Angel in Chains (The Fallen 3)

“You’re lying to me.”

Okay, some shifters were supposed to be able to pick up on lies, maybe to even smell them, but did angels have some built-in lie detector, too? She didn’t think so.

“No, I’m not.” She’d bluff her way through this.

His smile held a cold edge. “After everything, were you going to just drive away and leave me?”

The darkness was even more intense in him today.

She reached for his hand. “No, I want us to both get the hell out of here.” Unhallowed ground. Translation—ground they needed to f**king get away from. It was working some kind of bad mojo on Az, and she wanted her hero back.

She sure didn’t want to deal with his bizarro dark side.

He glanced down at her hand. She followed his gaze. Her skin seemed so pale, while his was darker, golden.

“I dreamed about you.”

She swallowed. Okay, dreams were good, they were—

“You died in my arms.”

Dreams sucked. When his stare returned to her face, Jade tried to smile. “Good thing dreams don’t come true, huh?”

“For angels, they do.”

Her smile fell away.

“We see when our charges will take their last breath. We know of the moment that we must take them with our touch.” He was holding her hand and stroking his fingers over the back of her knuckles. “I’ve taken thousands of lives. Never hesitated even once. Not like Keenan.”

She had no idea who Keenan was. “Sorry, don’t think I know him.”

Faint lines appeared around his eyes. “Keenan was a powerful Death Angel. But when it came time for him to take his latest charge, he hesitated. He felt sympathy for the mortal, and he didn’t want to take her soul.”

Jade didn’t know what to say, but that was okay because Az wasn’t done talking.

He said, “Keenan lost his wings for her.”

That was kind of sweet. “So they survived? Got to live happily ever after?” Great, now she sounded like a fairy tale. Maybe even a perky greeting-card-wannabe girl.

The goose bumps on her arms were getting worse. A cold wind seemed to surround her.

“Because Keenan didn’t take her when he should have, his mortal was bitten by a vampire.”

Jade tensed.

“Now Nicole St. James has to spend an eternity feeding off others.”

So, not a happy ending.

“Keenan knew what he had to do,” Az continued, voice a deep growl. “I told him, but he wouldn’t give her up. He was ready to trade his life for hers.”

She didn’t like where this was going. “I don’t want anyone to trade for me.” She wouldn’t be taking on that burden, thank you very much. “So if an Angel of Death is coming, he’s coming for me. Not for anyone else.”

The blackness deepened in Az’s eyes. That was just creepy. Was her angel showing some demonic tendencies? He needed to stop. “Let’s get out of here,” she whispered. “Please, Az, let’s just go.”

He leaned over her. Seemed to surround her. “You want me to stand back and let death take you?” Fury snapped through his words.

She didn’t back down. “I want you to get your ass on that motorcycle and get us the hell out of here.” Because she felt like Death was reaching out to grab her with his icy fingers right then.

It’s this place. We’ve got to leave.

Locking his hands around her arms, Az grabbed her and lifted her onto her tiptoes. “I know how Keenan felt,” Az muttered. “What I asked him to do . . . I know now.”

Wonderful. Fabulous. They could—

“I told him to just kill her. To touch her, take her soul, and come back home. To forget about her.”

Jade frowned up at him. That was some cold-blooded shit.

Az’s mouth curled, but that was no grin on his face. “Bastion told you I wasn’t the good guy. And you should know . . . angels can’t lie.”

Oh, hell. She tried to jerk away from him. He just held her tighter.

“I know how Keenan felt,” Az grated. “Because if Bastion came to me and told me to kill you, I’d destroy him.”

She froze.

“How?”

Now Jade was lost. How what?

“What did you do to me?” His hands tightened on her. “I never cared for a human, but I can’t let anyone hurt you.” The blue flashed back again in his eyes, as if he were fighting something. Someone. “Even myself.”

In the next moment, Jade found herself on the back of the motorcycle. Az was in front of her, revving the engine.

“Hold on!”

She locked her arms around his stomach. Held as tight as she could. The motorcycle rocked forward with a blast of power that she didn’t think was entirely natural.

But then, the unnatural was becoming more normal for her every day. Jade glanced back at the old cabin. The woods were so twisted around it now that the vines and vegetation appeared to swallow the place. And, for an instant, she could have sworn she saw thin, ghostly images walking near the woods.

Images that stared after her with fury.

Before vanishing in the light.

Jade turned her head away and pressed her face against Az’s back. Whatever the hell that place had been, she never wanted to go back there again. She had more than enough darkness in her life.

Curses, spirits—they could just stay the hell away from her.

Az braked in front of an all too familiar looking dive in New Orleans. He killed the engine and shoved down the kickstand.

Jade glanced up at the entrance of Sunrise. Didn’t almost dying in the place once mean that they should probably stay away? She thought that might be a good guide for them to follow.

And she realized that she was still clinging tightly to Az. Clearing her throat, she managed to unhand the guy and climb from the motorcycle. “Wanna tell me why we’re walking down bad memory lane? I mean, we’ve got the whole city as a meeting place, did you have to tell Tanner to catch up with us here?” Only, they weren’t meeting Tanner right then. It was a long way until midnight, and she sure didn’t want to just kick the time away in that hole.

Az glanced at her. His blond hair shone in the sunlight. No helmets for them—none had been stashed with the bike. Yeah, they were all about dancing with death.

He studied her a moment. His eyes were back to being that bright blue that she loved—thank goodness. Hopefully, “bad Az” had been left behind at that hell-forsaken cabin in the woods.

“We need brimstone.” He climbed off the motorcycle.