Warrior's Angel (The Lost Angels Book 4) (21 page)

Chapter
Twenty-Five

Michael
slowly removed his hand. Rhiannon felt the world attempt to rush into the space he’d left empty. It was a cold and bereft world, and all she wanted to do was snatch his hand back.

The truth
, she thought with whimsical despondence.
How would I even know the truth at this point?

Michael gave her a slightly admonishing look, as if he could read her mind
and didn’t approve of her mistrust.

Maybe he can
, she thought.
Gregori said he was a vampire
.

“I’m not reading your mind,
Rhiannon. I’m a cop. I can read nearly every thought you possess written clearly across your face.”

“Then how did you know Gregori had spoken with me?”

“I want to explain that to you, if you’ll let me.”

Rhiannon took a deep breath. It shook a little
. She moved to sit cross-legged, feeling at once weary and weak. It had taken a lot of her strength to heal him. His injuries had been vast. “If you want to be honest with me, start by telling me why I came here today to find you in ribbons.”

“I’
ll get to that,” he promised, sliding across the floor to sit directly in front of her, knee to knee. He took a breath as deep as hers had been, and she had the impression he was getting ready to drive down a very rocky road. “Your most recent memories were passed into me when you healed me. I don’t know why, but I’m guessing it has something to do with my vampirism and the fact that you’re my archess. You see, everything Gregori told you was true.” He blinked, and a slight frown marred his forehead. “Well, almost everything. He embellished a bit.” He studied her for a moment, and straightened, appearing to come to a final decision. “I could spend hours telling you all about it, Rhiannon. Or I can just show you. It would be a lot easier than explaining everything. If you trust me.”

Rhiannon frowned. “
Show
me?”

He nodded.

“What, you mean like with a
Vulcan Mind Meld
or something?”

He chuckled, his blue eyes crinkling with hone
st merriment. “You’re not far off, actually. What Gregori told you about me being a vampire was true. But what he didn’t tell you is that I’m more than that. When I was turned, I took on a lot of power, for lack of a better word. All at once.” He glanced away as he obviously tried to come up with the right words to explain the situation. “In effect, several of the abilities I absorbed melded and mixed, creating new ones.”

Now he had the decency to look
slightly chagrined, and his cheeks took on color. “If I wanted to read your mind, I could. You were right to suspect me. But I’m not Rhiannon. What I
will
do, for you, if you agree, is allow you to read
my
mind. I’ll let you in,” he said, leaning forward and placing his fingertips to his temple. “In here.” He straightened again, lowering his hand. “And you’ll know everything.”

Rhiannon fidgeted. She made a soft, desperate sort of sound when the uneasy fluttering sensation she’d been feeling in her gut finally became strong enough to make her twitch. There were butterflies in there, thousands of them. The entire Swallowtail Foundation atrium could have existed inside her stomach, and it wouldn’t have felt any different.

Vampire
, incubus, fallen angel,
mind meld
. Words and images swam through her head, flashing in and out of existence like fish suddenly appearing before a diver in the deep blue of a bottomless abyss. It was a lot to take in.

It wasn’t
that she couldn’t believe the supernatural aspects. She’d had plenty of experience with the “hidden” sides of existence. It wasn’t that, at all.

What s
he couldn’t quite wrap her dizzy head around was
her
part in all of it, the possibility that
she
could be someone so important. That she could be an
angel
. And not only an angel, but the last of four very special angels that had been lost to four
other
very special angels long, long ago.

Ő
rangyalom.

You are my guardian angel.

Michael’s fingers were touching her again, this time to lift her chin, and raise her eyes to his. Once more, his warmth infused her. Admittedly, it gave her strength too, clearing her head a little.

“What do you say?” he asked.

“Will it hurt?”

“Physically, no,” he told her. “But as to whether it hurts emotionally…. I suppose that depends upon how well you come to accept
and handle the truth, Rhiannon.” Again, he brushed her flesh with his thumb, this time across her lips. A shiver she could barely suppress ran its course through her body from head to toe. “But I have a feeling that a fighter like you will be able to handle it just fine.”

Rhiannon’s breathing hitched, her heart skipped a beat, and every ounce of hesitation fled from her all at once
.
Fuck it.

“Fine,” she said aloud. “Do it.”

There was no hesitation. No seconds of build-up, no making her wait. Michael seemed to know exactly what she needed. She had never been a very patient person, and she hated unpleasant surprises. Jack-in-the-box moments had always terrified her.

He spared her of that now, taking her face between both hands and tossing her
consciousness head-long into another world, all at once.

She saw it all play out in front of her like a movie. Each scene told a story, and each story told ten more. She saw his realm, Michael
’s. She witnessed the place where he and the others like him had once resided, in some far off dimension so vastly different than her own. She saw within it creation and destruction, saw mistakes made, battles lost, and wars won. She witnessed the years passing, time sliding inexorably by, slow when it needed to go faster, fast when it needed to slow down.

Then she saw
Earth, the blue marble in the vastness of an endless Cosmos, a tiny period at the end of a single sentence in a single book in a library the size of an ocean in a multiverse with a billion ocean libraries. Upon that tiny planet, she saw what he had seen, knew what he’d come to know.

And then she was opening her eyes, and Michael was leaning over her.

There are moments in a person’s life, if they’re extremely lucky, when everything
in the world finally makes sense. In those moments, it feels like the centrifuge of life stops spinning, and everything comes speeding back toward the center to coalesce into a clear, perfect picture. The carnival music ends. The blur of confusion goes away. And you’re whole again.

