Vengeance: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 3 (5 page)

“Better than you think,” he whispered.
 

“Listening to gossip about the supes’s new Justice Dealer isn’t kosher, and no matter how much you think you might know, I’m still new to the job. Speculation’s just that.”

“I’d love to prove to you that your lack of faith is uncalled for, but I’m just too tired and I don’t have the energy to spare right now.” He shifted in bed and the covers slid further down his hips. “I’ve got to focus on healing, and quickly.”

“Who are you?” I demanded, shoving my hands in my jeans pockets.

“I’m Micah Niphal.” He looked away, suddenly seeming uneasy. “Won’t you now demand to know
what
I am as well?” I shrugged and he snorted, grabbing his bandaged ribs. “I owe your man and his household an immense debt of gratitude. If I may ever repay it…”

“To be fair, he’s already lost a front door, so I guess I should ask if you’re going to rain terror down on the house.” I’d only been joking, but he paled so much that I instinctively stepped toward his bedside. “Micah?”

“It’s a legitimate question, one I’m not sure how to answer. Will I rain terror down myself? Never willingly. Will my presence here bring terror to your threshold? Quite certainly.” He rubbed his face with his free hand and when he looked up it seemed as if his eyes had dimmed.

I was unsettled at his apparent directness. “Don’t you ever soften the truth a little?”

He was solemn when he answered. “No.”

“If she’s too kind to ask, then I will. Micah Niphal, to whom do you belong?” Hellion’s flat, toneless voice added to my unsettled feelings. His phrasing was so odd that I looked over my shoulder to find him just inside the doorway, seemingly hesitant to come any closer.

Silent, Micah stared not at Hellion but at me.

“Answer me,” Hellion spat.

“Hey! The guy’s injured and I’m sure he didn’t draw that, that…thing here. Um, what
was
that thing?” I asked, turning so I had Micah on my right and Hellion on my far, far left.

“If you won’t answer me,
malach
, then answer her.”

“I’m not sure whether you just called him something or were clearing your throat,” I teased. Micah smiled; Hellion never even looked at me. I turned back to Micah and shrugged, false bravery barely covering my encroaching unease. “No big secret, right?”

“Actually, it is.” Micah again shifted in bed and I reached over to pull his pillow higher behind his head. “Thank you.” He smiled at me and I was momentarily shocked into stillness. Holy crow, that beauty. The word
malach
rolled around in my mind and with a look of horror I stumbled backward. “
Malach
is the Jewish word for—”

“Angel.”

Chapter Three

Hellion gripped my arm and held me upright, but through his hand I could feel the faint tremor that ran through his body. Something about Micah scared him, and if he was afraid, I should be freaking hysterical. Oddly, I wasn’t. I got my feet under me and realized that Hellion was holding on to me as much for the contact as anything else. He was just too much the dominant male to admit he needed to touch or be touched for anything other than sex. I pulled his hand away and he glanced at me, visibly relaxing when I laced our fingers together.

“Easy peasy,” I whispered, and he tightened his grip before he repeated the phrase to me. Taking a deep breath, I turned back to Micah. “What does your name mean?”

“Micah is simply my name. ‘Niphal’ means to be thrust out, banished.” He looked ashamed at the revelation, clearly intending to say no more.

Hellion just stood there.
 

Getting information felt like freaking divine dentistry.
 

Shoving my free hand in my pocket, I considered Micah. “Okay. So you’ve been thrust out. Of where?”

“You’re not serious?” he asked, shock painting a thin veneer over his face’s masculine grace.

“Incredibly.”

“Shamayim. I am from Shamayim,” he whispered so softly I wasn’t sure I had the pronunciation right.

“Heaven,” Hellion breathed out, equally as soft, as he clutched my hand.

“No.” I pulled free of Hellion and turned to face him. “Heaven is an existential realm of possibility, not a real place. No, I don’t believe it.” I spun back to Micah, but he interrupted me before I could speak.

