Blood of Destiny (Witch Fairy #6) (5 page)

I move my head out from under Kallen’s and glare up at the Angel I least want to see. 

Chapter 4

“What are you doing here?  Are you a peeping Tom or something?” I ask.  It is so creepy to think about him getting his kicks out of watching Kallen and me fooling around.

He looks at me with disdain.  “I have no interest in you other than what you owe me.  I have come to collect a favor.  You do owe me two.”  He looks back and forth between me and Kallen’s still form.  “It is not my fault you spend most of your time in bed with the Fairy.”

I refuse to respond to that.  I glare at him instead.  “What favor?”  It’s a little awkward having this conversation with Kallen’s body motionless next to mine.  Not to mention a little creepy.

Ambriel tries for nonchalance as he checks his fingernails for dirt.  “I need you to find three of my old friends.  I miss them and would like to get reacquainted.”

I narrow my eyes at him, but it doesn’t matter because he’s still not looking at me.  “That would be three favors.”

Now he looks up.  “On the contrary, I am asking you to find my friends.  That is the favor.  It does not matter how many there are.  This will only count as one of the two.”

“I disagree.”

“How sad for you.  I would hate to have to turn you in for asking me to delete history.”

He has to be joking.  I squeeze myself out from under the statue that is Kallen, and I stand up.  “If you tell on me, then I’ll tell that you actually did it.  It seems you would get in more trouble than me.”

He shrugs.  “Perhaps, but I am not particularly fond of my job anyway.”

“What about your wings?”

He smiles.  “If I lose my wings, then I will not have to work.  I do not see a down side to that.”

I tilt my head and scowl.  “So, basically, you’re so lazy, you don’t care if you lose your wings or not.”

He grins.  “I believe you are beginning to see how things are.”

I hate him.  I’m strongly considering changing into a Pegasus so I can trample on him.  I also hate that I’m the one who got me into this mess.  “Who are these friends and why can’t you find them yourself.  I thought all the Angels could tell where everyone else is through your wings.”

He raises a brow.  “Done a little research, have you?  In their current state, I can find them, but I cannot address them.  They have chosen to Fall.”

“Fallen Angels?”  I narrow my eyes at him.  “By their choice or someone else’s?”

Ambriel’s face goes from aloof to offended.  “How dare you insult my friends?  Not that it is any of your business, but I will answer your question.  They Fell of their own accord.  As I become more and more frustrated myself, I begin to understand their reasoning.”

“Frustrated with what?”  He writes things down for a living.  It’s not like he makes rainbows and someone keeps forgetting to supply him with the color yellow.

He sighs as if I’m stupid.  I get that a lot lately.  It’s unbelievably annoying.  Before I can tell him that, he says, “Yes, I can see how one such as yourself would not be able to see the big picture here.”  One such as myself.  I’m thinking that wasn’t a compliment.  “Life amongst the Angels must seem like a walk in the clouds to you.”

Actually, I have never once seen an Angel walk amongst the clouds.  “So, this is the part where you tell me all about the hardships of being an Angel?  What, do you get hand cramps or something from writing things down with your feather pen?  Please, what could possibly be so hard about your job?”

I may have just offended him.  Or made him homicidal.  Probably both considering the unadulterated loathing that is leaking out of his eyes and rolling down his cheek to try to reach me.  I wonder if it burns? 

“What is so hard, you ask?  You, who flits about from place to place barely paying attention to anything around you that does not directly affect you?” 

“Hey!”  I’m not that self-centered.  Am I?

“Imagine spending eternity having to constantly pay attention to even the slightest movement, the softest whispered word, the falling of each leaf, the drop of each snowflake.  Then you tell me why my job is so hard.  If I do not record each tiny little thing, then the balance in my area crumbles, bringing chaos and death to all living things.”

Because he missed a leaf falling?  I don’t think so.  “Please, that’s ridiculous. You can’t possibly record every little thing.  By the time you wrote all that stuff down, everything you wrote about would be dead and gone.”

