Death's Door (Supernatural Security Force Book 3) Read online

  There was a loud boom, and the building I was resting on shuddered with the impact. Selaphiel let out a small sound of pain. That comforted me.

  “If you hurt her,” Adrik growled below, “I will kill you.”

  “You’d choose one of them over your own kind?” Selaphiel demanded, but her voice sounded smaller than before. Hopefully, he’d hurt the bitch. “Over your own sister?”

  “You stopped being my sister when you started killing innocents.”

  “I’m working toward a greater goal. For us. You know that.”

  “Summoning evil creatures to harm innocents, Sela? That’s your plan to get us home? You really think He would consider that fair play?”

  “There were no stipulations on the decree, Adrik. You know He has to honor the outcome no matter the methods. It’s how He works. It’s how He’s always worked. And our time is almost up. What was I supposed to do?”

  Even from way up here, the smugness in her tone was unmistakable.

  Bitch.

  “It’s over, Sela. This ends now.”

  “Shortsighted as always, brother.” A loud boom sounded, drowning out everything else and leaving my ears ringing in its wake. Over the buzzing, I barely heard her as she added, “This is just getting started.”

  Then, everything was still.

  Chapter Two

  My body buzzed with the overload of magic and pain. The beating of wings was a roaring sound in my little bug ears. I struggled to get my bearings, but all I could think about was Selaphiel’s comment about my father. A moment later, I was nearly blown off the edge of the sill as the wind rushed in around me.

  “Gem?”

  Adrik’s voice was quiet. Calm.

  Was she gone?

  How much had he overheard?

  “Gem.”

  And then I heard it. The strain in his tone.

  My fear for him cut through the fog like a knife. Had he been hurt? Had Selaphiel done something to him?

  I pushed to my feet and wiggled my wings, inching toward the edge of the landing.

  “I’m here,” I called, hoping his Neph hearing could pick up my tiny voice.

  His arrival nearly blew me over the edge of the brick sill, but I managed to hold steady.

  And then, he was there before me, hovering in mid-air as his big, black wings beat ferociously against the pull of gravity.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  It took me a moment to find my voice—and tear my gaze from the bloody gash that had been ripped open across his chest.

  “I’m fine,” I said, “I… Selaphiel… I think whatever she blasted me with drained my power. I can’t shift.”

  He inched closer and held out his hand. “Climb on,” he said as blood ran from his wound and fell like raindrops to the street below.

  Without waiting to be told twice, I climbed onto his open hand and hunkered down in one of the creases of his palm.

  When I was settled, he closed his hand in a fist, sealing me inside, and shot upward into the night sky.

  I promptly vomited.

  Luckily, it was a bug’s worth of barf and hopefully not offensive to the owner of the hand.

  My stomach rolled as Adrik banked and swooped. I didn’t have to ask to know we were going back to the sketchy townhouse in the Ninth Ward. It was the only place his Neph friends didn’t know about—which meant the only safe haven he had left.

  After tonight, I understood why he was so worried about me going back to my apartment. Having an evil Nephilim supermodel with the power of death in her veins trying to “off” me wasn’t the kind of threat I wanted to face alone.

  When the motion finally stopped, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  The buzzing in my bug-body hadn’t improved, but not throwing up again was a nice turn of events.

  Maybe I’d even be able to rest long enough to—

  “Whoa, what the hell is happening?”

  Adrik’s hand vibrated first, and then whatever power he’d summoned hit me, causing me to shake violently as the pressure built inside me.

  “Adrik, I swear to the Big Guy above, if you kill me, I’ll—”

  My exoskeleton exploded.

  My bug screams turned to full-size cries and curses.

  I vomited. Again.

  When I opened my eyes, I found myself on human hands and knees, dry-heaving and breathless and tingling with the effects of whatever the hell had just happened.

  But at least I had arms again. And legs. I lifted my hand to my head and winced at the pain even the slightest touch caused me. But the bleeding had stopped. So, I also had my brain still intact inside my skull, it seemed.

  Thank the angel.

  One very specific, very broody, very hot angel.

  From behind the curtain of my tangled blonde hair, I looked up at Adrik, who stood over me with knitted brows. His chest was covered in blood, and his expression was pinched tight.

  “Better?” he asked.

  I decided not to point out the obvious vomiting and simply nodded.

  “Yeah,” I rasped, taking his offered hand as I climbed to my feet. “Better.” I wavered on shaky legs and looked up at him. “How in the hell did you do that?”

  “Neph power perk,” he said simply.

  “But you…forced me to shift.”

  He looked guiltily away. “Nephilim can do that sort of thing. If they’re powerful enough.”

  My jaw dropped as I realized the full implication of his admission. My dad’s death… He’d been found in his human form. Not his griffin. And without a scratch on him. Which hadn’t made any sense, given the story about him supposedly fighting a demon.

  “Can Selaphiel also—”

  I broke off, my breaths coming in short gasps as shock and grief gave way to rage.

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  My heart thudded, and I bit back the questions on my tongue. Right now, we needed to get inside, but mostly, I needed to not throw up again. Once I was sure my stomach would stay inside my body, I would lob all the questions I wanted.

