Renegade Angel

He arched his back and spread his wings wide, wait ing. Slowly, he could feel it filling him, the white light of healing using him as a conduit to suffuse the woman he held. It started slowly, then strengthened, filling him until it pulsed right along with his heart. The power flowed faster, brighter, rushing through him and from him with such strength that the air around him began to whip and pull at him. And now it was Raum shuddering, fighting not to recoil as something wild and sweet flooded him, something he had forgotten long ago.

Beauty. Joy. Love …

Means to an end, he insisted to himself, even as the Light began to illuminate even the darkest places within him, invading. Awakening. Just a means to an end. I do not care. I will NEVER care. I am darkness. I am sin. I am the enemy of love.

That was about the time his hands, pressed against Ember, began to sting. Then throb.

Then smoke.

Raum’s eyes flew open in horror, and he let Ember fall to the ground just as they burst into flame.

“Son of a bitch!” he roared. Everything fled his thoughts but white-hot pain. Raum mashed his flaming hands against his chest and collapsed onto the ground, smothering the flames with both his weight and the damp soil and leaves beneath him. He closed his eyes tightly, though nothing on Earth, in the Above or the Below, could have taken him far enough away from the blinding pain in his hands.

Through gritted teeth, he began to recite some of his favorite human expletives.

His fury was rudely interrupted by a soft moan, and his anger vanished as he realized Ember was still sprawled on the ground where he’d dropped her. Raum scrambled over to where she lay, keeping his wounded hands close to his body.

She was still, so still, her face half in shadow as he knelt over her. She was still far too pale, even for one with her light complexion. But her breathing appeared to have steadied, her lips parted slightly as her breath sent small puffs of mist into the cold night air. The thin T-shirt she wore was covered in blood, still wet, and so close to her, Raum’s nose was filled with the coppery scent of it. Despite his pain, he fumbled at her shirt with red, raw hands, rending the material in two down the front of her and pulling it away where the fabric had adhered to the small, deep puncture wounds around her shoulders.

Ember moaned again, a soft, thick sound in the back of her throat that twisted like a knife in his chest. Raum tentatively brushed his hands against her skin, examining the way the blood flow had stopped, frowning as he realized the skin was knitting itself back together even as he watched. It was incredibly rare for a half-breed to be able to self-heal so quickly. But the wounds were vanishing, leaving unbroken skin beneath a thin and tacky film of Ember’s blood. Her soft skin warmed beneath his hands.

His gamble had worked. But Raum realized too late that in his haste, he hadn’t thoroughly considered the possible consequences: he hadn’t dreamed that touch ing her would become so addictive so quickly. But even as he willed himself to stop, his hands stroked and soothed with a gentleness he had thought was long forgotten.

This time when she shivered, he knew it was from the deepening chill in the air and not because she was leaving him. He gathered her up again, eyes skimming down her exposed torso as he did and lingering on her full, rounded breasts, the nipples taut in reaction to the cold. The intriguing indent of her navel in her long, lean waist.

Raum jerked his gaze away and pulled her into his chest, wrapping his wings around her as he got to his feet. The pain in his hands had lessened to a dull ache, smoke still coiling lazily from the raw skin, but concentrating on holding Ember pushed it to the back of his mind and made it more bearable. They would have been healed already, had it been anything but fire. That fire, in particular. Still, the damage should be gone by morning, though they’d be misery for a while yet.

Ember hadn’t yet wakened, but she curled into him, nuzzling her face into his chest. She sighed softly, and Raum felt a strange tug somewhere in the dark and blackened vicinity that supposedly held a heart. He had a sudden, overwhelming desire to protect her, to keep her close ….

“Well,” said a voice, “this is a new one, even for me.”

Raum hunched his shoulders defensively in reaction. He wasn’t at all in the frame of mind he liked to be in when confronting the almost always unhelpful Reapers. And this one, Jarrod by name, had thwarted him before. Raum made sure his hands were well-hidden beneath his wings along with most of Ember, determined not to let the Reaper see the damage he’d inflicted on himself. Then he might ask questions, and Raum was in no mood to answer them.

“What are you doing here, Jarrod?” Raum grumbled. “Your services aren’t needed.”

“Apparently not,” Jarrod replied, quirking a brow. The Reaper was clad as the rest of his kind always were, all in black, and with a long coat that had been known, on occasion, to hold wonders. Not that they shared, Raum thought, glowering.

The Reaper stretched his neck, trying to get a better look at what Raum was holding on to. “What have you got there?”

“None of your business,” Raum snapped, wrapping his wings more tightly around himself. Why, after millennia of Reapers avoiding him like the plague, did this one have to show up now?

