Of Wings and Wolves (13 page)

“You’ll be safe enough in this house without me. My guards have been instructed to shoot intruders on sight.” He took his jacket from Margaret and slipped it over his shoulders. The maid was stealthy. Summer hadn’t even seen her approach. “Stay close to the house. The gardens will be safe, but avoid the beach and forest.”

“Maybe I should come with you,” Summer said.

Nash hesitated with his hand on the door. His expression was inscrutable. Was he hot again, or cold? It was impossible to tell. “No,” he said. “I prefer to know that you’re safe here.”

“You’re not going to do something stupid, are you?”

He took her hand. Summer was surprised when he brushed his lips over her knuckles. It sent electricity shooting straight between her legs—like he had kissed somewhere much more intimate. “I will return to you, Summer. I promise.”

Nash operated out of offices
in a nearby town called Wildwood. It was somewhat larger than Hazel Cove, though not by much; Adamson Tower was the tallest building there, and it was only seventeen stories. Indeed, Adamson Tower was the tallest building in the entire world. There wasn’t a lot of competition.

He could have had one of his men bring a battery straight to his house, but curiosity had gotten the better of him. Nash needed to know who was fucking with him.

His valet met him on the street outside, and she looked shocked when he emerged from his car and tossed the keys to her. “Sir,” she said.

“Good morning,” he replied, shooting her the kind of look that made it clear questions were unwelcome.

Some of the surprise likely stemmed from the fact that he had arrived without his entourage—those damned leeches in expensive suits that wanted to curry his nonexistent favor—but he suspected that most of her surprise was because of something his “successor” had done.

What had the usurper told them? That he was taking a long leave of absence? Retiring, perhaps?

Someone was going to have Hell to pay for this ridiculousness.

He swept through the front doors of the tower.

Human engineers could never match the ingenuity of angelic architects, so he had designed the tower himself. The sweeping glass sculptures that formed the centerpiece of the foyer had been sketched by his hand four hundred years prior; the smooth stone beneath his feet had been quarried from land that he owned east of Wildwood. He had dictated that the builders should find the whitest, purest stone, so that it resembled the buildings back home. It wasn’t as good as using ethereal bone, but nothing mortal was an adequate replacement for what angels produced.

Conversations fell silent around him as he entered. The receptionist all but fell out of his chair behind the curved desk. All activity in the lobby died within moments.

Nash caught the elevator door before it could close, and three faces, colorless with shock, stared at him from the other side. He thought that they probably worked for him. If he had been more like Summer, he probably would have known their names and positions, too.

“Out,” he said, and they rushed under his arm to vacate the elevator.

When the doors opened on the seventeenth floor, Nash found nobody waiting at his personal receptionist’s desk. His office door stood ajar.

Nash shoved it open.

A woman stood behind his chair. She was the same height as Nash, though much slenderer; her curveless body was draped in an elegant gown of filmy, peach-covered material. The light shining through it showed every line of her ribs, her waist, her hips. Brown hair fell to her elbows in soft waves. Her skin was a dark shade of olive.

He knew that skin, that hair, those ribs. He knew them as well as he knew his own.

“Leliel,” Nash said.

She turned to face him. Like all angels, she moved like she had eight foot wings sprouting from her back, even when they were invisible.

“Nashriel,” she replied warmly. Leliel’s face was still arrestingly beautiful. The blue eyes typical of their kind were striking against her skin, and she had the kind of high cheekbones and strong jaw that would have suited a pharaoh.

After so many thousands of years, Nash had thought that seeing Leliel again wouldn’t fill him with the same bitter anger that he had felt the last time they spoke. Yet it returned immediately, undimmed by time, and he was tempted to wrap his hands around that slender, beautiful throat.

“You’re the one that took charge of Adamson Industries?” he asked. “
You
ordered that damn press conference?”

“Indeed.” Leliel lifted an eyebrow. “Adamson? Really?”

There was nothing else she could have said to drive him to fury faster than that.