  Breathe, Gem. Save your crazy for when your stomach is solid.

  I forced myself to focus on what had just happened—and what we were going to do about it.

  “Your sister is batshit crazy,” I said.

  “On that, we agree,” he said.

  “And the bull?” I asked.

  “Dead.” His voice was flat, but his eyes raged on. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”

  It wasn’t until he turned me around that I realized we were on the townhouse roof instead of the street below. Wow, my senses were really drained.

  Leaning on Adrik for support, I let him take me inside through an access door that led into an attic and, from there, down a set of stairs to the second floor of the townhouse.

  In the hall, I stopped outside the first open door and peered in at the sleeping form resting on the full-size bed. Tony. He looked the same as the other day. Eyes sunken with dark circles underneath and bright blue skin. He was bigger now than when I’d found him at the Delta building the other day with bulky muscles and a broad frame that dwarfed the mattress he slept on.

  When had he gotten so big?

  I looked around for some sign of food or drink or even personal care items. But there was none. The only other furniture in the room was a medical machine that was apparently reading his vitals and emitting soft beeps every few seconds.

  “His vitals remain stable. Though, his mental state has not yet begun to adjust to his change,” Adrik said quietly, his voice gravelly with pain.

  I looked over, frowning at the wound on the dark Nephilim’s chest that had yet to begin to close. It should have started healing by now.

  “We need to get you patched up,” I said.

  He moved away, heading farther down the short hall.

  “In here,” he said.

  I followed, passing another room where I glimpsed Wolfrick also asleep in a twin bed dwarfed by his large, furry body.


  “He looks so peaceful,” I whispered. “But also scary as hell.”

  “He’s helped hold Tony down for me a few times,” Adrik said, and I bit my lip, worrying about Tony’s condition again. What was happening to my friend that it took a Nephilim and a level six lupine demon to hold him down?

  Quietly, I followed Adrik across the hall, into the bedroom he’d been using as an office. It looked nearly the same as it had the last time I’d visited—which felt like a lifetime ago now. But in addition to the desk, he’d added a twin bed against the far wall. And on the wall behind the desk, a collage of photos and sticky notes had been pinned in a crazy sort of grid pattern.

  I stopped and stared at it, studying the scrawled handwriting and grainy photos.

  Adrik cleared his throat, and I turned back to him, prioritizing. Not bleeding out came first.

  “Where’s your first aid kit?” I asked as he lowered himself to the bed. With his giant frame, the narrow mattress looked even smaller now.

  He slanted a brow in my direction. “What part of immortal angel makes you think I own a first aid kit?”

  “Right.” My shoulders sagged, and I bit my lip, glancing around the room for an alternative, but there was nothing. I frowned and closed the distance, examining the wound more closely. “Why isn’t it closing anyway? Shouldn’t your angel DNA handle this for you?”

  “It’s a Nephilim-inflicted wound.”

  I looked up and realized just how close our faces were. My breath caught, and I forced myself to focus on the conversation, not his dark, sexy eyes or brooding mouth.

  “Selaphiel can actually hurt you.”

  He nodded. “It’ll mend. Eventually.”

  I shook my head at his easy dismissal of it. “And if the wound had been lethal?”

  “Sela doesn’t want to kill me.”

  I snorted. “She had me fooled. What with the hit she put out on you. Which makes less sense now. I mean, why send hitmen to do a job she could do herself?”

  “She wants to punish me. The demons she summoned were meant to be a distraction.” His words were lined with exhaustion. “She means to hurt me in other ways.”

  His gaze flicked to mine.

  He frowned.

  I didn’t bother stating the obvious. We both knew what Selaphiel’s strategy had been tonight. And without Adrik’s intervention, it would have worked.

  “She killed my father.”

  I was still processing the truth of it, but I needed to know if Adrik had known. At my words, his expression hardened and became impossible to read.

  “Did you know?” I asked, bracing myself for the answer.

  If Adrik had known and kept it from me—even to protect his own sister—I couldn’t handle it.

  “I’d begun to suspect,” he said quietly.

  I thought of the coroner’s report I’d unredacted. “She must have forced him to shift. After,” I said, my voice gravelly now as I imagined what it must have been like for him. Selaphiel’s power had been crippling tonight. I didn’t want to think of my father suffering like that before he’d died.

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  And Grandpa. The most gentle, non-violent man I’d ever known. I didn’t doubt Selaphiel had killed him too. She would have done the same to Gran if Grandpa hadn’t kept her safe. I couldn’t even think of it right now. But it had been her. Selaphiel. For all of it.

  “Why?” I asked, tears beginning to burn.

  “Sela’s always had a different view. A sort of us versus them. She hates that I’ve embraced our life here—and the diversity of this world. But I had no idea she’d take it this far.”

  And then it clicked. Her comment about choosing my kind over his own.

  “She did it to get to you,” I realized.

  Pain rose, flashing sharply in his dark eyes then vanishing as he buried it again. “She was jealous that I formed a friendship with an earthbound creature.”

  “Not to mention one that was trying to foil her plans to get into Daddy’s good graces. What the hell was she talking about, a decree?”

