Dark Wings (Never Dark Book 1) (8 page)

Parting

Violet

Dragging myself to headquarters at six a.m. was torture. I didn’t get any sleep last night after Lucas left. And the guilt of sending fellow angels to their inevitable death bothered me. I should’ve never taken Cole up on his back-up deal. It was my fault, really. I had all the means necessary to kill Lucas, but I didn’t. Instead, I tried to fuck him. If my superiors knew I tried to bed a demon, I’d be banished from the Never Dark realm—
A fallen angel
—a cat four demon, forced to live amongst the demons until I die.

***

“I sent three angels down there. Two of them are dead,” Cole groaned, slamming his hands down on the desk and then falling into his chair. “The third one came back so shaken up we had to send him back to the realm to be fixed.”

“Are you sure they’re dead?” I asked carefully.

“I found two god damn heads mounted on stakes right outside our fucking door. Of course I’m sure!”

Behind me
, Janet closed the door and stood beside me. She pulled her new red hair around her shoulders and it irked me, making me want to change my hair color.

“
You sent three angels to a demon headquarters?” I asked, ignoring Janet’s puppy dog stare as she watched me in awe.

Cole narrowed h
is brows at me. “Do you have a hearing problem?”

Sternly, I folded my arms across my chest. If I wasn’t so eager for his permission to get off this
demon-ridden planet I’d knock his condescending tone back into his greasy mouth.

“
Yes, I sent three angels. I thought that was all you would’ve needed,” he continued.

I ran my hand over my face and exhaled. This guy
was possibly the biggest moron I’d ever met. “That place is packed to the roof with demons—what were you thinking?”

“But
you went in alone…” Janet muttered in a confused tone.

I turned toward her.
“Shouldn’t you be tending the reception desk?”

She
fixated her puppy dog eyes toward Cole.

“She can stay
,” he said and I rolled my eyes.

“
I went in alone because I had been close to Luc—Death before he became a demon… romantically. I was using that to my advantage.”

“And what happened?”

“It’s in the report I gave you,” I replied, not wanting to disclose what I’d written in my report in front of Janet.

“Well, I’m not in a reading mood today
,” Cole responded, taking my folder off his desk and tucking it under his arm. I fought off a disgusted grimace as my report touched a small sweat patch on his shirt. “So, what happened?”

Immediately,
my hands became moist with sweat and my throat dry. Cole and Janet watched in anticipation—well, Janet watched in anticipation—Cole seemed bored.

“He was one step ahead of me.” I cleared my throat. “
He always has been and always will be. I need to spend time tackling issues I can handle, not chasing after ex-lovers in hopes of freeing them. Besides, there are angels more capable than me, maybe they’ll stand a better chance at taking him down.”

“But it’s so romantic
,” Janet cooed, twirling her hair around her index finger. “And I bet this guy is, like, a total babe.”

I watched her with a
blank expression on my face as I pondered what exactly went through that chemically abused skull of hers. Today, her choice of makeup consisted of sunflower-yellow lipstick and bright golden eye shadow that framed her nice green eyes. She was definitely creative… and brave. I, for one, would never leave the house with such ridiculous colors on my face.

“What’s your plan now?” Cole asked, saving me from replying to Janet’s stupid remark.

“I want to leave Earth and go back to the Never Dark for a new assignment.”

“Why on earth would you want to leave Earth?” Cole and Janet said in unison.

Janet’s full, yellow lips curled into a smirk and she batted her golden eyelids at him. My stomach turned.

“Um,” I stuttered, fighting back the bile that crept up my throat. “I don’t think I’m needed here right now. I need to clear my head and the only way I can do that is in a Lu
cas-Death free environment.”

Cole ran his chubby index finger along his bottom lip as he surveyed me. “Well, isn’t this funny. You need my permission to leave, don’t you?”

“Yes.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Sir.”

He smirked and shifted in his chair
, placing his folder on the table. “What will you do for me?”

I cringe
d. It was Cole Nark, that sentence could mean anything.

“I may not be human, but sexual harassment laws still apply in
this
workplace,” I replied, unable to keep the disgusted tone from my voice.

He scoffed. “Relax, t
hat’s not what I meant.”

“Then for the sake of keeping my breakfast down, please elaborate.”

Cole scowled at me, his eyes almost disappearing under the fat around his eyes. “Will you put in a good word for me? When you get there?”

An incredulous smile spread across my face.
“You want to be an angel?” I couldn’t stop the giggle that fell from my lips as I ended my question and I wanted to kill myself for it.

“What’s so funny?”

I tightened my ponytail and pursed my lips against an outburst of laughter that was threatening to come out. “Nothing.” I didn’t sound convincing. “I just had no idea you wanted to fight demons.”

Cole jumped from his chair and paced his office. I tried to imagine his plump
physique doing half the shit that we do and I almost fell to the floor in a fit of laughter. Picturing him in a tight catsuit was the only thing gross enough to stop me from doing so.

“Nobody else seems to be bloody doing anything
,” he boomed. “I figured if I become an angel, I could actually get something done.”

“If only it was a simple as that
,” I scoffed.

“Isn’t it?” Janet butted in.

“Absolutely not.” I turned my attention back to Cole, remembering that I needed to get his permission to leave. “With all due respect, sir, being an angel isn’t as simple as dying, becoming an angel, and then kicking ass. There is a long process you need to go through and months—sometimes years—of training before you even get the chance to set foot on Earth.”

“I know the process
,” Cole spat, shoving his chair into his desk.

It startled Janet
and she took a slight step behind me. I’ve fought creatures from the Underworld, so it’d take a lot more than an angry human and a loud noise to frighten me.

