The Taken

Chapter Nineteen

Dawn was tugging at the skyline by the time Grif headed back to Tony’s, carefully navigating the wide streets in Kit’s precious car. If what remained of the night had a scent, it’d be heavy ash and cheap perfume. If it had weight, it’d be a hangover. If it had emotion, it’d be regret. The whole damned thing-from Chambers’s party and Ray’s skin club to the call that’d led him and Kit to death-had left a bad taste in Grif’s mouth. It was the taste of humanity’s underbelly, and he wished there was some way-other than the obvious-to wash it away.

On top of it all, Anas was stalking him. Grif couldn’t see her, but he’d have known it even without her appearance at the stables. The ability that allowed him to open locked doors and communicate with the Pure and feel the combustible heat in Hitchens’s heart was also an instinct. It was an inborn lightning rod, giving him advanced warning, if not protection, from an oncoming storm. The angel was near, she was furious, and she was making it clear she still wanted Kit dead.

Which put her and Grif at absolute odds. Because Grif was no longer here just for himself, or even for Evie. His wife was long dead, and whatever restitution he could give her would be a cold, unknown comfort. However, Kit was warm and alive, and if she were to perish now, he wouldn’t feel mere guilt.

He’d want to die, he realized… and then he’d want to die again.

The thought pulled his chest tight. If he wasn’t careful, his headache would return. Sarge might be controlling the strength of his fierce mental attacks, but it also seemed the longer he was on the mud the more he could do the same.

But he still couldn’t find his way around this damned city. Where the hell was the entrance to the Country Club?

Grif turned his mind back to Chambers as he searched. He believed, though he couldn’t prove, that the man was behind the murders of those closest to Kit. He also believed and couldn’t prove that those murders were linked to the list initially acquired by Kit and Nicole. More than that, he thought as he finally spotted the club’s exclusive entry, the man’s openness with Grif about the sexual frat parties, and his willingness to host them at his personal property, meant he was also unconcerned with the world at large discovering his little secret. And why would he be? All those men gathered in one room like powerful little lemmings… and not one of them was talking.

And people love to talk, Grif thought, cursing as the road dead-ended before him. Backing up, he wondered what sway Chambers held over the powerful politicians, entertainers, and judges. The cameras in those rooms were part of it, but that wasn’t why Nicole Rockwell had died. Like Kit, she’d no idea about his estate parties.

So back to the Wayfarer Motel. To something connecting the two sexual enterprises. But what? Grif thought, finally spotting Tony’s long horseshoe entry. And who?

Pulling the car to a stop at the top of the private drive, Grif inwardly patted himself on the back for seeing Kit’s little treasure safe, and stretched into the night. Exhaustion was etched on his insides. Fatigue was something else he’d forgotten about his mortal years.

And the bone-weariness cost him. Grif had already shut Tony’s front door when his intuition caught up with his thoughts. The dregs of the weighty, ash-strewn night weren’t ready to be washed away after all.

A shadow lunged. Six feet, one-ninety, favoring his right. Grif leaped left… right into Lance Schmidt’s iron grip.

“You’re not as pretty up close,” Grif gasped, right before Schmidt blew out his kidney. He folded with the bolt of pain, immediately hobbled. The fist that rocked his jaw corrected his posture, and the headache he’d been dodging all night splintered his brain.

Booted feet caved in his stomach, cracking ribs, then a thud, and he was flipped, his mouth blooming with numbness and blood.

“Not so pretty, either…” he heard, right before steel-tipped toes found his head, his ear. Then he heard nothing.

His breath wouldn’t come. He was dying-he suddenly remembered it from the first time, and couldn’t help wondering if Sarge would send another Centurion or if he’d be expected to trudge back into the Everlast alone. Probably the latter. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know the way.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t dead yet. Grif opened his eyes-about all he could manage-and immediately regretted it. He’d only suspected that Hitchens was headed down a violent path, but Schmidt’s cold, marbled gaze told Grif that he’d killed before… and he enjoyed it.

Grif almost wished the man would torture him. Then, once Schmidt’s time was up on this mudflat, his soul would be shipped directly off to the forest. He’d have to endure every moment of pain he’d ever caused, and do so at the hands of the relentless, single-minded Third. And, oh, how they’d love to destroy this cruel soul again and again and again.

