Angel's Redemption (The Fallen Warriors Series Book 6) (7 page)

She was just a few miles from the base when she sensed the disturbance in the air that announced other angels were nearby.

Her back stiffened in auto response, but then she remembered Michael and Eva were scheduled to lead a training session in the area tonight.

Pride washed over her at the thought of how well Michael had been handling everything these past few weeks. Though she knew he grieved his sister’s death, he’d put those feelings on the backburner, focusing with single-minded determination on bringing down the Tribunal.

He was strong, and with him on their side, their chances of success were infinitely better.

She decided to circle back around and pop in on their training session. A few minutes, and then she would get the rest her body told her she needed.

But when she touched down at the parking lot of the abandoned building where Eva had told her they would be training, a glimmer of unease swept through her spine. Something was off.

Lily was headed toward the crumbling brick building when the muted sound of screams floated to her ears.

Those weren’t normal training sounds, not by far.

Panic set in, and her desire to see what was wrong warred with the instinct to fly away. But before she could decide on a course of action, a figure went tumbling through one of the broken out windows on the ground level. The remaining bit of glass shattered beneath him. He moaned and tried to rise as another figure stepped through the window and marched toward him.

She recognized several things at once. The man on the ground was Adam, and from the blood streaming down his face and hands, he was in bad shape. And the figure striding toward him was none other than Hekam, an angel she’d once known and always hated—the bastard.

If she didn’t intercede
now
, he would kill Adam.

Her heart wrenched at the thought. No, she couldn’t let that happen.

Without pausing to think another moment, she let her wings loose and turned the flame torch into its on position. She screamed out Hekam’s name as she zipped through the air, and he stopped short, his shocked gaze meeting hers.

He saw what she held in her hand, and his eyes went wide. His hands rose to automatically block his face, but that was no match for what she held.

She took great care in aiming the torch at him, lest she accidentally hit Adam, and pressed the button to shoot a lick of white-hot flame right at his face. It caught him on the arms.

An ear-piercing shriek tore from him as his body lit up like a pack of fireworks.

Hekam’s body incinerated almost instantly, and Adam quickly rolled out of the way of the falling ash that served as his remains.

Lily landed right at Adam’s side and knelt to examine his bruised, bloodied face. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he panted. Wincing, he pointed inside the building. “Attacked.”

Lily looked up toward the hole where the window used to be. It now gave her a clear view of the empty ground floor of the building, where a battle, of sorts, was currently being waged. Michael and Eva against four angels.

They were hopelessly outnumbered, and somehow the white-wings had taken advantage of that by divesting them of their flame torches and forcing them to kneel on the ground.

One of the angels now held two in his hand. He carelessly lifted one and aimed it at a human who scrambled by, instantly smothering the human in fire. The other was pointed right at Michael.

“No!” Mindless panic propelled her into flight. She went up and through the window, shooting her torch right at the angel. He exploded into flames, the two torches in his hand dropping to the ground.

Her gaze collided with Michael’s, and time seemed to slow. She could practically see the pulse beating in his throat as he worked out how to act next. Then his gaze lowered to the two torches on the ground, and she could see the moment he decided to go for them.

But then, before he could act, Eva screamed at Lily. “Another one, behind you.”

Everything happened so quickly then that she could barely process it. A body rammed into Lily from behind, knocking her down. The torch flew from her hand as she fell.

At the same exact time, Michael dove for one of the torches on the ground. Before he could reach it, one of the other angels slammed his fist into Michael’s temple. His head hit the ground hard, and his eyes rolled backward.

Eva’s scream echoed through the empty space. “
Noooo!
”

Lily tried to dislodge the weight at her back, but a pair of strong hands grabbed onto the base of one wing and yanked hard. Muscle tore in her back, wrenching a scream of pure agony from her throat.

The angel at her back snatched her ponytail and drove her face to the ground. Her nose broke with a sickening crunch. Blood coated her mouth, and the pain from her face melded with that at her back.

