Chapter 28

“W-what the...?”

Nothing else comes out of my mouth as it slackens, hangs open, gathering drool.

My brain feels tasered, convulsing uselessly inside my skull. Time itself seems to spasm and decelerate. Either this or Godric is taking off that sweatshirt in slow motion.

Gazing straight into my very essence, he raises the dark material, exposing his body inch by maddening inch. By the time it clears four of his endless packs, I’m almost moaning in suspense.

C’mon, you sadistic tease, show it all to me already.

As if he heard my mental shout, his movements slow down more. Or maybe it’s my mind. Or time. Who knows what his powers are, or what he’s capable of.

One power for sure is turning taking off a nondescript sweatshirt into an act of torture.

To thwart him, I close my eyes.

When I open them again, he’s moving at a normal speed, as if time has resumed its pace. He whips the sweatshirt over his head, and makes me sorry for mentally yelling at him.

Fully-dressed, and in his celestial-assassin/death-incarnate obscuring clothes, I thought the universe insane to have created him. Half-dressed, I think it has an annihilation agenda—for mortal and immortal females alike.

His body is a weapon, in every sense. A cruelly beautiful, sublimely lethal weapon.

It’s his uncanny proportions, of bulk to definition to height to breadth. It’s the mesmerizing shape and movement and girth and length of every line and muscle. It’s the golden tinge to his tan skin, the polish of its smoothness, the dusting of silky hair where it should be and no more. It’s the power, combining with elegance, entwining with savagery that composes what he is.

Sheer cosmic poetry. An ode to infinite blessing and destruction.

Then I focus on his tattoos. Because, of course, he had to compound it all by having tattoos.

They all stem from a circular mark stamping his left pectoral, which resembles that frieze’s frame in design, but not in details. I’m certain the runes encircling it are different. And within it, a vortex seems to swirl away into endlessness. Chains of entwined runes emanate from its cardinal directions to cascade over his chest and side, and down his left arm, each as if following a vital artery, or a line of power that runs through him. Under my dazed eyes, they change from a dark blue-green to a simmering emerald glinting with sparks of fire.

Godric throws down his sweatshirt and continues to watch me watch him. Gobble everything about him up, like a starving woman. One who knows she may never see food again.

Before I make his semi-nakedness my mind’s permanent screensaver, the question belatedly hits me.

Why did he take off his sweatshirt? And will he take off something else?

Yes, please!

No, not please. Have some self-preservation, moron.

But what if he does? What if he touches me? He said he can, but won’t. Was that a pledge or did he only mean, It’s a hard pass on your scrawny arse, White?

What if he has changed his mind, and decided it’s the best way to break in the Aggravating Abomination he failed to subdue with shock and awe? And what if he leaves me no choice? Free will isn’t something he considers.

Not that he’d force me. If he touches me, he’d probably need to scrape me off him afterward.

All these debates race in my mind as he walks back to me. I swear the ground moans under his footsteps. It, too?

I sit like a flightless duck, staring up at him. Storm clouds gather in his eyes, and it’s right there. The resentment he talked about, the frustration. But there’s something else I can’t fathom. Something ancient. Endless. Just how old is he? How powerful?

But one thing wipes every thought away. This time I know I’m not imagining it. The hunger I see, in his igniting eyes, his parting lips. His evident arousal.

My gaze snags on the massive bulge in his pants. I doubt I’d survive that.

But something inside me screams at me and my mortal fears, roars it must have him.

It’s this crazed voice that makes me snap out of it.

But it doesn’t seem he has. He’s still staring at me, yet I feel as if he doesn’t see me, or not just my face. He sees more. And it—inflames him.

I can see it in the sparks of power crackling through his lethal tattoos, the flecks of ruin slithering within his glowing eyes. This is how he looked in my dream, before he drove his sword in my heart.

Oh, hell.

My mouth fills with ashes, my chest with lava. And that’s before I see them. The runes. Or a rune. Appearing within a vortex appearing inside his tattoo, right over his heart. As if some invisible hand is chiseling them with molten iron and eternity into his skin.

It’s only when the smell of burning flesh, his flesh, fills the air that he frowns down at it.

Before I can read his expression, he clutches it, as if in pain—no, as if he would tear it and the flesh it branded out.

I choke in alarm, and his gaze snaps to mine. He looks like himself, yet different. And I know why.

