Angel's Shield (13 page)

“We just need to hang on until Suriel taps into Castle Archangel’s
dormant power crystal,” Jeremiel said, dragging his Alpha up the steps. The
angel fell heavily, catching himself on the stone.

“I didn’t know we had a power crystal until last night,” the Alpha
said, hand clasped over a nasty burn on his right thigh. “It should work,
though. We just needed some sort of energy shield to activate it.” He grinned
up at Charmeine. “I am exceedingly grateful you came.”

“Hold still, so I can fix this,” the angel with the white wings
said, dropping to his knees.

The Alpha brushed him off. “Not now, Raphael.”

Charmeine bit her lip, using the pain as a focus to keep the
shield stable, as she grew more and more exhausted. Jeremiel and Haniel had put
their hands on her shoulders, and that helped, but she was the focal point. She
had to control the energy and keep the shield working. More angels fought the
demons, retreating to safety, but there weren’t very many. That worried her.

“Yes, now, Gabriel,” Raphael snapped. “Your femoral artery is
damaged. Hold still.”

Gabriel fell silent, face going tight with pain as Raphael put his
hands over his wound. A white light shimmered under his hands, then he sat
back, looking exhausted. “That was close.” His eyes drifted up to Charmeine,
then flicked to the men at her back. “Haniel! Your wings, oh my God, they’re
perfect,” he breathed. His eyes filled with tears.

Charmeine smiled, even through the strain of holding the shield.

“Yeah,” Haniel said, nonchalance personified. “Cool, huh?”

What a doofus. Everyone can hear the emotion in his voice,
she thought, amused.

“Yes, they are wonderful,” Raphael replied, still staring. His
eyes shifted to her. “Triple mating?”

She nodded, about to reply, but a crackle of energy surged through
the shield, making the shimmer spark. “God, what
is
that?”

“That’s Suriel and Ariel, doing their thing,” Gabriel said.

She gasped as heat bled through her blade into her skin. Far
across the courtyard, demons began to scream. The shield wavered, then
shattered into a billion points of light that shot out over the ground. Each
tiny spark found a demon and obliterated it. Ash drifted across the landscape.
Charmeine could still feel the shield’s energy, but it was somehow augmented.
Active, even without her holding it.

“Do I let go?” she wondered.

“I think so,” Jeremiel said, letting his hand fall. Haniel
squeezed her shoulder gently, then he, too, stepped back.

“I think our gift helped activate the castle’s natural defenses,”
he said.

“I’d read about a shield like that in the archives,” Raphael said,
sounding awestruck. “But I could never figure out if it was real or myth. The
records don’t differentiate when you go back that far.”

“We found the records on it about a year ago, but when we
investigated, we discovered the energy crystal that powered the shield was
dormant,” Ariel said, walking tiredly up the steps. Her wings drooped, but the
midnight blue of her feathers was still striking.

“We couldn’t activate it without your native shield capacity,”
Suriel added as he came up behind Ariel. He rubbed his face, wiping ash away. “We
were lucky.”

“Blessed,” Raphael murmured.

The energy surged again, startling Charmeine, then subsided. All
the fires went out. The only light was that of the full moon gleaming softly
down over them in the summer’s warm night.

“It isn’t gone forever, is it?” she asked, worried.

Ariel smiled. “No. The castle shield will run all the time now.
Your personal shield is under your control.”

“Oh, that’s good. Really good,” Charmeine said, letting her blade
drift down. She looked across the courtyard. “The demons are all gone?”

“Even those damned lords,” Gabriel said. “We killed them first,
but their dogs kept coming. I hate boar demons.”

“Don’t we all,” Jeremiel muttered, running a finger down the now
healed scratch on his arm.

“I’ve never seen so many massed in one place before,” Nathaniel
said, joining the group.

“We need to find the portal,” Zeke said.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Gabriel told his weapons master. “No
more wandering for you.”

“How are we going to find it then? Until we do, this is going to
keep happening.” Zeke didn’t sound happy.