But Schmidt pulled out a gun instead. So it was to be silent and fast. Without another word, Schmidt compressed the trigger in a slow-motion squeeze that still lasted too long. Braced for death, Grif could only watch in frame-by-frame increments as the bullet left the chamber.

Then Grif’s shoulder blades flared with pain as Anne intercepted.

No. Not Anne. That was an unremarkable name meant for mortal lips. The creature who caught the fired bullet with the sharp edges of pointed teeth was Anas-the Pure, created by God, numbered among the Powers, tribal kin to the Dominations and Virtues, the first of the created angels who controlled demons and guarded the heavens… and who, self-admittedly, wouldn’t help a mortal even if her own soulless life depended on it.

Spitting the bullet back at Schmidt, who flinched, wide-eyed, when it burned his skin, she checked on Grif with a sidelong gaze and a growl.

“Your eyes are healed,” Grif slurred… or maybe he just thought it. He couldn’t be sure his larynx wasn’t crushed. He couldn’t be sure of anything, because that was when all hell broke loose, though Grif was no longer conscious to see it.

Memory. Teeth and wings, fire and full-throttle screams. It was all that remained of the chaos following Anne’s rescue. Or maybe he’d dreamed his second death, the blood slowing, the tissue dying. Even Grif’s beaten and bruised flesh merely echoed with the abuse, like a sad note lingering on the air, though paralysis had settled in his bones. When he tried to lift his head, nothing happened.

“A few more minutes,” Anne said, a giant shadow passing above him. Memory flashed again and he saw her bending, lifting, healing, but then she, and the thought, disappeared. “You’ll never even know it happened.”

Untrue. His memory had proven intractably stubborn… though his flesh was proving as weak and fragile as ever. Yet Anne’s healing touch worked. He was sitting up within five minutes, standing unassisted in ten. Even his back, where his wings had been ripped away, felt strong, solid, and whole. “You saved me,” he said, wobbly as a newborn deer in the middle of Tony’s wide, wood-paneled living room.

Anne cut him an annoyed look, and his breath caught. Her eyes were blue from corner to corner, and roiling like storm clouds beneath tightly curled lashes. She waited until his heartbeat had settled, then went back to staring out the window as the sun rose over the dewy green.

“Did you kill them?” Grif asked.

This time she looked at him like she wished she’d let him die. “Kill a child of God?”

“Right.” Stupid question. He cleared his throat. “So…?”

“They left,” she said, back to him. “Ran. Though your would-be assassin accidentally drilled a hole in the side of his partner.”

“Must have seen a ghost,” Grif said, stretching. That was better. “So how’s his buddy?”

“Couldn’t you tell? He’ll be dead within the hour.”

Grif froze mid-stretch.

“Come on, Shaw,” Anne said with undisguised disgust. “You’re a Centurion. You can still sense death coming for others.”

Grif shook his head. “I blocked it out.”

He’d been working so hard to ignore his angelic side, to use the time left on the mud to clear his name, that he’d missed death coming for him.

Yet Anne’s words jogged another memory from Chambers’s gala.

“Didn’t you smell that?” he’d asked Kit after they’d walked away from Paul, but she’d waved the question away and Grif let it go. But he recognized it now. Paul had reeked of post-mortem plasma.

“Use it or lose it,” Anne said, without sympathy.

That must be why Grif hadn’t perceived the swirling mist, the sign of impending death he’d relied on most, though in retrospect even Paul’s voice had sounded tinny, the echo of the hourglass running out. “It was the same smell that was stalking Paul earlier tonight.”

Anne merely continued gazing out the window. Grif joined her, staring until she was compelled to turn his way. Up close, the eyes roiled like an azure cyclone. “Why’d you interfere?”

Now she sneered. “Because I know what you’re trying to forget. You’re not human, Shaw.”

“So why help me, Anne? If I’m gone, Kit dies, and you’re back in the Everlast. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Glancing down at a rip in her silk blouse, Anne stroked the soft material with her fingertips, and frowned. “Katherine Craig will die anyway. But I can’t return to the Everlast unless you, the man who bound her to that fate, escort her there. She’s your Take, Shaw. And you’re mine.”

