No, she wouldn't let her thoughts go in that direction. She'd had to break her never-made but implied promise to Mina. The inexplicable magic that had allowed a simple mermaid to draw one of the universe's most powerful angels out of his element, convince him to accept being turned into a human and drag him through nearly a week's worth of Western human culture, would help her survive long enough to get him there. And once she got him there, the shaman would be able to heal his soul so it would be important to him. She refused to let herself believe anything different. There had to be some kind of sense in the universe. Someone had to have a happy ending, in a situation where a happy ending truly mattered to the balance of the rest of the universe.
"I would prefer to stay with you until you return to your own kind, my lord."
"I would prefer you to be well."
Her eyes opened. "The same goes. I never . . . felt lonely with you. Only safe. Warm. With wings wrapped around me." Her gaze drifted over his wings, which had appeared with sundown, which oddly she couldn't remember happening. Had she drifted off? He'd also shed the jeans for the cooler battle skirt. "Couldn't figure out why my aunt Jude felt afraid . . . but it's you. The way I feel about you."
"I don't want you to be afraid."
"I'm not." She smiled then. "I was loved by an angel. How could I feel a moment of fear?"
Jonah didn't like the serene acceptance in her features, as if they were already down a road where Fate had removed the choice of turning back. Travel by Fate . . .
"You are loved by an angel. You are also the most exasperating female. You have no sense of when not to argue with me."
"My time may be short."
"It is not," he said with sudden, frightening fierceness. Sliding her more deeply into the water, he kept his hand near in case she was too weak to stay above the surface herself in her non-water-breathing form. "Damn it, Anna, I--"
"I meant, if you're going to send me away." She smiled, actually almost laughed at him with her sweet mouth and gentle, all-too-knowing eyes. "Besides," she said sleepily. "If you let David rush me back to the ocean, such an intense and long trip would require him to ground himself, and you've said the easiest way to do so, the most pleasurable way . . ."
He tapped her forehead, managed to catch a strand of hair and tug on it like a group of threads. "I am going to drown you," he promised. "As for David, I'd advise the safest way for him to ground would be a nice, cleansing meditation."
She closed her eyes again, though the smile stayed, fading only as she relaxed against his hand. "Do angels know any songs, my lord? Do you sing?"
"We are trained to do so, yes. The Music Master worked diligently with me for nigh twenty years before he recommended that my tongue be removed so I couldn't cause the next apocalypse with my singing voice."
"Oh, no . . ." Her laughter was a quiet whisper, weak. It made Jonah's vitals tighten with an emotion he'd rarely felt in himself: fear. "No wonder you said your singing would frighten the cellar dweller half to death. But it can't be that bad, truly. Sing something to me. A lullaby. There's one about a sea horse, who twirls himself in a bed of seaweed and swings, back and forth, back and forth, while he watches the light of the moon thread down through the water to him . . . closer and closer, until he swings in the moonbeams."
She sang it for him, soft and easy. Though she spun no magic in her voice, the notes were clear and pure, the magic contained in their sheer simplicity. She ran out of breath, several times, but finished it. "You try."
For her, he did. He rumbled through it while her head came to rest on his knuckle again. She tapped out the time against him. Jonah wanted to kiss her, hug her to him fiercely. He was going to fly her back to the sea himself, to hell with it.
When he was done, her eyes opened to slits, a twinkle in the violet blue depths. "I think the apocalypse has started. I sense great chasms rending the earth."
"You were warned," he reminded her. "Little firefly. You know, it's believed by some that fairies are fallen angels who weren't bad enough for Hell."
"I've heard there are angels as big as giants. One that could whack you with one hand, like a fly."
"While you would be one of those tiny, irritating biting bugs he can't see."
A smile touched her mouth, then died away again. "We're supposed to love all of the Lady's creation, but I admit, my lord, I miss the ocean so much I am beginning to lose an appreciation for what is beautiful about the desert."
"You're in it," he said. When her gaze flickered up to him, her small hand came to rest in the crevice between two of his fingers.
"No matter what happens, my lord, this is not your doing. It was my choice. Even the men you command, it is their choice. Do you know that? They don't expect you to be infallible. They expect you to be a man worth following, even into death or worse."
He swallowed, his hand tightening on her small body. Suddenly he wished she were larger, as large as the Goddess Herself, and he could bury himself in her arms, in her, and escape the feelings those words unexpectedly prodded to life in an aching chest. "How can a man deserve such loyalty, except when he keeps them from being slaughtered?"
"It isn't about keeping them from harm, my lord." She shook her head. "It's about doing what's right and true, not shirking from that. I was frightened of helping you. Did I tell you that? That I thought about swimming away with the others? But that wasn't right. I knew it, when I saw you for the first time."
"You could have been killed."
"Yes, I could. But it would have been worse to make the world a little less bright, because of my cowardice. Such things add up in the subconscious of the world, my lord. Become part of its blood."
"You're too young to understand that."
"No, I'm not. Truth is truth. It's just difficult to accept when you lose the people you love."
She looked up at him as a tear splashed on her abdomen, proportionate to a cup of warm water hitting her skin and splitting into a dozen other drops, warm and salty. Jonah looked away, ashamed of his weakness, but her words made him close his eyes to fight more tears he couldn't afford. "Love adds up in the subconscious of the world as well," she whispered.
He brought his attention back down to her then. When she pressed her forehead against his fingers, the contact resonated throughout his whole body. The way the slight weight of her rested in the cradle of his palm with such trust. The fragile impressions of her curves, the edges of the diaphanous wings. "We're not far now," he repeated, though he was swept by a sudden uncertainty as to what the destination of this journey truly was. What it would mean to both of them. From the first, she'd been leading him, and he'd been shamelessly content to follow.
She nodded, apparently too tired to speak anymore.
The approaching night wind whispered over the desert. Jonah lifted his head, turning in its general direction. Anna stiffened in his grasp as his muscles tightened and the confusion of his thoughts cleared in an instant. The quality of the wind changed, the whispering becoming a sibilant hiss.
Holy Goddess.
"Evil, persistent beasts," he muttered.
Nineteen
IN a flash, Jonah leaped up on the rock, balancing over the bowl and its precious contents. Staring into the dark, he shifted his attention between the multiple approach points, cognizant that they could even come over the rock formation he'd placed at his back.
When he heard something below him, he glanced down to find Anna gazing bemusedly up into the folds of the battle skirt he'd donned just before sundown while she dozed in the water, for he'd felt more comfortable in it.
"If I'm going to die right now, my lord, this will be quite a view to have in my mind. They'll be sure I deserve Purgatory, right from the off."
"I can think of far more justifiable reasons to send you to Purgatory for some discipline," he said, torn between exasperation and amusement.
Even as he teased her, he kept his guard up, searching. If he had to, he'd call Luc and David to him. He wouldn
't risk her life any longer for pride, and she was bound to him now. The Dark Ones wouldn't ignore her. He could feel them shifting out in the darkness, drawing closer, seeking. He and Anna were hidden in the shadows of the rock. Once the Dark Ones found them, they'd announce their discovery with their usual deadly shrieking, diving upon them like unnatural birds of prey. With his energy signature as an angel, it was only a matter of a few moments.
He tensed, crouched down over her. David . . .
With his senses so tuned to the impending threat, he first took the sound for a muted growl. But it was too constant, too . . . mechanical. It was drawing closer as well, getting louder.
Light. Twin lights, piercing the night. A vehicle coming. Coming fast.
Jonah cursed. If the occupants got too close, the Dark Ones would push traces of sadness to full-blown despair, stoke anger over a minor offense to psychotic violence. They'd enlist human help to try to take Jonah down.