He looks surprised under all that hatred.  Guess he really did think I’m stupid.  How nice.  Instead of acknowledging that I’m right, he chooses disdain.  “Are you always so ignorantly literal?  Do you truly believe that I have a feather pen and a tome of parchment where I studiously record with ink each detail?  Where, exactly, do you think these parchment tomes would be kept?  Do you think there is a giant library where I can put each tome when it is finished, and then start on the next one?  The physical recording of events is for you lesser beings.  We Angels record these things by acknowledging them.”

Oh, that does make a lot more sense.  But, now I’m even more disgusted with him.  “So, back to how lazy you are.  All you have to do is
watch
everything going on and acknowledge it with a nod or something?  And you’re willing to give up your
wings
so you don’t have to
watch
things anymore?  Do you have any idea how pathetic that sounds?  You do realize that if you Fall, you’ll have to do a lot harder things than that to make a living and survive.”

I thought he was mad before.  I think he’s about to smite me, now.  I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I remember hearing that Angels can do that.  I’m thinking it has something to do with turning me into a dark streak on the carpet.  I really hope that he can’t do that.

“Your ignorance is overshadowed by your impertinence and vulgarity.  You know nothing of what you speak.”

I’m about to say, ‘Yeah, I get that a lot’ until I realize that would make me seem even more ignorant.  Instead, I go with, “I’m sure you don’t want to be around someone as vulgar as me, so feel free to toss me back into the Fairy realm and never see me again.”

His hand actually starts to move towards my throat.  Hey, he’s going to choke me!  Well, he was going to until my wings showed up.  Now, he can’t get to me because my wings have wrapped tightly around me.  With a frustrated growl, he drops his hand. 

Taking a moment to collect himself, he finally says as if nothing happened, “You will find my friends and bring them to me or I will bring my case to Tabbris.”  Tabbris is the Angel who takes other Angels’ wings if they do something against the rules.  I don’t think she’s big on second chances.

Guess I don’t have a choice.  “Fine, where are they?”

Pulling something from the pocket of his incredibly tacky white suit, the one I’ve been trying to ignore because it’s so tacky, he holds out his hand to me.  “You will use this to locate them.”

I look down at the object.  Then back up at him.  “It’s a rock.”  It’s not even a crystal.  It’s an ordinary, dirty, brown rock.  “What am I supposed to do with a rock?”  Throw it at him comes quickly to mind.  Good lord, I’m so violent lately.

Ambriel narrows his eyes at me.  “Is it not shiny enough for you?”

“I don’t care how shiny it is.  It’s.  A. Rock.  It’s just lying there in your hand, doing nothing.”

“Did you expect it to dance and do tricks?”  Okay, the first thing I’m doing with the stupid rock
is
throwing it at him.  Hard.

I sigh in frustration.  “How is a rock going to help me find your friends?”  I see that smirk trying to jump on his face.  He’s antagonizing me on purpose.  Good thing he wasn’t the first Angel I met.  I might have given my wings back if he was.

“You will follow it.”

“Follow a rock?”  And I’m the one people keep calling ignorant?

“It will lead the way.”

I roll my eyes.  “You know, this conversation would move along a lot faster if you would stop giving me annoying answers.  I really don’t want to spend any more time in your presence than I have to.”

I see him eyeing my wings that are still in a defensive position, as his hand tries to inch up towards my neck.  I give him my own little smirk because he’s not going to be able to touch me.  I love my wings.  Which is why I’m doing all this in the first place.  To keep them.  “Okay, seriously, please tell me what I’m supposed to do so I can get this over with.”

He seems to like my tone a little better this time.  He relaxes his stance and says, “The stone knows who you must find.”

I can’t help interrupting.  “How?”

If he keeps doing that thing with his eyes, they’re going to stay that way.  “I have instilled the knowledge within it.” 

Great, the laziest Angel of all programmed a rock for me to use.  That’s going to turn out well.  Oh.  Guess I said that out loud because his hand’s twitching again.  I need to move this along before he and I have a showdown with our wings.  I haven’t truly gone head to head with an Angel, so I really don’t know who would win.  “What do I do with them after I’ve found them?”

“You harbor them until I instruct you otherwise.”

