Ashes of Angels

Cassandra would not allow him to see her gulp. She knew exactly what couple he was talking about. She’d developed a network of muses and, as a result, others in the know, like halo hunters.

Sam marched her up a snowy path and kicked open the door to her building. “The vampires want you and me to get together much more than you or I do, trust me on that one.”

He set her inside and she stumbled forward, but hit the stairs at a run. It felt like a run, but was actually a laborious climb up four steps. Her limbs bent with great difficulty. Icy fingers didn’t properly grasp the iron railing.

He beat her to her apartment door. Cassandra huffed with exhaustion, stunned she hadn’t seen him pass her up. The angel flashed her his cocky grin, and—was that puppy-dog look admiration?

Wrong time; wrong guy. If only Marcus had been more romantic, she might have avoided this date with destiny.

Wrong, Cassandra. The angel would have found you. Be thankful Marcus hadn’t revealed a hero complex when that happened. Protect the innocents.

She leaned against the wall, thankful for the support. One thing she never minded about this building was that the landlord blasted the heat out into the central hallways. Already she felt melty and the tingling in her fingertips had stopped.

“My house keys are in the car. You owe me a car. I’m not rich, and I just paid that thing off.”

“You won’t need a car to do what we’ve to do.”

“I don’t need your help to stop the apocalypse, buddy.”

“I prefer your shortening of my name to Sam over some senseless nickname,” he offered. “And who said anything about the apocalypse? I want to slay the Fallen and annihilate the vampires. That’s far from end of days.”

“You really hate the Fallen, eh?”

“I do not subscribe to hate. I don’t know how. But I will do whatever is necessary to make things right.”

He didn’t know how to hate? Made sense in the greater spirit of angels and divine goodness, but the Fallen were not the good guys, so why couldn’t they hate?

He gripped the doorknob and twisted it hard. It splintered the wood around the lock and he opened it and walked inside. “Don’t worry, you won’t be returning.”

“Like hell I won’t. You are not the one who gets to tell me what to do,” she said, feeling her energy return in spurts of warmth rushing through her veins. “Why wouldn’t I return? This is my home.”

“Because as of right now, you are on the run.”

“Yeah?” Rubbing her hands together, Cassandra soaked the loft’s toasty warmth in through her pores. “Generally the person one runs from does not accompany them on that escape.”

“You’re not running from me.”

“Oh, right, the vampires. I forgot.”

She lived in a vast third-floor loft that stretched the building’s width. The highly glossed cement floors flashed with moonlight, and at the south end gray velvet furniture nestled before the floor-to-ceiling window. Tiny blue spotlights—she always left them on—in the ceiling tracks to her right lit the kitchen with what she’d always called an ethereal glow.

The angel strode about and sorted through her things, lifting the couch cushions and tugging open the drawers on the coffee table. He found the pistol in the coffee table and tucked it into the waistband of his pants, next to her Taser.

Shaking first her left foot then her right, Cassandra worked the blood back to her extremities. She wasn’t completely warm yet, and sensed her blazing cheeks may have developed a touch of frostbite.

Sam turned to her, too sexy in only leather pants and boots. In the midst of a winter storm, he had marched her home wearing nothing but that. Stunning.

His shoulder-length dark hair, scruffed this way and that, spoke more of the bed-tousled look than angry warrior. Muscles and, well—who could disregard those guns? And since when had a man accessorized with deadly weapons appealed to her? She liked danger, but not the sort that could kill.

“Where is the rest of your arsenal?”

“In the bedroom,” she offered sweetly.

He stalked down the hallway.

Cassandra made a beeline for the shelf of cookbooks above the stove. She pulled out the red leather-bound grimoire Granny had given her and paged to the spell designed to put a force field of white light around her to protect her from angels.

She found the dog-eared page and began to chant the Latin verse.

A hand slammed the book shut, pinching her fingers in it. An overbearingly sexy male leaned over her shoulder, whisking her bare back with the hard curve of his pectoral muscle. “No, sweetie. You don’t want to keep me at a distance.”

“I’m pretty sure I do.” Mostly. Yes, she did! “Back off, will you?”

“And what will you do when the vampires come? How will you protect yourself?”

“If you’d stop raiding my arsenal, I’d give ‘em what-for with a bullet to the brain.”

“Won’t kill a vampire. You need a wooden stake.”

“That’s Dracula movie stuff. The stake doesn’t need to be made of wood, and that’s definitely not the only way to kill a vampire. A bullet will slow a vamp down, and I’ve a machete to slice off their heads, and …”

And something special she wasn’t going to reveal to anyone. She had to keep at least one ace up her sleeve.

“That’ll probably do the job.” The angel slid a hand along her jaw, and when Cassandra thought he was feeling her skin, deciding if she were soft enough for him to have his way with her, he abruptly tipped up her chin. “You want a repulsion spell against me? I’ll give you a simple one. A means to put me back and give you space. You can use it if I ever feel the compulsion come upon me.”

“The compulsion?” She knew what he was talking about, but wanted to hear it from him.

“To have sex with you.”

She swore at the back of her throat and her body sank against the stove. Granny had explained all this and had made Cassandra and her sister repeat it until they’d known it by rote. But until now she’d never felt the implications of what it would be like to stand before the man who wanted to ruin her life.

Why must he be so handsome? And his eyes. All angels had kaleidoscope eyes, but she’d never imagined the mix of colors could be so utterly captivating. She didn’t want to run from him, she wanted to put her arms around him, and—no!

Snap out of it, Caz. The moment you start thinking you’re a muse—an object that an angel seeks to use—then you’ve lost the battle. You’re more than that. You are strong. You’ve trained for this!

“Listen, Cassandra.” He lifted her by the elbow to stand straight and she met his eyes. It was peaceful there. His voice soothed her too sweetly for a man she should fear. “The word is agothé. Try it.”

“Agothé.”

As if struck by an invisible force, the angel was slammed against the kitchen wall, his arms pinned out and his feet dangling above the cement floor. His bare chest, impossibly strapped with muscles of steel, heaved.

He smiled. “See?”

“How long does that work for?” She slunk along the counter, backing away from him.

“Not long.”

Not long was long enough for her.