Forbidden (3 page)

Because spiritual entities were sensitive to auras, Michael’s brothers immediately sensed his agitation. The glass of chocolate milk dropped into Raph’s hand.

“Man, what yanked your light?”

Michael tapped his heart. “Electric shock. Right here.”

“You were electrocuted?” Gabe lowered his book and sat up with interest.

“Hot damn! Hook me up!” Raph laughed.

Michael rolled his eyes and opened the fridge. He tried to appear unaffected about the incident by pouring a glass of juice and downing it. Then he started again.

“It wasn’t electrocution, exactly. It was more like … well, like a soft spark. Almost ignorable. Then it exploded like a bomb.”
And almost took my freakin’ breath away
.

He paused again, distracted by the memory of the girl’s long tan legs in faded cutoffs.

“Ahem.” Michael snapped out of it and cleared his throat. “It started drumming like a … like a … second heartbeat.” He admitted this reluctantly but withheld a more important issue about the girl because, frankly, it had scared the shit out of him.

Besides, he must have been wrong. Must have imagined the whole thing. Right? It was impossible;
she
was impossible.

Gabe thumped his book shut like a judge’s gavel calling order. He liked facts and simplicity. He began his cross-examination with a sharp tone. “Michael, clearly something has upset you. You’re neither easily rattled nor prone to exaggerations. If you’re this upset, you have our rapt attention. Now—”

“
Rapt
attention?” Raph snorted out a laugh. “You have our
rapt
attention? Are you serious, man? Why can’t you talk like a normal teenager?”

“Speak,” Gabe corrected him with a smirk. “
Speak
like a normal— Ow!” Raph had levitated the book and thrown it against Gabe’s head. Gabe snatched the book from the air. “We’re not normal teenagers, Raph! And you, first and foremost, should expend more energy trying to fit in than looking for ways to irritate me!”

“But it’s so easy!” Raph laughed.

Gabe lifted his chin indignantly and turned to Michael. “Aside from this alleged second heartbeat, what else happened?
Did you lose a soul?
”

Michael scoffed. It was an absurd question. He had a perfect saved-soul record of 2,133 and 0. Highest for a first-class guardian. He’d never even come close to losing a soul. The nurse at the accident had reacted quickly enough to avoid a head-on when the truck driver dozed off. Michael was called by The Council of Guardians to stand guard only to ensure she wouldn’t slip into a coma, making her easy prey for that low-life, ambulance-chasing soul seeker Degan.

After giving Gabe a
Like hell I lost a soul
look, Michael continued. “This second heartbeat was connected to a girl. She showed up at the accident and she … well, she looked right at me.”

He couldn’t believe he just said that. It sounded like adolescent babbling from a recently earthbound angel, not a seasoned guardian who knew better. And Michael knew better, which made him almost doubt himself for the first time. Almost.

“Impossible,” Gabe said.

“Were you in spirit form?” Raph asked.

“Of course.”

“Impossible,” Gabe repeated. “She wasn’t looking
at
you. She was looking
through
you, like they all do. You know that better than—”

“She spoke to me!”
Michael blurted out.

The boys look at each other. “I know, I know,” Michael grumbled. “Impossible. But she did. I was in full spirit form when this girl showed up. I didn’t realize the pain was radiating from her until she stepped closer. That’s when it spiked like an electric
impulse. The second heartbeat started, and then
she
looked at
me
and asked if
I
was okay.”

“What is she?” Raph asked. His curiosity finally turned serious.

“Human. I’m sure. She had a perfect human aura but …”

“But what?” Gabe pushed.

“I don’t know. I’d never felt so much emanating from a single person. Everything was jammed up and overlapped and convoluted. I couldn’t separate them—love, hate, fear, determination, desperation, pain. All colored and muted—”

“What colors?” Gabe’s eyebrows scrunched together with concern. Human auras were rather simplistic in nature. Anything out of the ordinary was a curious thing, especially to anyone in the spirit realm.

