"How do you know about that?"
She shrugged. "I've spent time in the human world. I've studied their history."
"So have I." The shadows were back in his eyes again, the dangerous set to his mouth that made him seem so formidable. But he regarded her curiously. "Won't someone be missing you? Your family? Your great-grandsire?"
"I don't stay in one place for long. They're used to my absences."
"So no one looks after you."
"I look after myself," she said with a trace of irritation. "I got you here."
"Despite my command to leave me."
"It wasn't a command," she protested.
Jonah snorted. "It most certainly was, and you ignored it."
She rose, went to the water. For a moment he thought she was going to dive, metamorphose into her other self and leave him there. Rising, he came up behind her, not yet touching her but standing just at her back. Feeling her hair brush his chest, his abdomen, he gazed down over the top of her head at the swell of her breasts, the pink tips so recently suckled. One was abraded from the fierceness with which he'd laved her, and that enduring mark gave him an odd sense of satisfaction.
"I'm not angry with you, little one. I just didn't want you hurt on my behalf. I am grateful for your help." It was somewhat of a lie, he knew. The darkness had been welcoming, quiet. Even through the pain there'd been a lure to it that had almost made him want to forcibly resist her help.
But she'd been persistent. Thinking about it now, he realized it had reminded him of the presence of the Lady. That determined reassurance that spread from the heart into the rest of the body, bringing a calming peace. Creating a desire to be closer to Her, to step inside Her essence and never leave. When he'd surfaced enough to realize it was a mermaid, risking her life to take him to shelter, it had surprised him. Also thinking about it now, it angered him. In a sea full of creatures stronger, more capable, they'd allowed one young girl to risk her life and sanity for him.
He needed to send her away. She would be in danger here. He couldn't let his weaknesses cause her further harm.
"My lord?" Her voice was soft, her breath on his skin. He had both arms around her, one across her breasts, his forearm pressed to her beating heart, the other wrapped over her waist, holding her against him. His one undamaged wing had swept around and covered her in front, cocooning her. His feathers brushed their toes.
"Yes, Anna?"
She pressed her temple against his jaw, an unexpected gesture of comfort. After a pause, she spoke hesitantly. "I've seen your kind once or twice. At first, I thought I was seeing the wind moving the clouds under the eye of moonlight, but then it was like the glitter of green light that ripples over the sand's surface when you walk upon it. You know, where the weight of your foot ignites the creatures that make the light, telling you they're there and not illusion?"
When he nodded, she continued. "I was floating alone on the surface when they shimmered through the sky. Then they came down lower. Two or three of them."
He could feel her smile pull against his jaw as she recalled the beauty of it. "When the gulls play in the sky, they make it look so effortless, but this eclipsed even that. They danced, the three of them, whirling, twisting, as if they were able to ride the air and yet bend it at once so they could do the most remarkable things."
"Windwalkers," Jonah responded. "They guide the air currents. Alter the tide flow, send seed to the ground, scatter the ashes of things that need dispersal. They are happy creatures."
Apparently, something in his voice turned her regard to him. Under the scrutiny of those large violet eyes with silver rims around the irises, Jonah felt as if he'd been turned inside out. And the view was not pretty.
"There are others," he said gruffly. "Messengers. Healers. Guardians. Watchers."
"What kind of angel are you, my lord? If angels have so many tasks, what is yours?"
I am an angel of death. But he didn't say that. He was afraid if he did, something violent would come forth from him.
He brought destruction. The blood and ash of those he vanquished were part of what the Windwalkers dispersed, before they touched the earth. Swirled away into nothingness, as if the Dark Ones he destroyed never existed. Whereas the bodies of the angels they killed fell heavily to earth and had to be incinerated after the fact.
"What is your purpose, my lord?" she repeated, her head cocked, eyes curious.
Jonah withdrew his touch. "I am not a Windwalker," he said.
Walking away from her, he squatted, naked and pensive, at the water's edge, his functional wing automatically spreading to balance him as the other stayed in a protective half fold. "You've given me some of what you know of angels. Let me give you something I know about mermaids." His gaze rose and pinned her. "A mermaid can't shapeshift unless she is a descendant of the royal house of Neptune, from the bloodline of one particular daughter, cursed by her love for a mortal human."
Anna became very still, and the energy in the cave pressed in even more closely, making it harder for her to breathe. "That is true," she said at last.
He nodded. "It's time for you to go, little one. I cannot endanger one of Neptune's children further. Particularly not one I'm sure he values like a jewel in his trident for her courage."
She blinked. "I don't understand."
Oh, of course you do, she told herself. It was just magic to heal him, you ridiculous child. He's an angel. He's done with you now.
Jonah rose, the shadow of his body making her traitorous limbs shudder in the remembrance of him on top of her, surrounding her as she held him. A fleeting impression, so fleeting she'd call it illusion except she'd learned long ago she couldn't permit herself that kind of cynicism and keep her sanity.
"It's too hazardous for you to be here if the Dark Ones are still seeking me. You've done more than anyone could have asked, and certainly more than I deserve."
She was not going to make a fool of herself. Anna looked down to see his fluids trickling down her leg, her body still flushed and swollen from his attentions. It almost overwhelmed her, then and there. She closed her hands into fists at her side, trying to hold it in.
"If there's nothing more you need, then, my lord." Forcing herself to swallow, she looked up and met his gaze squarely, though she had to firm a trembling chin. She could see understanding in his eyes, regret. If it masked pity for her naivete, she might just die. "How long must you stay here before you can surface?"
"Awhile," he said vaguely. Then he turned away, bending to pick up the battle skirt that had been carelessly tossed aside in their passion. He wrapped it around his hips, belted it, though somehow the concealing garment just emphasized the sensual beauty of his body. If anything, it made him even more appealing, snugging in across his hips, the hem stopping so high on his bare, muscular thighs. Was her moisture on him? Of course it was.
Anna focused past it, tried to concentrate on a niggling sense of wrongness about his response, something that was pushing through her personal concerns. "Awhile, my lord?"
"Aye. I'll rest here a bit, little one. Perhaps more than that. It's a quiet place. A good place." His gaze drifted to the spot where they'd lain. "Already with good memories."
While she was gratified a miniscule amount, her gaze traversed the damp cavern with its bare traces of heat coming from the fissures. It seemed lonely, barren, with the bones of the dragon and nothing else for company. But she was not an angel. What did she know of them other than what she'd learned in the past several hours?
What did she know of anything? She was hardly more than a child to one such as him, anyway. Except for those few moments when she'd been far more than a child.
To suit his purpose.
Six
DAVID sat cross-legged on a bank of clouds, staring down at the mist drifting across the alternating green and blue terrain of the earth's surface. Mostly, he focused on the blue area. He'd made the clouds solid beneath him in order to support his weight. He tried to keep that i
n the back of his mind, despite his other urgent concerns. He didn't want to have his thought flow interrupted by the sudden yank of gravity as he let his attention wander and found his seat had become like the diaphanous waves rolling below in translucent clusters.
He felt Lucifer approach, settle next to him, his black wings brushing David's carefully folded white ones in an affectionate greeting before Luc tucked them in and squatted, his toes curling onto a cloud sphere that formed at his behest and fit just beneath the curve of his feet as if he were an eagle atop the small gold ball of a flagpole.