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Fortunately for Bronze, however, tonight was finally the fallen angel sentinel’s lucky night, and boy, did he need it. Well, need was a relative term because the need to sink his halberd into a breathing demon body was as strong as a swimmer’s need to claw to the surface lest their lungs give up the ghost. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had a kill. Had it been weeks? No, a month and a half at least.
The quiet concerned them all, for one did not stay quiet if one had something to say. For all the eons Bronze had fought the demon ruler, Cyro, and his charmers, he’d always known the bastard to have far more words than good reasons to use them.
Which meant the silence was a tactical maneuver, and Bronze was so sick of it.
“Always with the fucking games,” he muttered into the night air. “Just give me something to kill.”
Because if he had a task to occupy his mind, it would push out the irreverent words of a deity who had decided to publicly take him down a notch by hitting him with one of her prophecies.
All because he’d foolishly made a joke at her expense. A joke that, regrettably, didn’t go over as well as he’d hoped.
That’s what I get for sassing a goddess, he thought wryly, which brought him right back to the massive problem at hand: when his body wasn’t busy hacking charmers to pieces, it gave his head free rein to fuck with the rest of him. Right on cue, her words floated to the surface like a water lily parting the murky algae of his mind.
“Not all curses are created equal, sentinel. Some require more skill than luck to defeat them. One day soon, you shall meet a woman to challenge you in this regard.”
At that, his eyes lit up. “A woman, eh?”
“Yes. I wish you luck. Lycans are so very fond of their games.”
So, yeah, he really hated playing games.
Bronze twisted on his perch and was surprised that his ass hadn’t fallen asleep yet. The branch he’d chosen wasn’t particularly wide, but it was broad enough to ensure neither ass cheek fell asleep on the job. Only mildly proud of himself for selecting a halfway decent tree to scout from, Bronze took in the abandoned textile and cotton mill that protruded from the ground below in all its decrepit glory.
The former mid-eighteen-hundreds four-story brick building—former, because the poor thing had been relieved of a story or two thanks to some angelic fire power—abutted the Ellis River and had once been a hotbed of charmer activity. With all the recent demonic trails having gone cold, the sentinels had been forced to retrace their steps and ensure the rats hadn’t scurried back to their initial home once the predators had fixated on prey elsewhere.
If there had been a shittier place for the demon ruler to establish his original base of operations, Bronze couldn’t think of one. That had been the fucking point and the reason he was going to have to shave down his palm with a rasp later just to get the dump truck’s worth of splinters out of his skin. After driving Cyro and his forces from every pimple they’d sprouted from recently, the sentinels didn’t put it past the bastard to make what was once old new again, especially if Cyro thought it would be the last place they’d look for him. Lucky for Bronze, he’d drawn the short straw that evening, which left him scratching his ass and surveilling an old hideaway that likely wouldn’t?—
The faint, rhythmic whirring was all that preceded the shuriken’s arrival. Bronze jerked his head to the left just in time to absorb the throwing star’s vibrations from the tree trunk it sank into behind him. Gleaming silver winked from a honed point three inches from his chin, nearly turning his goatee into a one-sided walrus mustache that had looked good on no man ever, let alone the gingers.
But the thrill . . . Oh, the thrill that pumped through him as he eyed the deadly edges so clearly meant for one of his more vital bits was the drug he’d been too long without.
Sweeter than sex and just as addicting.
Tracking the trajectory of the weapon had been the work of a moment. There, on the far side of the building, settled on the north bank of the river, a pair of gold eyes flashed beneath the mill’s ancient wheel before descending back into the shadows.
That dangerous pleasure pumped into Bronze’s limbs until they were full to bursting, awakening what had always been poised at the ready. Mages, he lived for this. The chase, the capture. It wasn’t that he was a sadistic fuck who liked to toy with his prey, it was just that— Aw, hell, maybe he was exactly that. The problem was, after living as long as he had, there was little to recommend him for taking the high road. He’d seen just how brutally agonizing it was when a charmer unraveled a soul from its mortal, the flailing body, its limbs slowly dying one by one . . .
And then there were the other tactics employed by the demons that hit far too close to home. Intimately so. Rather than shirking the terrors, he draped those horrifying memories around him like a warrior’s cape and let them coax his celestial fire from his depths like a brutal lover only called upon to slake darker urges.
No. I’m not above anything my power wishes to take from them. Let’s have our dance.
Bronze leaped from the tree he’d perched in and flung his arms wide, chest parallel to the floor in the ultimate swan dive. Before gravity got it in its head to pull on his strings, he freed his power and his wings. Twin condor-length panels of shingled bronze feathers rippled from his back and caught the wind like a fighter jet, narrowing him toward a target that had no hope of hiding.
If Bronze had been anything like the majority of his brothers, he’d have palmed his firearms and shot the charmer full of angel-fire-fueled bullets. Sure, it was effective, as the sentinels’ fire was the only thing that could kill a charmer, but where was the fun in long-range combat, especially after one of those fuckers had tried to give him an even closer shave?
Nah. Not his style.
Bronze reached around to the small of his back and gripped his sickle sword. The blade itched to sink its edge into some demon flesh, or perhaps it was just the power of Bronze’s anticipation that set his weapon to humming in concert. A blur whipped along the river’s edge, then there was nothing save for the sparse patch of reeds that swayed in the opposite direction of the vegetation around it. Bronze banked hard, his angel fire curling up his spine and threatening to punch through the first meaty demonic thing it could. His power not only had teeth but a tightly coiled tension that couldn’t wait to spring. The heat of his celestial fire was a comforting heaviness around his soul, one he savored and acknowledged every time he called upon it.
For it never lasted nearly as long as he wanted it to. Not anymore. Unfortunately, his most formidable weapon was the sole celestial power that remained after he and his brothers fell from the Empyrean, Heaven’s highest realm.
A sharp whizzing rent the night air, buzzing along Bronze’s flesh in skittering tremors. Another shuriken. Bronze rippled into his metallic skin and angled sharply to the right. Sparks flared brightly in the inky darkness as his sword sliced three throwing stars out of the sky. As he batted the last weapon away, the charmer sprang up from his crouched position and beat feet along the river’s edge.
“Hey, where ya going? I haven’t given you your goody bag yet. You can’t invite me out and not let me return the favor. Bad form, my dude. Bad form.” Bronze dove low, recalled his wings when he was mere feet above the demon’s head, and dropped onto the charmer right as it got to the bridge above where the large wastewater pipe fed into the Ellis. The dilapidated overpass’ cobblestones had no problem showing off their age, giving Bronze a marvelous cheese grater-like surface to ground pound the charmer into. The demon collapsed under Bronze’s weight and skidded to a halt facedown against the brick.
Well, facedown with an angel sitting on his back, his head cranked toward the sky, and a sword kissing his exposed throat.
Bronze squeezed his thighs around the demon’s neck, making sure to hammer down on that carotid good and tight while leaving those pale ears free and clear. Mages, he missed this. The strain of holding his power back against his enemy when his angel fire was near to bursting through his muscles was the ultimate erotic act. Knowing he could smear the charmer writhing beneath him into a soot stain with no more than a thought was its own type of power. The endgame orgasm. The kind of high that elite athletes would sell their souls to achieve, just for the chance to chase the feeling down and lick its heels if they ever got close enough.