And he couldn’t Take Kit if he’d already been shipped back to incubation to heal from the trauma of yet another death. So Anne needed him alive and near Kit, but they couldn’t order him to harm her… and couldn’t stop him from protecting her, either.

“Of course… now you owe me.”

Grif tilted his head. “Which means?”

“If you were to speed things along, I wouldn’t forget the deed.” She tried on a smile, but it looked like a puzzle on her face, and Grif didn’t smile back.

“You mean kill her myself so you’ll play nice with me in the Everlast.”

“You’ve already killed her,” Anne said coolly. “You need merely to put her out of her misery.”

Grif turned away, but Anne was there, too, and Grif hadn’t even seen her move. “Don’t walk away from me.”

So he leaned against the thick bulletproof glass. “Were you trying to scare her at Chambers’s house?”

Anne smiled, mouth unnaturally wide. The flesh she was so regrettably trapped in wasn’t a perfect fit. She wore it like a sweater that was too tight and so her expressions bulged in places they shouldn’t. “To death.”

Grif began shaking his head. “No, I-”

“Kill her!” Anne yelled, and she lashed out with her fist, not at Grif-no, she couldn’t do that-but at the barrier that’d protected Tony for the last fifty years. The glass wall fell in a shower of sharp drops, and Anne jerked away, as surprised as Grif by the outburst. More surprised at the blood welling in her palm. She jerked back at Grif’s touch, but when he held firm, she allowed him to take hold of her arm.

“You catch bullets with your teeth,” he said quietly, “but you bleed when you break glass?”

“It’s this flesh!” she cried, the sound of mourning doves in her voice. “It’s a handicap! I am dying in here, can’t you see?”

Welcome to the club, Grif thought, releasing her arm. “That’s the human condition, Anne. As long as you’re alive, you’re dying.”

Shooting him a squalling, blue-stained glare, Anne pinched together her wounds. The skin melded where it touched, and she massaged it like clay until it was once again smooth and the blood was wiped away. However, Tony’s fishbowl was a mess. He’s gonna be pissed, Grif thought, huffing as he looked around.

“Nice job…” he began, but when he looked back at Anne’s face, a lone blue tear slid over her cheek, trailing wet stardust.

“This is not my nature,” she said, her powerful voice a mere whimper, a child’s despair carved on her smooth, perfect features. “This is not my way.”

Grif had never even heard of a Pure in need of comfort, much less seen one. But he understood.

“Come here,” he said, holding out his arm. When she only looked at it, he moved to her side, and drew her close. Anne stiffened, then suddenly slumped. It was the first human empathy she’d ever known. Grif guided her to the half-moon sofa, settled her back with a chenille throw across her lap, and a pillow tucked behind her neck. Telling her to wait, he raided Tony’s beloved wine rack, choosing the bottle the old guy had pointed out as his favorite, one he’d been saving for decades.

“It’s for a good cause,” Grif muttered apologetically, pulling the cork from the bottle. Only the best for a Pure. Yet he hesitated in handing the glass to her. “You said you couldn’t bear all five senses at the same time. Your eyesight is back…”

“My touch is gone,” she said, running her fingertips along the chenille, and then back up to the rip in her silk. Fingering the material, she looked genuinely sad. “I never knew a material thing could be as soft and cool as the wind.”

Blinking, she lifted her gaze to Grif’s, and nodded as she accepted the glass. Holding it on her lap, she said, “My sense of touch was acute when I arrived, but then it just went blank. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t feel things anymore, it was like they didn’t even exist. That’s when the colors flooded in.”

Anne leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Now I know why a rainbow is a gift. Oh, and the glorious dimension of everyday objects. I spent this entire morning studying a single rose.” She raised her head, and the blue depths of her eyes were wide with the memory of her first rose. “Did you know that life thrums through the veins of every petal? It’s so alive that humans try to wear its secrets.”

Grif lowered himself to the lounger across from Anne, and shook his head. He hadn’t known any of that.

“But the touch is gone. Textures mean nothing to me anymore.” She stared wonderingly at her palm, then said as if to herself, “And somehow… they mean more than before.”

“Because you can’t unknow your life’s experiences,” Grif said. This was his area of expertise.

She looked at Grif. “I must go home.”

