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R oman stood in the center of Charlotte’s tiny, trashed apartment. He seethed with anger and knew damn well his eyes were glowing, but he didn’t care. Looking at the destroyed coffee table, couch, and other objects in the room reminded him of what those filthy demons had done to her the night they first came here, beaten her and then abducted her.

Touched what’s mine, the angry whisper crept through his mind as Armaros appeared in the doorway of Charlotte’s room.

“Belongings are missing, clothes and toiletries from the bathroom, same as in the other room. Someone must have interrupted her while she was packing her things. Whatever bags she had packed have been taken as well.”

“The demons must have her.” Grigori shut the fridge door in the ridiculously tiny kitchen, taking a swig out of a beer he’d grabbed from it.

Roman glared at him, but the heavy footsteps coming up the hall stopped him from yelling at the fool. Phoenix entered the apartment, followed closely by Lucian.

“Your car is untouched and has no trackers placed on it. I find it quite odd they left the Noire behind,” Phoenix told him, running a hand through his sandy, disheveled hair.

“Maybe they knew you’d kill them just for touching it.” Lucian chuckled, walking slowly around the room, kicking things with his big black combat boots, and looking for any signs of who may have been there.

Roman peered over at Armaros, the warrior frowning and focusing on a blank wall by the door.

“What is it?” he asked the dark angel.

“Magic. I can feel it. They had a witch with them. Powerful, too,” he said with distaste, making his way over to the wall, staring hard at some invisible thing Roman and the others couldn’t see. Armaros’s eyes glowed as he held up his hand, placing it in the center of the wall. He whispered too low for any of them to hear, and then the wall shimmered, words appearing out of nowhere, sending chills down Roman’s spine.

I have her, Roman. Come and get her if you dare.

“It’s written in blood. I can smell it.” Maalik’s voice broke the silence as he entered the apartment, looking from the wall to Roman. “If she truly is Lucifer’s way out of Hell, we are all fucked now.”

Roman watched as his brother’s eyes turned black. Maalik’s body stilled in the unnatural way only a vampire could. His head slowly turned as his eyes stopped on the pool of dried blood at his feet on the floor. He hissed in a breath, and Roman caught a glimpse of Maalik’s fangs.

“Brother?” Roman asked, confused at his odd behavior.

Maalik never took his dark eyes off the blood. “Her roommate. She has been injured. Is she here?” he asked, finally dragging his eyes away from the stain and locking eyes with Roman.

“No. There is no sign of either of them. From what Charlotte told me, her friend was knocked unconscious when they were attacked two nights ago. Charlotte must have come looking for her. She’s been worried about her ever since,” he answered, trying to gauge Maalik’s reaction.

He wasn’t sure what was going on, but it was becoming clear to Roman that Maalik was drawn somehow to Charlotte’s friend. Why, he didn’t know, and now was not the time to get into it. Charlotte was in danger, and they needed to find her and get her back. He gave Maalik another once over, noting how he looked angry enough to tear the city apart, and then his gaze landed back on the bloody writing on the wall.

Roman’s blood boiled. Lucifer’s demons had taken Charlotte. He had to find her. Everything depended on them finding her before she was taken to Hell. If she made it past the gates of Hell, there would be no way they could get her back. They would all be doomed… again.

“Roman, what are we to do?” Lucian asked, staring at the wall. “And whose blood is that written in?” He pointed to the deep red letters on the wall.

“It’s her blood,” Maalik told them, watching Roman carefully, his eyes still black as night.

The thought of them hurting her, cutting her to use her blood, pushed him over the edge. His temper flared violently, fire coursing through his body as he stalked toward the wall with an angry roar, slamming his fist straight through it.

“Be calm, brother,” Maalik told him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

Roman spun faster than Maalik expected, shoving him across the room. “Don’t tell me to be calm, Maalik!” Roman yelled, his eyes burning with crimson fire. “They’ve hurt her, written an entire message to me in her blood! How can I be calm? And that’s fucking hilarious coming from you right now! Have you seen your eyes?”

Roman noticed the other angels had backed away from him, leaving Maalik standing alone in the center of the room, hands up in front of him as if Roman were a wild beast he was trying to calm.

A flash of anger moved across Maalik’s face before he closed his eyes, and when he opened them, his familiar green stared back, his body no longer tense.

“Come, brother, it’s me. Take a moment. Why do you care if she’s hurt? You don’t even know her.”

Roman clenched his fists, feeling as though he would break his fingers as he tried to rein in the rage flowing through him. He focused on Maalik’s green eyes, holding him steady as he took a breath and settled his rage.

Maalik’s words rang through his mind. Why do you care if she’s hurt? Good fucking question. How the hell could this mortal girl have so much control over his emotions when he had only just met her? They had heard myths and read ancient scrolls over the centuries of angels having one true soul mate; someone created just for them to walk eternity with. Roman had never met an angel who had a soul mate before, but his crazy behavior was making him question whether Charlotte was supposed to be something more than a strange mortal girl he barely even knew. The feelings he had when he was around her, or just even thought about her, were unlike anything he’d ever experienced in his long life.

