“Oh, just tell him,” Dinah said. “I want him to stay so I have someone to talk to.”
She didn’t wrap that up with “in case we get stuffed into a box again.” Which was what I’d done with my guns when I’d left the life of an assassin so many years ago.
“That won’t happen again, Dinah. I will never put my guns down,” I said.
She shivered. “Good. Now, tell him how you know the fallen will be here. He’s too dumb to realize that you’ve done this a time or two.”
I checked the elevator; we were about halfway up. “Where would you go if you were the fallen, cast out of heaven for some reason? When you hunt, you have to put yourself into the shoes of your prey. This is where I would go, if it were me,” I said.
The elevator binged and the doors slid open. I stepped out and snapped my fingers so Ruby stuck close. Not that I was terribly worried. She didn’t seem inclined to leave my side. I made my way past the tourist shop full of tchotchkes and T-shirts emblazoned with NY and Empire State Building. I moved to the outer balcony that was caged in to keep people from jumping off.
A blast of hot air slid around me as I left the cool interior of the building. I went to the edge of the balcony and wrapped my fingers around the metal grating as I stared out over the city I knew inside and out. I dropped my hand to the top of Ruby’s head, centering myself.
Here, this had been my hunting grounds for so many years, and there were very few parts of it I hadn’t been in, that I hadn’t killed in.
I stilled my body and waited, breathing in the summer air that was a mixture of heat and smog. My mind wandered and I found myself sliding into the meditation that had allowed me to mentally escape the facility. No longer cutting myself off from my real self, the world beyond the one I could touch opened and I saw Bear. He stared at me, his face a little more healed, but his eyes wary.
“Look for Anita. I sent her,” I said. “Be safe, keep your sister safe.”
His eyes widened and he nodded and then was gone. Why the wide eyes though? Because I knew? Or had something more happened?
My hands began to cramp as I stood there and the time slid by. The day passed and the tourists began to thin as the closing hours approached. I made myself move, stepping away from the view and making my way around the circular balcony as the employees did a pass looking for stray tourists.
It was not difficult to avoid them seeing as they were too busy flirting with one another to notice they were being outpaced by me and Ruby, and they quickly went back inside, grabbing at each other as they went.
Idiots.
“What about the cameras?” Dinah asked, snapping me back to the moment.
I moved to stand right under a camera and settled my back against the stone wall, and the dog again lay at my feet, her one good eye closed, totally relaxed. “Happy?” I asked Dinah.
“Better. I mean, you’re all about going undetected and here you are right in front of the cameras like a diva,” she bitched at me, and I smiled.
“Thanks. I was watching those two getting cozy. Love is a dangerous game, one that too many people lose at. It boggles the mind that anyone plays it anymore,” I said, thinking about Killian. I’d taken a chance on love twice. Once with Bear’s father, and he turned out to be the biggest liar of them all; I’d had to kill him to keep not only myself but our son safe. Killian had . . . he’d shown me what it was to have a real partner, one who stood by you. I touched my head, my memories of the night I’d given birth raw and unsteady. I wanted to believe that he had let me go because he’d thought me dead. And not because he’d made a deal that they’d take me and he’d be free. Even that I could be okay with if it was for my children.
My heart still clenched, though, and I hated the emotion. Emotions would get one killed faster than anything else and I drove them all down deep.
A boom of thunder in the distance turned my head. Storm clouds thick and gray rolled toward us with an unnatural speed, darkening the already dimming light of the evening.
“Here we go,” I said.
I didn’t move so much as a muscle twitch as the rolling clouds settled around the top of the building, slowed and then parted. A figure dropped out of the clouds and landed in a crouch at the corner across from me. I stared, trying to piece together what I was seeing.
She stood, but that wasn’t quite right. Her back was stooped and her body was rail thin. Wings that looked tattered and bruised were tucked in tightly to her body and seemed too small to support her slight weight. Brilliantly white hair was pulled back from her face in a single braid that hung long over one shoulder with a few tendrils escaping their bonds. It was tied off with a series of daisies that had wilted.
Bright blue eyes peered at me. “You found me awfully quick.”
I didn’t move from my place. “Ornias gave me the clue.”
She snorted and shuffled a few feet closer, a walking stick appearing out of nowhere. She gripped it hard and leaned heavily on it. “He was always a right bastard, that one. You know, I stuffed him in that church all those years ago. I found it amusing to throw it in their faces that a demon could survive in one of their sacred buildings.” She pointed to the sky with her stick and there was a
