Avenging Angel (The Fallen #4)(66)

“How?”

Seline watched in silence.

Marna hesitated. Tanner’s body was still locked in battle-ready mode. “I want you to teach me to kill.” She lifted her hands and held them, palms out, toward Sammael. “With a touch.”

A faint line appeared between his brows, but it was Seline who asked, “You mean you can’t?”

Marna shook her head.

“Power comes back in different ways, for different angels.” Sammael didn’t seem particularly concerned. Since it wasn’t his life, why would he be? “Give it time,” he said with a shrug. “You’ve only been walking the earth a few months. You’ll get stronger—”

“Time is what I don’t have.” She pulled in a ragged breath. “If I’m going to keep living, then I need to know how to kill.”

Waves of tension seemed to roll off Tanner.

“Can you stir the fire?” Seline asked.

Marna nodded. “But fire isn’t much good against a demon.”

“And that’s what we’re facing,” Tanner said as he stood with his legs braced apart. “The vamps want her blood, yeah, we know that, but there’s a demon out there, pulling puppet strings and stealing faces.”

Seline blinked her perfect eyes. “Stealing what?”

“He changed himself,” Marna said, and her gaze darted to the window. To the mass of bodies below. Was anyone ever truly who you thought? “He took my body, my face, and he killed two shifters.”

“Interesting.” From Sammael.

“It’s not interesting,” Tanner fired back. “It’s dangerous.”

The right side of Sammael’s mouth kicked up into a half-smile. “Let me guess . . . he took your form, too?”

“And nearly killed a cop. This SOB is gunning for us, and we will take him out.” Tanner’s vow.

But Marna said, “Fire won’t stop him. That means I can’t stop him.” She didn’t have Tanner’s certainty that they were gonna win the day.

“Hmmm.” Sammael’s fingers stroked Seline’s leg in an absent caress. “But your shifter’s claws should do the trick. Unless, of course, he’s too squeamish to kill his own brother.”

“Like you were too squeamish to kill yours?” Tanner fired back.

The air in the room got very, very thick.

Sammael’s fingers stopped their stroking. “You should be careful, shifter.”

“No, you should be.” Tanner lifted up his claws. “I know how to kill you, too.”

Had anyone else ever stood up to Sammael before? Marna didn’t think so. If they had, those folks hadn’t exactly lived to tell the story.

Sammael threw back his head and laughed. Wait, laughed?

Tanner wasn’t laughing with him.

“I like you, shifter,” Sammael said once he’d gained control of himself. It looked like Seline might have pinched him. “You’re not afraid to piss off Death.”

No, he wasn’t.

Marna cleared her throat. “Can we get back to the Touch?” Or did they just want to fill the room with more supernatural testosterone? From where she stood, there was already plenty of that in the place. Enough to choke her and Seline.

Sammael gave a slow nod. “So you want to be able to kill demons.”

“But what if a demon isn’t the one . . . ah . . .” Seline cleared her throat and finished, “. . . stealing faces?”

“Demons can work glamour like no one else,” Tanner said. “It has to be one of them. No one else can—”

But Sammael had turned to glance first at Seline, then at Marna. His brows lowered as he studied her. “Why haven’t you told him?”

She stared back at him, lost. There was nothing to tell.

“Marna . . .” Sammael sighed her name as if she were a naughty child. To one as ancient as he, maybe she was. “You and I both know that demons aren’t the only ones who can change their forms.” Then his gaze turned back to Tanner. “Surely you’ve heard the legends about demons, about how they first came to be.”

Tanner’s back was to the tinted glass and the throng of dancers. “They were descended from the Fallen.”

“Um . . . yes, and so where do you think that handy glamour magic first came from, huh?” He waited a beat, then said, “Angels. They’re the ones who mastered glamour long before any demons walked the earth. Angels can steal faces, too.”





Cody hurried down the darkened street. His neck had healed, but his gut twisted with every step he took. Another demon in New Orleans who could steal faces? How the hell had he missed that?

He’d always thought he was alone. A freak, even among demons. Others of his kind could stir powerful magic. Control the minds of humans. Not him.

His father had once said that he was a curse. Unable to shift into the powerful form of a panther, what good had he been? His father had laughed and mocked him for only being able to shift his physical appearance so that he looked like humans.

“Fucking useless. Should have killed you the first day I realized the panther didn’t live inside of you.” His father’s words rang in his ears.

And the bastard had tried to kill him. He would have succeeded, if Tanner hadn’t been there. Jumping in, taking those blows and the slices from their father’s claws.