  “There is a legend, not much more than a myth among my kind really, that promises a return for the Nephilim who defeat the demons once and for all.”

  “What is the promise?”

  “A return from whence we came, it says.” He snorted as if it were a bad thing.

  I shook my head, confused at his reaction. “You would all return to your own dimension,” I say, a little surprised I’d never heard the story before. Then again, Neph were notoriously secretive about their pasts. Especially the age “before”—which is what they called the millenniums they’d lived prior to being sent here to Earth. “That sounds like a happy ending to me.”

  He grimaced. “Sela is naïve and denies what her head and her heart already know. She doesn’t understand there is nothing to go back to.”

  “What do you mean nothing to go back to? I thought you came from Heaven.”

  He gave me a slanted look. “Heaven is a strange concept. The humans have made it into some sort of utopia, but the truth is they have no idea what really lies beyond the veil.”

  “But you do.”

  The haunted look that flashed behind his eyes startled me more than his next words. “Let’s just say there are multiple destinations.”

  His words were cryptic, and I bit back the questions that rose. Like whether or not my father was now at one of those destinations. But I held back. This felt like it was leading to something personal for him.

  “Selaphiel said she’s angry with you for being so overprotective. What does she mean?”

  “When we were young, our parents were lost to the heavenly wars. As a child, Selaphiel was always…quick to take. And after our parents were gone, I became too indulgent. It led to an entitlement that became… She is selfish,” he said at last. “In the last world we inhabited, she caused destruction, and so we were sent here. To make amends.”

  “So, she thinks if she does a good job here, she’ll be rewarded.”

  “She thinks the Powers-that-be care only for the outcome and not for the means used to achieve it. They meant this as a chance for redemption, but she thinks this is all some sort of punishment. That if we prove ourselves, we’ll be rewarded with a new home. A paradise.” He snorted. “She is wrong. This is the paradise. All that waits for us back there is more politics. More power-grabbing. More danger.”

  “Are there demons in your heaven?”

  He snorted. “Worse. More Nephilim like her.”

  I bit my lip. It was one thing for the supernatural community to see the Neph as the villains. But it was quite another to hear Adrik admit it too.

  He looked up at me, reading my expression. “You’re surprised that I would talk badly of my own kind.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  After a beat of silence, he said, “Just because we fight evil doesn’t make us good.”

  “Is this why you left the council?” I asked.

  “I finally realized I could do more good from the outside than within,” he said.

  I thought of Wolfrick. And Tony. And my father.

  Looking at Adrik, I could see the truth of his words reflected in his very existence. The dark wings. The dark eyes carrying so much sadness and pain. His kind was supposed to be our savior from a dark evil, but instead, they had become the enemy no one saw coming.

  A year ago, I would have lumped Adrik in with the rest of them too. But now, I understood. Evil came in all forms, and the outer shell had nothing to do with it. Just like Wolfrick was nothing like the monster they claimed he was, Adrik wasn’t a villain either.

  His heart was pure—even if his moods were a little dark and brooding.

  I was beginning to suspect he had reasons for that darkness. Reasons that would probably break my heart to learn.

  And today, I had room for only one heartbreak.

  “I’m sorry about your parents,” I said quietly.

  “It was a long time
ago.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Loss is loss.”

  He didn’t answer, and the silence stretched.

  “Stop,” he said finally, pulling me from my thoughts.

  “Stop what?”

  He tugged me down beside him, and even though his wounds needed attention, I sat.

  “I know what you’re thinking. About your dad. About what he wanted for you.”

  “His dying wish was that I remain unaware of the danger and corruption in the world,” I said dully. Already, the rage had cooled to a sort of numb acceptance that I knew from experience only made it harder to function beyond the need for justice. I also knew this kind of numbness made me reckless. I did dumb shit like drive dangerously fast around S turns or join the SSF.

  “He wanted you safe,” he said.

  I snorted. “What’s the difference? Either way, I’ve already gone against his memory.”

  “Your father was proud of you. He still is. You can’t let guilt or regret weigh you down. It will eat you from the inside and destroy you. I don’t want to see that happen. Not to you.”

  “Maybe it already has,” I admitted. “I’ve spent the last few months doing nothing but searching for my father’s killer. Now, I know who it is, but how does that help? Selaphiel is so much more powerful than me. I can’t beat her in a fair fight—not that she’d fight fair anyway. And even if I could take her down, all I can think about is how empty I still feel even after learning the truth.”

  “Revenge is rarely fulfilling.”

  “Clearly, you’ve never been to high school.”

  He shook his head, ignoring my attempt at sarcasm. “Your father loved you. His wish for you to stay out of the SSF was about protection. It’s why I tried warning you off, and it’s why I attended The Monster Ball, to watch you. But I can see now that he was wrong. We both were. You’re the strongest creature I’ve ever known. But you don’t need to let your anger and grief define you.”

  “It’s not.” My pulse sped at his words, especially the part about me being strong, but I forced myself to remain focused. “This is about justice. Selaphiel is a danger to the entire supernatural and human population. If we don’t stop her, who will?”

  He sighed. “I’ve asked myself that question for some time now.”