Distantly he was aware of screams. High, bloodcurdling, female screams. In another life he would have reacted to that sound. Now…now there was nothing but him and what he had no doubt was his imminent death. On his terms. On his own two feet. Once and for all and no coming back.
Energy circled the flying woman’s hand in the shape of a discus, and she reached back just the littlest bit, in order to put some spin on it, he presumed. Funny how, whenever he faced these moments, moments when his death begged for a kiss, the world seemed to slow down. As if to stretch out the final moments for as long and as leisurely as possible. Prior to his encounter with Chatha, it had happened each of the two times he had gotten what should have been mortal wounds…for anyone else anyway. He’d just been too angry and too stubborn to give it up. But now…he could go now. He’d be all right with that.
The discus flew at him and he tensed, bracing for it, wondering what it was going to feel like.
Just when it should have hit him a wall of blue energy shot up barely an inch from the tip of his nose. He could see it, like smoke blown through a blue laser light show. The discus rebounded off it in a shower of blue sparks, then whipped back on its caster, its thin edge slicing right through her left calf. If there was a wound it was invisible, but the way she screamed out and floundered in the air told him that there was indeed a damaging hit of some kind. All of that big bad omnipotence evaporated from her in a screech of pain and fury. Leo saw his breath clouding through that energy barrier and he found himself fascinated by it in some distant corner of his mind. A corner so far removed from this maniacal horror film he’d suddenly become a part of. In truth, it was beautiful, if energy could be beautiful. And for some reason, just the sight of it calmed him, strengthened a part of him that had felt so weak these past days.
The squealing bitch in the air hissed out a word.
“You!” It reached out a shaking finger, pointing at Leo. “You will pay for this meddling. These are not your affairs! Be warned!”
And with a new screech of frustration she ripped up into the sky, disappearing with the sound of a sonic boom.
Leo was stunned, trying to figure out what had just happened. But now that the threat was over, the sound of his own heart beating in his ears lowered enough for the rising sound of screams to penetrate.
You.
Then Leo realized what she had meant. He whipped around in an about-face and found himself looking dead into neon yellow eyes, the look of them like the way a flash caught a cat’s eyes in a picture. They were something unholy and damn unnerving that close up. Especially considering there was no discernible sclera. The entire eye. Every bit of it as glowing fluorescent as could be.
They were set in black, making them stand out in relief, not that it was needed. It was a woman, black-skinned from head to toe…not African American black, actual midnight black as black could be. The color was so uniform she was barely visible in the night…except for the fact that blue laser light wings stretched out behind her, casting an ambient glow all around the edges of her silhouette. Only, lasers were not as graceful as these wings were; were not so languorous and delicate, and did not ripple with gentle, liquid movement.
Leo jolted away from her, only to bounce back when he hit the blue wall behind him. It sent him forward, forcing him up against her, their chests colliding. He reached out automatically to steady her, an instinctual response to the nature of her sex and that built-in reflex that his mother had hammered into him. And that was when he realized her soft nighttime skin was completely exposed to all and sundry. She was na**d as the day she was born.
Although nothing was born with the full-bodied br**sts and curves his fumbling hands came into contact with.
And then he realized she was one of them. Of course she’s one of them, you idiot! She has f**king wings and eyes that glow in the dark like a pothead’s black-light poster.
His next thought was that she had come up behind him and yet he hadn’t sensed her at all—a realization that filled him with displeasure. No one could ever sneak up behind him successfully. It had been a game he and Jackson used to play, each trying to see if one could sneak up on the other with total surprise…like some kind of ridiculous tussle between Inspector Jacques Clouseau and his manservant Cato.
Jackson.
My god, how could I have forgotten? He whipped around half a turn and saw Jackson lying dead on the ground. Marissa was on her knees beside him, pulling at his shirt, grasping and shaking him by turns, all the while screaming his name down into his face as if he might hear her and suddenly pop upright as though being startled awake from a deep sleep. From the other side Docia was tearing down the drive, her bare feet flying over the white landscaping rocks of the driveway, no doubt being chewed and sliced to bits with every grinding step.
Leo was galvanized into action, pushing the strange female out of his way just in time to catch Docia around the waist, hauling her out of her dead run, her momentum swinging them full around as he absorbed the impact as best he could without hurting her. He realized then that she was screaming Jackson’s and then Ram’s name, both hysterically volleying out of her as if she couldn’t figure out which upset her more or whom she was most devoted to. Both men appeared lifeless on the ground, but Leo knew that at least one was alive for certain.