He’s allowing me to see the real monster inside at last. And it’s harrowing. Incredible. Irresistible.

Next moment, I think I imagined it. Imagined it all.

The monster is gone. And he’s not towering over me as I thought.

He’s not even looking at me as he growls, “About time.”

His bass notes strum in my marrow as I gape up at him. I can no longer comprehend English, it seems.

Then Lorcan enters my field of vision, and I crash back to reality.

Godric was addressing him.

The first thing I check after that realization is Godric’s new rune within that vortex. It’s absent.

Did he mess with my head and I imagined it, or is he Glamoring himself now?

I bet I’ll never know.

After waving at me, Lorcan also starts taking off his sweatshirt.

He is many levels above human perfection himself, yet not of Godric’s caliber. Not to my eyes. And not to the rest of my senses. As for my hormones, he doesn’t even register.

Seems that celestial sadist is a species of one where I’m concerned.

I hope he molts!

I wish it even harder now I know I wasn’t the target of his semi-striptease. How did I think I was? I must have had a meltdown at my first glimpse of an expanse of his flesh.

“Last chance to change your mind,” Lorcan says, facing off with Godric, fists bunching.

What’s going on here?

Godric gives a curt headshake. “It’s the only way to observe her power at work firsthand. Also a must as a frame of reference for its future development, if any. I have to chart it from the baseline of her current fitness level, through the curve of improvement as I whip her into shape.”

It’s still as if he’s talking in Nephilim, if they even have a language of their own…

My mind blinks out as the two nephilim explode towards each other.

My cry of alarm is cut off as I launch in the air and slam on my back on a mat a dozen feet away. I was thrown there by the shockwave of their clash.

They’re fighting.

State the obvious, won’t you, moron.

Seems the slam restarted my intelligence as I suddenly get what they’re doing. Then my mind empties again as the spectacle of those colliding forces of nature unfolds.

Soon, I realize it’s no random brawl. It’s some highly-evolved martial art, far more complex and vicious than any human form I ever saw. One created and practiced by celestial beings.

Their movements are a breathtaking choreography that no human body can achieve, an intricate dance of grace, precision—and savagery.

Then there is the power. Each blow they land releases a thunderbolt that reverberates the super-stadium-sized space, and shakes me down to my cells. Any would have pulverized any lesser being.

Mesmerized by the sheer beauty and brutality of their duel, I lie there, watching them, distantly realizing they’re both now winged, have taken their fight to the air. And I didn’t see the moment their wings emerged. Again.

Among the many bone-crushing blows Lorcan lands, one to Godric’s jaw sprays blood from his mouth.

Enthralled, I watch the crimson yet glowing fluid arcing towards my face. I don’t try to evade it. It doesn’t even occur to me.

It hits my right cheek like a shower of embers. But when I flinch and shudder, it isn’t with pain. Or not only pain. Then it trickles down to the seam of my lips.

Instead of wiping its still-warm moistness in disgust, my tongue snakes out and laps at it. A moan of intense pleasure reverberates through me, arrowing straight to my core. I bolt up when I realize it’s mine.

I swallowed his blood. As if it was vital water when I was dying of thirst. And I loved—love the taste. If ambrosia exists, this would make it taste like dust. I also delight in the effect. It’s like—like getting a lick of a star.

I never had any mood-altering drugs, could barely afford caffeine. But this—I just know this surpasses any high I ever heard about. Even that of Angelescence.

The best, and maybe worst part, is it’s not affecting my awareness. It’s actually making me clearer than ever. Present. Connected. As if I have a direct line into the power of the universe. The fount of his powers.

All this from a drop of his blood?

But why, when the Angel Essence had no effect on me whatsoever?

A theory flares into my streaking mind. I wait until it’s Lorcan’s turn to bleed to test it.

Hoping they don’t see me scrambling like a lizard where his blood lands, I smear my hand in it, and stick my fingers into my mouth.

This time, I only taste blood. Not like human blood, from my experiences with tasting mine during beatings. Its metallic overtones are more pleasant tasting, have a zing of something fresh and heady, and a depth that flares images in my mind, of the vastness of open space studded with millions of stars.

But nothing like the overwhelming power, the brilliant clarity and sheer bliss a drop of Godric’s blood caused me. Is still causing me.

So only Godric’s blood has that effect on me? Is that why he’s the only one who can “fathom and mold” me? We’re compatible somehow?