He crossed his office in a flash and slammed Leliel to the window. It was triple-paned and reinforced; nothing short of a bomb could have broken it. But it cracked at the impact of her bouncing skull.

She shoved him away. “I didn’t come to fight you.”

“You can’t have thought I would greet you with a kiss and songs of joy,” Nash spat, reaching for her throat.

She deflected his hand with her forearm. “Stand down, Nashriel!” she snapped. Her energy crackled around them. The lights flickered, buzzed. The bulb on his desk lamp exploded in a shower of sparks. The rest went dark.

The glow of her wings filled the darkness left behind. Leliel had always been the most beautiful angel, with her red-gold feathers and impressive wingspan, and she had the force of energy to match it.

Nash hadn’t felt another archangel’s heavenly light in so long. He hadn’t even realized that he had missed it.

She smoothed her hair down with both hands and took a deep breath. Her wings vanished.

The lights flickered and turned back on.

“Let’s have a talk,” Leliel said, her voice forcibly serene. She pushed him lightly in the chest. The back of his legs hit the chair, and he sat.

“I’m surprised you’ve survived the war.”

Her expression turned pitying. “The war has been over for centuries,” Leliel said. “More than two thousand years.”

“So have you come to free me?” Nash asked.

Her laugh was as light as one of her feathers. “No, my love. I have not.”

“Two thousand years isn’t punishment enough?”

She touched the back of her head, and her fingers came away glistening with silver. “This isn’t a punishment, Nash,” she said, showing him the blood on her fingertips. “You’re still as dangerous as you’ve always been, and here you will stay as long as you present that danger.”

Nash’s hands gripped the arms of his chair. “You mean until you kill our Father.”

“He’s no father of
mine
,” she said, and he could tell that she was about to lose a grip on that serenity. She paced to the window and folded her hands behind her back again as she gazed at the street below. The wound on the back of her head was already closing again.

“So what are you doing, if you haven’t come to release me?” he asked. “Have you chosen to exile yourself now?”

Her eyes burned with blue fire as she bent down to rest her hand over his heart, and he stiffened. “I know that you’ve found a way out of the Haven,” she said softly. “I’ve felt the disturbances of doors opening and closing in recent years. Obviously, that hasn’t been your doing, or else you wouldn’t be here now. But I’ve brought friends to help me close the doors before you find them.”

Of course that was her plan. It had been far too much to hope that the woman he once loved would have forgiven him.

“So you’re dealing with balam and gibborim now. Have you truly fallen so far?” Nash asked.

“You have no clue how far the glory of angels has fallen since you left.” Her hand clenched into a fist, and she leaned her weight into him. “It won’t take long to resolve my business here. I wanted to see you one last time before saying goodbye for the rest of eternity as we know it.”

“You shouldn’t have wasted your time,” he said.

Her lips twitched. “Tell me, my dearest one—you’ve had a very long time to think on what you did. Are you sorry yet?”

He pushed her hand off of him. “I will never be sorry for choosing the right thing when others were too weak.”

“Perverse,” she murmured, straightening her back. “A leave of absence from Adamson Industries would do wonders for you, don’t you think? Your first vacation in millennia. Savor it, Nash, because once I am gone and these doors are permanently sealed again, you will never have another vacation like it.”

She glided to the elevator and tapped the button.

“I could kill you now,” Nash said in a low growl.

Leliel smiled. She knew as well as he did that he couldn’t hurt her. “I noticed that you’ve had a guest at your house. A young woman. A
human
. Tell me—what is she to you?”

“She’s an intern.”

“There’s no need to lie to me. You wouldn’t be the first angel to fall into fascination with a mortal.” The doors opened, and she stepped inside. He caught the door to stop her. “What, Nashriel? Do you want me to give you my blessings?”

“If you had the slightest sense of decency, you would let me go home.”

Leliel’s lips pursed. “And leave the girl behind? Perhaps you aren’t as fascinated as I suspected. Perhaps I should remove that distraction from your life.”

“If you touch her, I
will
kill you.” It burst out of him before he could think to shut his mouth.

“I believe you,” she said.

Nash stepped back. “Good.”

