Fallen Angel: Mythic Series, Book 2 (2 page)

“Heads.”

“Good for her,” he nodded sincerely, pulling a three-legged chair away from the tiny table, rotating it, then straddling it backwards to wait patiently for his roommate to carb-load. “Who’d she get?”

Ryssa poured the last of the Count Chocula into the bowl and plopped down, not bothering with milk. Jax was lactose intolerant. Funny, but true. Some things survived even death.

“Zachariel.”

She avoided his eyes, knowing what she would see in them, willing him not to speak. It made no difference. Vampires rarely did what anyone wanted them to. They were a lot like cats that way – standoffish, haughty, and generally considered themselves superior to everyone else.

“He still trying to get you to play for the white team?” he probed, hitting her with another long-running joke between them.

Except it was no joke, not to her. “Fuck off,” she growled.

Jax laughed. “So tempting. But that would just make things weird.”

Yeah, because there was nothing weird about a woman who could see dead people and had a vampire for a roommate. Ryssa snorted. “I wouldn’t taste as good if I wasn’t a virgin. You said so yourself.”

Jax sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. Another thing about vampires: they were
total
drama queens.

“True. But don’t doubt yourself, sweetheart. If I thought for one minute you’d be into it, I’d tap you like a keg, baby.” She raised an eyebrow. “With more than my fangs,” he added unnecessarily, suggestively waggling his eyebrows.

That made her smile. Jax always knew how to cheer her up. She tossed the bowl into the sink and stood up, stretching out. “Quick shower?” she asked. The lingering scents of mortal sickness and death clung to her and her clothes. It wasn’t enough to be picked up by human senses, but vampires had an extremely good sense of smell.

He grinned. Even revealing his sharp, white fangs, he was gorgeous. The blonde hair that looked bleached by the sun on top and a few shades darker beneath, the compelling midnight eyes. He could have any woman (or man) he wanted with one smoldering look; he wouldn’t have to use an ounce of the compulsion skills vamps were granted upon their transformation.

Not for the first time, Ryssa wished there
was
some spark between them. Someday he would find his true mate and she’d be alone again. Chances were, she’d never find another like Jax, someone willing to cohabitate platonically, offering his protection for exclusive feeding rights.  

“Can I wash your back?” he teased.

She fought the quirk of her lips. “No.”

“Please?” He gave her the big puppy eyes, the effect ruined by the lascivious grin on his face.

“Does that ever work?” she asked, rolling her eyes.

“On everyone else?  Of course it does.”

She waved him away. “Be gone, fang boy, lest I find my wooden hairbrush and staketh your man-whoring ass.”

“You wound me, Ryss. Really.”

He exhaled soulfully – a strange habit since he hadn’t needed to breathe in nearly a hundred years - dragging his tongue over one extra sharp, pearly white fang as he looked her up and down. “All right. I’ll be waiting in the bedroom. But hurry. Mrs. Cavanaugh’s cat is starting to look pretty tasty right about now.”

Mrs. Cavanaugh was the ghoul who lived across the hall with her partially decomposed, zombie feline as her constant, pampered, companion. The thing was butt ugly and stank to high heaven. For Jax to even joke about feeding on it, he had to be starving.

Ryssa’s lips quirked. “Duly noted.”

Ryssa took a quick shower, letting the tepid water (it was never hot enough) wash away the clinging scents of Claire O’Malley’s sick room and the sweat and pollen from the trek back. Donning an oversized T-shirt and plain white cotton panties, she slipped into bed beside a waiting Jax.

“Mmmmmm, vanilla,” he said, nuzzling her neck. “My favorite.”

“I know,” she said quietly, snuggling against his smooth, cool skin and tight, hard muscles. Like all vamps, Jax’s body was
amazing
. Too bad she felt nothing other than the safety and comfort of those arms. There was no spark, no desire there. For as much as he teased her, she knew he felt the same way.  

“You’re too good to me, Ryssa,” he murmured.

“Yeah, I know that, too.”

He chuckled, then carefully slid his fangs into her neck as he cuddled her against him. Ryssa closed her eyes and let herself drift away, knowing Jax would take care of both of them, at least for a little while.

