It must be the power of that incandescent light, the magical heat of it. She realized abruptly she was sinking with the wing, had been the whole time she was experiencing that heady feeling that seemed to make her aware of all the parts of herself that could stir a lover. Her mouth, her throat, her grasping fingers, the undulation of her hips . . .
Even as the wave of sensations amazed and confused her, a tingling sense of unease penetrated them, warning her that the pleasurable light was struggling, fading somehow.
There was also a definite urgency to its downward motion that couldn't be explained by the weight of waterlogged feathers, mainly because they did not appear waterlogged at all, floating as easily as the tendrils of her own hair. And didn't birds--or birdlike creatures--have hollow, nearly weightless bones?
The wing had maneuvered her off the white sand bottom, down to the nearest shelf another thirty feet below, then to a finger seventy feet below that. From here, she could see one more shelf, and then the ocean tipped off into a much deeper cavern, so deep she was startled out of her reverie by a sense of vertigo. While she could see the wall of coral, covered with tube sponges and sea fans, below that things became much murkier, until it went into complete black, where the light from above wouldn't penetrate, and the water grew far, far colder. There were no reassuring whorls of warmth. They were over the Abyss.
The wing had seduced her like a siren, and sea creatures knew all about the danger of sirens.
Wriggling out of its grasp, she leaped away from it. Because of her sudden surge of apprehension, she whipped around, half expecting pursuit.
It did appear to hesitate, but she told herself it was just the waters she'd stirred, holding it in a momentary vortex. When it drifted down and landed on an outcropping of rock, it began to slide, tumble, toward the edge of the Abyss. As it drifted in that direction, a hunger grew in her heart that she couldn't explain. A need not only to grasp it in her hands again, but the creature to whom it belonged.
Danger . . .
The sonorous call reverberated through the waters, the whales signaling one another, the message picked up and carried by a school of fish that exploded out of the edge of the pit and cut past her on all sides.
The instinctive spear of terror through her vitals made her look up. She couldn't see anything, but somewhere above her, she sensed dark, shifting . . . monsters. There. Red lights, glowing at a distance like signal lights from boats. Red eyes, a color she shouldn't be able to distinguish at this depth unless it belonged to something that contradicted natural law.
Every creature had a honed fight-or-flight sense, necessary to live in a world governed by survival of the fittest. But this was more than the alarm caused by a predator's impersonal hunger closing in on her. This was personal, creeping into the marrow of her bones, a dark, anxious poison spreading out from her internal organs. Even as she was able to identify that the intent was to paralyze her with her own fear, she could not seem to counter it, which made it even more terrifying.
Leave him . . . You cannot help him . . . No concern of yours . . . He cares nothing for your pathetic kind . . .
Dark Ones. The enemies of the angels, of every life form. The power of the compulsion was overwhelming, and it was not a single voice, but many, a malevolent force. As she struggled against it, she managed to throw up a weak protection spell, enough to give herself the space to realize they were not targeting her specifically, but any creature in range that might be giving their target aid.
She couldn't stand against Dark Ones, and she knew nothing of the battles angels fought. Why should she defy the will of that voice of darkness?
As Anna watched the wing make its tumble, she realized it was being drawn to its master, like an innocent child betraying its parent. It was just an amorphous glow now, falling into darkness, like a candle being extinguished. The darkness of the Abyss was total. Final. It would swallow the wing.
The owner of that wing was unprotected, wounded. She was as sure of that as she was that much of the fear battering her senses was real, not just the magical effect of his pursuers.
Abruptly she shot forward, using the powerful propulsion of her midnight blue tail to send her over the edge and arrow down into the Abyss. Seizing the floating wing, she increased the speed of its descent, taking it down, herself with it.
Take me to your master. We must save him if we can.
Two
IT got much colder, very quickly. As she descended, Anna tried not to think of the increasing darkness, the shadows melting together as the light was left behind, heralding the total blackness that waited below. She gripped the wing as if it represented a life-or-death oath she'd taken.
