A Caress of Wings Read online

  “Yeah.” He sat. “I’m with you so far.”

  “Some of the Watchers didn’t want to become Fallen vampires. They begged Adrian—he’s the Captain of the Sentinels—for leniency, and he had the foresight to see that we’d need help, but his hands were tied. We’d been ordered to strip the Watchers of their wings. For angels, wings and souls are bound together. You lose one, you lose the other. Our souls are what feed us. Instead of eating food like you do, we absorb sustenance from the energy around us. That’s why the Fallen drink blood. They need that life-force energy, but they can’t get it the way they used to. You following?”

  “Yes. Some of the Watchers didn’t want to be bloodsuckers, but they had to lose their wings which would automatically make them bloodsuckers.”

  “Right.” Her gaze swept over his face, marveling—once again—at how seamlessly he was transitioning from the half-animal creature in the basement to this healthy man in front of her. All within the space of a few days. Certainly the immediate and total healing of his body helped immensely, but he was a remarkable example of adaptability and survival. He was a miracle.

  “So,” she went on, “Adrian had to conceive of a way to take their wings, but not their souls. Demons are very adept at taking possession of souls, so Adrian experimented with transfusing demon blood into the Watchers before severing their wings and it worked. However, in addition to sparing their souls, the demon blood—werewolf blood to be precise—also imparted some special properties, such as the ability to shapeshift.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “For many years, the lycans have worked for the Sentinels to keep the vampires in check. In their human forms, they use these weapons you see around us, so we collect them as we go. We also study them to better learn how to defend ourselves against them.”

  Trevor ran a hand over his head and the dark hair that was growing at an accelerated rate. “Wow. Okay. Vamps, lycans, angels, and demons.”

  “It’s a lot to take in, I know.”

  “I’ll say. How do I know which of you guys are angels and which are lycans?”

  She shook her head. “There are no lycans here.”

  “Oh?” His brows rose. “That makes it easy, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose.” Her mouth curved. It was easy being with Trevor. The easiest thing she’d ever done.

  “You have a beautiful smile, Siobhán.” His voice was warm and soft, just like his eyes were when he looked at her.

  “I like your smile, too.” Once again she found herself rubbing at an inexplicable ache in her chest. She couldn’t help feeling uneasy when she thought about him facing the nightmares he had just escaped from. He’d so recently found safety and now he was putting himself in danger again.

  She began walking the perimeter of the room, looking at the guns in their racks. “Vampires are vulnerable to silver. All of the bullets and blades here are heavily coated with it. A direct shot to the heart or beheading is the only way to kill one, so please keep that in mind.”

  “But we’re looking to capture, not kill, right?”

  “Right. I just want you to know how to protect yourself if it comes to that.”

  He caught her gently by the elbow as she got closer. “I wish you wouldn’t worry about me. It’ll distract you when you need to be on your game.”

  Her dark head cocked to the side. He really had beautiful cheekbones. They were even more striking now that they weren’t hollowed out. And his clothes, the black T-shirt and urban camouflage pants that matched what she wore, fit him better by the hour.

  Trevor’s lips quirked on one side. “What do you see when you’re looking at me like that?”

  “A very stubborn man.”

  He laughed and she absorbed the sound deep inside her. “I’ve been called that before. It must be true.”

  “It’s good to hear you laugh, Trevor.”

  “It’s you,” he said simply, the pad of his thumb stroking the sensitive inner curve of her elbow. “I feel okay when you’re around. I feel good.”

  The simple touch reverberated through her. She pulled away, needing to catch her breath. “I have to check on the infirmary and see how the subjects are doing.”

  “I’ll come with you.” He stood, towering over her.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I don’t like being alone,” he said softly, a terrible sadness drifting through his beautiful eyes. “And I don’t like being far from you.”

  The ache in her chest blossomed like a stain, spreading through her. She thought she should stem it somehow, retreat, but she couldn’t seem to find the will. They’d gain distance from each other soon enough when she sent him to the archangel Raguel. Perhaps she should stop worrying so much and just enjoy him while she could.

  She grabbed his hand in her own. “Come on, then.”

  * * *

  He was cruising a shopping mall for vampires.

  Trevor stayed rigidly focused on the insanity of that thought in order to keep his panic at bay. The sheer volume of noise in the cavernous space felt like it was pressing against him from all sides. The barrage of smells and people had his heart racing and his palms damp.

  He hadn’t considered that he’d be thrust into such a teeming public place. He hadn’t been prepared, although he doubted that any level of preparation would’ve been sufficient to put him at ease. After a year of darkness and suppression of sound, the deluge of sensation was too much.

  A passing teenage girl bumped into him, and he flinched.

  “Watch it,” she snapped, as if the contact had been his fault instead of hers. Then she raked him with a glance that turned from irritated to interested. “Oh, hi.”

  Trevor rushed toward the nearest exit. He stumbled past Il Fornaio and shoved through a door to the outside, gulping in a much-needed lungful of cool night air. He walked several steps from the building, setting his hands on his denim-clad hips and taking deep, calming breaths.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, hating his weakness and craving Siobhán. If only she’d been able to play the role with him. Walk with him hand in hand. Look into the shop windows with him, lean against him, be with him. She kept him on an even keel, just by being near. But she’d blow his cover, she said, because vampires could scent what she was.