“Let me go! Leo! Let me go!” she screamed at him, fighting with all she had to be free of him. And free she was after the third tug when she used every bit of her Bodywalker strength to set him back hard. The strength she wielded was shocking. He knew men that weren’t even close to that strength, never mind a woman.
“Ram is alive!” he blurted out to her as she ran forward. He immediately hurried in her wake, expecting her to veer off and go to her lover. But his information seemed to help her choose who was in most need of her, and she slid down to her brother’s side.
By the time he reached them, Marissa’s screams were punctuated with panicked, devastated sobs the likes of which he had never heard in his lifetime, and could only pray he would never hear again.
“Jackson! Jackson!” Docia cried, shaking him frantically, vying with Marissa for contact with him. “Is he breathing? Tell me he’s breathing!”
Leo knelt and reached two fingers to press to Jackson’s throat.
“He has a pulse.”
The next sobs from both women were a combination of relief and a panicky sort of hope.
“Then why won’t he wake up?” Marissa demanded of him. “He’s Menes, for God’s sake! He’s the most powerful Bodywalker living or dead!”
“His nervous system has been scorched.”
All three of them looked up at the black woman, all of their breath and sound suspending at the same exact moment, the resulting silence lasting only an instant, but eerie just the same.
“What…how…what does that mean?” Marissa demanded to know. “Tell me what that means!”
“The energy the imp uses burns every nerve in the body, causing instant paralysis and a level of pain so severe there is no equal to it…and he has lost consciousness because of it.”
“Who are you?” Marissa demanded. “How do you know this?”
“There is no time to waste on introductions,” she said dismissively, kneeling down to yank Jackson away from the grieving women.
“No! You leave him alone!” Marissa hissed through her teeth, clinging to Jackson’s body with all her strength. “Touch him again, Dark One, and I will rip your arms free of their sockets and then beat you dead with them!”
“Wow, great visual,” Leo said, pretty damn impressed by Marissa’s believable delivery of the threat.
The woman seemed to fold her wings back, their graceful lines pulling in and concentrating in an undulation of light between her shoulders. She leaned forward as she kneeled down, her hand reaching to cover Marissa’s with a gentleness that Leo could almost feel against the back of his own hand.
“Hatshepsut,” she breathed softly. “You know my people. You know what we can do and the things we know.” Leo realized then that a warm wind was swirling softly around them, almost as though it too were trying to soothe Marissa. “You must give him to me if we are to begin to save his life. I cannot promise you a cure, that is not within my power, but I can keep him here with us until he can be mended. He is very much needed here,” the woman said knowingly, “and not trapped in the Ether for another hundred years.”
“No. No, I could not bear it. I cannot bear the idea of life without him.” Marissa wept, harsh gasps of her breath pulling in a staccato hitch.
“Then let me have him,” she said gently.
Marissa’s fingers had curled tightly into Jackson’s shirtfront, but now they slowly unfurled and she sat back on her heels.
“What are you doing?” Docia demanded. “You’re just going to trust her? No! No, he’s my brother and I won’t let you—”
“What other choice do we have?” Marissa asked her quietly, her eyes awash with brimming tears. “To let him lie here? To let him die? To fumble about trying to heal him in ways we simply aren’t capable of?”
“There are spells,” Docia said fervently. “I can bring my Templar power to bear. I trust myself far more than I would trust a stranger! We know almost nothing about the Night Angels,” she whispered fiercely between tense lips and clenched teeth.
So that was what she was. A Night Angel. The name suited her perfectly. Between those wings and her skin…and then there was her hair. Cleanly white, not a single touch of color or shading, not even a variation at the roots where a bleaching process would have been detected. She had it bound in a figure eight shaped knot on the back of her head, a thick, winding thing that told a tale of great length.
And not a stitch to cover those unbelievable swells and hollows. From the slope of her shoulder to the cleft of her backside, there wasn’t a single ounce of shame. Nor an ounce of anything but well-shaped muscle beneath all of those female curves. Had she been human he might have thought she’d spent hours in the gym in order to achieve that muscular definition. Perhaps there were muscle groups required for flight. It wasn’t even a thought that could have possibly crossed his mind before this week. This strange, surreal, painful week.
