Warrior's Angel (The Lost Angels Book 4) (27 page)

Epilogue

Angel stood in the shadows of an alley a block from the scene of the archangels’ battle. She watched in silent understanding as Rhiannon Dante earned her wings and rose above the tumult of Earth alongside her mate, the archangel Michael. The last of the Four Favored had found his archess.

The battle had created a chaos of nearly epic proportions in the streets and buildings surrounding Michael’s. But Angel had seen this kind of thing before. In Texas, in Scotland, in San Francisco.

She knew the archangels’ Guardian would take charge of the cleanup. Vampires commanded by their king, Azrael, would erase minds and video recordings. The archangels themselves would use their abilities to right vehicles and road signs and traffic lights and mend buildings or roads where they’d been cracked or struck by lightning. Any injured mortals would be tended to by the archesses or by Michael, whose curse had been lifted, and who would once more possess the ability to heal.

Angel knew all of this with an easy certainty. It was simple fact.

But it was with a thick mixture of unease and bracing anticipation that she knew what it all
meant
.

The archangels had finished what they’d come to Earth to do. There was no reason any longer for them to remain here, in this realm. But remain, they would. Here, they would stay – until the final archess was located.

Because there weren’t only four. There were
five
.

Angel was the last.

She took another few seconds to watch the winged couple who were embracing one another in the skies above a New York City street, and then she stepped back into the shadows behind her. When she emerged, she was in Chicago.

She glanced up at the thick, dark night to see clouds spinning together. Where the storm had just ended in New York, it was only beginning here. And this one was bigger. It was more significant.

This was
his
storm.

Taking more of a risk than she had ever taken, Angel placed a mental and magical shield around her
self. It would prevent her from being located by someone like Hesperos, the Nightmare King. Now was not the time for him. Now, she needed to be alone.

Alone with t
he dawning of a kind of future, and the ending of another.

Once the shield was in place, Angel moved again through the shadows, slipping fr
om alley to alley across the Windy City until she stood at the base of a building one hundred and ten stories high. For a moment, she only stood there, her eyes closed, her breathing slow and regulated.

When she felt she was as ready as she would ever be, she opened her eyes. She didn’t have to be there. She didn’t have to walk into the lion’s den. But
there was a part of her, that same part of her that grew still and quiet when his face appeared on television or she caught an image of him in a newspaper or magazine article, that accepted there was little point in fighting it. That part of her knew the end had begun, and it wanted to face it head-on.

At least… for a few seconds.

Angel swallowed hard, took one last deep breath, and looked up.

*****

On the magically hidden terrace of a magical apartment on the sixty-sixth floor of a tower eight hundred miles away from Michael and his archess, a man in a dark gray suit grasped the railing of the balcony before him in a bruising grip. The metal bent under his fingers, and his body shook. His eyes flashed, the sky above him darkening further as memories that had been taken from him thousands of years ago were suddenly returned.

All at once.

And he remembered.
Everything
.

There was a step behind him, the soft impa
ct of a high heel on marble. “Sam,” Lilith whispered softly. She didn’t have to say anything else. Nothing further was any longer necessary. She knew what had happened. She knew Michael had found his archess. She knew everything, and had all along. He’d made sure of that.

Samael straightened
, releasing the railing. He felt as if he’d been punched in the gut by the multiverse. And he’d delivered the punch himself.

“I know,” he said simpl
y. His voice cracked slightly. Yes… even
his
voice could crack.

Moments passed, moments in which the entirety of the trut
h surrounded him, stabbed through him, and filled every molecule of his being with the inescapable verity of who and what he was. What he had done.

And who he was searching for.

Then, as if pulled forward by invisible chains, Samael once more grasped the railing – and looked down.

There she was.
She was hiding her true form from the world, as she had for centuries. But he could see it clear as day. He’d seen her in countless dreams, caught her scent on rogue breezes, and heard her voice in echoes he couldn’t quite grasp. And now he knew why.

“I
know
,” he repeated, this time to himself, and to her.

He knew she’d heard him when she took a step back. He could see the tiny retr
eat even at this distance. He knew that she would run from him. She had been running from him for millennia. It could be no other way.
She
could be no other way.

And
he also knew that he would pursue her, to the ends of the Earth and far, far beyond, if need be. Until she was at last his, and he could once more know peace.

“Run, Angel,” he whispered. “Run fast and run far.”
But know
, he added mentally.
I will find you anyway. And when I do, I swear to you that you will never want to leave me again.

*****

“I’m a dragon.”

Mr. Verdigri nodded, as did Mimi’s aunt, Bess.

“A
red
dragon. And you both knew it all along.”

Again, they nodded.

“Pardon my French,” said Mimi frankly, “but WTF?”

Bess
Tanniym bristled and squeezed her hands together, but Mr. Verdigri chuckled softly and sat back in his chair at their round glass table beneath the gazebo in the Swallowtail Foundation atrium. “Your mother was a red dragon. She and your father met very young and had a child together –
you
. Dragons are always born into human form. Later, they either develop their dragon traits or remain human. The chances for both are fifty-fifty.”

Mimi sat back a little and listened intently.

“Should you take on your mother’s genes and develop dragon traits, it was your father’s wish that you come into your true form in your own time and in your own way, young Mimi. Imagine how differently you would have faced the tasks and challenges of everyday life had you known you were not human.”

