Page 23

R yder hopped out of his chair, dropping an out-of-date gossip magazine as I bolted past him in the waiting room.

I felt him on my heels as he jogged to catch up to me.

“What happened in there?”

Busting through the automatic doors, I didn’t let my focus drift to anything but what was ahead of me.

“She humiliated me, threatened me, tried to destroy me.”

“Isn’t that what therapists do?” There was a lightness to his question, as if it were a joke, but I was not in the mood.

I shook my head, dispelling the image of Dr. Fairmore before it could cool my heated thoughts.

No. She was just like the rest of them.

“Yes,” I said coldly, my breaths getting faster even as my strides slowed.

“But something else happened in there—” Struggling to get that last part out, I stopped in the middle of the garage, doubling over and gripping my knees.

It felt like an invisible hand clutched my throat.

Ryder placed his palm on my curled spine.

“River, are you okay?”

Pins and needles struck every one of my senses, harsh and jarring and heavy.

What happened to his sixth sense, his hunter’s instinct that had saved me more times than I cared to count?

I managed to whisper, “How did you not see this coming?”

The caress along my spine slowed.

“What happened in there?”

When I didn’t answer, the ground slipped out from beneath me, and sturdy arms cradled my body, tucking themselves around my back and under my legs.

Out of frustration I went rigid, but after a few steps I relaxed into his arms. Ryder really needed to stop sweeping me off my feet or he might think he was actually helping.

But to make that point I’d have to actually stop him.

I lifted my head to do just that, then let it fall back.

I was too winded to argue, and this little nook between his neck and his shoulder against his soft cotton tee unfortunately felt nice.

He carried me through the garage, towards the back, past his car.

I twisted in his grasp, eyeing the Chevy, his responding squeeze meant to assuage my confusion as he stepped onto an unmarked gravel path between the columns.

It led to a courtyard nestled within the neighboring complex, lined with three concrete benches sheltered by individual arbors crawling in orange and pink honeysuckle.

He gently placed me down on one of the benches and took a seat next to me, his eyes lightened by the vines breaching the wooden frames.

A fountain, sculpted into an angel of all things, stood in the middle.

I grimaced, pivoting away from it.

Water trickled in the background—calming, soothing.

The peacefulness of this spot, at complete odds with the chaos next door, brought feeling back to my limbs and words to my mouth.

I repeated my earlier question.

“How did you not see this coming?”

“What?” he asked flatly.

Shifting to my side, I reached into my pocket, relieved to find the feather.

Somehow, it hadn’t burned to a crisp like the rest of them.

“What does this mean?”

Ryder took it by the quill.

He held it to the light, and I was able to see the deep, purple lowlights to the onyx vane.

It was stiff, unlike the flowy plumes I’d find spilling out of my down comforter.

“Is it from a Nephilim? Demon? Something else I don’t know about but can already tell you I don’t want to?”

He lowered the feather, twirling the translucent shaft between his fingertips.

“Remember how I told you demons are the tortured souls of corrupted angels?”

This—this was exactly what I didn’t want to know.

I bit down on my bottom lip.

“This is from one of their wings.”

“So. My therapist is a demon.” Any more pressure on my lip and I’d break the skin.

“Fan-fucking-tastic.” Ryder’s mouth twitched and I swore if he laughed, I’d smack him.

I gripped the bench’s roughened edge.

“I couldn’t see any wings,” I told him, like that’d refute his claim.

It didn’t. “She has them, but they don’t manifest in this dimension. Here, they’re more of a shadow. Kind of like…phantom wings.”

Out of everything Dr. Finis had the potential to be, a demon was honestly the least farfetched.

If he would’ve explained to me that she was an angel, or even just a mortal, that’s when I would’ve stopped believing him, because there was nothing decent or human about her.

As I stared at the chipped wings of the stone angel carved around the tiers of the fountain, my thoughts inevitably trailed to Dr. Fairmore.

Her eyes a brown so rich at certain angles they were almost black, but nothing like the bottomless pits of Dr. Finis’s.

Even if Fairmore knew or had a hunch about the Voices, even if she’d left me high and dry…

There was no way she was a demon.