He watched as she bent forward, sliding an arm behind Jackson’s broad shoulders and the other beneath his knees. Leo watched, utterly stunned, as those lean muscles flexed and—with a remarkable display of strength—she lifted a man who had to be at least 180 pounds of dead weight as if he were a baby. It wasn’t completely effortless. He could see that as she moved quickly past him, toward the house, every single muscle in her body working hard at her task.
When they passed the spot where Ram was, Docia broke away from them and hurried to his side. He was down on his haunches, bent over as though he were trying to be prepared in case vomiting ensued. He looked pale and sick, his eyes shot through with blood in the sclera, a sharp background for the gold of his irises. At Docia’s urging he straightened up onto his feet. And even though he didn’t look much better for it, Ram leaned on his love for strength and followed the entourage into the house. This rousing was also to be said for the Gargoyles, who were also picking themselves up from the deep holes in the ground left from the impacts of their stone bodies.
They all followed in the Night Angel’s wake, at a loss to do anything else. She had come in and taken total command of the situation, and Leo was left without a single doubt that she deserved their hopeful faith in what she could offer them.
But she had warned that she could not give them a miracle cure. He hadn’t missed that part. It sounded as though all she could offer them was a way to keep him alive for the time being while they figured out a solution.
“Where is his bed?”
“There’s a couch—” Docia began, gesturing toward the parlor.
“No. He cannot be moved once I begin, so you will want him as comfortable and protected as possible.”
Marissa hurried forward, showing the Angel the way to the master suite she shared with Jackson on the topmost floor of the house. Like all the rooms in the house the windows were polarized to block out the sun, the glass going blacker the brighter it became outside. Electronic blinds between the glass panes and automatic shades also reinforced that, raised and lowered as need be at the touch of a button.
Docia hit the button that did that, protecting them from the imminent daybreak, just about an hour more away. Only an hour before everyone, except for Leo, a human companion who lived with them named Max, and Marissa’s sister Angelina, would be confined to the house or risk weaknesses under the sun. The humans would be the only ones able to freely exit. Which was the point of having Max for a lackey, Leo thought with a dark frown. As Bodywalkers, the owners of the house would become paralyzed at the touch of the sun. Just as the Gargoyles that stood sentry all around the property would turn to stone the very instant a single ray of sun crested over the horizon and touched them. Max would be able to carry out daylight activities and necessary tasks for his employers as they took the opportunity to sleep hidden away and protected. At least, Leo thought it was sleep. Hell if he really knew anything about any of this.
Energy circled the flying woman’s hand in the shape of a discus, and she reached back just the littlest bit, in order to put some spin on it, he presumed. Funny how, whenever he faced these moments, moments when his death begged for a kiss, the world seemed to slow down. As if to stretch out the final moments for as long and as leisurely as possible. Prior to his encounter with Chatha, it had happened each of the two times he had gotten what should have been mortal wounds…for anyone else anyway. He’d just been too angry and too stubborn to give it up. But now…he could go now. He’d be all right with that.
The discus flew at him and he tensed, bracing for it, wondering what it was going to feel like.
Just when it should have hit him a wall of blue energy shot up barely an inch from the tip of his nose. He could see it, like smoke blown through a blue laser light show. The discus rebounded off it in a shower of blue sparks, then whipped back on its caster, its thin edge slicing right through her left calf. If there was a wound it was invisible, but the way she screamed out and floundered in the air told him that there was indeed a damaging hit of some kind. All of that big bad omnipotence evaporated from her in a screech of pain and fury. Leo saw his breath clouding through that energy barrier and he found himself fascinated by it in some distant corner of his mind. A corner so far removed from this maniacal horror film he’d suddenly become a part of. In truth, it was beautiful, if energy could be beautiful. And for some reason, just the sight of it calmed him, strengthened a part of him that had felt so weak these past days.
The squealing bitch in the air hissed out a word.
“You!” It reached out a shaking finger, pointing at Leo. “You will pay for this meddling. These are not your affairs! Be warned!”
And with a new screech of frustration she ripped up into the sky, disappearing with the sound of a sonic boom.
Leo was stunned, trying to figure out what had just happened. But now that the threat was over, the sound of his own heart beating in his ears lowered enough for the rising sound of screams to penetrate.
You.
Then Leo realized what she had meant. He whipped around in an about-face and found himself looking dead into neon yellow eyes, the look of them like the way a flash caught a cat’s eyes in a picture. They were something unholy and damn unnerving that close up. Especially considering there was no discernible sclera. The entire eye. Every bit of it as glowing fluorescent as could be.