“What’s up with him?” I whispered to Janet
while Cole wrestled with his filing cabinet.

“His
brother was killed last night, a werewolf by the looks of it.”

“A werewolf?”

“Yes Ashton, a
fucking
werewolf. While you’re prancing around in a nightclub, chasing after demonic ex-boyfriends, people are getting slaughtered by the demons you’ve neglected to kill.”

I bit my tongue, determined to come off as the bigger person. “I’m sorry to hear—”

He raised his hand to silence me. “Spare me the pity party.” Cole managed to pull open his filing cabinet and retrieved a sheet of paper. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see what it was for. He leaned over his desk and plucked a long, black pen from a cup that read ‘
I hate Mondays… and Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Fridays
.’ He scribbled his signature three times over designated sections of the page.

“Here’s your permission.” He slid the pap
er toward me, along the smooth wood of the desk. “Give me your gun and get the hell out of my office.”

With a quick nod, I
took my gun from the holster at the back of my catsuit and placed it on his desk. I grabbed the sheet of paper and left his office as quickly as I could. Normally, I’m one for challenging Cole, but today he deserved a break. Poor guy lost his brother. Janet followed me from his office, closing the door with a quiet click behind me. Despite hearing that Cole lost his brother, I was happier now I had the documents needed to leave Earth. The next step was to book the next available appointment for the teleportation room and get the hell out of here. We only had one Veltra angel at this headquarters, and with the amount of angels that arrive and leave every day, he was usually quite busy.

“I can’t believe yo
u’re leaving and I’m stuck here. Fml, right?” Janet pouted as she dropped into the chair behind the reception desk. I stared at her quizzically.
Fml
was apparently meant to mean something. “What?”

“
Fml
?”

I stared at her blankly.

“Fuck my life?”

My jaw clenched and
I wished I’d never asked. I knew it had to be an abbreviation for something ridiculous. “Right. Anyway, I need to see Tom as soon as possible. When is the next available slot?”

Tom was the name of our resident Veltra angel.
Janet tapped annoyingly away at the keyboard and I waited, glancing around the room. I noticed that they’d put a new painting on the wall. If I recall the art classes I took in high school correctly, the piece was titled
The Last Judgement
by Michelangelo
.
A replica, of course—the original was painted on the altar wall inside the Sistine Chapel. It was kind of creepy having a miniature version of it hanging in here.

“Tom is due to
teleport someone here within the next hour. There’s no one scheduled to leave, but you don’t have much time once he arrives. He’s set to return immediately to bring another.”

“Pencil me in. I’
ll wait for him in the teleportation chamber.”

As she glanced down at her white keyboard to type my name in, I turned on my heel and left. Janet
struck me as the kind of person that says goodbye with hugs and no doubt kisses, too. I tucked the permission paper under my arm and squeezed it tightly to my side. I’d hate to lose it. I headed past Cole’s office and down the long, corridor toward the teleportation room. The HQ wasn’t overly large, but it was intricate. There were so many doors I had to get through and security guards that I had to show my form to before I even made it to the reception of the teleportation chambers.

“Name?” Gladys the receptionist asked, peering over the small gold glasses that perched on the bridge of her nose.

I fought hard not to turn my nose up at the foul stench of perfume. Perfume was a guess. It seemed the only logical explanation for the strange smell. There weren’t any cats here, so the chances of it being cat urine were slim to none. I swallowed hard, taking a bitter taste down with it.

“Ashton, Violet.”

“Form?” Her thin purple lips matched the short
plum-colored curls that coiled around her ears. When I looked closer, I noticed that she was very color co-ordinated… in every way. The small purple diamonds that hung on a short gold chain from her ear lobes glistened in the bright white light. As she glanced downwards at her computer screen, I saw a faint amount of purple eye shadow, barely noticeable behind her thick black eyelashes. With two loud thuds, she stamped my form and handed it to me.

“Tom should be here within the hour. Take a seat.” She hugged he
r mauve cardigan around her chest and I became conscious of the cold air in the room. For some reason, the air-conditioning was blasting. I sat down on one of the plastic chairs across from the reception desk, placing my form on the empty seat beside me. The room was grim, bare, and white from wall to wall. I found myself staring at Gladys, suddenly appreciating her extreme color choice. The various shades of purple she wore offered the only semblance of color—of happiness—against the brutal onslaught of white. Instantly I became bored. I focused harder on Gladys. I wanted to see her wings. I watched her for a few minutes, trying to remember how to see into her ‘inner angel.’ All I had to do was focus. After a few minutes, two big masses of energy floated behind Gladys. The miniscule lines of aura inside her wings were green, which meant organization. What you become in our society is determined by the color of the aura in your wings. Our wings are a mass of white energy, but if you look closely, little colors run through that mass of energy, like the veins in a human body. The color determines what you’ll do in our society. Before you awaken in the Never Dark, your wings begin to grow. They start off as tiny balls of light and by the end of your transition, they’re fully grown. Red means you’ll be recruited to fight, like me, or guard. Blue is intellect—you’ll end up as one of our scientists. Green means organization, which are our assistants and receptionists. And purple means you have the ability to travel, like a Veltra angel. Purple is quite rare; out of the twenty thousand angels in our society, we had only one hundred Veltra angels. There are a few more colors, but I just couldn’t seem to remember. I stopped focusing on Gladys and let her impressive wings dissolve into nothing. I shifted in my seat, trying to find a secure position. There was plenty of room to move about, but nowhere to get comfortable. The hour I had to wait suddenly seemed too long and keeping my eyes open quickly became difficult.