Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“He’s grounded in Europe due to a torn wing tendon,” Dmitri continued, “but he told me Marco began to receive incessant calls approximately five months before his death and that was only the beginning. Gifts delivered to his mortal family home as well as his angel’s household, handwritten letters in the mail, odd occurrences that made Marco feel watched.”
Illium’s heart jolted, but Aodhan’s mind touched his before he could say anything. I’m fine, Blue. A firm resolve. I asked Dmitri not to shield me from such things anymore. To heal, I must grow.
Curling his fingers into his palm until he’d formed a tight fist, Illium held his silence even as his need to protect Aodhan roared within. “I’m guessing you don’t have an ID on the stalker or you wouldn’t have called Aodhan in.”
“No, she was very clever about that.” Staring into the wind, Dmitri seemed lost in his thoughts, shaking them off only when Izak flew by with his wing. “But she—and it is a woman from the self-references in the letters that Navarro saw—made one mistake. She dropped off gifts on the balcony of the apartment that housed Marco’s mother at the time. That balcony was on the eleventh floor.”
Aodhan’s wings stirred. “Venom could climb that, but Venom’s an outlier even among vampires. Has to be an angel.”
“Especially when you add in a second incident.” Dmitri’s eyes followed Izzy’s wing as they practiced above the city, but his mind was clearly elsewhere, his voice harsh in a way that was deadly.
“Giulia is convinced that Tanika was—a month prior to the war—hit by a projectile dropped from above while she was crossing an otherwise empty football field. There were no houses from which anything could’ve been thrown and the lump of what proved to be melted plastic was too big for a bird. Tanika said she looked around but saw no one, but she was dazed so it took her time. Long enough for an angel to vanish into the clouds.”
“A warning rather than attempted murder?” Illium couldn’t see why not a chunk of rock otherwise.
Dmitri nodded in agreement before shifting so he faced Aodhan. “I’m giving you Marco and Tanika because you asked me to send this type of situation your way, but if you don’t want the—”
“I’ll take it. No young vampire or mortal should be terrorized by one of our kind.”
The two men’s eyes met, and Illium had the strange sense that there was something he didn’t know, but they did. As if they were part of a club of which he wasn’t a member.
His heart ruptured, the psychic tear agony.
He could think of only one experience the two might share of which Illium wasn’t aware: being the target of the ugliness of obsession.
10
Are you sure, Aodhan? Dmitri’s mental voice was as intense as the darkness of his eyes. There’s no shame in walking away from that which is toxic to you.
I’m sure. He held the other man’s gaze. I feel only a violent anger, not fear.
Dmitri, a man who had an intimate understanding of violence, gave a small nod.
Aodhan had expected a question from Illium at the pause that had gone on too long, but when he glanced at the blue-winged angel, he saw that Illium was focused on Dmitri, his expression stark.
Of course he’d understood without explanation. Illium’s emotional intelligence was one of his greatest gifts. Aodhan also knew that Illium would never ask him to betray Dmitri’s confidence—a confidence he’d shared while Aodhan lay broken in the Medica. Not just in the body, but in the mind.
“You will survive, Aodhan.” A primal command, the hand Dmitri clenched around Aodhan’s emaciated one strong.
“You can’t know that.” Aodhan was able to allow himself to be weak with Dmitri because Dmitri had carried him when he was a babe; he was the dangerous older brother who had always protected. “What they did to me…it broke me, Dmitri. I breathe but I’m dead inside.”
Dmitri’s eyes flared, his rage a kiss of red on his cheekbones. “I was broken once, too. I thought I’d never come back from that. But I did. While she rots and is forgotten. That will be the punishment for your captors, too.”
Then, while Aodhan lay silent, Dmitri had told him the story of a mortal who had loved his wife and children with wild joy, and who had been best friends with a young angel who would one day become an archangel. And he’d told the story of how an angel obsessed with the mortal had murdered his entire family and Made him a vampire without his consent.
The monster had forced Dmitri to watch his son suffer in agony so terrible and without end that Dmitri’d had to make the choice to end his beloved boy’s life. “I had to snap my Misha’s neck,” Dmitri had said, his voice a harsh rasp. “My smart, loving boy who I’d promised to protect forever. I had only ashes to bury of my Ingrede and our sweet baby girl.