Weirder and weirder.

I’m so engrossed in my musings, I don’t notice the fight is over until the two nephilim land. Lorcan like a graceful bird of prey, Godric in his preferred landing method when I’m around, like a rogue asteroid.

At least he must have curbed the shockwave this time, since it doesn’t swat me away. Or destroy half the gym. Though it’s probably built to take an archangelspawn’s punishment.

I find both ruining crisp-white towels with their silvered red blood. Not sure when they got them, I focus on the proof of that vicious fight all over Godric’s face. I’ll treasure the sight of him bruised and bleeding. Even if his injuries are gone by tomorrow.

As if the universe won’t even give me that petty pleasure, I find the damage Lorcan inflicted on him healing before my dismayed eyes. Between each blink and the next, his face is returning to its unblemished, chiseled ruggedness.

Aargh! Not even computer graphics are that fast!

Unlimited power. Check. Impossible beauty. Double check. Instantaneous healing. All the checks remaining in the box.

As I call the universe every filthy name I can think of, Godric, the personification of its injustice, looms over me.

“On your feet, White. Get to work.”

I consider playing dumb, but my neck won’t thank me if he hauls me up by it. Scrambling up before he does it anyway, I know exactly what he meant. He wants me to collect the Angel Essence resulting from their little staged conflict.

Not that I can accommodate him.

“I don’t see a thing.” As his scowl darkens, I rush to add, “Maybe because you were only pretending to fight?”

Lorcan grins wryly as he rubs his blackened eye, which is also resolving, if slower than Godric’s. “I assure you, there was no pretense involved.”

I look around again and shrug. “There’s nothing. Maybe because you’re only half-angel?” An ominous grunt issues from Godric, and I cover my mouth. “Oops, excuse me—half-archangel?”

Godric closes in on me, and it takes all I have not to stumble back. Or worse, to grab him, climb him and lick all remnants of blood from his mouth in a frenzy.

As I pray he won’t come too close or I’d succumb to the urge, he grits, “Describe exactly what you saw when you collected Angel Essence.”

I roll my eyes. “I already told you in painstaking...” I stop, shooting a finger at what must be a hundred feet above us. “It’s up there!”

Both nephilim snap their gazes to where I’m pointing. They see nothing, of course, and Godric looks back at me. “We didn’t get into the real fight until we were airborne. So the Essence is expended where true conflict occurs.”

I nod at his summation. “It probably took some real damage to get you pissed at each other, and work up an angelic lather.”

He exchanges a glance with Lorcan, making the other guy sigh, and advance on me, his wings snapping back out.

“I hope you’re not afraid of heights,” is all Lorcan says before he wraps an arm around my waist, and shoots in the air.

Gulping down a shriek, one of my fantasies becomes an instant casualty of this take-off.

Flying in someone’s arms isn’t an incredible experience. It’s a recipe for seeing your mortality with your own eyes. Eyes that might fall out as I watch the ground—and Godric—recede.

But his sight exasperates me enough to overcome the fright and vertigo. He’s saddling his cousin with the dirty work of touching me. When I’m apparently doing him and his kind a huge favor, too.

“Tell me where,” Lorcan says, interrupting my murderous thoughts, adjusting his hold with his other arm beneath my knees.

Needing this appalling experience over with, I mutely point to the largest mass of Angel Essence.

“Stop,” I croak as he almost overshoots it.

He brings us to a brain-jarring standstill. I would have head-butted him if I didn’t already feel like I’ve flown through a windshield. I settle for pinching his underarm. Or trying to. Hard to pinch satin-covered steel.

He chuckles. “You said stop.”

“I should have known you fly like you drive. I left my stomach, and brain, a dozen feet back!”

“I’ve had no complaints from previous passengers. Every single one even insisted on repeat…rides.”

“Ew, Lorcan. You didn’t just brag about your sexual conquests!”

“More like contestants. And no bragging involved, or needed.”

I glare at his impossibly handsome face with its disarming smile, and exhale. “Yeah, tell me about it. You probably need a forcefield to zap supplicants away.”

“I’m not in the habit of rebuffing my fans.”

“No kidding. Your backlog must be as long as the Great Wall of China.”

“I do what I can to fulfill requests.”

“On a first come, first served basis?”