* * *

D
avid Michael Corrigan stared out the large floor to ceiling windows of his home office, but there was no solace to be found in the view today. The centuries-old pines were nothing but a blur of dark green in the silvery moonlight, smudged by the sudden moisture welling in his eyes. The gently rolling slopes of the lush green expanse between the house and the forest did not assuage the sharp pain in his chest; nor did the expertly tended gardens, with their magnificent blooms and cobbled walkways, offer peace.

He thought of the beautifully crafted angelic sculptures found throughout the grounds, ever vigilant, always watching. Where were those angels now? 

His mother, Elizabeth Barrett Corrigan, was dying, and none of his wealth, power, or political connections could do a goddamn thing about it. There were no more drugs, no more treatments, no more surgeries. Modern medicine, the world’s best doctors, and the finest, cutting edge drugs and techniques were every bit as useless as the ancient Chinese healers, holistic medicine men, and shamans he’d procured.

Scamming, pathetic, bottom feeders, all of them.

His mother was accepting her imminent demise as she did all things – with a perfect poise and grace that put him to shame. She was okay with moving on, she’d said. It was just the next step, one that had her both excited and a little frightened, but ready to face head-on. She was such a strong, good woman. Wife, mother, business woman extraordinaire – it was difficult to imagine the world without her vibrant presence in it.

David was a pragmatist. He knew that death was part of life. But she was only sixty, for Christ’s sake. Far too young. She should have more time. To travel to all those far-away places she had dreamed of visiting but somehow never got around to. To realize her dream of holding her grandchildren in her arms. 

Not that
that
was going to happen. David had only two requirements for a serious relationship:  one, the woman had to be more interested in him than his bottom line, and two, he had to be more interested in the woman herself than just her bottom. Unfortunately, those two criteria had proven mutually exclusive thus far.

As much as Elizabeth wanted grandbabies, she wouldn’t want him to settle.

God, he was going to miss her. She was the rock, the glue that had kept the family business from going under when his father died in a plane crash years earlier. David had been just a child when she turned their small mom-and-pop business into a multi-million dollar enterprise. She was as loving as she was ruthless; ferocity personified when it came to protecting what was hers.

David loved her. He respected the hell out of her. Would gladly offer his own life for hers if it would spare her even one iota of suffering.

But he really, really didn’t know if he could do
this
.

Not because he hadn’t been willing to do everything possible for her. It had been David that procured the best of the best. He who had insisted on flying in every specialist, every healer, every fucking charlatan who offered even a sliver of hope.
Christ
. He’d known some nasty characters in his life, but those that tried to profit from dying widows deserved a special place in Hell.

He blamed himself. She hadn’t asked for any of it, not once the conventional treatments had proven ineffective. But she’d smiled and went along with him anyway, for his sake, because he refused to accept that she could just
die
. She was better than that. Better than him, better than all of them.

And now, when she finally did ask for something, he was balking.

He felt justified, though. One of the hospice nurses who cared for his mother had told her about a young woman who was said to help people pass from this world to the next. The nurse said this woman could see between realms, talk with angels and demons alike, and ease the passage of those whose time had come. The nurse didn’t know the woman’s full name, nor where she lived.

And - this was the best part - the only way to contact the woman was by whispering a single name in the dark from beneath the ancient oak that sat at the highest point of the town’s oldest cemetery.

It was complete and utter
bullshit
. An urban legend spread by the same kind of people who pretended the boogie man was real and made the sign of the cross when a black cat crossed their path. Total hokum facilitated by two-bit con artists hoping to make a buck off of other people’s fear and desperation.

But, because David adored his mother, because she had asked this of him, he hadn’t been able to refuse.

And so he sighed and turned away from the panoramic view once night descended in earnest. He wrapped his mother up in warm, fleecy clothing and drove her out to the cemetery himself. Carried her frail body to the tree and sat down beside her on the blanket while she closed her eyes and whispered the name beneath the silvery moonlight.

Ryssa
.