“Blacks, reds, greens, blues …” Michael’s voice trailed off and his eyes drifted with remembrance. He could see the girl’s uncommon aura as though she were standing in front of him. He could feel her concern for him radiating like a lighthouse. Her spirit had been open, needing something from him. And then Degan showed up, and Michael’s temper flared, and her spirit closed like a slammed door. Only the second heartbeat had kept them connected. When he’d been forced to disappear with Degan, the heartbeat faded and the emptiness Michael felt had been nearly unbearable.

That’s what bothered him the most.

“You sensed she needed special protection?” Gabe asked.

Michael lowered his eyes and worked to mask the myriad of emotions flowing through him. The last thing he wanted to reveal was the rush of feelings he’d felt for this girl. Guardians have a natural instinct to protect humans at all costs but Michael’s instinct had gone well beyond the boundaries designated as special protection, well beyond the boundaries of his vows as a guardian. Nothing like this had ever happened before and it had thrown him off his game.

It wasn’t easy to conceal his emotions from his brothers because he wasn’t supposed to. They worked as a team and shared everything. If his brothers suspected that he had developed the skill to hide his emotions, they were obligated to report him to The Council. Michael would be placed under watch for signs of weakness and betrayal. Now more than ever, Michael didn’t want to invite problems. He had been working too hard to perfect his guardian gifts for the Winter Trials—that once-in-a-lifetime chance to join the special legion of warriors known as Halos of the Son. They were
the
elite team, the highest in ability, respect, and rank—second only to archangels. Just receiving an invitation to be considered for the trials was rare, and Michael was not about to do anything to interfere with his chances.

“Is there something more?” Gabe asked suspiciously.

Michael’s jaw muscle flexed violently as he contemplated options. He should explain about the girl seeing both him
and
Degan, something he didn’t know was possible. Oftentimes humans think or imagine they see angels in their natural form. Doubtful. More likely, they feel an angel’s presence, or maybe even sense a spirit walker helping lost souls. It would be a similar sensation. But even then humans would explain it away as something else, never realizing the close proximity in which they all existed.

Some humans can see ghosts, but no normal human should ever see soul seekers like Degan. As pathetic as they are, they belong to the lower spirit realm. Humans can’t see them; it just didn’t happen. And certainly not someone as young and innocent as this girl.
If
she was as innocent as Michael had first assumed.

“Should you report her to The Council?” Gabe demanded.

Michael’s reputation was beyond reproach, his loyalty measured alongside his namesake, the Archangel Michael; but his silence was making his youngest brother uncomfortable.

“Just ask Dad,” Raph piped in, losing interest and rising from his chair. As usual, he was barefoot, shirtless, and wearing faded jeans low on his lean hips. He stretched, cracked his back, and ended with a hearty burp. “I’m telling you, Dad’ll know what to do. Messengers live for this stuff.”

As a third-level messenger for the Council of Guardians, Dimitri Patronus regulated and watched over guardians but also reported on any unusual humans they might encounter. This girl more than qualified.

Still, Michael couldn’t give up her secrets. He gave a mental shake to cast off loose emotions but alleviated nothing. Something had shifted inside him, and he regretted telling his brothers anything.

“I’ll wait,” he announced with the familiar authority returning to his voice. “I didn’t recognize her as a local so maybe she was passing through. Besides, I didn’t get a sense that she was harmful to anyone. But if she sees any of us in spirit form again, we’ll tell Dad. And as far as I know, this girl doesn’t need any special protection from anyone.”

Chapter 3

Dante

Hell smelled.

If nobody ever told you evil had an odor, Dante Dannoso could. He had been in Hell for seven centuries and knew firsthand.

Imagine sinners that reeked like roadkill mixed with an ample dose of demon blood smoked to perfection. That was Hell. And it smelled.

Dante learned to ignore it, to distance himself from his surroundings because he didn’t really belong there. Okay, maybe he did now, but not in the beginning. Who knew dying for love sent you straight to Hell?

It was complicated.

Anyway, the stench was pretty faint in the upper catacombs where he lived and even lighter in the antechamber where he was standing now. Waiting.