Her vision went black, and through the ringing in her ears, she heard one of the angels say. “Should we kill them?”

“Just the humans,” said another voice. “Ezekiel wants the Fallen and the nephilim.”

She groaned and tried to rise, but a booted foot pressed down on her injured back, sparking a trail of agony through her spine. Then, mercifully, she knew no more.

Chapter Eight

S
eth soared back to the rebel base as fast as his wings could carry him. His heart was currently lodged somewhere near his throat, and his body was numb with disbelief. He could hardly wait to inform his fellow Fallen of what he’d found. They would have to discuss the implications, strategize their next move. Either way, it would be a big one.

His mind racing with possibilities, he touched down in front of the abandoned Brooklyn warehouse and made his way down into the tunnel.

The moment he opened the iron door into the hideout, he was smacked in the face by an avalanche of emotions: fear, panic, and despair all coalescing into one giant mass of energy.

“What the hell?”

He stepped into the control room to see Ethan striding toward him, his face set into a grim mask. Though he held tight control of his emotions, it didn’t take a genius to sense that something was wrong. Very wrong.

“What’s happened?” he asked Ethan.

His fellow Fallen gave him a look that told him to prepare himself. “Michael and Eva were leading a training session nearby when they were attacked by a group of angels. Ruby’s cameras caught much of the incident.”

Seth’s throat tightened as the fear that echoed off every corner of the room gripped him as well. “Are they—”

“They’re still alive, but they were taken to the Central Park tower. By the time we discovered what was going on, it was too late to chase after them.”

Seth fought to calm his dismay. He could certainly understand why everyone was scared. Michael was, in effect, their leader.

“We need to—”

“Wait.” Ethan set his hand on Seth’s shoulder.

Foreboding snaked its way through Seth’s body. He frowned at Ethan. “What?”

A flash of pity lit Ethan’s eyes. “They took Lily too.”

Dread slammed into Seth’s body. He fought the urge to double over at the churning in his gut. “Lily? Was she… hurt?”

Ethan’s jaw tightened. “Unconscious.”

Seth wiped his hands over his face as horror buffeted him. What had they done to her to cause her to lose consciousness? He didn’t dare think of it.

“We must attack.”

Ethan nodded. “Jason and Ruby are of the same mind. I flew out to their training session to inform them of what’d happened, and they are now gathering all the humans we’ve been training to organize an assault.”

Seth gripped his arm. “No. We don’t have time to wait. There’s no telling what they’ll do to them.”

He knew firsthand the horrors of being a prisoner of his kind. Torture. Pain. Those would be a given. His heart broke for Michael, who’d so recently undergone the same treatment, but even more so for Lily and Eva. He shuddered to think what the white-wings might do to them. Once he would have never thought his kind capable of the darker forms of torture, but he’d learned not to place any sort of trust in them whatsoever.

They were capable of anything and everything. And they had
his
Lily.

“Seth.” Ethan placed his other hand atop Seth’s, gripping it firmly. “I assure you, we’re going to do whatever it takes to get them all back. Safe and sound.”

“That’s not good enough.” Giving in to the panic simmering at the surface, Seth pulled back and turned toward the door. “I won’t idly stand by while she’s torn apart by those monsters.”

He got no more than three feet when Ethan yanked on his shoulder, swinging him back around. “Seth, no. Don’t do anything rash.”

“Let go,” Seth snarled. His rage broke free, misdirecting itself at the man standing before him. “I’m going after her.”

“We all are,” Ethan persisted. “Wait for us.”

“No.” He shoved away, stalking blindly to the door. When Ethan’s hand closed over his shoulder once again, he shook him off and kept going.

“Seth, no!”

“Screw you.”

Just as he reached for the door, Ethan slammed into him from behind, knocking him to the ground.

Fury wound through Seth as he tried to dislodge Ethan. Deep down he recognized this was idiotic, that Ethan was only trying to help, but his fear of what was happening to Lily controlled him. He couldn’t simply sit back and wait for a plan.