Of course nothing happened. The gentle breeze blew the scents of freshly mown grass and graveside bouquets to them even as it tickled the leaves of the massive tree into a soft, soothing shushing above. They sat there for an hour, just the two of them, while she murmured that ridiculous name, over and over again.

David bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood. He was furious at the nurse for telling his mother about this, for making her do something so ridiculous. That woman and her crony friends were most likely getting a big laugh out of it. She probably had someone hidden in the bushes, recording the hilarity of it on an iPhone. The video would show up on YouTube by morning, and they would be the laughingstock of their elite community.
Lifestyles of the rich and gullible
.

Elizabeth, however, didn’t seem to mind. She smiled serenely and held David’s hand, and said that even if nothing came of it, it had been an hour that she had spent in the fresh, clean air, beneath the stars on the beautiful moonlit night, with her favorite man in the world.

Goddamn it. He was
not
going to cry again. He was a grown man, for Christ’s sake. A successful businessman. Worth a couple of million, give or take. At least half a dozen women had already decided they wanted to be Mrs. David Michael Corrigan II, willing and eager to give his mother the grandbabies she so wanted, even if it would be too late.

Yet he’d give it all up in a second if he wouldn’t have to watch his mother die.

“Y
ou’ve been summoned.”

Marcella drifted over to Ryssa, the touch of her ghostly fingers feeling like frost on Ryssa’s arm. It was more than welcome in the overheated interior of the demon-run club, thick with the scents of brimstone, blood, and sex.

“Not again,” Ryssa groaned, balancing the tray of drinks as Tane, the shifter bartender, loaded her up. “I’ve barely recovered from the last one.”

Marcella gave her a sympathetic look, her features smudged and otherworldly, but breathtakingly beautiful and glowing against the sea of black leather and crimson-clad patrons in the low-level lighting. The fact that she wasn’t fully corporeal didn’t detract from her stunning looks in the least. Knee-length blonde hair, made shimmery by the radiance that allowed her to be seen, curved around perfect feminine features. No one would know by the looks of her that she had murdered no less than seventeen men in her day. The exact number was unknown; some placed the guesstimate as high as fifty. Being one who valued her own privacy, Ryssa never asked.

“I know, hon. I’m sorry.”

Ryssa exhaled resignedly, lifting the tray to her shoulder with years of skilled practice. She could not ignore a summons. As drained as she was, it was nothing compared to what mortal souls went through when facing death. Fear of the unknown, anxiety, and sometimes downright terror often made one’s last moments in this plane especially difficult. Overcoming those things was sometimes harder than facing whatever it was bringing them to that point; after all, everyone
knew
they were going to die someday. She sure as hell wasn’t going to blow someone off because she was a little tired. If she could ease their passage, she would.

“Tell me.”

Marcella floated along behind Ryssa as she worked her way through the preternatural crowd, eliciting shivers and shudders as the ghost reached out and grabbed some of the more well-endowed males along the way, her icy fingers unerring in finding their targets. The reactions ranged anywhere from stunned hisses to requests to meet up later. Ryssa didn’t know the specifics of exactly how specter hook-ups worked, but Marcella was popular among some of the kinkier Extraordinaries.

“Older woman, maybe mid- to late-fiftyish. Rich looking, very classy. Had a younger man with her, probably the son.” Marissa smiled. “He was hot, in a Wall Street powerbroker kind of way. Total skeptic, though. You’re going to have your hands full with that one.”

Just what she needed, a doubting momma’s boy, Ryssa thought. She handed out the drinks, slapping away the tail of the demon that tried to slip up under her micro mini.

“Awesome,” she breathed. “Got an address?”

Marcella beamed. “I followed them back to Brookside Heights. The
big
mansion on the hill. Whoever she is, she’s loaded.”

“Thanks, Marcella.”

“Anytime, Ryss. Want me to cover the rest of your shift?” Marcella was already eyeing up the table of fire demons in the corner with a lusty look in her pearly black eyes.

“Would you mind?”

“Hell, no. I’ve done my rounds.”

Part of Marcella’s afterlife penance was being forced to visit the graves of those she’d killed. Marcella made a shooing motion, sending a blast of chilled air over her. “I’ll let Karthik know.”