Keeper of Crows (Keeper of Crows #1)(34)

I swallowed. “Fine. I’ll get dressed.”

“Fine,” he growled.

After he slammed the door shut, I yelled, “Fine!” just for good measure. Michael struck me as someone who always had to have the last word, but I showed him.

I tugged the denim over my heels and shimmied it up over my hips, buttoning and then zipping, before making my way downstairs. I grinned at Gabriel, who beamed back at me.

“I trust you like your gift, Carmen?”

“I absolutely love it.”

Dimitri began yelling again, angrily thrashing against Gabriel’s steel grip. I eased toward him. Could I have a lightning leash, or maybe a whip made of the same? I’d teach Dimitri a lesson he’d never forget before frying his pathetic ass all the way to Hell.

Gabriel inclined his head and suddenly Dimitri was sucked across the room, plastered against the wall, held by what I first thought was an invisible force. Then a familiar crackling sound filled my ears. Lightning.

It bolted across the skin of his neck, searing tender flesh and making Dimitri pant, puffs of air inflating and then deflating his cheeks rapidly. Two lightning cuffs forked across his ankles. His wide eyes watched as I approached.

“What do you want?” he panted in defiance of his restraints.

I stepped toward him, fingers clenching in rage. “Your head on a fucking pike would be a good start, Dimitri.”

Michael pushed me aside. “You know Warren Kennedy?”

Dimitri laughed. “You figured it out, then? Your own father paid me to nearly kill you. ‘Put her as close to death as you can, Dimitri, but do not cross that line,’ he said.”

“Why would you take orders from my father?” I spat.

“I am a businessman. He paid me enough to keep me comfortable for years.”

Michael tore the shirt over his head, his tattoos angrily morphing all over him. Gabriel’s eyes flashed dark before he did the same, revealing similar markings that ebbed and flowed, a furious, dangerous tide of dark ichor.

A loud snap came from behind Gabriel as his wings unfurled, hindered by the ceiling above us, each the gray-white color of a dove. They looked as though they emanated light, lit from within their hollows. I imagined Michael’s wings, what they would have looked like; dark as the night and holding every color within. Powerful and menacing.

Dimitri’s smug look disintegrated into terror. “What the hell is this?” he mumbled.

Gabriel looked menacing, despite having seemed so nice when I first met him. Michael would have been even more terrifying with wings. Maybe that was why he didn’t have them anymore. I couldn’t help but take a step back from the furious angels. Rage rippled through their muscles, and for a fraction of a second, I was afraid, afraid for myself and afraid for Dimitri. However, the worry for him faded as quickly as it began when I thought of the dark car pulling up in front of the gate after the taillights from the cab I rode home in faded in the distance. Of the deeply tinted window rolling down, and the feeling of knowing what would come next. Dimitri didn’t visit people in the hospital—or rehab—out of the goodness of his heart. Get in the car…

Something passed between the two angels, and then Michael turned to Gabriel. “Show me.”

Gabriel sneered at Dimitri and grabbed Michael’s temples before lowering his head. Michael stared, unfocused, at the wall above his friend’s curly hair. He was seeing something, his eyes darting back and forth angrily as he took in the scene Gabriel laid out. A low growl began deep in the hollow of his chest, and soon Michael couldn’t contain it anymore. He let out a howl that was so loud, I had to cover my ears. And then the archangel unleashed all hell on Dimitri.

Bones cracked. Skin split and tore. Bruises blossomed. Blood oozed.

“Let him down,” he panted to Gabriel when he finished his initial assault.

Dimitri fell into a bloody heap on the floor, his face unrecognizable. He tried to push himself up, but Michael kicked him to the floor. Blood drizzled from Dimitri’s mouth and nose.

“I saw what you did to her – what you let them do to her. You will spend an eternity regretting every second of it. Do you hear me?”

A groan fell from Dimitri’s mouth as he collapsed, blood falling in threads to the floor below. Michael turned to Gabriel, looking as if he’d just gone for a light jog instead of having beat a man to a pulp. “Make him a triple.”

“A triple? Do you have authority for that?” Gabriel asked, confused.

“I just said make him a triple.”

With one last glance at Michael, Gabriel knelt by Dimitri, rolling his body over. Only the subtle rise and fall of Dimitri’s chest indicated he was alive. Gabriel covered Dimitri’s eyes, speaking in the language Michael used, and then he covered Dimitri’s ears. Black tar filled both sets of cavities. He laid a hand over Dimitri’s mouth and it sealed, a thin layer of skin immediately growing over his lips.

See no evil.

Hear no evil.

Speak no evil.

A triple.

I just hoped it prevented him from doing evil.

Dimitri deserved to be a triple, but my heart ached for Michael. Would he get in trouble for doing what he did? He did it to avenge me.

“I did it because that man,” he angrily pointed to Dimitri, “deserves to burn, but I want him to suffer first.” Michael just did the same thing he hated the demons for doing, and he did it for me. I just hoped this wouldn’t eat away at him and somehow turn him against me. But whatever he saw, it was worse than what I remembered. The kicks and punches, I felt them, saw them coming and had no way to defend myself against them – but what else was there?