Demon Fire (The Angel Fire Book 3), Marie Johnston [books suggested by bill gates TXT] 📗

joints were overshadowed by big, strong hands. “I knew Boone didn’t believe us.”

Boone blinked. Sierra held her hand to her side and drifted closer to him. “Boone. Are you okay?”

“That’s Sandeen?”

She nodded. Nothing about her expression was gloating. The worry in her eyes was for him. “It’d help if one of you showed him your wings.”

“How can you keep risking us?” Harlowe said incredulously. “We’re in the middle of the city.”

A rare flash of anger highlighted Sierra’s blue gaze. “It’s not like I can show him mine.”

“What I don’t understand,” Sandeen drawled, “is why I only become more visible.” He poked at one of his hands. “I hate to share this, but Andy’s a pain in the ass. I’ve walked in this realm as myself before and y’all need to help me figure out the specifics. Or Andy will and his tests won’t be as pleasant.”

Boone’s mind spun to catch up. Alma was possessed. There was something in her. A man. A demon. If that was true, what else was true? All of it?

Sierra in the middle of nowhere. The scars on her back where wings would’ve been. No footprints, like something dropped down from thin air.

His fallen angel couldn’t be a real fallen angel. That was impossible.

Yet . . . he’d seen a lot of evil in his line of work. Needless pain and punishment. Criminals who couldn’t believe what they’d done to someone they loved, who were confused by how it all had happened.

It made too much sense and no sense at all.

“Impossible,” Harlowe said.

“Give me a dagger with Sierra’s blood on it and take me to the Mist.” There was no taunt in Sandeen’s tone.

“Why Sierra’s blood?” Urban asked. “Would any fallen’s blood do?”

“Go get some and we’ll find out.” And the taunting tone was back.

“Jameson’s did the same, didn’t it?” Sierra asked. “That’s how you know. That’s how Andy knows.”

Sandeen’s bland shrug was all Alma. Boone could no longer make out another face over the woman’s. “Andy knows a lot that he shouldn’t. He has spies everywhere—from all realms. He’s been positioning himself for years. Jameson and I had a deal. I got his blood if I got him weapons.”

“Numen weapons?” Harlowe jumped up. “You were behind the killings of warriors?”

“The warriors I fought weren’t exactly upstanding citizens of Numen society. The only difference between them and Sierra is that she got caught. Besides, Daemon steel, Numen steel, it’s all the same. Jameson claimed he was burned by Numen steel, but I think that was his guilty conscience.”

Jagger shook his head. “Lies to protect the guilty again?”

Boone might not be able to see Sandeen anymore, but the arrogance in Alma’s expression was all his. “It all originated from the same place, angel. It’s called balance. Numen got angel fire, we mined the steel.”

“Impossible.”

Sandeen ignored Jagger and continued. “Eons ago, a couple of enterprising parties from each realm struck up a deal. But Numen didn’t hold up their side of the bargain. They took our steel and killed the messenger.”

From the poleaxed look on the others’ faces, this information was as new to them as it was to him.

“He lies.” Harlowe rolled over the back of the couch and grabbed Alma by the shoulders. Harlowe’s lips were moving, but Boone heard nothing.

Alma yanked the multi-tool from Urban and slashed an arc, slicing across the back of Sierra’s wrist.

She hissed and drew back. Boone was at her side, ready to shield her, but Alma was limp on the couch. Her head back, her snores the only sound in the room. No multi-tool in sight.

The little knife wasn’t the only thing gone. Boone searched the room. “Where’s Harlowe?”

“Lowe is still in the Mist,” a familiar man’s voice said. Standing behind Alma was the man Boone had seen, only outside of Alma instead of in, and a couple inches taller than Boone. “I’ll keep this and give poor Alma a rest.”

He flipped the tool closed and stuffed it in the pocket of his grungy top, a shirt that looked like it’d been picked up from a gutter after a mudslide. The man’s pants weren’t any better.

And he had wings. Big fucking wings that arced near the top of his head and trailed down to the floor. A glossy midnight black, the feathers were thick and reflected the light in the room. Boone had never seen wings on anything but birds, but damn. Were angel wings as beautiful?

Boone still held Sierra’s hand in his. Beads of blood collected along the cut but he didn’t have a tissue and wasn’t willing to leave her side to get paper towels. Her blood obviously did something. He’d believed she was in danger before, but the sobering reality sank in farther.

Harlowe appeared as if she’d just stepped out of an invisible wardrobe out of a child’s story. Was there really another realm? A Mist?

Urban was standing now, his jaw hanging. Boone had witnessed a creature inside of a human disappear and then reappear—with wings—and for fuck’s sake, were those horns?—but Urban and Jagger were the shocked ones.

“Impossible,” Urban breathed.

Sandeen stretched and rolled his neck, his wings lifting and his feathers silently fluttering. “Numen steel. Daemon steel. It apparently doesn’t matter. Either will give me the full pass out of the host.” He stretched out an arm. Muscles and veins stretched and flexed in his forearms.

“But how?” Harlowe asked. Her gaze kept straying to Sandeen, like she was trying not to look when all she wanted to do was stare.

Sandeen gave her a sly smile. “If you don’t know, I’m not telling you. Unless you want to work out an exchange.”

“Ew.” Harlowe’s disgust lacked conviction.

Sierra tensed. “It’s me. I can do this.”

“I thought maybe Jameson was special but I think I’ve ruled that out. The Mist will eventually expel anything that isn’t Numen, including fallen. Like a built-in security measure. But if I have unearthly steel and some fallen blood, it’s like a loophole that fools the natural tendencies of the realm to prevent a demon from crossing in