The moment moved over and through Rhiannon, bringing the man above her into sharp focus.
Perfect
, she thought.

Mine
, she thought next. And in her heart of hearts, she knew it wasn’t a selfish statement. It was something true. It was meant to be.

“Feel
ing okay?” he asked. “You were out for a few minutes there.”

Rhiannon nodded. At least, she thought sh
e did. Then she licked her lips because they’d gone dry. “I knew
The Masked One
was a vampire.”

Michael blinked. Then he threw back his head and laughed, clearly not having
expected her to say that. He shook his head, and his eyes shined. “He was the first.”

Yes. She knew that now.

Her entire body tingled with his nearness. She saw Michael at the cliff’s edge as a warrior. She saw him in battle after battle, tall and resplendent. Now she knew what kind of person he was – not the monster Gregori had insisted, but a man good and true and strong and
right
. He was everything she had ever wanted in a mate.

Michael’s eyes darted to her mouth
again, and his pupils expanded.

Of all who will perish at the Culmination’s hands, the Four Favored will go first.

Before she fully realized what she was doing, Rhiannon had her hands against Michael’s broad chest. With some effort, she shoved hard, pushing him away. She sat up, breathing hard. He was heavy.

“I could use a drink. You?” She hurriedly
got to her feet and left the living room before she could look back to see Michael’s no doubt baffled expression. In the kitchen, she opened his refrigerator door and stared blankly inside. Her heart was racing, and her body was uncomfortably flushed.

Focus, damn it
.

But a moment later,
she felt the now familiar heat at her back and knew he was directly behind her. She hadn’t even heard him approach.

Vampire
.
Cop
. And who knew what the
incubus
in him was capable of?

She watched as he braced an arm against the side
of the refrigerator, and the muscles in his forearm flexed. Her mouth went a little dry. She tried not to move.

“
Sorry, I don’t shop much.” His lips were just behind her left ear. “I’m accustomed to using the mansion for food; it’s always stocked. All I’ve got left here is beer.”

Rhiannon exhaled quickly. “That’ll
do!” she nearly squeaked.

S
he grabbed the two cans still left in the plastic six-pack holder, tore one of them away, and spun around to face him. She shoved the can into his chest to hand it to him. It was like punching a brick wall.

As soon as he straightened
and his hand came over hers to take the can, she ripped her fingers away and slid past him the way a cat would scoot around an alley corner. That was how she was feeling now, like a cornered cat.

She moved hastily back into the living room and paced a little beside the couch, somewhat afraid to sit down. Where would he sit if she did? Next to her?

She glanced at him when he came to the archway to the kitchen again. He was smiling now, and it was a knowing smile.

He looked sinful in that smile. A
nd in those jeans, despite the drying blood on them. And in that torn, tight tee-shirt that lifted slightly around his narrow waist to reveal taut ridges of a six-pack….

He’s an archangel.

Everything she’d learned from him only moments ago came spinning back into her. With a plop, she sat down on one end of his leather couch. The apartment itself was relatively inexpensive; Formica countertops, linoleum and cheap carpet flooring, few decorations. He hadn’t gone to any trouble to make the apartment luxurious, probably because he had the mansion to go back to when he wanted to. Which she would love to see, herself.

But the couches were honestly nice. She’d been wanting some thick, leather ones like this for a while.

With shaking fingers, she popped open her can of beer and internally congratulated herself on distracting her mind with the furniture.

She looked down at the brand
of beer in her hand. It wasn’t a brand she knew personally, but in general, she hated beer in cans. It got warm too quickly, and there was always a tinny taste to it from the metal.

“I hate beer in cans too,” Michael said easily. He’d leaned one shoulder up against the side of the archway and tucked a thumb into the waistband of his jeans. “But this is all
the store across the street carries.” He took a long swig and swallowed it down. “It’ll do in a pinch.”

Rhiannon
didn’t bother wondering how he knew what she’d been thinking. He’d already assured her he wasn’t reading her mind, and from what she’d learned of him during their
Vulcan Mind Meld
, she had to admit she believed him. He wasn’t that kind of person. Michael was a man of his word. Plus, what he’d said about being a cop and being able to read people’s expressions was also true. She wasn’t exactly hiding things from him.

“So tell me something,” he suddenly said, cutting through the mounting tension with casual ease. “When was it you first found out about your powers as an archess?”

Rhiannon blinked. “An archess….”

He chuckled. “Sorry. I know it’s a new term for you. But that’s what you’ve be
en known as to my brothers and me for thousands of years.”

Rhiannon took an absent-minded drink of her beer. When she lowered it again, she said, “I can’t believe there are three others out there like me.”

“Eleanore, Juliette, and Sophie,” Michael supplied. “They’re good people. Like you. I know you’re going to love them as much as they’re going to love you.”

That heat Rhiannon had felt earlier due to his nearness wasn’t going away. This talk of her being like the other archesses was only making her think about the mating that drew them together. And that mating made her think of Michael.

She cleared her throat. “I… I was almost seven when I first realized I had abilities others didn’t have.”

Michael raised his chin, and his expression became serious, tuning in
to her with the attention of a seasoned cop. He moved to the loveseat across the coffee table from her and sat back to listen. It was odd to have the complete attention of someone like him. It had been thrilling enough before, but now that she knew how important a figure he was, it bordered on baffling.