When the curve of her tail touched the edge of another precipice, it startled her. The wing slowly, slowly settled. As it did, she realized it was covering a shape partially illuminated by the wing's fading internal light. When it shifted, the light grew stronger, making her realize it had blanketed another wing whose light was brighter, for it was still attached to its owner.
She floated closer, hovering over him. His eyes were closed and there was a cut on his face, the blue line of severed flesh a smaller version of the alarmingly large open wound on his back, staining the other wing and his skin. Beneath it, he was bruised, covered in welts as if he'd been beaten, clawed. She swallowed.
Another good current, and he would roll over the edge of this outcropping and fall even deeper, to where the temperature could drop beyond what she could bear. But there was nowhere to hide here.
She glanced up. They were coming. In the unnatural despair hovering just at the edge of her consciousness, she could sense them. Scattered, but descending. And they had no intention of helping him, whatever they were.
The wing was drifting, so she reached out to grasp it, only to realize it wasn't drifting. It was . . . shifting. Shifting to align itself with the wound in his back.
Then the wing brushed her. Since she was bent over the angel, it curved around her, pulling her down, low, lower. She tried to free herself, but before she could she was lying upon the side of the inert creature as the wing folded itself around its host. Her alarm eased as Anna realized she was simply inside the wingspan as it curved inward.
She was almost afraid to look into his face at this close range, but curiosity won out over good sense. With that one look she understood why her great-aunt had wept in remembrance.
He was unnaturally beautiful. No, that was wrong. He was as perfect as Nature could make him, and nothing could make anything as Nature did. While her cousins always sought to make themselves more beautiful, as if that were the main reason for existence, one underwater orchid blossom emerging from a crevice of coral put them all to shame.
It hurt the heart to look at something as beautiful as this, so perfect that it was almost an emotion in a physical form. Despite the danger pursuing them, for a moment she was absolutely still, amazed she was close enough to touch. A high, fine brow. Such a straight, straight nose. His hair was dark, so dark it blended with the nearly night color of the water and made her jump when it whispered over her upper arms. As it waved over his face, brushing those sculpted features, she saw the strands of varying lengths formed a shoulder-length mane. One piece apparently had been braided to keep the rest from his line of sight, for it was already half unraveled. The clean-shaven line of his jaw made it almost impossible for her to resist the desire to reach out and touch his face, see what it felt like, smooth skin, chiseled bone. The texture of his mouth. She remembered the way the wing had made her imagine a man's mouth upon hers, and her body unexpectedly tightened all along where it lay against his. She wanted him, but in ways that went far beyond physical and emotional understanding.
She needed to be a part of him. His beauty spoke of light, a light so pure it would burn away the body while the soul clung to it, willing to become ash to be within its presence.
And she would never feel alone again.
This was some strange compulsion,
a different, much more pleasurable form of what the dark creatures had tried to impose on her mind. Anna shook it off with effort and focused on the immediate problem, the insane thing she was about to do. Roll them both deeper into the Abyss.
When she curled her arms around his upper body, it was a reach. He had broad shoulders, necessary to support those wings, she was sure. A wide chest. Unlike human flesh, which felt cold and slippery beneath the water, or sea creatures, which felt soft and sleek, he was somewhere in between--hard muscle and warm, smooth skin. It reassured her, because she'd been uncertain if he would be affected by depth pressures the way humans were. The wing obligingly stayed curled over her. Would it stay with her? Could she hold him as they fell, or would she lose him in the darkness?
As his heart beat against hers, she tightened her arms around him. Closing her eyes, she had to will herself to pay attention to what she was trying to do and not just lie there, clinging blissfully to him until death came to take them both.
She felt her way through the feathers to his side, his waist, an easier holding point. Using her tail, she pushed against the ground, her bare hip bone pressing into his leg. All he wore was a belted, short half tunic that rippled with the water's movement, and she felt the hard muscle of his thigh.