  Gathering his composure, Trevor was turning to head back into the mall when the cell phone in his pocket rang. He pulled it out and answered.

  “That’s enough for one night,” Siobhán said. “We’ll hit it again tomorrow.”

  “No, I’m okay. It’s only been what . . . an hour? That’s not long enough.”

  “We can’t be too obvious. You’ve left your scent at a half dozen public places tonight. Trust me, the bait’s been set. We’ll close the trap tomorrow or the next day.”

  “But you’re in a hurry.” And he was letting her down. “I can hold on for another hour or two.”

  “This was never going to happen overnight. Head back and we’ll talk about it.”

  “Siobhán—”

  “Please, Trevor.”

  He shoved a hand through his hair, which had grown at least two inches since he’d first woken up on Siobhán’s couch. Somehow, he knew his hair growth was like a countdown. It was indicative of his body’s rapid healing and resurgence. At the rate he was going, he’d be back to his old self in just a day or two, and he wondered what would happen then. There were no lycans with her and there were no “mortals” either. Where were the others she must’ve saved over the years? Did she wipe their memories and send them back out in the world, none the wiser of her existence or the existence of angels, period?

  He didn’t want that, couldn’t even begin to think about it.

  “Okay,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll head back.”

  “Thank you.” Her voice was soft. “I’ll see you soon.”

  * * *

  Trevor paced the length of an unfamiliar living room, his mind going over every single action taken since he’d been rescued.
>
  “You should sleep,” Siobhán said from her seat at a small computer alcove in the apartment’s kitchen.

  “I’m not tired.”

  “That’s my blood talking. But if you lie down for just a few minutes, you’d lose consciousness and get some rest. You need it.”

  He brushed her off with a distracted wave of his hand. They were in the apartment of a guy named Brian Kramer. Brian had been waiting for them at the airstrip in Seattle, and he’d given Trevor a change of clothes and the keys to his car. He’d given Siobhán the keys to a van and explained to Trevor, “By staying at my place, it’ll look like we’re roommates to any vamps who might follow you.”

  “Doesn’t that make you bait, too?” Trevor had asked.

  “I won’t be here.” Then Brian had grabbed a suitcase and left in a cab.

  Trevor stopped moving and crossed his arms. He stared at Siobhán. “Is Brian an angel?”

  Her head lifted. “What? No.”

  “A lycan?”

  “No.”

  He took a deep breath. “Is he a mortal you’ve saved in the past?”

  “No. I’ve never met Brian Kramer before tonight. He works for someone I know. Someone I’ll be introducing you to eventually.” She frowned and pushed back from the desk. “What’s wrong?”

  He watched her cross over to him, her movements fluid and graceful. She wore jeans and a blue sweater that matched her eyes. She looked young and all-too human when dressed in civilian clothes.

  The three other angels who’d accompanied them to Seattle—Malachai, Carriden, and Daniela—had gone hunting, leaving them alone. Siobhán and Malachai had argued about which one of them would stay behind and babysit, but she wouldn’t back down. Trevor didn’t know if that was because she wanted to be with him or because she knew of the terrible anxiety he suffered when they were separated for too long.

  “I’m just trying to figure out the logistics here,” he said gruffly. “You were able to arrange this undercover scenario pretty quickly and thoroughly.”

  “There’s a complicated structure of angels here on earth, Trevor. It would only confuse you to try to explain it all at once. Suffice it to say, Brian Kramer works under another angel for another purpose, and I was able to call in a favor.”

  “You’ve been hunting vampires for years. Why is it so complicated to find one or a few?”

  Her lips pursed; then she went to sit on the couch. “We’ve relied on the lycans pretty heavily. A lot of what we know about where vampires concentrate and what their behavior patterns are came from the lycans. They were the ones in the trenches every day.”

  “So why aren’t you using lycans for this sting?” He took a seat beside her.

  “They revolted just a couple weeks ago. Right about the time the vampire disease first became known.”

  Trevor leaned into the corner of the sofa, digesting that. “So you’re on your own? How many vampires are there?”

  “Tens of thousands.”

  “And how many Sentinels?”

  “Less than two hundred.”

  “Jesus Christ.” He winced. “Sorry. I should watch my mouth.”

  Her lips curved ruefully. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve got enough to deal with at the moment.”

  “Why did they revolt?”

  “Well, that’s complicated, too.” Her eyes stared into his, revealing a swirling morass of reactions and what he would call emotion—emotion she swore she wasn’t capable of feeling. She had no idea how wrong she was. Out of all the angels he’d met so far, Siobhán seemed the most . . . real.

  “We didn’t mistreat them,” she went on. “They were fed, clothed, and paid well. They had no expenses, and we enabled them to do what is in their nature to do—hunt. But, all that said, we weren’t kind to them. They weren’t beaten or chained, but I think we never stopped thinking of them as the Fallen, beings that deserved to be punished. And we treated them that way. They had no free will. They did what they were told when they were told, and that was it.”