Charmeine shivered. She didn’t like the sound of that, either.

“God will show us the way,” Raphael said. “He always does.” He
turned his smile on Charmeine and her angels. “He brought Haniel and Jeremiel
back to us, didn’t he? And he gave us our newest angel, the lovely Charmeine.”
He held out his hand.

She blinked and looked at Haniel. Was this guy for real? Haniel
just shrugged, so she gave Raphael her hand.

He kissed her fingers lightly. “Welcome to Castle Archangel,
Charmeine Haneul Bryzinski. Thank you for bringing our lost angels home.”

Chapter Eleven

Charmeine stared down at the parchment, completely overwhelmed. “That’s
my name. My full name. That’s how you knew it.”

“It is,” Raphael moved the sheet of paper closer. “We record the
births of all the angels in this file.” He leaned over and tapped his finger on
her name. “You can see that Valoel, your grandfather, faithfully recorded the
date and time of your birth. This is his signature.” He pointed to a scribble
at the end of the paper.

“What happened to him? Why didn’t he ever tell us he was alive?”
Charmeine asked, finger just touching the ink.

Raphael shook his head. “He probably loved your grandmother, but
that was when some humans were hunting down our kind. I can only speculate, but
he probably avoided her and his son, your father, to protect you. He wouldn’t
have wanted to put you in harm’s way.”

Haniel slid an arm around her waist. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged and leaned back, letting go of the tiny pang of
what-might-have-been that had lodged in her heart. “It’s okay.”

Jeremiel raised an eyebrow at her.

“No, really,” she said, smiling at him. “You can’t miss what you
never had. I don’t even miss my parents that much. They died when I was so
young, I only remember bits and pieces of what they were like.”

“You’re the second human-angel hybrid that has become fully human.
We never thought it was possible, not until Zeke and Nathaniel bonded.” Raphael
slid the paper back into the metal file and pushed the drawer closed. It was
part of a large file cabinet set into the wall of the castle’s library. He gave
the wall a push with his foot and the entire thing moved back into a recessed
cavity. Once it was as far back as it could go, another wall of bookshelves
slid over the front, like something out of a spy movie.

“No one seems to care that I’m Asian,” she said, still surprised
about that. “Well, half-Asian, that is.”

Raphael laughed. “It doesn’t matter. You’re an angel. Whatever
other blood you bring to our people will only enrich our culture and genes.”

She shook her head, bemused, and walked over to the huge window.
Sunlight shined down on the old carpet beneath her feet, highlighting the gorgeous
colors of the silk. The wood paneling glowed in the light. She hated to admit
it, but she liked it here. It felt like home in a way her old house never had.
She smiled faintly.
Grandma would’ve loved it here,
she thought, running
a finger along the windowsill. The sun-warmed wood gave her a sense of peace,
even after the battle they’d fought a little over a week ago.

Looking outside, she could scarcely believe that there’d been a
demon army on the grounds. All the fires were gone and the demons had turned to
ash and disappeared. The landscape looked pristine. Beautiful.

“If there’s anything else you want to research, just let me know,”
Raphael said with a smile. He nodded to Jeremiel and Haniel and left the room.

“Let’s go up to our suite,” Jeremiel said, tugging on her halter
tie.

She batted his hand away. “Careful. You’re going to untie me and
then we’ll have a problem.”

Haniel laughed. “That’s definitely not a problem, if you ask me.”

Charmeine rolled her eyes at her lover’s smirk. He waggled his
eyebrows at her until she giggled.
He’s so much more playful now that he has
his wings back,
she thought fondly and murmured a quick prayer of thanks
under her breath.

“Come on. I have something I want to show you,” Raphael urged,
smoothing a hand down the middle of her back.

****

A few minutes later, he handed her an envelope. “Remember when I
went back to your hometown a few days ago? To pick up your stuff from the trail
shelter?” Jeremiel asked.