There was a lot of waiting in Hell. You waited to be punished, which came far too soon for most losers and involved an unusual number of fiery objects. You waited to get jumped by gang reapers who were easily bored and easily amused by inflicting their own brand of pain. If you were a nobody, some schmuck who had pissed away his soul for job or money or talent, you waited to get yours. And it was coming. Every reaper, soul seeker, or demon would pounce on you, repeatedly. For grins. And it hurt. Repeatedly.

But if you were one of the Chosen, a demon with reaper capabilities, you usually didn’t have to wait for pain. They were called Demon Knights or Knights of the Unforgiven, post-humans who were cursed with a special demon living inside them. Demons like Persuasion, Affliction, and Impatience.

They might sound mild but they were from Hell; mild didn’t exist.

Demon Knights constantly endured some level of pain as they worked to control their demonic urges. The greater the urge, the greater the pain; thus, the essence of their curse. In return, they received assignments that sent them to the surface to torment humans. The kicker? They reaped their own victims, meaning they didn’t have to wait for official reapers to close the deal. A Demon Knight could snatch a tormented soul so fast that it would be halfway to Hell before a guardian received the call for help.

Hell’s Army of One.

It was a pretty sweet setup, unless you ran with Dante. He and his friends were Demon Knights, and they had issues. They kept losing souls. Well, Dante would lose his temper, and then they would lose souls to Heaven or limbo. A major faux pas down below. Because of this, Dante and his pack had been grounded, literally, for nearly four hundred years. They hadn’t been given a single soul assignment—hadn’t seen a death contract in ages. All that could change today.

“Trust me,” Dante reassured his friends. “They will vote in our favor.”

Two hours ago he had sent a petition to The Order of Reapers. They controlled everything: who competed in the Demonic Games, who was sent to wither away in Hell’s most subterranean level called the Nether Region, and who was allowed to resurface with a death contract. Dante wanted to be reinstated so he asked for a specific death contract.

He wanted the soul of Pastor St. James. Well, technically, he wanted the soul of the pastor’s daughter, Sophia.

Dante hadn’t wasted four hundred years sitting around laying bets on the Demonic Games. He had been tracking his lost lover’s soul and found it in Sophia.

Just the thought of finding her again sparked a fire inside him. He couldn’t wait to hold her again, to kiss her, to be with her. Moisture gathered in his eyes and his hands trembled in anticipation. It had been so long but it was finally going to happen; he could
feel
it, feel his hands caress her skin, feel his fingers slide through her hair, feel his mouth devour her sweet lips. She was home, his only light in a dark world. They had been inseparable. In love. “Until death do us part” had never been an option.

First things first.

Dante
had
to resurface and he
had
to have permission. Everybody did. But he couldn’t let The Order know he had been searching for his lover’s reincarnated soul. They must believe that he was trying to redeem himself, trying to get back into the King of Hell’s good graces, if he actually had any good graces. The King, simply referred to as the Master, had not been seen for centuries and left the daily operations of soul harvesting to The Order—six cantankerous old Demon Lords and their leader Lord Brutus. Only when things went terribly wrong was the Master’s dark energy felt. Something The Order tried to avoid because it usually meant someone would lose their head, literally. As such, soul assignments were carefully scrutinized, and personal assignments were never allowed because every soul Taken was strictly for the Master’s pleasure.

Dante knew Lord Brutus would never let him resurface to stalk a Forgiven soul like other Demon Knights did; not Dante with his track record. But maybe Lord Brutus and The Order would allow him to hunt down a sure thing like the pastor.

Pastor St. James had committed a mortal sin, one even his daughter didn’t know
about, and it was Dante’s ticket to the surface. Only Vaughn Raider, Dante’s oldest friend, knew the real target, but even he doubted The Order would approve.

“What makes you think they’ll go for it?” Vaughn looked up from the whetting stone where he had been sharpening daggers for the past two hours. With the Demon of Affliction buried inside him, he was constantly compelled to inflict pain on others. He
had
to alleviate his demon’s urges, somehow. If he refused, like he had tried in the past, his demon would eventually overpower him and thrash everyone around, only to end in a bloodbath with him chained to a wall. Demonic urges were insatiable so control was key. Well, control and sharp weapons.