No way.

“The only way you’d see her wings is if she was injured, by Source, that threatened to return her to her dimension or kill her. Which brings the question…how’d you get this feather?” He leaned in so close I could count the golden flecks in his eyes.

“I’ll ask again, River. What happened in there?”

His gaze was so overwhelming I had to look back to the fountain, or I’d be spilling my whole life story.

“She knew too much.” I ran my fingers along my hairline, sweeping away the shorter layers falling into my face.

“About my mom, my episodes, parts of me I haven’t shared with anyone. Then she got super aggressive, tried to force it out of me, and I did that…thing.”

His voice was tight.

“What thing?”

I scuffed my sandals on the packed gravel.

“You know, that…yelling thing.”

Ryder raised his brows in understanding.

“She got struck by lightning and exploded?”

“No, she got taken out by a beam of light.” Catching my hands as they flew to my mouth, he lowered them to my lap, his grip unwavering.

“Which I’m…pretty sure I summoned.”

“How? Did you use the same words?”

“No, but I had…similar feelings.” And visions.

Even fully removed from the situation, the anger still simmered.

And the grief, well, it was unrelenting.

“Which were?” His thumb stroked my knuckle.

I wasn’t sure if it was Ryder’s subtle touches or if I was in that weirdly blissful, short-lived period between adrenaline and shock…

For some reason the rawness of this moment, the surge of my emotions, it all stripped away my fears.

And once the words left my lips…

I couldn’t stop.

“Anger, frustration. Grief, guilt. So much of it, it overwhelms me. I can still feel it now, thrumming beneath my skin.” My digits curled over each other in an uncomfortable bend, but I continued.

“I don’t think me literally yelling has anything to do with it. I think it’s the point I reach to actually get to that place, where my feelings don’t have anywhere to go…except out.”

When Ryder didn’t respond, I decided to shift my gaze from his fingers, still clasped over mine, to his eyes.

They peered at me with such an intense yearning.

I couldn’t tell if it was me, or the information I had, that he sought so badly.

“Most Nephilim have abilities,” he finally said.

“But I haven’t met someone that could wield the elements at that kind of scale, like, ever.”

Lucky me.

“So, what kind of abilities do you have that makes you so special, hunter ?” It was meant to wipe the smugness off his face, but it only made it worse, and that was the kind of look that undid me.

In an instant, his breath was a warm caress against the sensitive space below my earlobe.

“Maybe it’s my impeccable sense of hearing.” There’s no way he heard my heartbeat, even if it raged against my ribs.

“Or my supernatural reflexes.” Even if he caught that rogue piece of hair before it met my chin, there’s no way he sensed the pleasurable shiver when his calloused fingers brushed my skin.

“Or my ability to detect the faintest flicker of pain, or fear or…” A huskiness entered his throat.

“Excitement.”

That…

Oh God. There’s no way.

Even if it rippled off me like pheromonal perfume.

I gulped. Evil therapist. Demon.

Evil therapist. Demon.

He chuckled, and I knew right there and then my cheeks had turned beet red.

I willed him to stop looking at me like that, like he had fire in his eyes and in his…

Ugh, Ryder, just get back to the subject before we switch to one that involves a lot less talking.

“We’re not technically required to do anything with said abilities, or the title that comes with them.” He leaned back, giving me some breathing room, but remained closer than he had when we originally sat.

“Although the Sainthood definitely encourages it…”

I didn’t miss the hint of venom that coated the Sainthood .

“What’s the Sainthood?”

The lines in Ryder’s face hardened, causing him to look as chiseled as the stone angel before us.

“A council that preserves the Order of the Nephilim and performs the duties…” He shook his head.

“More like rituals, that enforce our Law and Judgement.”

I wanted to ask about these rituals, about the whole other world that seemingly existed before my very eyes and yet had somehow stayed hidden from me for eighteen years.

“So, when is someone going to come and get the demon that just tried to kill me?” I had to hit the important stuff first. “There’s bound to be a repercussion for that…right?” When he clicked his tongue in answer, incredulity may have gotten the best of me.

“What are they good for, then?”