She nodded, staring down at the paper in her hands. “I remember.”
It had been a week after the demon attack. She hadn’t wanted to go back. Hadn’t
wanted to see the ruins of the house where she’d lived so many happy years with
her grandmother. So, he’d offered to fly down and pick up the few things she
had in the shelter for her so she wouldn’t have to do it. She planned on going
back sometime, when it didn’t hurt so much, maybe in a month or so. She
definitely wanted to visit with her friends at the diner. And she’d always
maintain the trail shelter as best she could.

“I stopped in town for lunch. Melvin had this for you.” He
gestured to the envelope. “Go on. Open it.”

She bit her lip, then slid her finger under the seal. When she
peeled back the paper, her grandmother’s face stared out at her from an old
photograph. “How is this possible?” she asked him through her tears.

“There’s more,” Haniel said.

She shook the envelope and another photo fell out. This one was a
copy of the only picture she’d ever had of her parents. She thought it had been
lost forever. “Melvin gave these to you?”

Jeremiel nodded. “He said your grandmother gave him copies, in
case anything happened.”

“I have a feeling your grandmother knew a lot more about the world
than anyone realized,” Haniel offered.

Charmeine shook her head as she ran her finger over her mother’s
face. This was her mom and dad’s wedding picture. Her mother barely came up to
her father’s shoulder. “I just can’t believe she saved these for me. My
grandmother was amazing, but she wasn’t the kind of person who daydreamed or
worried about stuff that could happen in the future.”

“She had an affair with an angel,” Jeremiel said, gently. “I think
she knew there was more to the world, both good and bad, than was obvious in
the little town where you grew up. And she prepared for the day the bad would
come knocking on your door.”

“I’m glad she did,” Charmeine said. She rubbed her cheek with her
shoulder. She would
not
cry, dammit!

“Hey, it’s okay,” Haniel said. He tugged the photos out of her
hand and set them on the nightstand.

She turned to him and hugged him tightly. “I’m glad she saved the
pictures.”

“I know,” he murmured, running a hand down her hair.

She lifted her face, wanting more. He kissed her, and as always,
heat flared between them. She trembled, feeling shy and desperate, all at once.
He chuckled, then kissed her more deeply, licking inside her mouth with a
passion he only showed her and Jeremiel. She loved him for it, loved that he
only truly let down his barriers with them. “I love you,” she said when he let
her up for air.

“And I love you, my darling mate.” He kissed her lightly. “And I
love you, Jeremiel.” He smiled at their third. “But you knew that.”

Jeremiel kissed him softly. “I did know that, because you are in
my heart. I love you, too.”

Haniel’s eyes glittered.

“No crying!” Charmeine said, choking back her own tears. She was
too happy to cry.

Jeremiel chuckled and pulled Charmeine close, tucking her in
between him and Haniel. She let their warmth surround her, more content than
she’d ever been in her life. She had to say the words to him, too. Saying them
out loud was important. “I love you, Jeremiel.”

He kissed her forehead. “I love you, too, Charmeine.” He laughed.
“We sound silly.”

“I don’t care. Kiss me,” she murmured, cupping his cheeks. “Kiss
me like you never want to let me go.”

He obliged, holding her so tightly she squeaked. Haniel slotted up
behind her, his full cock jutting against her ass. “You smell like home,” he
murmured, nibbling down her neck.

She couldn’t reply. Jeremiel devoured her and she responded in
turn, clutching at his shoulders. When he paused to breathe, she wrapped her
legs around his waist. “I can’t wait any longer.” She struggled with her
halter, trying to get it off.

Haniel nudged her hands away and untied the fabric as Jeremiel
walked her to the bed. His erection pressed against the seam of her jeans,
rubbing at her clit. She moaned, needing more stimulation. He dropped her on
the bed and she scrabbled at the button of her pants, but Jeremiel growled and
pushed her hands away. He had her nude in under five seconds, so she started
tugging at his pants. He grunted when her knuckles jostled his dick, but she
didn’t care. She had to have him.