Fallen Angels 03 - Envy (53 page)

He pushed his way inside and stopped. Upon the modest cot, there were three suits laid out, each with coordinating ascots, stockings, and shoes.

The middle combination of black and pale grays would compliment him best, Nigel thought.

Putting the plate down, he reached out to stroke the fine cloth of the sleeve. Odd that the archangel had lined these up. Colin was not particular about his vestments.

Turning away, Nigel looked at the leather-bound books. The trunk. The oil lamp that burned with gentle light.

Where was the angel going with such dress?

And then he recal ed: Colin had been down with Edward, and wherever Edward was, so too was Adrian.

That cocksure angel with the fetish for piercings had never been known to affiliate with members of his own sex before, but it wasn’t as if Nigel got into that portion of his subordinates’ lives in any detail. Besides, Colin was irresistible. Which was what had landed Nigel in the position he was in now.

Such a fool he was, Nigel thought.
Such
a fool.

He strode out, but closed the flap behind him softly. The last thing he needed to do was get caught—

A cheerful whistling tune brought his head about.

Sneaking behind the tent, his breath caught. In the midst of the stream’s rushing current, Colin stood with his back to the bank, a soft rubbing cloth passing over his shoulders and leaving a trail of suds that eased between the winged muscles of his torso, fol owing a path e’er downward. . . .

Colin’s head came ’round, and then the top half of him fol owed.

Nigel swal owed hard as their eyes met. The male was a vision such as he had seen afore, and yet was e’er new.

“Good evening,” the other archangel said, before resuming his soapy ministrations across his chest.

As Colin worked his skin over, he didn’t swivel away, but instead continued that soft cloth down, down . . . down. . . .

“Going somewhere?” Nigel said bitterly.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

The archangel pivoted al the way about . . . and given what the male’s body was up to, Nigel felt like cursing. The outfits. This washing. Skipping the meal as if he were preparing for something special.

That arousal.

If it wasn’t Adrian, could it be a human suitor? Or a soul on the safe side of the castle wal s, mayhap?

“I have news,” Nigel forced himself to say smoothly. “That was shared over dessert, in fact.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

“Indeed.”

As they conversed, Nigel’s peripheral vision was proving achingly acute: Although he focused upon Colin’s face, he was al too wel aware of the careful attention the archangel was paying to his manhood.

And to think cleanliness was a virtue.

More like a torture.

“Nigel?”

“You also missed the victory flagging, and Jim’s appearance.”

“For which I give my apologies.” Colin hissed a little in pleasure and then seemed to refocus. “Now, tel me, what is your news.”

“The Creator has decreed for whom the next bel tol s. It is not whom we were told at first.”

This got the archangel’s attention—and froze that damnable cloth. “I thought al the souls were agreed upon before the game began?”

“They were. And it was assumed, at least by me, that there were but six because one side or the other would win early.”

“But now?”

“Oh, this soul was approved of. I was just unaware that there would be a second inning upon him.”

Colin’s surprise was satisfying; at least it proved Nigel could stil get a reaction out of him.

With a powerful thrust, the archangel took a smooth dive into the waters and then stepped out of the river. As he emerged, dripping and stil hard in that essential place, Nigel obligingl proffered the male the toweling that hung upon the closest branch—it was not to save the archangel from a chil , however.

More because Nigel did not need to incinerate on the spot.

However, although Colin did dry off, the bastard merely looped the thing around the back of his neck when he was finished.

“Weren’t you getting dressed?” Nigel interjected.

“ Aye.”

“Now?” Please.

“Who is the soul?”

“Matthias.”

Colin frowned. “Is the Creator redacting Devina’s victory, then?”

“The decision from on high is that the loss to her shal stand, but that Jim wil have a second attempt to influence the man.”

“This is unprecedented.”

“The game is unprecedented.”

As the pair of them stared at each other, Nigel’s heart ached to the point of actual pain. Which was his cue to leave, wasn’t it.