Harbor them?  That puts an image in my mind of three Fallen Angels tied up at a marina, floating in the water.  “Harbor them where?”

He raises a brow.  “You have a home.  Sort of,” he adds with some snark in his tone.

“You want me to bring three Fallen Angels home?”  I snort.  “Yeah, that’s going to happen.”  Isla, Tabitha and my mother would kill me.

“You will figure out a way.”

Now
he’s confident about my abilities.  Great.  “Fine, whatever.  Can I have the rock so I can get started?”

There’s a wicked little gleam in his eye as he puts the rock in my hand.  I’m guessing I don’t want to know what that means.  I’m already sure this whole thing is going to be a disaster.  I’ll probably find his friends and still end up losing my wings. 

Looking down at the rock, I am seriously underwhelmed.  It’s like any other rock in our gravel driveway back home.  Actually, it’s uglier than most of them.  And unfortunately a little slimier, too.  Don’t even want to know.

With a last little smirk, Ambriel says, “You might want to catch your boyfriend.”

“What?”  I turn around quickly and watch as Kallen’s face falls flat into the pillow where my head used to be.  Like I said before, it’s a good thing it’s a soft bed.

Chapter 5

“Xandra,” a muffled Kallen voice says.  He hasn’t lifted his head yet.  “Is there a reason I’m suddenly kissing a pillow?”

I can’t help a giggle.  “A new fetish of yours, maybe?”

He rolls over onto his back and puts his hands behind his head.  “That is something to consider.  At least I know it will not disappear out from under me.  Did you have somewhere urgent you needed to be?”

I flop back down on the bed next to him.  “Not anywhere I wanted to be.”

“Nice rock,” he says, looking at the ugly little thing in my hand. 

What does it say about my life that my boyfriend is not even surprised or upset that I disappeared while he was kissing me?  “Thanks, I got it from Ambriel.  It’s supposed to help me find Fallen Angels.”

Now he looks surprised.  “And you would want to do that why?”

I can’t look him in the eye now.  “It’s one of the stupid favors I owe him.”  I brace myself for a scathing comment about my disastrous panic attack.

But it doesn’t come.  “Why does he want you to find them?”

I shrug.  “I don’t know.  He wouldn’t tell me.”

Concern is creeping onto his face.  “What are you supposed to do when you find them?”

I sigh.  This is going to go over as well as trying to convince him this stupid rock is a diamond.  “He wants me to bring them home with us.”

That gets more than a concerned look.  He sits up and stares down at me in disbelief.  “You told him no, correct?”

How do I say this without making him want to kill me?  “I said it wasn’t going to happen.”  I think I resent the doubt in his eyes.  Even if it is mostly deserved.  I said the words.  I just didn’t stick to them.

“Xandra, please tell me that you are not going to attempt to bring Fallen Angels to my grandmother’s home.”

I purse my lips a minute.  “I guess I could bring them to Dagda’s.  We could treat them as ambassadors from another land.”

He laughs.  “Either way, it will be a tough sell.  I do not see Isla or Dagda agreeing.  You will have to tell this Angel no.”

I sigh.  “I can’t tell him that.”

“Sure you can.  It is a simple word; I believe Dagda explained its meaning to you earlier.”

“As charming as your sarcasm is, it’s not very helpful.”  Wow, never thought I’d be on this side of those words.

Kallen’s quickly working his way back to anger.  Before he can say anything, I say, “It’s not like I’m actually going to find these Fallen Angels.  The only clue I have is a rock.  It’s not even a talking rock.”  I don’t think, anyway.  I guess I haven’t tried to start up a conversation with it.

I’m pretty sure there’s a vending machine full of snarky comments in Kallen’s head at the moment.  I think he’s pausing to put his money in and make a selection.  “Yet, you agreed to this.  Did you even stop to think about the consequences?”

Hmm, he went for a coffee cup condescending instead of a bag of snarky.  I always love that.  “Yes, Dad, I did.  The consequences are – I lose my wings if I’m not successful.  And at this point, I don’t think I care.”  My arms are crossed over my chest as I glare up at him.

