Angel Slayer. Michele Hauf

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СКАЧАТЬ What do you have for me, Bruce?”

      “I tracked the Fallen to an art gallery.”

      “You tag him?”

      The GPS injection gun Bruce wore in a holster was still loaded with a cartridge. “No. But I did discover something very interesting.” He turned and eyed the gallery, still swarming with mortals oohing and aahing over its contents.

      “No tagged vamp? What the hell are you doing? Traipsing through Times Square?”

      “Listen, Antonio, I found some paintings you’ll want to see.”

      “Paintings?”

      “Yes, they were painted by a chick named Eden Campbell. They are all of angels. I think she knows something. They are remarkable.”

      “You’ve never seen an angel, Bruce, what the hell makes you think some woman painting fluffy-winged angels knows something? I’m very disappointed—”

      “In each painting the angel wears a sigil,” Bruce hastened out. “And I know I’ve never seen an angel, but I have seen those symbols in that ancient book you used to summon Zaqiel and the other. They are the same. I know it.”

      He heard shuffling. Antonio must be sitting behind his desk in the cavern. Bruce called the guy’s home a cavern because seventy percent of it was located underground. Five hundred years old and sunlight had never touched his skin. Holy water burned him and he seriously could not see his reflection in a mirror. He was old world all the way.

      “You swear this is serious?” Antonio asked. “I’m sure of it, boss.”

      “Who is the woman? How does she know this?”

      “I have no idea. Some society chick. I missed her. I guess she left before I got here. The gallery closes in a few minutes.”

      “Buy them all,” Antonio ordered. “Ship them to me overnight.”

      “Will do, boss.”

      A thousand years sitting Beneath, doing nothing more than contemplating emptiness, tends to steal a demon’s energy, if not his sense of what is.

      What is, is the world had changed, Ashur told himself. Drastically. He hadn’t afforded the time to look at his surroundings upon arrival here on earth. Immediately he focused on tracking Zaqiel. It was what he did; nothing else concerned him.

      So why was he cruising through an overcrowded city on a strange two-wheeled vehicle with a muse clinging to his back?

      He never got involved with the muse. The woman was merely bait, a necessary lure to bring the Fallen into its half angel/half human form—the only form in which it could be killed. As well, the form it assumed to impregnate the muse.

      Generally Ashur arrived just as the Fallen was going to attempt the muse. Then he slayed the angel.

      His timing was irritatingly off. He should not have been summoned until the very moment of the attempt. Had the rules been altered? And why were the Fallen walking earth again? Hadn’t their ranks been swept away with the great flood?

      He had no concept of how much time had passed since the flood, or since he’d been banished Beneath. Millennia, surely, for the world had changed drastically.

      “Take a left!” the woman yelled over the roar of the motor.

      Ashur liked the noise of the engine as he revved it, but he did not care to take directions from a female. However, he did turn because he had not navigated this city before, and her directions had given Zaqiel the slip many city blocks earlier.

      So long as Zaqiel knew a Sinistari was with the muse, the angel would not approach her. But it was in the angel’s interest to keep his muse in sight, for he could not track her by scent but only by the identifying mark. Though the angelkiss made all senses unnecessary.

      If the muse irritated the angelkiss, it acted like a beacon.

      Ashur did not want to use the angelkiss until he had the woman in a space he could control.

      Slender fingers gripped him tightly about the waist, clinging to the front of his shirt. He’d gained a mortal’s raiments after surfacing from Beneath. Upon arrival following his summons, Ashur had taken a look around, seen what the mortal men were wearing and had assimilated the trousers, shirt, jacket and boots.

      A few minutes observing the men and their motored bikes, and he had learned the driving technique. He’d stolen a bike, leaving behind a crew of leathered bikers shouting at him as they struggled to start their own vehicles. Only one had managed to follow him, but he’d given him the slip.

      He’d sacrificed valuable time gathering a few essential tools of this realm, and because of his delay the Fallen was still alive. Yet the angel would have never attempted the woman out in the open with witnesses. Or would he?

      The world had changed. Ashur expected everything else—including the Fallen—had changed, as well.

      “Drive under there,” she said, pointing toward a slope in the street that lunged beneath a towering cement building. “It’s my building. You can park underneath in the garage.”

      Ashur took in the rows of shiny metal vehicles as he rolled slowly down into the cool, lighted garage. Man had come a long way from the horse-drawn carts he recalled. The improvement was unnecessary to judge from the huge, dense city where he suspected most could walk to and from their destinations.

      And yet the motortzed vehicles were bright and loud. He must get one of those if he were to spend any amount of time here. He slowed and read the words on the back of a vehicle that appealed—Ferrari.

       Concentrate, Ashuriel. Do you fall to the old sins so quickly?

      Heh. Sins? He’d mastered them all. And with ease. Mortal sins were not considered evil or wrong to his kind. In fact, indulgence was a way of life.

      Theft had come easily, without thought. Vanity, well, he wasn’t sure if the clothing he wore was the finest, but he was clothed.

      Lust? Well, that suited him fine. He vaguely recalled that particular mortal sin now as the woman’s fingers impressed upon his chest. Though the particular elements that designed the sin had been lost to him over years of desolation. He knew it had involved touch and emotion and intense physicality. It would come to him, surely.

      Violence would be granted when he shoved Dethnyht into the angel’s glass heart.

      Parking the motorbike, he pulled out the key, sensing he’d need it to restart the thing. He waited for the muse to slide off behind him. He could feel her head pressed against his back and her fingers didn’t so much dig into his chest as affix themselves to it.

      Touch. He pressed a palm over her narrow fingers. Yes, he’d forgotten the pressure of another person’s flesh against his own. So odd how he could feel her warmth even through the shirt. It shimmered through him and—He must stop regarding the sensation.

      “We’re here,” he said. “It is safe now.”

      An easy lie. One thing he did remember was the muse was СКАЧАТЬ