The doors slid shut.

eleven

Summer found Abram standing barefoot
on the beach with the tide slowly sucking his feet into the sand. Abram’s gaze was fixed at the distant mountains on the other side of the black lake, but it looked like his thoughts were a million kilometers away. “Angels,” he said softly.

Summer sighed, leaned against his side, and wiggled her bare feet into the sand. “Yeah. Angels. And Gran’s been lying to us.”

“I know.”

“We don’t come from around here.”

“I know that, too,” he said. “I think I’ve known that for a while.”

The water was cold slopping over her feet. Her toes were already numb. “And if she’s lied about that, then what else do you think she’s keeping from us?”

“It doesn’t matter. If Gran’s lying, she has a reason. I trust her,” Abram said.

“But don’t you think she needs to trust us, too? We’re adults now. We can handle anything she throws at us.”

“If it’s bad enough that she thinks we shouldn’t know, then she’s probably right to keep it to herself.”

She used one of her feet to shovel a clump of sand into the water. “I wish I had your faith.”

Abram wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave it a brief squeeze. Usually, a hug from her twin brother would have been more than enough to calm Summer, but it didn’t help at all this time.

Summer took a step back. She could just make out guards walking along a stretch of beach to the north, and more black bodies on the lawn behind her. She could sense their unease. “Nash didn’t want us to come down to the beach. We’re safer in the house. Come on.”

But he didn’t move. “I think I’m ready to show my painting to you,” Abram said. There was determination in his features, the set of his jaw. “I took it to the art department to show my instructors. We can go to the university together.”

The instant of excitement she felt at the idea of seeing his painting was immediately dashed like waves over the rocks. “Okay, what’s up? That painting is your baby. You wouldn’t try to use it to bribe me if there wasn’t something seriously wrong.”

He looked reluctant to speak, but she stared at him until he relented.

“It’s Nash.”

The mention of his name was enough to send shivers down Summer’s spine again. The way he had kissed her knuckles…

She shook her head to clear it. “Do you know something I don’t?”

Before he could respond, Summer felt a shift in the air and caught a whiff of burning plants. Nash’s smell. She turned to see the gates at the end of his road open to allow a sleek luxury car to enter.

Her stomach knotted. If her brother spoke, she didn’t hear him.

Nash was back.

“Summer,” Abram said with a hint of warning in his voice.

She waved him off. “I’ll talk to you about this later. Okay?”

Breaking into a jog, she managed to reach the top of the hill at the same time as Nash’s car. He emerged carrying a box under one arm.

Nash smelled strange, like artificial polymers, and also like burning hair—an unpleasant odor that made her nose itch. The box must have been the source of the metal and plastic scent. She had no idea what the rest meant.

“The battery?” Summer asked, breathless from her run to his car.

“The battery,” he said, setting it on the hood. He took her shoulders and stared deeply into her eyes, like he was trying to see through to the other side. “Are you okay?”

She found her hands creeping to his hips of their own volition. Her fingers traced the edge of his belt loops. “I’m fine. Nothing happened while you were gone. It was kind of boring, actually. What did you find at the tower?”

Instead of responding, he pulled her into his chest and rested his chin on top of her head. She could feel his heart beating underneath her hands.

The sudden affection surprised her, but not as much as the strength of smells that surrounded her. The stink of burning hair reminded her of the gibborim. And was that…blood?

She pressed her nose into his throat and took a deep breath. His stubble scraped against her lips. “You’re not hurt, are you?” she asked, sniffing down his neck to his collar.

“No,” he said, and she realized what she had been doing. She had practically buried her face in his chest hair. But he didn’t let her pull away when she stopped—his arms only tightened. “I’m not injured, but we should talk.” He spoke a little louder. “Take the box to my office.”

“Yes, sir.” Margaret slipped away before Summer had enough time to wonder how long the old woman had been watching them.

Nash started walking toward his gardens, and Summer hurried to keep up with him. There was no sign of the warmth that had been in his greeting now—his face was stony again, and he barely looked at her as they passed through the iron gates.