“Well, I was minding my business, now that you mention it,” Jarrod said. His fair skin shimmered faintly in the darkness, a marked contrast to his severe clothes. “But see, then I was called by a woman’s departing soul, so here I am, ready to guide her into the beyond, and instead, I find a Fallen angel who thinks I don’t realize he’s hiding her under his wings. Right. There. In front of me.” He cocked his head, amusement and curiosity glittering in his dark eyes.

“You’re not needed here, Jarrod. Go away.” Raum pulled an arm free and waved him off with an irritated jerk, then remembered his hands.

Shit.

“You’re burned,” Jarrod said softly, his surprise evident. “Did you … ?”

The question, only half-finished, hung in the air between them. Raum considered denying it, but though he was adept at lying, anything he said was going to sound ridiculous. All he could hope for was that the truth got rid of the Reaper faster. He fixed Jarrod with a steely glare that greater beings had withered beneath.

“What if I did? It’s no business of yours.”

Jarrod looked nothing short of stunned, an expression Raum didn’t think he’d ever seen on a Reaper’s face before. The other man was silent a long moment, though he made no move to leave. Then he said, “I’d heard you were one of the defectors, you know. But I didn’t actually believe it was true.” His dark eyes narrowed slightly, considering him with unnerving intensity when Raum said nothing, which he knew the Reaper would take as confirmation enough.

Then, Jarrod said softly, “This is not the place for you right now, Raum of the Fallen.”

Raum stared. It was the first time he had ever received any information that might be remotely construed as helpful from a Reaper, who were stubbornly neutral. Jarrod’s face betrayed no emotion, though he continued to watch Raum with that look of frank assessment.

Finally, Raum said, “I know about the Nexus. We’re not going to let it happen.”

Jarrod’s smile was thin. “That’s a switch. But you’re up against more than you know.” Then he walked toward him, his stride purposeful. Raum took a step back, glaring.

“Don’t be greedy, Raum. Let me see the woman.”

“Piss off.”

Jarrod stopped and folded his arms across his chest. “She’s not so far from the borders of death yet, Raum. I want to see if you’ve done your job right.” He shook his head. “At least, I’m assuming that saving innocent humans is part of your job now?”

“Not really,” Raum grumbled, unable to let it go. He had no interest in word getting around that he was trying to get back into the white-winged contingent when it was so entirely untrue.

Jarrod stepped forward again. “Then all the more reason for me to have a look. You probably screwed it up and I’ll have to take her anyway.”

Raum bared his teeth. “Try it and lose an arm.” But he relented at last, parting his wings to reveal Ember’s unconscious form. He remembered that she was naked from the waist up, and turned her into him so that Jarrod couldn’t get a good look, gripped by another wave of unreasonable possessiveness. He could tell from the odd look the Reaper gave him that he’d noticed, but for once, Jarrod kept his opinion to himself.

Instead, he leaned over her, eyes intense. He reached out one long-fingered hand and brushed a lock of gleaming hair away from the side of Ember’s face, and Raum felt his fists clench. That was followed by a wave of nauseating pain, payment for moving his abused hands without thinking.

“Well?” he gritted out when the Reaper continued to examine her silently. Jarrod raised his gaze to him, and it was as black as a starless night.

“Why did you save her?”

Raum blinked. “What?”

“Why did you save this woman?” Jarrod repeated. “Be cause that’s what you’ve done. And considering what, and who, she is, I’m a little confused. I don’t know what it cost you, exactly,” he continued, his voice dropping, and Raum saw his eyes go to his smoking hands. “But I’m going to guess it was quite a bit.”

Raum paused, torn between the truth and keeping up appearances, though the latter would mean the end of this bizarre conversation with the Reaper. He’d never looked at the agents of Death as much more than a necessary nuisance, sometimes entertaining to bother, completely useless when it came to information. But Jarrod, with whom he’d engaged in the occasional war of words with over this soul or that, seemed to want to tell him something. And the days when he could afford to blow such an impression off were gone.

“It … she was guarded. Stupid nefari was meant to protect her and turned on her as soon as it got excited.” He shrugged. “I should have been more careful. She’s important to this Nexus business, and … Uriel doesn’t want her hurt.” It was as close as he would come to the truth, to his own interest in protecting her.

“But why you?” Jarrod asked, and he seemed genuinely perplexed.

“Because I said I would. Because this is the sorry state my existence has been reduced to.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Because it’s my fault she got hurt. Why does it matter to you anyway, Jarrod?” The words sounded foreign to his own ears, rolling strangely off his tongue. When was the last time he had admitted to anything resembling guilt? And yet it was true, all true.

He suddenly felt ill.

Jarrod seemed to sense this, and his gaze softened, though Raum didn’t appreciate it. He had no use for pity, and wanted none. Still, the truth got him what he’d wanted.

Or thought he wanted.