“Don’t be angry at me for telling you the truth, no matter how badly you find you don’t want to believe it. Your crisis of faith doesn’t change my situation one bit.” His eyes had blazed back to life.

“I’d take a lesson or two in diffusing her temper so effectively,” Hellion grumbled.

Micah chuckled and gasped, holding his ribs again. “Deliver to her the truth in a manner she cannot deny no matter how badly she may want to. She’s a solid head for truth, Hellion.”

Rooted to the spot by reality, I could only stare at the fallen angel in the guest room. I jumped when Hellion stepped closer and laid his hand on my back. “Why are you here?” I asked, not a little rudely.

“To suffer for my self-righteousness and to gain re-admittance to Shamayim that I might once again serve the Holy.”

I shook my head. “Not exactly what I meant.” Dropping Hellion’s hand, I turned in a small circle and came back to face the being sitting so at ease amid the sheets. “What did you do, specifically, to get kicked out?”
 

Micah was silent.

“Answer me,” I demanded.

“He can’t.” Hellion pulled me into his chest. “It’s a violation of his punishment to discuss much with us.”

“How do you know?” I asked, straining my neck so I could seek his face.

“That’s a conversation we’ll have in private.”

“I know of it, Hellion, so don’t feel you need hesitate on my behalf.” Micah’s voice was so wrought with emotion that I inexplicably choked on my own.

“No,” Hellion snapped. “I’ll not lay myself bare in front of you just to have your compassion or your pity. Hers will be hard enough to deal with.”

“Hey.” I squeezed his arms and lay my head against his chest. “You know you can tell me anything.”

“It’s not the knowledge that I can,
mo síorghrá
, it’s the knowledge that I must.”

Unease settled over me and I nodded woodenly. “You’ll excuse us, Micah? I apparently need a few minutes with Hellion.”

“Agares will return, Hellion. You cast him out but did not destroy him,” Micah called as we walked from the room.

Hellion’s shoulders hunched. “I know.”

Our bedroom hadn’t been attended to due to the morning’s melee, so I went to spread the bed up just to have something to do. Hellion had not only avoided speaking to me as we walked up the two flights of stairs, he hadn’t touched me, had even gone so far as to shy away from my touch. By the time we’d reached the second floor, I’d given up. I had just finished arranging pillows when he partially pulled the curtain back so that half the room was lit by the setting sun. Not surprisingly, he chose the chair that was still in shadows nearest the fireplace. I sank onto the sofa across from him and waited.

Hellion was silent, his arms crossed over his massive chest and his face closed down. He hadn’t even been this removed from me the other night in the clearing when he thought I’d chosen Bahlin. He glanced at my drumming fingers.
 

I pulled both hands into my lap and wound them together. “You’ve got to say something, Hellion. This silence is killing me.” I hadn’t meant to speak but, as a child, my parents often began my worst punishments in this very manner. Old fears die hard deaths.

“Give me a minute.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. My heel started bouncing on the floor and he snapped, “For the love of Odin, Maddy! Can’t you just be still?”

I willed my foot to stop and took a deep breath, prepared to defend myself, but he chose that moment to speak.
 

“When I was a boy, no more than eight or nine, I’d started to obtain a small level of power. I took first a houseboy position and then an apprenticeship with an old master, Tarrulus, who was known to dabble in the darker arts at times. He claimed it was done for knowledge. I know now it was for more than that. He’d involve me in some of the minor spells, but for the darkest arts he left me out or sent me away from the manse. I knew the dark arts weren’t for me…primarily, anyway…but I’ll admit I was curious.” Hellion stood and walked to the curtains, pulling them shut again, barring daylight abruptly.
 

My eyes were slow to adjust to the darkness, so I was surprised when he spoke from close behind me. I hadn’t heard him move. I tried to stand, to go to him, but he forced me back into my seat and held me there, either by spell or willpower. I didn’t fight it.