Sighing, Grif leaned back in his lounger, then held up his glass. Staring at Anne through the dark cranberry stain, he said, “Do you know why people drink this? I mean, wine instead of beer or scotch or vodka? Or anything else?”

“I do not know why one would drink at all.”

Nodding once, he continued, “It’s because wine tells a story. If a bottle is properly stored, and this one was, you will taste a juice that is changed only in age. The rest remains the same as when it was bottled. All the choices the winemaker made in picking the grapes, and blending them, and storing them are in the bottle. You taste the fruit, but you also taste the wood of the cask as if it were a living thing-and, of course, it once was. You taste the storm that hit right before the grapes were picked, and whether it cooled them too quickly. You taste the earth… the way it was fed, when it was watered, and if it was healthy.

“All these things come together in a simple bottle, and when you drink it, a climate and a man you never knew, and a bit of mud you never actually stepped foot on, reveal themselves to you. It’s the personal history of the world recorded in a bottle. This one is the record of the year Tony was born.” He jerked his head. “Taste it.”

It was fascinating, watching a Pure experience sensation for the first time. She tried to hide the foreign emotions, but there was no controlling her surprise when the first drop of wine hit her lips. As her eyes fluttered shut and her throat hummed, Grif could almost follow its path as it rolled down her tongue, igniting the sweet and sour taste buds, before sliding into her throat, disappearing in a mysterious heat of knowledge in her belly’s core.

“Now that’s a story,” he said, lifting his glass in a toast when her eyes finally refocused.

For a moment, Anne didn’t move at all. Then, just as he spied more blue tears filling her eyes with liquid stardust, she opened her mouth and screamed. A raven’s rabid screech ripped the air, accompanied by bared teeth and bulging eyes. The cry blew through the room, elongating until there should have been a hesitation. Yet the moment when any man would have to draw breath passed, and the weight behind the spine-scraping pitch only increased. Lifting, the tonsil-ripping howl reached another crescendo, then snapped like a band into a numbing silence. Feeling a pressure grow above him, Grif looked up.

Lightning cracked through the ceiling to arrow between him and Anne. For an eye’s blink, Grif caught the origins of the unnatural fire bolt. Through the rooftop, past ozone and sky, a grainy membrane lay ripped like skin. A tangle of color rested behind that-the rainbow God unfurled onto the Surface, bunched up like ribbon in a box. Anne’s cry ripped the seams of God’s promise, allowing an even briefer view of what lay on its other side.

Paradise.

Grif’s cry joined Anne’s at the sight, and he reached up toward the wonder, both everything and an abyss. Every element of the universe was mashed together in undulating effervescence; flame burning behind frost, velvety clouds roiling over gold sheets of evaporating water, peaceful pockets of darkness, inflamed and full, like bulging black hearts. Grif listed toward it like a sailor toward the siren’s call. Yearning rose in his chest like a wave, followed by an ache that crashed in to lay him flat.

All of his losses-his life, Evelyn’s, the unknown future of their doomed past-they all reached from inside to choke him. Yet the beauty above spoke to him, as if only to him, and his mouth opened to form a reply from his heart. Across from him, Anne was speaking in tongues. Even with tortured minds and broken spirits, even bound to the Surface, they ached for God’s presence. It would be like being drawn back into the womb. It would be rest. It was the only real redemption there was.

It took Grif longer to recover from the sight of Paradise than it did from the attack. But it left Anne even worse off than before. After she’d stopped screaming-mending the rainbow, sealing the membrane, stitching the sky, raising the roof-the beautiful chaos disappeared, and the world was normal once more. But Anne was curled around herself and looking about blankly, wide-eyed at the room, as if she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there.

Then, azure eyes blazing mad, she said, “Kill her.”

“No.”

A bolt shot into Grif so quickly he was smoldering before he realized her fiery wings had flared. Now he was the one forced into the fetal position, but she didn’t allow him to remain there, curled around his burning belly. A long arm forced his gaze up and the dusty scent that had stalked Paul, as well as tonight’s attacker, blew into his lungs as Anne hissed.

“Then I leave you both to your fates.”

And she hit him so hard his mortal senses fractured, and darkness spun to claim him, and the blue-eyed Pure was instantly gone.