He shook himself from his thoughts, staring around the room. The other angels seemed a bit more at ease now that his eyes were back to normal.

“I’m sorry, Maalik. I don’t know what came over me,” he apologized as his brother came up to him.

“It’s okay, Roman. We’ll find out where she is and take her back at all costs.”

Roman nodded. “Yes, we must find her before they head toward a gate, and she’s out of our reach. Lucian, call the clan and ask if any of the Lycan have seen or heard of any demons with a human girl. Phoenix, get down on the street and ask anyone if they saw or heard anything the night Charlotte was abducted.”

“If anyone gives you the make and model of the car they were driving, let me know straight away. I will put a call into one of my police friends down at the precinct and see if they can put an APB out and locate it,” Maalik told Phoenix, the angel nodding as he and Lucian quickly left the apartment.

“Hey, you know this demon is still alive?” Grigori’s voice came from the other room. “I wonder if it was Charlotte who shot him or if someone else was here,” he added as he dragged the unconscious, bloodied man from the other room.

Roman frowned. He couldn’t picture Charlotte shooting anyone. She seemed too timid, too kind to hurt anyone. “Bring him back to the mansion and lock him up. We are going to have some fun with this one, and he will tell us everything he knows. Armaros, how powerful is this witch you say is with them?” Roman added, turning to him.

Armaros stood silently, still staring at the message on the wall.

“Can’t you just scry her out?” Grigori asked.

The tall, tattooed man slowly shook his head. “No, I cannot. She is warding Charlotte. The minute she stepped into this apartment, I lost sight of her. I haven’t felt power like this in eons… since we first fell, and the ancients still walked the Earth. I think the best thing to do would be to talk to the witches. Her power was so close to their coven, they would have felt it. They may know who it is. They don’t like rouges in their city, so they may be extremely helpful with this.”

Roman nodded. “Good. I hate to ask, but I need you to go see Cassandra. I want you to tell her what’s happened and ask the witch in person so you can tell if she is being truthful or not. Maybe they have a way they could scry for Charlotte together, using the coven’s conjoined power.”

Roman hated sending Armaros to meet with the High Priestess of the Witches, but he trusted no one else to deal with them properly. Roman often wondered if the witch’s hatred for Armaros often came from the fact they couldn’t bewitch him and were jealous of the great power buried deep within him.

Years ago, a young witch Roman had befriended once whispered to him, The witches fear him, you know… His power and where it came from. The elders say he holds the power to destroy us all. Roman had never spoken about the drunken witch’s whispers to anyone, but he never forgot the chills that ran down his spine at her words.

Armaros didn’t look happy with the order but simply nodded, making his way to the exit. “Armaros, be careful. We don’t know who we can trust right now,” Roman told him, remembering Ariel’s warning only a few hours before.

He needed to start paying closer attention to the fallen and the people they worked with. He had to find out who was working with the demons and kill them. The thought of someone he trusted working with his enemy infuriated him. He couldn’t imagine any of his fallen brethren turning against him. They were all loyal to a fault. But it was something he would have to put on the back burner for the moment, realizing his to-do list was growing longer every day. His priority was finding Charlotte and getting her safely back to his mansion, and this time, he would personally see to her safety.

* * *

Roman stood as the fallen sat around the table back at the mansion. It had been hours since they’d been in Charlotte’s apartment. The angels had scoured the city, calling in favors from the witches, Lycan, and vampires. Even the humans who secretly served them had helped. From all the intel they gathered, they’d finally got a lead on where Charlotte might be.

“Are you sure the Lycan are right?” Roman asked Lucian, taking a seat at the table.

Lucian nodded. “Yes, they saw demons with a girl of her description being taken to a warehouse over past Hillgrove.”

Roman looked at his watch. It was two-thirty a.m. He’d spent hours torturing the demon they’d found at Charlotte’s apartment. The information they’d gotten out of the piece of shit was good but not great. Armaros had come into the dungeon toward the end of the torture session and told Roman the demon had had his memory wiped so he could only relay to them what had happened in the apartment and who he was with.

“We attack tonight. We cannot let them move her. My guess is they will try to get her to an airport and fly her to a country that houses one of the gates to Hell. As we all know, there are seven gates, and we only guard one of them, so we can cross that one off the list. I doubt very much they will try to use the one hidden deep beneath the Vatican,” he told them, exhausted.

“My guess is they will take her to the closest one. I can’t see them wasting time flying all around the world. Lucifer will want her as fast as he can get her. He has remained trapped down there for thousands of years. I’m sure we can all agree if it was us in his position and we’d found a way out, we wouldn’t be fucking around, that’s for sure,” Maalik said, frowning into his glass of whiskey.

His brother had been distracted since they’d been at the apartment. After the others had left, Maalik slowly walked around the tiny place, stopping now and then to close his eyes and… sniff the air.

The only answer Roman had got out of him when he questioned his behavior was old enemies. After that, he’d stared at a picture of Charlotte’s roommate that was stuck to the front of the fridge. He’d looked tormented as Roman watched him brush a finger over her image before snatching it from the fridge and jamming it in his coat pocket.