“At any rate, I thought you should like to know,” he said briskly. “I bid you adieu, and . . . good evening. Clearly, you intend to have one.”

“I do.” Colin’s lids went low. “Indeed I shal .”

Nigel nodded stiffly and walked with no greater grace back to his tent. As he passed the tea table that had since been cleared, he was glad that the other two and that grand dog had returned to their quarters. He did not wish for even Tarquin’s canine stare to witness this walk of private humiliation.

He had gone o’er to present a gift, only to witness preparations for a tryst that obviously didn’t involve him.

Stupid.

Fool.

In his quarters, Nigel stripped down, but he did not retire to the bath—too many memories. Instead, he donned a new satin robe that he had never worn in the presence of Colin and stretched out upon his chaise longue, looking about his luxurious appointments.

Even with al the colorful drapery and the comfortable bedding, it seemed such an empty place.

Beside him, the flame atop a beeswax candle idly wafted to and fro, and he envied it its easy job. Unfortunately, the thing offered little in the way of company, so he just watched it cannibalize itself in silence, the tears of consumption dripping slowly down its ever-shrinking body.

How depressing: Even something as romantic as candlelight he interpreted in a vocabulary of loss—

“This scone is fantastic.”

Nigel looked up. Colin was standing in the entryway of the tent, his strong arm holding the tarp curtain aside, his long, lean form fil ing the space.

He was wearing the black and the gray.

Nigel went back to focusing on the candle. “I am glad it sustains you.”

“Thoughtful of you.” The archangel came in whilst finishing the thing. “You know, you haven’t paid me a visit in quite a while.”

Actual y it had been very recently, but that hardly served to be mentioned.

“Were you not heading out somewhere?” Nigel muttered.

“Oh, aye.” When Nigel glanced over, Colin circled in a masculine way. “Do you like this?”

“The clothing?” Nigel waved his hand. “Not for me to judge.”

“I wore it for you.”

Nigel’s eyes shot back. “Surely you don’t mean to be that cruel.”

“Cruel?” The archangel seemed honestly confused. “For whom else would I wear such useless garb?”

Nigel frowned. “I thought maybe Adrian or . . .”

Colin’s laugh was immediate. And grating as al get-out. “You think that angel . . . and I . . .?”

“He is fit.”

“Aye. But he is not whom I want.”

Nigel swal owed hard, and tried to hide his reaction by looking away. “It . . . is for me?”

“Aye. So what say you, lover mine.”

Eventual y, he swung his eyes back and the two of them stared at each other for the longest time.

Then Nigel sat forward and brushed his hair back with a shaking hand: The desire for composure did not win, not here and in private. Not with Colin.

Never with that archangel, he feared.

Reaching out his hand to his love, Nigel said hoarsely, “I say . . . it was the one I would have chosen.”

The archangel came forward with a smile. “And that,” Colin murmured, “was why I put it on.”

D
own below, in an attractive suburb of Caldwel , Susan Barten sat in her living room, wide-awake even though it was four a.m. Upstairs, her husband and her remaining daughter were sleeping in their respective beds, and al was quiet above, around, and below her.

She was used to this silent, painful sitting in the dark. The last stretch of uninterrupted rest she had gotten had been the night before . . . “it” had happened.

As usual, she sat in the armchair next to her couch, with her eyes trained on the front door. This was her perch, the branch she locked her feet onto as the winds of fate blew gales at her loved ones, peeling off layers of who she was and what her family was and how she’d expected to pass her time on earth.

She always faced the door Sissy had once gone in and out of so regularly—and this had been true even after the first couple of nights, when the initial hope had bled out, leaving nothing but a paralyzing fear behind. It was stil true even now, when there was a concrete reason to know that her daughter was never, ever returning home again.

God, to think she felt lucky there was something for them to bury.

At the thought, tears itched in the corners of her eyes, and she found herself thinking about that Dr. Seuss book, the one that had been so ubiquitous at the high school graduation, the one they had bought for Sissy along with those dove earrings and that dove necklace and that dove braclet.

Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

An early grave was not what any of them had contemplated.

Why couldn’t this destination of hers have been medical school? Or Eurhen t Or New York City?

Or just to a hair salon in downtown Caldwel , or a vet’s office, or an elementary school to teach?

Why couldn’t it have been what al of her classmates had been granted?

Why did it have to have been that Hannaford supermarket on that particular night . . .

Susan balanced on the tipping edge of madness as the hundreds of different avenues open to her elder daughter presented themselves in a list . . . and she wondered yet again why, when the dice had been rol ed, had they come up with—

A shout erupted out of her mouth before she was conscious of making the sound, and her legs were the same—doing their duty to get her out of the chair and around behind the thing before she was aware of moving.

A man had come through the door.

A huge man with blond hair had entered her house without actual y opening the way in, and he was now standing in her front hal .

Staring at her.

Wait . . . she knew him. He was the one she had given that necklace to. He was the one who had looked devastated along with her.

And he was devastated stil .

“What are you doing here?” she asked softly, strangely aware that however he had arrived, he was not here to hurt her or what was left of her family.

“Why have you come?”

The man just stared at her without answering, his harsh face saddened to the point where it seemed as if he were on the same edge she was.

Feeling unsteady, Susan rounded the armchair and al but fel back into it. Then she placed her hands on her knees, and rocked back and forth slowly.

“I already know they found her,” she said. “I know they found . . . my daughter. . . .”

The man came forward as she began to sob, and after she tried to wipe her eyes, she found that he had crouched down at her feet.

“You said you were going to bring her back,” she choked out.

When he nodded to her, she took that to mean he stil intended to make good on the promise, but surely he knew such a thing was impossible.

“I’m glad you came,” she murmured, thinking out loud.

He remained silent, and as she looked into his strange eyes, she voiced the guilt she had not spoken to anyone else: “I kil ed my daughter. I sent her out for those groceries. I asked her to go . . . and if she hadn’t . . . she wouldn’t have . . .”

There was no going any further as she began weeping. And as she cried her heart out, the massive warrior stayed with her, sharing her pain and her solitude and her regrets, his big hand coming to rest on her shoulder and easing her, his presence a balm over the raw burns that covered her even though her skin was outwardly stil intact.

When she calmed down some, he put his hands on hers.

At the contact, magical warmth entered her and traveled up both sides of her arms, the tide moving into the chasm in her chest, fil ing her.

It was then that she saw he had wings. Great gossamer wings that rose over his huge shoulders and caught the light, even though she had left the house in darkness.

“You’re an angel,” she whispered,ransfixed. “You are . . . an
angel
. . . .”

He showed no reaction, just kept staring up at her, his beautiful eyes and his healing touch elevating her even though she remained seated.

Eventual y, he removed his hands from hers, but the warmth he had given her stayed inside her body.

“You have to go?” she said sadly.

He nodded, but before he rose to his great height, he pul ed open his shirt. There, at his throat, was the delicate necklace she had given him, the dove of peace suspended from its little chain.

She reached out and touched the links that were warm against his glimmering skin. “I know you wil take care of her.”

He nodded once . . . and then he was gone. Instantly.

With jerky movements, Susan jumped out of the chair and rushed across to the front door. Unlocking it and throwing it wide, she leaped onto the cold concrete of the stoop.

No sign of him. But he had been there.

The warmth he had given her was stil with her.

As she looked up to heaven, she saw that it was snowing: Little white flakes were drifting down slowly from the sky, their weaving paths like that of the destinies of people, ever changing, never the same, moving around obstacles seen and unseen.

Letting her head fal back, she felt the tiny spots on her forehead and cheeks as if they were smal , kind hands sent to brush her tears away.

The angel would be back, she thought.

And Sissy, wherever she was, was not alone. . . .

It was a long time before Susan stepped back into the house, shut the door, and quietly made her way up to the bed she and her husband had shared for decades. As she slid inside the sheets, he roused briefly.