He would rather die trying to save her.

“Seth.” Ethan gave a growl of anger and the two wrestled on the ground. “Seth, stop.”

He didn’t stop, couldn’t stop. Lost in his emotions, he kept fighting, kept going until Ethan’s mate, Tayla, appeared beside them and she spoke softly. “Seth, no.”

The compassion and determination wafting from her accomplished what Ethan had not been able to. It got him to take pause.

Fear and despair clashed within him as the futility of his struggle penetrated.

Seth blinked back the tears that formed in his vision. “I can’t just leave her there, Tayla.”

She bent to look him in the eye, and Ethan rose off him, crouching on his other side.

“You don’t have to,” she said. “Ruby and the humans are headed toward Central Park now. Almost a hundred of them.”

He rose up onto his elbows. “Right now?”

She nodded, her eyes flashing with heat. “This ends tonight. We’re getting them back, Seth.”

Relief settled around Seth like a blanket. He turned his gaze to Ethan, who gave him a grim nod.

“Tonight,” he murmured in agreement.

Thank the Heavens.

Determination stiffened his spine as he sat up and allowed Ethan to pull him to his feet.

“Before we go, brother,” he said to Ethan, “there’s something you must know.”

Ethan’s brow lifted in question.

“I discovered something. Something big.”

*****

What seemed like an eternity later, Seth soared over the Manhattan skyline with his fellow Fallen at his sides. Aaron’s mate, Samantha, who had the ability to temporarily mask her nephilim presence, had led the group of humans into their attack positions just outside the Central Park angel tower.

They’d had no run-ins with Consortium Guards along the way, which said something. The human lackeys generally patrolled the streets at night to ensure the curfew was honored, but either they’d all deserted their posts after finding out that the angels meant to eradicate all of mankind, or the Tribunal had already done away with them.

“Are you okay?” Ethan asked from beside him. He flew with an unlit flame torch in one hand and his opposite arm tucked around his mate, Tayla.

Seth tightened his grip on the flame torches he held in each hand.

“I will be,” he said grimly. As soon as he laid eyes on Lily once again.

“Remember, our objective is to get to the angel tower as quickly as possible,” Ethan said. “Once they sense our presence, they will most certainly ambush us. The humans will be waiting right outside the tower with their lit torches in hand. With any luck, we’ll quickly make our way inside and open the doors to allow the humans inside.”

That was their best chance of survival. Although there were almost two hundred angels on this world, they were split between angel towers all over the world. The Central Park headquarters would have the largest population of angels, but Seth doubted there would be more than twenty of them.

With close to a hundred humans, all of them carrying weapons, the angels in the tower would be outnumbered.

They stood a chance of actually winning this battle.

Seth felt the moment they flew into the zone of discovery. The tickle along his spine told him other angels were nearby. They would feel the same, which meant time was now of the essence.

Soaring quickly through the air, they approached the tower. The increasing vibration through Seth’s body told him some angels had left the tower and were now headed toward them as well.

“Time to make the drop off,” Ethan called out.

Ethan, Jason, and Nate shot down toward the ground, depositing their nephilim mates beside their human allies, who even now raced for the tower. Then they flew back up to join him and Aaron just as a group of five angels sped toward them, their own lit torches in hand. Their faces were all familiar, of course. Given the small number of his kind, they all knew each other. Seth tried not to think about that as he turned his flame torches on. Any familial bond they might have had was torn when he and his fellow Fallen had been condemned to death. Now, as far as he was concerned, the other angels were nothing but their enemies.

“Now,” Seth yelled. He aimed at the white-wings, and the shootout began.

The next several minutes passed in tense concentration as he and his brethren zigged and zagged through the sky, aiming flame balls at the white-wings while avoiding their answering volleys. One came so close to his wing that he could feel the tip of his feather singe, but thankfully, it didn’t catch fire. The flame was so intense that one little spark would be all it took to almost instantly incinerate him.