His voice was strained as he continued. “I was fourteen. As was typical on the eve of the Festival of Walpurgis, he sent me away with enough shillings to buy a room and a decent meal with a little left over for, ah, entertainment.”

“You were a boy!”
 

“Times were different then, Maddy. Life spans were much shorter for the average mortal. Aye, I was a boy, but I was on the verge of manhood. If it eases you any, I was still a virgin.”
 

I didn’t understand the viciousness in his voice any more than his dark mood. Unsure what to say, I kept my mouth shut and just listened.

“I took the money and hid in the gardens, convinced I was old enough to take part in whatever Tarrulus was doing. There was more activity than I’d expected, with men and women alike arriving by carriage or horseback. Some even came on foot. I knew many of the people to arrive, from barmaids to barons, and I was surprised. I’d assumed the master was performing dark magic, not throwing a party.” He snorted. “I was a fool.”

My eyes had adjusted well enough that I could see him again, his hands braced against the fireplace mantle, muscles bulging in his forearms. His head hung forward, and his hair covered his face in a sheet. His breathing was irregular. I watched him closely. He didn’t move though he still held me in place. The Big Bad was about to be revealed. I wanted to be closer to him when it was, but I was too scared to interrupt him.

“I crept closer and closer to the west side of the house, thinking to see inside one of the large windows. They say curiosity killed the cat. They’re wrong. It almost killed
me
.” He turned his head to look at me and in the darkness I wasn’t sure whether his eyes were entirely black or if it was the haunting shadows that made them seem so.
 

I felt the pressure holding me in place ease, and I scratched my nose. It was the only non-threatening gesture I could come up with on short notice that would seem natural.

He never noticed.

Hellion dropped his face again, hiding behind his hair. “A hand clamped over my mouth. I struggled. I was neither small nor frail, but I quickly discovered that fighting was useless. My attacker dematerialized with me to a room that had clearly been readied for a guest. I was terrified. He said to me, ‘Speak or scream, now or at any time, and I’ll peel the flesh from you one strip at a time.’ I nodded and he let me free. I tried to turn and fight, and he bashed my skull but good. I went down. When I woke, I found myself tied…” His voice had tightened until that last word seemed choked out around breath gone ragged. “Let me just say I was no longer a virgin before the night was through.”

I stood slowly, horror churning in my stomach so furiously it felt as if I’d swallowed live eels. I stepped carefully to him. He never moved. Fine vibrations rippled through his body. His arm hair stood on end. I laid a hand on him and he shuddered. Careful to touch him on neutral skin—the forearm, then the elbow, the biceps and finally his shoulder—I refused to be shaken. I reached up and pulled his hair back, tucking the thick mass behind his ear. It was then that he pulled away.
 

I tugged gently on his hair. “Don’t. Please.” I laid a hand on his cheek and he closed his eyes, swaying into me, and I felt the first great tremor wrack him. I turned him to face me, and he let me before he unexpectedly wrapped his arms around me. We stood there without speaking, leaning into one another as the minutes built and ebbed and flowed around us, immune as only time can be to the devastation and suffering of the soul. I laid a hand over his heart and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath.

“He swore to return for me, Maddy, to take me with him. I would suffer or service him at his pleasure for eternity. He delighted in telling me he could see the darkness in me, that he would claim it as his own someday. Part of me believed he said it to torment me. Another part simply believed him. Following that night, I made it my goal in life to harness as much power as I could so that I would never fall victim to him or any other ever again. When I reached my full size, I worked to grow physically stronger. I learned the Dark Arts so I might stand a better chance of defending myself. Until now, I never entered into a relationship where my partner was more precious to me than my own life. And I have lived every moment of every day waiting for him to return so I could end the bastard.” He rested his forehead against mine, and his arms tightened around my waist. “It was Agares, Maddy. I won’t go with him. But now there’s more than me to consider. I will not let him take either of us,
a mhuirnín
. That,
that
is why I told Stearns and Mark to kill you if I was wounded or killed myself. It would be a kinder fate than anything he might hold in store for you.”