Savage Bond (The Fallen) (2 page)

She'd been cold moments ago, but now she was burning up, desperate to escape the choking confines of the flight suit. She wasn't in danger, she reminded herself. She just felt like she was, her mind's convenient little mental trick to get her feet back on the ground where her feet belonged. Where she was
safe
.

She knew these feelings. Wait it out, she reminded herself.  Just a handful of minutes—two or three—and she'd be okay again. The panic would tuck itself back into the dark corner of her psyche where the fear lurked. Everything would be fine.

Until the next time.

Each time, she hoped the panic attack was the last one, because she had a job to do and the panic was a barrier that got harder and harder to overcome. Each time, she'd been wrong. She'd avoided planes and flying for years, until MVD had forced her ass up into the air.

Ria might work for MVD, but she wasn't an agent. The covert stuff made her nervous, made her want to throw up from the adrenaline dancing its way through her nervous system. She was strictly backroom and support.  She watched, she sent the little unmanned drone winging through the air and over Fallen territory to do the snap-and-click, and she processed the images the drone sent back electronically.

All from the peace and quiet of her office chair. Hum of the servers and the bank of screens in front of her. She was damned good at her job.

She wasn't supposed to be
here
however.

This was no UAV. She wasn't piloting an unmanned aerial drone, driving the little craft through a low altitude sneak in the silent battle between the Fallen and MVD.

No, this was an actual, real life, honest-to-God plane with an engine and a human pilot and five thousand feet of empty space between her feet and the cold, hard ground.

Sure, she'd done six weeks of boot camp for MVD, gritting her teeth through the runs and the sit-ups, the survival training and the arms drills, but she'd done
that
so she could get her hands on their hardware. MVD had the most powerful, most cutting-edge software and hardware of any human organization she'd ever interviewed with. Or hacked her way into. The lure of those bits was powerful, plus the digital world just made sense. Programming was pure logic and she loved it. All cause and effect. If. Then. Neat little branches and subroutines. Predictable, if you could wrap your mind around the code base. And she could.

So it still didn't answer the question of:
why
?

UAVs reacted poorly to weather and there was weather rolling through the Preserves right now. Whatever MVD thought they'd seen, they wanted their second look right now and they weren't waiting for that weather to clear. She was a Combat Systems Officer, her CO had pointed out dryly when she objected to the reassignment, and that meant she was fully qualified for the job at hand. Not to mention she was the
only
CSO available.

And that was just the story of her life, wasn't it? She was always last choice. Never the first. She'd been the only photographer available when word came in that the unmanned drones weren't cutting it and the higher ups wanted to send in a human team. Rain had screwed the cameras to hell and back, but not before the last set of images came back, hinting at unusual movement out here in the Preserves.

"You think we're going to find us any?" The good lieutenant's finger stroked the trigger of the Vektor.

"There aren't supposed to be any angels out here."
Supposed to be
being the key phrase here. There was no denying the rumors about winged angels being spotted flying over M City and in and out of the Preserves. Hence her presence here on the plane, because she got the fun job of confirming or denying those rumors.  The Preserves were supposed to be a prison for the Fallen who couldn't keep it together any longer—not a launching pad.

"Yeah." Lieutenant Reece patted the Vektor's barrel as her eyes sifted through the shadows on the ground. The lieutenant was looking for trouble, too. "But if there were, we'd be ready. I'd like to take a shot at them."

The pilot came on the headset. "I'm dropping down to angels two. Get you a good look at our hot spot." The flight plan called for a close-up up on the area where MVD had been getting some disturbing intel. So far, all they had were high-aerial satellite shots, which meant not enough detail. To get the close-ups, her ass was out here on a plane.

In and out.

Something was going down, but fucking Fallen angels hadn't shared the 4-1-1. All stonewall and "No, ma'am, nothing happening here."

Air slammed into the chopper as Lieutenant Reece forced the side door open. Ria hated flying, hated this part of the job, but the paralyzing fear wasn't lifting until her feet were back on the ground, so she'd do her job here and then she'd go home.

Which was more than the occupants of the Preserves would be doing anytime soon.

The Preserves were no rest home, that was for damn sure. She wasn't sure how or if the bastard angels could be killed, but this was where the worst of the lot went to wait out their days when their own kind finally decided they were too dangerous to run around unchecked. Just a fancier way of saying
prison
, because that's what the Preserves were. And, if the bad apples of the Fallen world had found themselves a revolving door from their prison, the consequences wouldn't be pretty for M City.

She hated that she was afraid, hated the way fear tied her gut up in knots. She couldn't let that fear stop her, however. She was the best photographer MVD had.

There
. Movement again beneath the bird on the ground. "Take us down closer," she commed. She needed a better shot—this was big. Bigger than she'd suspected was possible.

Surrounded by rocky canyons, an unfamiliar Fallen angel stood in the center of the others like he was the mother lode of all things magical. When she adjusted the zoom, using the camera's lens to get up close and personal, she could see his lips moving. And, with each word he pronounced, new marks appeared on the bared backs of the Fallen angels surrounding him. The marks glowed red in the slowly gathering twilight, as if they had some kind of life of their own.

One minute and five hundred feet later, she knew the truth. The speaker shut his yap and his companions hit the ground, as if their legs were just done holding them up. Even from her bird's eye view perch in the sky, the screaming came through loud and clear, punctuating the crimson lace of bloody droplets hanging from the surrounding trees.  Red wings tore through the skin of their backs.

"Fallen don't have wings, right?"

Lieutenant Reece shook her head. "Never have had yet. Supposed to be part and parcel of that divine punishment package they've got going on. No wings. No soul. No Heavens."