He runs a frustrated hand through his hair.  “Can I see the rock?”

I hold my hand out to him.  Picking it up, he says the loudest, longest string of cuss words I have ever heard.  I think my ears are bleeding now.  He drops the rock as if it’s poisonous.  I’m about to ask him what his problem is, when I see the large boils forming on his hand.  Oh, crap.  I sit up and give him my best ‘I didn’t know’ look.  “Um, maybe only those with Angel blood are supposed to touch it?”

He’s dropped his quarters in, and the snark vending machine has delivered.  “Amazing how that thought did not cross my mind when my skin was searing off the bones in my hand.”

I’m really torn between sympathy and ‘I don’t have to heal it’ at the moment.  Fortunately for him, I love him too much to see him in pain.  And the blisters are still multiplying.  He has blisters on top of blisters now.  And they’re spreading fast.  Quickly, I cover his hand with mine.  I try to squelch the little voice in the back of my mind that’s telling me that the blisters could be contagious.  I love him enough to risk it.  Closing my eyes, I imagine the blisters dying away and his hand healing. 

Unfortunately, this is a little harder than I thought it would be.  Usually my healing is almost instant, but I’ve been at this for a few minutes now.  What’s wrong here?

From the look in his eyes, Kallen’s thinking the same thing.  “Are you trying to heal it?”

I have to look up at him, surprised that that seemed like a genuine question, not snark.  “Yes, I am.  I don’t know why it’s taking so long.”

He’s gritting his teeth now, and I know why when I look down at his hand again.  The blisters that I healed are already coming back.  That’s not good.

My wings had disappeared when Ambriel pushed me out of Angel time.  I whisper a call in my mind and they appear again on my back.  Closing my eyes again, I concentrate as hard as I can on healing him.  A relieved release of breath on his part makes me open my eyes.  His hand is as good as new.  “Sorry, I guess I needed my wings to heal you.”

He smiles now that he’s pain free.  It’s even a nice smile.  “Then I suppose we should figure out how you can keep them.”  Wow, a few flesh eating boils and he’s suddenly back on my team.  I’ll have to keep that in mind for future reference. 

I pick up the rock from where he dropped it on the bed.  He moves a few inches farther away from me as I examine it.  It still looks like a plain, ordinary rock.  It didn’t even light up or anything when Kallen touched it.  I shake my head.  “I give up for the moment,” I say, as I lay back down.  I put the rock safely in my pants pocket.  I don’t think it will hurt him through my jeans.  At least, that’s my thought process when I pull him with a hand behind his neck down next to me.  He hesitates as he eyes my pocket nervously, but then he decides to take the chance.  It could be the fact that I successfully made my shirt disappear.  His did, too, but I’m not going to tell him that wasn’t on purpose.  I just hope no one else in the house is suddenly shirtless.

It doesn’t take long for us to pick up where we left off before Ambriel interrupted us.  I squash the idea that he could be lingering around, watching us.  Wrapping my arms around Kallen, I roll us over so I’m on top of him.  Kissing a line down his jaw, I bring myself up so that I can keep going down his neck to his chest.  Savoring the feel of his lean, muscled torso, I continue my downward progress until I reach the waistband of his jeans.  My fingers find the button, and with fumbling fingers, I finally undo it.  A low groan deep in his throat tells me he’s not going to stop me out of fear of going too far.  I would much rather do this than ask a rock where I can find Fallen Angels.  I wonder if that’s what I’m supposed to do?  That would be so stupid.  ‘Hey, rock, where’s the first Angel?’

Have I mentioned that I should think things through a little better sometimes?  First, I’m surprised that I even had a rationale thought about the rock while I was so close to getting Kallen naked again.  Second, ending up kissing a pillow doesn’t even compare to your girlfriend opening up some big, black hole that is now sucking us down into darkness at about a thousand miles per hour.  It’s a good thing I had hold of Kallen’s jeans.  At least I can hang onto him as we fall.  Not that that will do us any good, I’m sure, but it’s nice not to be alone when falling into a void created by an Angel rock.  And when we fell, the bed didn’t fall with us, so I really hope we land on something soft.