for female genital mutilation against their wishes and the wishes of their mother. If we’re to help them, we must prevent them from arriving at the airport, to say nothing of getting on the plane.” He paused, allowing her to digest the information. “Will this give you enough time to recuperate?”
She had been doing the math, and now she nodded. “I think so.” She stood, not wanting to waste any time. She’d eaten, so she was good there. She just needed a few hours of sleep. Anyone else, knowing what they would face upon waking, would never have been able to fall asleep in the first place. But this was old work for Rhiannon. She’d been doing it for years. She’d adjusted.
Mr. Verdigri raised his glass of iced lemonade in a kind of toast. “Sweet dreams, Rhiannon. Perhaps they will feature our Detective Salvatore.”
Rhiannon blushed, but turned away, hoping to hide most of it. She didn’t want her boss to see her reaction to the detective’s mention. It wouldn’t do. There would be questions, and that kiss would come up, for sure. Which would only lead to more questions.
“Perhaps,” she said casually, as if to make light of his comment.
She began to walk off when she heard him chuckle softly behind her. “After a kiss like that, Miss Dante, I would imagine so.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
She’d had enough sleep, she was pretty sure. Maybe.
She rubbed her eyes and shook her head, trying to clear up vision that was going slightly blurry.
“Are you okay?” asked a small female voice in broken English. She glanced over her shoulder at the woman and four little girls who clung to their mother like Velcro. The woman was a Hungarian by the name of Dorottya who’d married an African man. Their children were four gorgeous, mocha-skinned girls with thick black hair and large, dark eyes.
“I’m fine,” Rhiannon answered quickly, then placed her fingers to her lips to signal that the woman should be as quiet as possible. The kids didn’t need to be told again. For some reason, they seemed to know instinctively that silence was required.
They were nearly home free. Rhiannon had managed to get the family out of the apartment building where they were being held without encountering unreasonable difficulty. She’d only had to knock out two men so far. There wasn’t much in the way of guarding going on, as the woman and her daughters were expected to not even attempt to run away, and no one at all expected someone to actually come and rescue them in the middle of the night.
Rhiannon made certain the coast was clear, and then led the rest of the way to the docks, where a boat was waiting to take Dorottya and her children to a safe house. From there, they would have their identities erased and they would be assigned new ones. The Swallowtail Foundation would supply them with funding so that Dorottya wouldn’t have to work, and the children would be able to attend school somewhere in Maine.
The night breeze caused a clanking of rigging in the masts of sailboats, and the vessels rocked gently back and forth in the harbor. Rhiannon hastily led her charges to the Fiery Skipper, which was actually named after a type of butterfly.
An anonymous captain waited in the shadows of the boat. He greeted Rhiannon with a simple nod and the code word. Then he saw Dorottya and her children to the lower decks, where they would remain until he’d finished piloting them a safe distance.
Rhiannon accompanied them to their quarters. Once there, she saw them to their individual beds, and pulled some things from the pockets of her jacket. She took Dorottya’s hands and placed in them a credit card, a fake ID, a wad of money.
She was pulling away when the woman gripped her hands more firmly and peered deeply into her eyes. “Uhrangialome,” she said softly.
Rhiannon blinked. She’d heard that before. She remembered. One of the women she’d liberated from the slave traffickers had whispered the term to her. Carefully, she attempted to repeat it. “Uhrangialome?”
“Close,” Dorottya smiled graciously. “I said, őrangyalom. In my language, it means, ‘You are my guardian angel.’”
Rhiannon felt a kind of heat go through her. It was almost like the physical manifestation of an epiphany. But it was wrong. It had to be.
“I’m no angel, believe me,” Rhiannon whispered, shaking her head. An angel wouldn’t be an orphan, wouldn’t swear like a sailor or have a history of theft and violence. Angels didn’t wear black leather jackets and take pain killers after brawling all night. They didn’t do what she did for a living. Angels had wings. They blew trumpets and blessed babies, and shit like that.
She squeezed Dorottya’s hands back and gave her a tight hug. “Good luck, Dorottya. To you and your girls.”
Dorottya continued to gaze at her, and it was clear from her expression that she didn’t believe Rhiannon, and that she truly did think of her as an angel, which was admittedly embarrassing to Rhiannon. But the Hungarian nodded acceptingly anyway, and smiled a very gracious smile.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
She left the cabins after waving to the children and exchanged a few last-minute instructions with the captain of the boat. Then she hurried down the docks and out into the city again.
It was very early morning, and the sun was just beginning to edge a twilight to Manhattan’s skyline. Her boots beat out a steady rhythm through the alleyways and down the sidewalks as Rhiannon made her way toward the lot where she’d parked one of the foundation’s cars on the 5th level of the parking garage.
She was a block and a half away when men stepped out of the shadows in front of her.
She froze and assessed the situation as quickly as she’d trained herself to do over the years. Five men. All gargoyles. She could tell because all five were still in the process of transforming from stone to flesh, and three of them still had their wings.
“You should have come quietly,” one of them told her. She gathered he was the leader, as he stood in the middle, and he was the closest to her. “But you had to cause trouble. That was bad enough, a female not knowing her place.”
The others clearly agreed, nodding in silent disgust.
“But then you killed Krase. His death was unwarranted. He was alone. There was no hunt taking place, and it was not a time of battle. ” The man shook his head admonishingly, and his eyes glinted like a cross between Tiger’s Eye and steel. “You crossed the line,
Fire Healer.”
It went without saying that Rhiannon had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. But it only went without saying to her. To them, it was all very clear, and she was very clearly guilty.
“Listen guys, you’ve made some kind of mistake,” she said, making the small talk that they would no doubt expect her to make. It would buy her time to take in details, size up her enemies, and figure out their surroundings.
“We have, you’re right,” said the leader, who took a step toward her.
She stepped back. She needed just a few more seconds… had to time it just right.
“Our mistake was letting you live. But you’ll be happy to know that because of you, we’re changing our laws.” He smiled, revealing chalk-white teeth.
“Oh?” she asked. She was only partly watching him now. Her eyes skirted across the alleyway, gauging distances and times. She had a lighter in her pocket for fire. There were trash cans she could throw, but there was a parked car thirty feet away, most likely with a full gas tank. That would be a better choice. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but that didn’t matter one iota. She could pull lightning out of nowhere; clouds just made it easier.
Rhiannon wasn’t at her best, but she also wasn’t at her worst. Despite her lack of adequate sleep and the job she’d already carried out in the final hours of night, these five didn’t stand a chance. Not against her. Didn’t they know that?
Rhiannon heard something crumble behind her. Pebbles skirted away from a brick wall to hit the ground and go skittering. She knew that sound. With a sinking feeling, she very slowly turned around, stepping to the side so she could keep everyone in sight at once. Five on her left now.
And two dozen behind her.
They filled the space of the alleyway, a crowd of macho-male maleficence, big and strong and full of itself in a most dangerous way.
“You boys really pulled all the stops for me, didn’t you?” she asked. “I have to say, I’m flattered.”
“From now on,” the leader continued, “a female will be given a choice. She can join us,” he said, cocking his head to one side. “Or she can die.” He shrugged helplessly, as if there was just no other way of doing things. This made perfect sense to him. It simply had to be.