They were set in black, making them stand out in relief, not that it was needed. It was a woman, black-skinned from head to toe…not African American black, actual midnight black as black could be. The color was so uniform she was barely visible in the night…except for the fact that blue laser light wings stretched out behind her, casting an ambient glow all around the edges of her silhouette. Only, lasers were not as graceful as these wings were; were not so languorous and delicate, and did not ripple with gentle, liquid movement.
Leo jolted away from her, only to bounce back when he hit the blue wall behind him. It sent him forward, forcing him up against her, their chests colliding. He reached out automatically to steady her, an instinctual response to the nature of her sex and that built-in reflex that his mother had hammered into him. And that was when he realized her soft nighttime skin was completely exposed to all and sundry. She was na**d as the day she was born.
Although nothing was born with the full-bodied br**sts and curves his fumbling hands came into contact with.
And then he realized she was one of them. Of course she’s one of them, you idiot! She has f**king wings and eyes that glow in the dark like a pothead’s black-light poster.
His next thought was that she had come up behind him and yet he hadn’t sensed her at all—a realization that filled him with displeasure. No one could ever sneak up behind him successfully. It had been a game he and Jackson used to play, each trying to see if one could sneak up on the other with total surprise…like some kind of ridiculous tussle between Inspector Jacques Clouseau and his manservant Cato.
Jackson.
My god, how could I have forgotten? He whipped around half a turn and saw Jackson lying dead on the ground. Marissa was on her knees beside him, pulling at his shirt, grasping and shaking him by turns, all the while screaming his name down into his face as if he might hear her and suddenly pop upright as though being startled awake from a deep sleep. From the other side Docia was tearing down the drive, her bare feet flying over the white landscaping rocks of the driveway, no doubt being chewed and sliced to bits with every grinding step.
Leo was galvanized into action, pushing the strange female out of his way just in time to catch Docia around the waist, hauling her out of her dead run, her momentum swinging them full around as he absorbed the impact as best he could without hurting her. He realized then that she was screaming Jackson’s and then Ram’s name, both hysterically volleying out of her as if she couldn’t figure out which upset her more or whom she was most devoted to. Both men appeared lifeless on the ground, but Leo knew that at least one was alive for certain.
“Let me go! Leo! Let me go!” she screamed at him, fighting with all she had to be free of him. And free she was after the third tug when she used every bit of her Bodywalker strength to set him back hard. The strength she wielded was shocking. He knew men that weren’t even close to that strength, never mind a woman.
“Ram is alive!” he blurted out to her as she ran forward. He immediately hurried in her wake, expecting her to veer off and go to her lover. But his information seemed to help her choose who was in most need of her, and she slid down to her brother’s side.
By the time he reached them, Marissa’s screams were punctuated with panicked, devastated sobs the likes of which he had never heard in his lifetime, and could only pray he would never hear again.
“Jackson! Jackson!” Docia cried, shaking him frantically, vying with Marissa for contact with him. “Is he breathing? Tell me he’s breathing!”
Leo knelt and reached two fingers to press to Jackson’s throat.
“He has a pulse.”
The next sobs from both women were a combination of relief and a panicky sort of hope.
“Then why won’t he wake up?” Marissa demanded of him. “He’s Menes, for God’s sake! He’s the most powerful Bodywalker living or dead!”
“His nervous system has been scorched.”
All three of them looked up at the black woman, all of their breath and sound suspending at the same exact moment, the resulting silence lasting only an instant, but eerie just the same.
“What…how…what does that mean?” Marissa demanded to know. “Tell me what that means!”
“The energy the imp uses burns every nerve in the body, causing instant paralysis and a level of pain so severe there is no equal to it…and he has lost consciousness because of it.”
“Who are you?” Marissa demanded. “How do you know this?”
“There is no time to waste on introductions,” she said dismissively, kneeling down to yank Jackson away from the grieving women.
“No! You leave him alone!” Marissa hissed through her teeth, clinging to Jackson’s body with all her strength. “Touch him again, Dark One, and I will rip your arms free of their sockets and then beat you dead with them!”
“Wow, great visual,” Leo said, pretty damn impressed by Marissa’s believable delivery of the threat.
The woman seemed to fold her wings back, their graceful lines pulling in and concentrating in an undulation of light between her shoulders. She leaned forward as she kneeled down, her hand reaching to cover Marissa’s with a gentleness that Leo could almost feel against the back of his own hand.