Roman knew better than to press his brother. Thousands of years ago, Maalik had gone off on his own, creating his own sired lines. The first bloodlines of his race. Purebloods, the angels called them. They were stronger, faster, and harder to kill than any others that came after them. Just like Maalik, his purebloods possessed the gift of walking in the sun, a trait that they had attempted but failed to pass on to their sired lines, condemning them to roam the night. As far as Roman knew, the original blood houses Maalik had made were the only vampires his brother had ever turned.

A lot of bad things happened in Maalik’s life back in those dark days. Roman knew little about that time in his brother’s life, except that whatever events had taken place were the reason he’d never sired another vampire to this very day.

“It will be Caral then.” Armaros’s deep voice pulled Roman from his musings. “The Ancient Pyramid in Peru. That’s the closest gate. If this goes wrong tonight and they get Charlotte out of there before we can get her, that’s where they will take her.”

Phoenix rolled his eyes. “I fucking hate Peru.”

Lucian smirked, slapping Phoenix on the back. “Aw, come now, Sun God, these people worshiped you for thousands of years. I’m sure the locals would love for their flaming god to return.”

“Shut the fuck up, Lucian. That is one time in our past I wish we could bloody erase,” he said, shaking his head.

Roman gave a small smirk, remembering the chaos the two had caused in Peru. Lucian and Phoenix had settled in many parts of Mexico and South America during a time when they had majorly fallen off the rails, causing whole civilizations to worship them, thinking they were gods. Phoenix, the God of the Sun, and Lucian, the God of the Moon. When the Incan people started human sacrifices to appease the two false gods, the two of them came to their senses and fled the country. As far as he knew, they had never been back.

“Well, if no one fucks up tonight, you won’t need to go there, got it?” Roman told them.

“Copy that, boss,” Phoenix replied, wiping his hand down his face as if trying to wipe away old memories.

“Ariel and the others will arrive in a few hours, so when we go in tonight, it will be all of us. I will lead one squad, and Ariel will lead the other. Ariel’s team will be the usual. Cael, Ramiel, Marius, Sabriel, and Turel, while you will all be with me. They will take out any outside guards and surveillance and draw the demons to them while we enter through the roof with the information the Lycan has given us. Lucian, tell us what they’ve found.”

Lucian nodded, his blue eyes glancing around the table. “The Lycan sent in scouts, said there are eight demons patrolling the outer perimeter fence, then there are two doors located at the front. Two guards per door, all packing AR-15 semi-automatic rifles. They all have at least six magazines strapped to their belts, as well as a 9mm Glock 17 with at least four magazines each. There are no doors around the back, and there is no one guarding the roof because they’re stupid. There is one trapdoor on the roof, which will give us easy access to the warehouse. Basically, we will drop right in on them while they are in the middle of fighting Ariel and her team. Should be a piece of cake.”

“Well, they are definitely expecting us to try something with all that firepower,” Grigori said, leaning forward on the table. “They knew we would come for her.”

“They would be stupid to think we wouldn’t try to stop them. I think after we hit their underground bunker and took Charlotte a few days ago, they’ve increased their security and firepower in all their establishments and hideouts,” Maalik told them.

“They can increase their firepower and security all they like, but it won’t help them. We will kill every one of the demons. They are nothing but vermin,” Phoenix added with hatred.

“We need to be careful. I have a bad feeling the witch will be with them, protecting Lucifer’s prize. She is powerful and will be able to hurt us. We all need to be wary of her. Her power is… unnatural,” Armaros added the last words almost in a whisper.

Roman was worried. He could clearly see this witch made Armaros uneasy, and if something worried him, then they all needed to be concerned. Hell, the angel was almost indestructible with his magic.

“Noted,” Roman said, nodding at Armaros. “If anyone comes near the witch, approach with caution and let Armaros deal with her. Only intervene if you see he needs help or if she is distracted by him, then kill her. The witch coven has confirmed she is a rogue, and if she is working with the demons and Lucifer, they said they want her dead, as she is a traitor to their race and their ways, so we have the green light to take her out without causing any problems with the peace we have with them. We will have another sit-down in the morning to ensure Ariel and the others are updated on our plans. We need this to run smoothly, no mistakes. We don’t want to be getting on a plane to fucking Peru because we fucked this up, does everyone understand?” he asked, looking around the table.

The fallen all nodded in agreement.

“Good. Okay, get some rest. It’s been a hectic couple of days, and we can’t afford any mistakes,” he told them as they all rose, leaving the dining room.

Maalik remained sitting next to Roman, having another sip of his whiskey, then placing his glass on the marble table. He turned to his brother with a slight frown. “Tell me, brother, do you think this will work? Will she still even be in that warehouse?”

“Of course it will work. The demons are no match for us, and she will be there. The demons won’t risk moving her in the light of day. They know we have eyes watching the streets. Don’t worry, brother, it will all run smoothly, like always.” But even as the words left Roman’s mouth, he had a bad feeling. Something just didn’t feel right, but for the life of him, he couldn’t work out what it was.