He grins at my chagrin when I realize what I said. I’m more concerned that it was unmeant. This is the one area where I’m too inexperienced to live!

But in my shitty life, I had the best reasons to abstain from anything sex-related. Even innuendos would have been asking for major trouble. I think it would be here, too. But I feel I don’t need a filter around Lorcan. He makes it easy to say anything to him.

“It’s the other way around.” It takes me a moment to get it, then I slap his chest. His smile widens. “But I’m not a stickler for rules in that arena. I’m easy.”

This forces a chuckle out of me. What I just thought. He’s not only a nice monster, he’s a drama-free one.

Suddenly, I realize something else. “Hey, you can hover without flapping your wings! I’ve never seen angels do that.”

He winks at me. “I can do lots of things. And I’m certainly no angel.”

“Yeah, I’m discovering that.” And it actually surprises me. I wouldn’t have pegged him for a playboy. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re flirting with me.”

“Oh, no, I’m never going there. I’m fond of my organs where they are.” He tips his head down toward the glowering up Godric. “You’ve been claimed.”

Claimed. That word shoots through me with something ferocious, primeval.

It makes me see red. “You’re out of your flipping birdbrain, big guy. I’m no such thing, especially where this colossal angelhole is concerned!”

“He said you’re his in the Divining.”

“That was an act for the Tribunal!”

He pouts dismissively. “He said it. That’s enough for me.”

“That’s it? He says something, and it’s law?”

“Pretty much. I told you before how deadly serious the Nephilim are about chain-of-command.”

Yeah. And I didn’t take him seriously because he’s always half-joking.

So what’s really going on in this messed-up world of those Nephilim? What kind of rules govern their society, their hierarchy? And what does Godric do exactly to wield that kind of power over Lorcan? Or is it over his whole kind?

Unable to wrap my mind over the implications, I turn to the energy only I can see.

This up close, I realize it’s nothing like the Angle Essence I’m used to. Not only that, but there are two forms. Like distinct signatures. Godric’s and Lorcan’s. And I know which is which.

Lorcan’s is the one with faint echoes of the usual angel fare. But it has deeper dimensions, mysterious corners where unsettling things I can’t fathom lurk. It’s far more complex and way darker than I would have expected.

Yet another surprise about the one I thought the open, easygoing good cop. This nephilim isn’t at all what he appears to be.

But Godric’s Essence is something else completely. It resembles neither other angels’ nor his cousin’s. Like him, it’s in a class of its own.

If it reminds me of anything, it’s what he exhibited during that dream battle. A whirlpool of power that transcends Light and Darkness. Maybe existence itself.

That same uncontainable hunger I felt then, prods me to reach for it, bathe in it. But I pull back. Saving the best for last, I guess.

I reach for Lorcan’s Essence, but it doesn’t turn into the usual ectoplasm-like material when I touch it. It pulses around my hand, as if investigating what I am. This never happened before. The energy always seemed to have reactions, but never a will of its own. This one does.

Then, as if approving whatever it sensed in me, it coats my hand.

I snatch a look at Lorcan. From his expectant expression I know he still can’t see or sense it. No one ever does at this stage. That’s why I moved around with it, without demons tearing me apart. The frenzy only occurred once I turn it into Angelescence.

Secure in his obliviousness at this stage, I admire his Essence. It’s not the bluish glow of Angel Essence, but an iridescent pulse that reflects the range of cobalt, emerald and indigo. Much like the highlights in his wings. It’s absolutely stunning. I wonder if it will retain these magical hues once I scrape it off.

Then I do what I’m dying to, reach out my other hand to Godric’s Essence. I’m literally shaking with anticipation as I touch it—only to lurch back.

It zapped me. With a thousand volts of roiling sensations.

Like its owner, it doesn’t want me near it.

Even so, I know I can contain it, tame it.

A voice inside me yells, Don’t. Not now.

For some reason, I consider this good advice. Probably from the violent rejection, what never happened before. But this contradicts the compatibility theory. Which means I no longer have a valid one.

“You okay?” Lorcan asks, something close to concern in his whisky-amber eyes.

“Yeah, it’s just your Essence isn’t what I’m used to.” Not a lie, in case he can tell. “Now put me down, please.”

From a standstill, he explodes into a nosedive. I leave my shriek, organs and blood behind.

Once he sets me back on my feet in front of Godric, I promptly throw up all over that chest I’ve been salivating over.