  “Wasn’t that the deal they made?”

  “That was the deal their ancestors made. Angels and vampires don’t die or breed, but the lycans do both. The lycans in service today are many generations removed from the Watchers who begged for mercy.”

  Trevor pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes closing. “Okay. You’re right. It’s a lot to digest.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s not your fault.” He exhaled harshly and looked at her, wanting her. He wanted more of this with her—quiet conversations and working together, digging through things together. In his mortal life he would’ve said he wanted to date her and get to know her better, but he knew it couldn’t be that way. Not with what she was. But he’d take this, this tentative friendship. “I need to ask you the real question on my mind.”

  “Go for it.”

  “What’s going to happen to me eventually?”

  “Oh.” She looked down at her hands in her lap. “I wish you wouldn’t worry about that. I promise that you’ll be happy and whole. You’ll have a good life.”

  “Without you in it,” he said flatly.

  Her silence was answer enough. And yet the downward turn of her mouth hinted that she might have mixed feelings about letting him go.

  “Don’t I get a say, Siobhán? It’s my life. Don’t I have the right to make decisions about how it should go?”

  She shook her head. “You have to think of the last year of your life as being a detour. You took a wrong turn—through no fault of your own—and you ended up here, but this is isn’t how it should be for you.”

  “A week ago, I would’ve agreed with you. I can’t tell you how many times I told myself I didn’t deserve what was happening to me—”

  “You didn’t. You don’t.”

  “But when I’m with you, I feel like I’m right where I’m supposed to be. I damn sure don’t want to be anywhere else.”

  “I think it’s a form of post traumatic stress disorder, Trevor—”

  “Bullshit,” he said quietly and vehemently. “You’re talking to a combat veteran, Siobhán. I know PTSD. I’m telling you that I’d feel this way around you if I’d passed you on the street or saw you across a crowded restaurant. You get to me, and that has nothing to do with how we met.”

  “You can’t know that.” She pushed to her feet and backed away, nearly tripping over the leg of the coffee table. “You’re forgetting what I am. I’m not like you, Trevor. I don’t have the ability to connect with you like a mortal woman could.”

  He stood, the rhythm of his heart taking on a heated, demanding beat. “I don’t believe you,” he said softly, not wanting to frighten her further. She was so skittish, her eyes dark and wide in her beautiful face. “I know how a woman looks and reacts when she’s attracted to me. The signs are all over you.”

  She shook her head violently.

  “I’m not going to push you, Siobhán,” he promised, carefully closing the distance between them. “I can live with this—what we have and what we can’t have. I just want to be near you. Don’t send me away.”

  “I have to send you away! There’s even more reason to, now that you’re talking this way. You’re confused. You’re mixing up gratitude with something else.”

  “Shh,” he soothed, hating to see her panicked and upset. He wondered why she was so freaked out when he knew she felt some of what he felt. She acted like the world was going to end if they cared about each other as more than friends. He wasn’t even nursing the hope that he could ever have her physically, but surely caring about each other—maybe even eventually loving each other—wasn’t wrong.

  She pointed an accusing finger at him. “Don’t look at me that way!”

  Trevor caught her wrist, tugging her closer.

  “Stop it.” Siobhán yanked away and he couldn’t hold her. She was too strong. “You can’t feel this way about me. You need to stop it right now.”

  He smiled. “God, you’re adorable—you
know that? You’re like a pissed-off pixie. A little dark-haired Tinkerbell.”

  Her mouth fell open.

  “You said no one can change the way I feel about anything,” he reminded her. “Doesn’t that mean it’s meant for me to like you?”

  A little growl escaped her, a sound of frustration that had the effect of rousing his desire. In an instant, he wanted her in the way he knew he shouldn’t. His smile faded and he took a step back.

  But she saw it anyway. He could see the awareness of his unexpected hunger sweep through her expressive eyes. And he saw the tiniest spark that told him she could return it.

  “Trevor.” Her voice was husky.

  Damn it. Getting turned on now was only going to freak her out more. “Yes?”

  She moved so fast he couldn’t follow her. One minute she was about a yard away and the next, she was pressed up against him and kissing him with passionate inexperience, her soft lips closed as she mashed them against his.

  He caught her up with a groan, lifting her feet from the floor, his tongue sliding along the seam of her lips until they opened with a gasp and let him inside. He licked into her mouth, stroking into the warmly sweet recesses, his mind reeling with the headiness of her flavor and the feel of her surprisingly lush body in his arms.

  Lust exploded through him in a potent rush, hardening his cock and goading him to grip her hair in his fist, holding her still so he could ravish her tender mouth.

  He was nearing the point of no return when he heard her voice whisper across his mind—I’m sorry. I have to take your memories.

  Then the room spun and went black.

  Chapter 8

  “Why now?” Malachai grumbled, staring down at where Trevor lay unconscious on the couch. “After we went through all the trouble of setting this sting up?”

  Siobhán studiously avoided looking at Trevor. Whenever she did, her heart rate kicked up and her breath shortened. She should’ve known better than to keep him around a moment longer than necessary. Every second she spent with him made her more vulnerable.