“Upon what is supposed to be a celebration of our escape, of our freedom, of the beginning of our reign on Earth, I hear there is a Chosen One in the city who is going around hunting and slaughtering us,” Zacharias started off speaking cooly and levelheaded. That should have been the first indication to the one cowering on the floor still begging for mercy that his pleas were in vain. He reached down and grabbed him by the throat, pulling him off the floor and holding him dangling in the air. “How in the fuck is it that you’ve allowed his continued existence?!” He growled low and threatening at him.
“You…you…you know
who
created the Chosen Ones.
He
would come to Atlanta himself and slaughter all of us for the offense of killing one of them. He’s powerful enough not to need his corporeal form to do it.”
The surrounding temperature in the room dropped a notch. Zacharias went deathly still. “
Michael,”
he roared out. “His fucking name is
Michael.
He can hear me and eavesdrop on my words as much as he damned well pleases. In fact I hope that he is choosing to now. The fourth seal has been broken and the ancient brokered peace that bound most of us to hell no longer has to be upheld. The time for the final war has finally come. We will take our rightful place and hold dominion over Earth first and then heaven itself. And there isn’t a damned thing that cocksucker Michael or his fucking Chosen Ones can do about it. All of our Prince’s carefully laid plans are yielding the exactly results he wants them to. All that is left for us to do to secure our victory is to find the one prophesied about and persuade her to our side. You were the one who was supposed to be in charge of the search. Have you located her yet?”
The other Brethren’s face turned chalk white. “N-…No,” he stammered. “We have had forces scouring the city for the particular Nephilim but the Chosen One that arrived has been making it more difficult for us to locate her.
He
created them from the Twelve and the Chosen Ones inherited their power to don a glamour that holds up even against us. It is difficult to deal with a problem that you can’t recognize.”
Zacharias shook with rage. He slammed the Brethren hard against the floor, picked him back up and slammed him down again then held him in the air once more. “
He, him, The Archangel.
HIS FUCKING NAME IS MICHAEL! Are you more afraid of his wrath than you are of mine? Big mistake considering it was inevitable that I’d return. Michael might be the Most High’s General but I am our Dark Lord’s. Who do you think is more capable of ripping you apart?”
The Brethren hesitated. It was only for a fraction of a millisecond but he hesitated nonetheless. He couldn’t have been so idiotic and so ready to die that it was done consciously while Zacharias snarled in his face. More probably, it was a knee-jerk reaction, born out of an innate terror of the Archangel history reverently and fearfully referred to as
The Archangel.
Either way, it signed his death warrant.
“You were going to die for your failure anyway, but I’ve just decided to make it far more excruciating than I originally intended,” Zacharias snarled in his face.
“It’s time to go,” Chase whispered to me. “They will not leave the humans who see what is about to happen alive to speak of it.”
I didn’t immediately move. I wanted to stay. To hear more, to find out more, to learn what they knew of the prophecy that Bennett and my Dad hadn’t been told and to figure out what he’d meant about a fourth seal being broken. But doing so would have been as stupid an action as the Brethren’s who had well and truly sealed his fate. Chase grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the booth. As we swiftly made our way down the stairs I heard the faint sounds of bone crunching, of flesh ripping, and of a dying man’s agony over the beat of the House music.
I didn’t turn around. Not as we continued down the stairs, not as we crossed the still crowded dance floor, and not as we walked out of the door and into the safety of the surrounding night.
I let him drive. My nerves were too shaky for me to handle the power of the american muscle car.
He pulled to the curb outside the entrance to my building but didn’t cut the engine. “We can go up and get you a bag of clothes for the night and we can come back tomorrow to get the rest of the things you’ll need.”
He opened his door but I tugged on his harm, stopping him from getting out of the car. “What are you talking about? Things I’ll need for what?”
“To stay at my apartment.”
“Wait. What? Why would I stay at your apartment?”
He looked at me as if I had suddenly turned into an imbecile. “Because according to the Brethren in Fusion he’s Lucifer’s fucking General and something just happened that allowed him and the rest of the Brethren trapped there to break out of hell; the final battle the prophecy alludes to you being caught smack dab in the goddamn middle of is about to be kicked off shortly; and yes the Brethren know about the prophecy too and yes they are actively looking for you. I’m the only one in the city that has a fighting chance of stopping them when they come for you.”
I opened my mouth to protest. To tell him me leaving my apartment and him insisting I relocate to his so he could babysit me was ridiculous and excessive. I opened my mouth to tell him that Brethren or not I could take care of myself. I knew that I couldn’t. That my chances against one of them would be slim to none, but I also knew that I would not put him in danger. I would not let someone else die because of me. Chase beat me to the punch before I could.
“Let me put it in another light for you. If they come for you and you happen to be at your apartment when they do and your roommate happens to be there as well what do you think will happen to her? You, they need alive until you make whatever decision you need to make. Her, they don’t. You saw what the Brethren did to one of his own in the club. You also know how much they despise humans. What do you think they will do to Whitney?”
Bile rose in my throat. My hands shook with the intensity of which I wanted to slap the shit out of him for manipulating me. To leverage her life against his and force me to choose which one deserved to die less. But I couldn’t deny the logic of his words. Just like I also couldn’t deny that he’d have more of a fighting chance than she would. Chase had signed up for this burden, for this life. For the possibility of dying way too young, way too soon, in way too vicious of a manner. Whitney had not. She was innocent. Her only crime was taking on the burden of befriending and remaining friends with me.
My hands clenched around the door handle and I flung it open. “Fine. Point Taken,” I growled over my shoulder. I fought back the sting of the tears that pricked at my eyes. I would not cry in front of him. I would keep it together for now and fall to pieces later in private.