"Then something's changed." Ria didn't move the camera from the scene unfolding in the clearing below, kept her finger working the shutter. Whatever was happening down there looked damned close to some sort of ritual.

"Well, shit." Reece's curse summed it up well as far as Ria was concerned.

"Yeah." Unless she was mistaken, she'd just shot a one-two-three tutorial for making monsters.

Those Fallen bastards had wings. They weren't supposed to be able to fly. That was the deal as she'd heard it. Three thousand years ago, the archangel Michael had exiled his Dominion warriors from the Heavens for staging a rebellion. He'd ripped their wings off and thrown them down to Earth. Not like she appreciated her home being used as the celestial equivalent of a penal colony, but truth was truth. The Dominions had become the Fallen and
none
of them could fly.

Except these Fallen clearly could.

One of the newly winged creatures soared up through the air. Her camera clicked instinctively, but her mind was screaming
Wrong
.

She wasn't second-guessing this and the intel couldn't wait. As soon as the pilot had opened up a line, she commed back to M City. MVD needed to hear this.

 Her boss's voice came in loud and clear—and filled with annoyance: "This channel is not secure," he snapped. "Next time, wait until you're secure before you call in."

Next time?
"This can't wait," she argued. "I'm sending pics," she said, starting the upload. Connection was poor and it would take time to move those images over, but she wanted eyes on this.

"Roger that." Before her boss could say more, the chopper jerked sharply left.

"We've got bogeys." The pilot cursed. "Not sure who or what, but definitely hostile."

Reece looked out the open door and cursed again. "Bastards definitely have themselves some wings."

More curses came from the pilot's seat, as the man got on the headset back to base, his fingers racing to find a secured channel. Reece shot her a glance. "Hold tight," she ordered and then she put the Vektor to work, firing round after round out the open door.

Ria knew the chopper wasn't built to sustain this kind of attack. There had to be thirty winged angels all slamming bodily into the chopper and already the bird veered hard left with the first hit. As an angel banked and came about for a second pass, the glowing red runes on its back lit up the sky.  The next hit jarred her teeth, the vibrations tearing through her body.

How long could they take this kind of damage?

"Suit up." Reece didn't take her eyes off the fight unfolding outside the chopper, jerking her chin towards the chutes hanging from the webbing.  Fingers trembling, Ria pulled on the chute.

"We've got a hard landing at best," Reece continued.  Worst was crash, but the other woman didn't waste breath pointing out the obvious.

MVD had set Ria up with a Black Hawk helicopter for today's field trip. The chopper could fly at low altitude, which meant she could get her shots. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, the chopper was still just a machine. The pilot was maneuvering them through the Preserves' rocky canyons, but the bird was barely making those turns, the blades fighting for lift.

The winged angels
that weren't supposed to exist
descended towards the chopper. The pilot dropped the bird even lower to evade, but he couldn't avoid the powerful downward push of air from all those alien wings. The chopper wasn't built for bat-turns, the blades whining as the pilot forced the bird to turn tight and hard. The one-eighty heading change slammed Ria against the side, her hands instinctively cradling the camera.

The bird whipped erratically as the pilot shot out of the last canyon and abandoned low-and-evasive for climbing fast and hard. The sun was dropping steadily beneath the horizon, the light going quick. Wind had picked up on the ground, too, so between the sunset and the wind, they were going to have brown-out conditions on the ground. If they even
made
it to the ground in one piece.

"Shit." The lieutenant cursed as she squeezed off rounds. The deafening roar of the Vektor bounced off the sides of the chopper. "Secure the card, Morgan. Do it."

Between the devil and the deep blue
. Before she could second guess herself, Ria popped the memory card out of the camera, unzipping the front of her flight suit as she considered her options. Then slid the card into her bra cup. The cold, hard poke of plastic was a wake-up call she could have done without.

The chopper shuddered, jerking hard as something heavy slammed into the tail.

"Check six," Reece growled. "We've got to hurry."

The pilot cursed. "Roger that."

He'd got them up to ten thousand feet now, which meant engine power was dropping off. Fast. Their ride was meant for recon, not high altitude. Reaching around her, Reece released the protective webbing on the west bay door. "I'll lay down cover on the east side. You're out the side. Count fifteen and pull the handle."

"We can go higher, fly out of this." Ria stared at Reece, willing the other woman to agree with her. She couldn't jump. No way.

"No." Lieutenant Reece kept it short and sweet, fingers unhooking Ria's protective harness from the side of the chopper.
Oh, God.
"Get your ass into that bay. On my count, you jump. Feet down. Arms in. Clear the plane, count it down to forty and then I pull the cord. And, Morgan?"

"Yeah?"

"You don't jump, I push."

"Do it quick," she said and Reece nodded. The bird jerked hard again and she steeled herself for the jump. Because it was jump or die and she wasn't ready to die.

Vkhin's headset crackled, coming alive, as the slim figure ejected in slow motion from the open chopper bay. Ten thousand feet up, but his view from the helo was still ringside. The gloved hand hitting the small of the jumper's back had him growling. That hand had touched
her
. He knew the body falling free of the chopper. Not as well as he wanted, but he'd been watching her for the last month and Fallen intel said she'd gone up in the plane. One pilot. One ride-along MVD agent. And Ria Morgan.

Ria's body cleared the chopper and he fought his instinctive reaction. That bird was going down and he didn't want her anywhere near the wreck. He'd warned Zer and the other Fallen that MVD was getting too bold, making moves that would take the human police division right into Fallen territory. Looked like he was going to have the proof he needed. Unfortunately, his professional responsibilities here were at war with something more feral. Possessive. Ria Morgan was
his
.