“Depends on who’s funneling their cash,” he gritted out.

“Mostly they walk around with a damn archangel complex, just because their power was decreed from Above.”

“From Above.” I glanced up into the sky, bright and burning.

“As in the Supreme Being Upstairs?”

“The one and only.” He closed his eyes and dipped his head back for the briefest second, as if this topic frazzled him as much as it did me.

“Trippy…” I murmured.

It was worth a pause, but not one that’d smother me in panic.

I myself was part angel, after all.

“So, you’re a hunter because the Sainthood told you to be?”

His shoulders rolled, flexing inwards.

“I’m not a hunter to appease anyone but myself.”

“Why does it all matter, then?”

“Because these are instincts we’re talking about. What happens when you ignore those? When you ignore who you are, who you were meant to be?”

I got the feeling he was no longer speaking hypothetically.

“Spontaneous combustion?” I offered with a grin.

His flicker of a smile disappeared way too soon.

“Pretty much.”

We were already so far down the rabbit hole I didn’t stop myself when I asked, “So what the hell am I? What’s my title?”

“Besides a beautiful girl with the power to shoot laser beams out of her hands?” Well, they weren’t exactly laser beams , but he did make it sound pretty badass.

“The one person on this earth that’s genuinely surprised me.”

A flash of heat warmed my cheeks as he blew out a laugh and tucked his bottom lip into his teeth.

I pulled my hands out of his grasp, the air cool against my fingers.

“There’s something I haven’t told you.” I was surprising myself at this point.

“The thing I did today, it happened last night when two werewolves cornered me at the bonfire.”

Ryder’s forehead crinkled in question.

“You channeled lightning? Or a beam of light?”

“Water.” An unstoppable surge of energy washed over me as I recalled the wall of ocean that I’d somehow constructed and the force of it flooding the beach.

I shuddered, suddenly as chilly and numb as I’d been standing on the bluffs before he’d found me—found me, in the dead of night on the side of the highway.

Frustration boiled inside me once again.

“And now I’ll ask you, Ryder. For the final time, I hope. How did you not see this”—I waved in the direction of the other building—“coming?”

He sighed, lowering his lashes.

“I was…distracted.”

“What, by the latest Hollywood boob job?” Chances were, he wasn’t reading the tabloids, but the snark would keep the panic from closing up my throat again.

“I’m sorry.” He ran his tattooed fingers through his hair just for the strands to fall right back to his temples.

“Sometimes these things slip through the cracks.”

Sorry wasn’t going to cut it.

“Forgetting to put away laundry. Missing a homework assignment. Those things slip through the cracks.” Not life-or-death scenarios involving threats from the underworld.

I threw my hands up.

“You’re a hunter, Ryder. Isn’t the first rule of thumb to never let your guard down?”

Waiting for him to own up to his mistake was like waiting for the apocalypse.

Imminent, but likely never to come in my lifetime.

I peered at him out of the corner of my eye.

He remained facing forward, chest caved, shoulders hunched, too proud to say the words.

I let him sit there like a dog with his tail between his legs for another minute.

“What do we do next?” I huffed out air through my nose.

“I imagine dialing 911 is out of the question. What’s the equivalent in Nephilim world? Do we try and bring it up with the Saints?”

“No.” It broke his stillness, and I swore I caught a glisten to his eyes.

“No, we don’t need them…” He blinked and it was gone.

“Look, you don’t know why these things are after you. But is there anyone who might? Anyone who has more info on your ancestry? About where you came from? Someone you trust?”

Not where, but who.

I clutched the lapis pendant around my neck.

What other secrets sat locked away in my dad’s den?

It’d be an awkward conversation…

but I guess I could just ask him straight up: Are you or mom an angel?

I bit out a sigh. If he’d known about my lineage and never told me—why would he divulge anything now, just because I asked nicely?

Pinpricks of anger struck my heart.

I took a deep, steady breath, inclined to think the chances he knew anything about this were slim to none.

I couldn’t let the other, more nauseating, possibility sidetrack me.

Why couldn’t I just look into a crystal ball?