“Hatshepsut,” she breathed softly. “You know my people. You know what we can do and the things we know.” Leo realized then that a warm wind was swirling softly around them, almost as though it too were trying to soothe Marissa. “You must give him to me if we are to begin to save his life. I cannot promise you a cure, that is not within my power, but I can keep him here with us until he can be mended. He is very much needed here,” the woman said knowingly, “and not trapped in the Ether for another hundred years.”
“No. No, I could not bear it. I cannot bear the idea of life without him.” Marissa wept, harsh gasps of her breath pulling in a staccato hitch.
“Then let me have him,” she said gently.
Marissa’s fingers had curled tightly into Jackson’s shirtfront, but now they slowly unfurled and she sat back on her heels.
“What are you doing?” Docia demanded. “You’re just going to trust her? No! No, he’s my brother and I won’t let you—”
“What other choice do we have?” Marissa asked her quietly, her eyes awash with brimming tears. “To let him lie here? To let him die? To fumble about trying to heal him in ways we simply aren’t capable of?”
“There are spells,” Docia said fervently. “I can bring my Templar power to bear. I trust myself far more than I would trust a stranger! We know almost nothing about the Night Angels,” she whispered fiercely between tense lips and clenched teeth.
So that was what she was. A Night Angel. The name suited her perfectly. Between those wings and her skin…and then there was her hair. Cleanly white, not a single touch of color or shading, not even a variation at the roots where a bleaching process would have been detected. She had it bound in a figure eight shaped knot on the back of her head, a thick, winding thing that told a tale of great length.
And not a stitch to cover those unbelievable swells and hollows. From the slope of her shoulder to the cleft of her backside, there wasn’t a single ounce of shame. Nor an ounce of anything but well-shaped muscle beneath all of those female curves. Had she been human he might have thought she’d spent hours in the gym in order to achieve that muscular definition. Perhaps there were muscle groups required for flight. It wasn’t even a thought that could have possibly crossed his mind before this week. This strange, surreal, painful week.
He watched as she bent forward, sliding an arm behind Jackson’s broad shoulders and the other beneath his knees. Leo watched, utterly stunned, as those lean muscles flexed and—with a remarkable display of strength—she lifted a man who had to be at least 180 pounds of dead weight as if he were a baby. It wasn’t completely effortless. He could see that as she moved quickly past him, toward the house, every single muscle in her body working hard at her task.
When they passed the spot where Ram was, Docia broke away from them and hurried to his side. He was down on his haunches, bent over as though he were trying to be prepared in case vomiting ensued. He looked pale and sick, his eyes shot through with blood in the sclera, a sharp background for the gold of his irises. At Docia’s urging he straightened up onto his feet. And even though he didn’t look much better for it, Ram leaned on his love for strength and followed the entourage into the house. This rousing was also to be said for the Gargoyles, who were also picking themselves up from the deep holes in the ground left from the impacts of their stone bodies.
They all followed in the Night Angel’s wake, at a loss to do anything else. She had come in and taken total command of the situation, and Leo was left without a single doubt that she deserved their hopeful faith in what she could offer them.
But she had warned that she could not give them a miracle cure. He hadn’t missed that part. It sounded as though all she could offer them was a way to keep him alive for the time being while they figured out a solution.
“Where is his bed?”
“There’s a couch—” Docia began, gesturing toward the parlor.
“No. He cannot be moved once I begin, so you will want him as comfortable and protected as possible.”
Marissa hurried forward, showing the Angel the way to the master suite she shared with Jackson on the topmost floor of the house. Like all the rooms in the house the windows were polarized to block out the sun, the glass going blacker the brighter it became outside. Electronic blinds between the glass panes and automatic shades also reinforced that, raised and lowered as need be at the touch of a button.
Docia hit the button that did that, protecting them from the imminent daybreak, just about an hour more away. Only an hour before everyone, except for Leo, a human companion who lived with them named Max, and Marissa’s sister Angelina, would be confined to the house or risk weaknesses under the sun. The humans would be the only ones able to freely exit. Which was the point of having Max for a lackey, Leo thought with a dark frown. As Bodywalkers, the owners of the house would become paralyzed at the touch of the sun. Just as the Gargoyles that stood sentry all around the property would turn to stone the very instant a single ray of sun crested over the horizon and touched them. Max would be able to carry out daylight activities and necessary tasks for his employers as they took the opportunity to sleep hidden away and protected. At least, Leo thought it was sleep. Hell if he really knew anything about any of this.