Chase offered to take the couch and let me have the bedroom. Since I was still peeved at being in his apartment at all as well as at the words he’d used to manipulate me into going I didn’t decline his offer or tell him there was room enough in the king size bed for the both of us. However, I wasn’t so petty as not to offer to wait in the living room while he showered and changed clothes. He quirked his left brow at me. As if to say that it was a little too late for propriety. My thoughts flashed back to the very improper position I’d ended up in in the club. To the way my skirt ended up hitched too high around my thighs when his fingers sank between them. My body slightly shuddered in response but I fought the warmth trying to flood my face. He was right. I was way past the point of demureness.
He shrugged out of his leather jacket, kicked off his boots, and unbuckled the belt at his waist. He slid it out of the loops and dropped it on the floor in the growing pile of clothing. He popped the button on his leather pants and pulled the zipper down.
A lump formed in my throat and the air in the room suddenly became stifling. I knew, just knew that he would be pushing the pants down and stepping out of them next. Just like I knew that when he did it I’d go into anaphylactic shock. Just looking at him shirtless, baring only the corded muscle of his chest and arms beneath smooth, tanned skin had me breathless. My lungs would completely forget how to take in air if those pants came down, exposing the lower half of him too.
His hands paused at his zipper and he offered me a teasing and arrogant smile that said he knew exactly what kind of havoc him disrobing in front of me was wreaking on my senses.
“You’re welcome to join me. We can shower together.” Dimples attempted to tempt me to close the space between us walk into the bathroom along with him.
I thought not for the first time of the number of panties his smile had probably melted smooth off. Only this time, a fierce emotion pricked at my consciousness on the tail end of it. An emotion I might call jealousy if it were not completely ridiculous for me to be feeling it in regards to him. We were not an item, we had no ties to each other, and what he did and with whom he did it had no bearings on me. And yet the emotion wouldn’t fade. It made me think about my own panties and why I was no longer wearing any under my miniskirt. He hadn’t melted them off with a smile, he’d ripped them off with his bare hands. The emotion made me wonder if it was something he frequently did and when it made the image of another faceless, nameless girl laying beneath him play before my eyes, I couldn’t help but to clench my jaw against the mental blow that followed.
I almost joined him. Almost. But then I remembered why we both needed to use the only bathroom in his apartment to shower in the first place. I folded my arms across my chest out of sheer cantankerousness. “I’m good. I’ll shower when you’re done.”
He smirked at me but didn’t say anything further.
I busied myself with not thinking about him naked in the shower with droplets of water running down his broad chest and firm abs by scrolling through random bike photos posted to Instagram on my phone.
“It’s all yours,” Chase said exiting the bedroom. A damp sheen still covered his exposed upper body, not at all helping my efforts to not think about it under running water. He had changed into a pair of gray jogger paints and nothing else. They sat so low on his hips that they exposed more of his happy trail and nearly confirmed the extent to which it continued to travel south. Damn it! Did he not know how to towel off properly or how to pull on a shirt?! His current state was making it very, very difficult to brood.
I leapt off the couch and muttered a thanks as I shouldered past him. I kept my eyes trained on the molding around the bedroom door and nothing else. I shut the door behind me then quickly showered and got out before my hands got ideas and took on a mind of their own. I pulled on a cotton tee, boy shorts, and a pair of sweatpants for good measure. I got into the bed forcing my mind into a blank slate. I would not think about who normally lied in it or imagine what it would be like to have him lying there beside me now. In fact, I wouldn’t think about him period. Not his mesmerizing eyes that were an unnatural shade of blue, not his charming smile or deep dimples, not his smooth chest or flat stomach, and certainly not the way it felt when he touched me. I did not think about any of those things as I lay on my back and slowly drifted off to sleep.
I woke up to knocking at the closed door. I raised my voice enough for Chase to hear that it was unlocked from the other side of it. As the doorknob turned I flung the covers off me and jumped up thinking it would be awkward to have him walk in with me in his bed. I stood facing the door when he opened it. Things were still awkward which meant I’d nearly twisted my ankle when clambering to get out of the bed for nothing.
My stomach rumbled at the same time he asked if I was hungry. He looked at my midsection in amusement. “I’ll take that as a yes. I made omelets. We can talk about what we overheard last night while we eat.”
“Fine,” I grumbled still half sleep. “But I’m still mad at you.” As fervently as I tried to say the words, they came out almost deflated.
A night’s sleep and time to digest the temporary change in my lodgings and the reason behind it had me seeing things clearer than the previous night. Chase was right. Me staying at my apartment only made Whitney a target and going to my grandparents would only make them one too. Chase could take care of himself against the Brethren better than I could. He’d been trained to do so, had been hunting them down for years, and had survived this long. So clearly, I reasoned with myself, he knew what he was doing and was good at it. That bit of logic was supposed to calm the unsettling feeling in my stomach I got whenever I thought about him having to face off against one like we’d seen at Fusion. It didn’t do its job one damn bit.
While we ate we talked about how from what and the active Nephilim patrolling it. Bennett needed to be warned so that he could in turn inform the Atlanta Sect of the Brethren’s presence and do what he could to prepare the active Nephilim for the now highly likely possibility of encountering one.
We finished eating, dressed, and headed for headquarters.
******
Bennett sat on the edge of his desk looking at us. He blew out a slow, controlled breath. The thick vein across the middle of his forehead told me that it did nothing to calm him.
“Can they be killed by Nephilim or is it just you Chosen Ones that have the ability to kill them?”
We’d told Bennett everything, including cautioning him against speaking or thinking the Archangel’s name. His threat towards me if I told Chase what I knew of the prophecy was enough to raise his suspicions too, as well as elicit a streak of curse words a mile long that ended with him promising to ask Charissa if she’d ever come across a way to kill an Archangel incorporeally in her studies of our origins and our history.