I grabbed the creature’s arm and held on to it.
It batted its wings and flew higher, shrieking in what I could only describe as joy. Then it released me. I clung on to its arm. It looked down at me, bared its teeth, and bit my hand. Pain pain pain. I released it and fell.
Just before I closed my eyes, I saw the light.
Chapter Fifteen
Michael carried me. He landed on the steps and hurtled forward before finding his balance so we didn’t fall flat on our faces. He mumbled something under his breath. I was too busy passing out to decipher it. He shook me, and I lifted my heavy eyelids. Through a daze, I found comfort in the golden flecks in his eyes. He carried me through a hall, past the stairs, took a left through the kitchen where the staff gasped and scattered, then past pillars of some sort. He descended. We arrived inside a place where the lights shone dimly in a soothing, sensual manner. It smelled of mint, and the warm air heated my cold body. I welcomed the change.
Michael deposited me on the chilly tile near a massive pool, one a Roman emperor would envy. Next to me, the steam licked my arm. Michael knelt and pressed his hand over the wound on my collarbone. Heat burned the flesh. I cried out, my back bending.
He didn’t relent. My skin prickled with heat, as if sparks of fireworks lit inside my body. I started shaking. “Please, please stop.”
He wouldn’t. His eyes started glowing.
Bloody and battered, I couldn’t escape, though I tried pushing him away. My chin quivered, but instead of crying, I counted the stars drawn on the blue sky on the ceiling. Next, he tore off my clothes, his gaze scanning my body. He took my stabbed hand into his and burned through it. If someone put my arm inside a fireplace, I imagine that would feel the same. Naked, dirty, helpless, burning, I cried. I cried until he leaned back and picked me up like a child. He cradled me, and we sat there for a while, me snotting over his shoulder, him saying nothing but running his palm over my back.
“Bathe in the healing waters,” he said. “Your wounds will seal, and maybe you won’t even scar. The water will heal and reenergize you.” Gently, he dropped me into the pool, and I sighed in relief. Even though the temperature was that of a spa, hot, almost too hot, the way it prickled and soothed my skin and wounds took my pain away.
Gaze on the other side of the pool, Michael walked over the water. Standing above the middle of the pool, he flared out his wings and shook them. Blood and dirt splattered the walls. The heavy smell of the cookie-dough fog that came off his wings got stuck in my nose, and I sneezed. Michael’s torso was covered in cuts and blood, his wings hanging lower than usual. What could possibly wound and tire a powerful angel like him? I didn’t want to know. Before my eyes, the claw marks on his chest started closing.
I touched my collarbone. That wound had closed too.
“You can heal?” I asked.
“Most angels can.” Michael sank into the bath. Blood from the wounds on his chest colored the water red. Above the water, only his eyes peeked, the unearthly glow directed at me. I became aware of my nudity. The clear water on my end provided him a view, though I don’t believe he watched me in a sensual way. He appeared calculating, thinking.
There wasn’t much I could do about being naked, and I wasn’t going to leave these baths anytime soon.
“How did you end up on the street?” he asked.
I told the whole story of how I searched for maps, the angel that came and said I needed to get out and find the Ducklings. “Some training exercise,” I concluded.
“Julia, no officer of mine should send an untrained soldier out into the streets. That was not the squad.”
I threw up my hands. “I didn’t know that.”
“Mistakes rarely happen in this Court, and I’ll get to the bottom of it.” Michael pinned me with his gaze and rose, the water at his chest level. “I will make a soldier out of you if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Okay. I definitely see why you’d want to make a soldier out of me and why I’d need self-defense. I’m a pretty good runner. I have that going for me.” Water rippled as Michael approached. Aware of my nudity but not his, I fisted my hands.
“Why didn’t you run, then?” he asked and placed his palms on the pool’s edge on either side of my head.
I traced an almost invisible scar on his chest, and as I did so, under my fingertip, it healed.
“I planned to run. I even tried, but I couldn’t see anything.”
“That’s why we run in the dead of night. You will note three in the morning is the dead of night. A mortal cannot see in the dark, and my soldiers, the trained ones who don’t whine about the waking hour, learn how to fight without sight. They develop a sense of smell, touch, and particularly hearing. What you came across in the town were nothing but minions. We call them the Marked. What is yet to arrive here is much worse. You must train, and train hard, and you must start living in my world. Not later, or tomorrow, or the next day. Today. Because, Julia, I would rather surrender than watch you die.”
I lifted my face. “What happens if you surrender?”
Michael bent his head and pecked my lips. “The Veil breaks, and the creatures of your nightmares spill into the mortal realm. The energy attracts the fallen angels, those who fell from grace. Lucifer doesn’t like to share, meaning any of my successors will face him. And fail. Hell reigns as Lucifer battles for power.