It’d be so much easier than breaking and entering into his office?—

My musing provoked a memory, and suddenly the idea didn’t seem so farfetched.

“Have I told you about the tarot reader?” I asked even though I knew I hadn’t.

He shook his head to confirm.

“At Grad Night, the night I met you, I had an episode—like the one I had that night in the alley you found me in. Anyways, it’s almost like this psychic experienced it with me. Afterwards she grabbed me, all possessed, and started chanting something over and over.”

“You’ve mentioned these episodes,” he drawled, continuing to watch the playful splash of the fountain.

“What exactly do they entail?”

I bit the inside of my cheek, my mouth quirking to the other side.

I’d never explained this out loud—the whole truth of it, that is.

But after what I’d experienced with werewolves, demons, Dr. Finis…

The idea of holding on to this secret any longer weighed so heavy on me it felt like it’d sink me to the molten core of the Earth.

There were no words to adequately explain my episodes.

But I’d sure as hell try, because I needed to get this off my chest, needed to tell somebody, needed to feel…

less alone.

“My episodes,” I repeated uneasily.

“It’s like… the world is speaking to me. Directly. Sometimes I listen. Sometimes I talk back. Sometimes all my senses blend together so the only thing I taste, touch, smell, and see are the voices on the air—but also aren’t—because I’m the only one who hears them. It’s…overwhelming. I usually end up blacking out or my brain kind of”—I thought about how I tripped during graduation, which, wow, that seemed so insignificant now—“stalls.”

His face betrayed nothing as he flicked his eyes to me.

“How do they manifest?”

“In anything and everything that makes a sound.” I shut my eyes for a beat, the hairs on my neck prickling in anticipation as I listened, fully knowing they weren’t going to come.

“In…the crunch of my shoes against the gravel. In the steady laps of the fountain. In the low howl of the breeze that keeps whipping my hair into my face.” I let the unruly waves tickle the bridge of my nose.

“To you, that’s ambiance, to me…one second, it’s white noise, the next it’s screaming at me.”

I waited for Ryder to laugh, to shove off the bench, to brush me off as crazy.

But he stayed, unmoving, next to me, not looking anywhere else but at me.

“And you think this psychic heard these voices, too?”

My breath hitched as he studied me, like I was different, but in a good way—in a way that seemed to intrigue him.

I cleared the knot bundled in my throat.

“I’m not sure exactly, but she kind of short-circuited during Javi’s reading, right after I had an episode, and that’s when she grabbed me and started chanting.”

“What did she say?”

“Quart…vigi…Quarto vigil?” I butchered it for sure.

“Any clue to what that means?”

“The Fourth Watcher.” Ryder’s brows tilted in.

“That’s Latin. It’s the old language of the Nephilim.”

Surprise twisted my features.

No one but the Voices called me Watcher .

How did she know? I’d always brushed it off as a petty nickname.

But…did it mean something more?

My stomach sank like I’d swallowed a hundred steel balls.

“Hey, you okay?” Javi’s infamous line.

It sounded so different coming from Ryder.

I forced my expression to one of indifference even though I was anything but.

“What’s a Watcher?”

“Powerful archangels supposedly tasked with keeping humanity safe from demons.” He wiped invisible dirt off the flat stone seat.

“Nothing but an urban legend, clearly.”

“Oh.” I wrung my hands, fighting the urge not to put them in my mouth so he’d try and grab them again.

“Why…why would she call me that?”

He strummed his fingers against the edge of the bench.

“I think we need to find her and ask.”

I dug deep for an excuse but came up with nothing, because there was nothing left to do but face this.

“She had a temporary structure for the festival. But…I know who can help us find her.” I sighed, cringing at what that meant.

We stood to leave, the courtyard’s fountain grabbing my attention as I went to follow him to the garage.

I stepped over to its basin.

The water had turned dark and oily.

Red.

“Ryder, do you see this?” My gaze tracked upwards, to each pool of liquid, to the cement wings wrapped around the tiers.

He stilled beside me, obviously seeing how the angel’s face had shifted; not frowning but not quite smiling, her lips pulled, brows tilted up.

She was crying.

The angel was crying tears of blood.