Mimi blinked. She
wasn’t an unreasonable person, despite her age, so she obediently did as he suggested, and imagined it. It gave her pause. She had a feeling she knew where he was going with his line of reasoning.

Mr. V went on.
“I can guarantee that you would not have taken each task as seriously as you did. You would not have taken the time to learn the things you’ve learned or care about the things you’ve come to care for as you do. Quite frankly, you would have missed out on one of life’s greatest gifts.”

Mimi’s aunt nodded sagely.

“The weakness of humanity is one of its greatest strengths, Mimi,” said Mr. V. “For it is in their weakness that they strive for something more and for something better. Without that weakness, they wouldn’t try at all. There would be no need.”

“So you’re saying you didn’t tell me because you didn’
t want me to be lazy.”

Again, Mr. V laughed
. But at length, he shrugged and nodded, just once. “In a manner of speaking.”

Mimi was quiet for a few minutes. She was processing things. It
was a lot for a kid to take in, the fact that monsters were not only real, but that she was one of them. Not to mention, what was going on with Rhiannon. And Michael. And the others! There was a whole slew of supernatural creatures swarming around her, doing their own things right under her nose. She’d been clueless until now.

Well, sort of. After all, she
had
seen the gargoyles that day coming out of the wall at the studio warehouse.

“Thank you for Strike’s funeral,” she said, changing the subject for a moment. It was just that she felt him missing again – there by her leg. By now, he would have bumped up against her a few times and peeked over the edge of the table to look for scraps she wasn’t going to eat. Or the ones she
was
going to eat. He hadn’t been choosy.

Mr. V had buried him right here in the atrium, and he’d had a friend who happened to be a dragon who was also a
druid
perform the ceremony. There had been magic involved, and an enormous tree with leaves the duo-colors of Strike’s eyes had grown from the soil where he’d been buried. Somehow, that made Mimi feel better.

She would sit under the tree in years to come and
play her Nintendo or do her homework. Or just remember.

“It was a lovely service,” Bess agreed softly.

Mr. Verdigri was silent for a moment, but he nodded, just once. And in his silence, he said enough. Mimi understood.

Again, she changed the subject.
“Cal promised to teach me how to use my fire,” she said, before she took a long drink of her raspberry lemonade. Cal was Calidum, who as it happened, was more or less the leader of the red dragons on Earth. Apparently, he’d been impressed with her at Michael’s apartment, and he’d decided to take her under his wing.

“Good, there is much to learn before you reach maturity. It will help you in every decision you make from here on out, including the eventual selection of your mate.”

Mimi screwed up her face. “
Mate?
”

Mr. V’s smile broadened. He
probably knew it was too soon to speak of such things, but sometimes older people could forget.

“
I’m only dating boys who’ve adopted six cats and can play guitar,” Mimi told him frankly.

Now both Mr. Verdigri and Mimi’s aunt laughed together, Bess rather riotously.
Mimi wasn’t sure what was so funny, but she let them have their chuckle as she finished off her lemonade and the waiter came to replace it with a fresh glass. She thanked him and poked a straw through the ice.

Once they’d calmed down, Mr. V asked for a Mint Julep, and Mimi’s aunt requested a Diet Pepsi with lemon. The waiter left at once to
fulfill the orders.

“Calidum is a good man,” Mr. Verdigri
finally said, nodding to himself. He leaned forward on the table, lacing his fingers together in a business-like fashion.

Mimi
stopped drinking, and released the straw from between her teeth. “How do you know?” she asked.

The table went still. Bess didn’t move, and Mimi had the sudden impression that
they both knew something she didn’t.

Mr. V
looked up, trapping Mimi hard in his emerald gaze. She blinked. Mr. V’s eyes were so green, they had never seemed quite normal to her. Not quite…
human
.

Now, they seemed less so than ever.

“Suffice it to say, I know a thing or two about dragons,” he said cryptically. And left it at that.

*****

“So, no Culmination,” Eleanore mused, pursing her lips in a contemplative manner.

“Apparently no’,” said Gabriel, who’d just twisted the top off a fresh, ice-cold beer from the mansion’s fridge.

Rhiannon looked from one to the other, and then up at Michael, who stood beside her where she sat on the couch. He lowered himself onto the cushioned armrest, and slid his hand beneath her hair to gently rub the back of her neck. It felt good. “Whatever the Culmination is, I think all we can be sure of is that if it’s even real, it could happen at any time,” he said.

“In the meantime, what are we supposed to do?” asked Uriel.

“Continue the way we have been,” said Max. “We do what we were made to do.” He straightened from where he’d been leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. “We fight the bad and help the good.”

“And keep an eye out for Gregori and his minions,” added Juliette.

“Aye,” said Gabriel, as he placed a hand on her thigh and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Which now apparently include the Adarians, whether they like it or no’.”

Apparently, Gregori had not just a few of the Adarians at his disposal, but
all
of them. And according to Michael and his brothers, most of them were supposed to be dead, having been killed in battles against the four archangels or against each other.

Now they could add “raising the dead” to Gregori’s vast and terrifying repertoire.

Eleanore shook her head. “I almost feel sorry for them.”

“
Me too,” agreed Sophie.