“We can discuss who I am after you heal him.” Heal him. Not treat him. It seemed this not-human didn’t just know my name, he knew that I was an angel of the seventh order, that I could heal with a touch.
I glanced around the empty lobby, double-checking for witnesses before waving the man into an empty exam room. It wasn’t exactly following policy, but if I could save Hayden’s life, I was willing to stretch the rules a little.
“What happened?” I asked as I approached the bed where the young man was gently laying Hayden down.
“Car accident. He hit a tree.”
I nodded, unbuttoning his shirt and placing my bare hand flat on his chest. My power flowed through my palmand into his body. Bones mended and punctures closed under my touch. Bacteria cleared and the swelling went down. And the worst of the gray anxiety and black pain left his aura.
I pulled back when everything life-threatening had been taken care of. “He’s going to be fine.”
The other man didn’t take his eyes off the bed. “He’s still hurt.”
I sighed. “He was in an accident. If he wakes up without so much as a scratch—”
“They’ll call it a miracle.”
“Real life doesn’t work like that.” And I’d learned that sometimes it was better to let a person heal naturally. Sometimes taking all the pain away made things worse for them mentally in the long run.
The nonhuman man moved so fast I could barely track the movement. The next thing I knew, fingers were digging into my arm and a hand slapped over my mouth just as my back hit the wall of the exam room.
“Try to fight me and we’re going to have some serious problems, little angel.” His voice was deep and melodic, the kind that you could listen to all day… if it were saying something other than threats. “You wanted to know what I am.” I felt his body tense, and then black leathery wings extended from his back. I’d never seen anything like them before, but I knew exactly what they meant.
Only twelve beings in the universe had wings like that.
This was a grand prince of Hell—one of the original Fallen who’d been cast out of Heaven after Lucifer’s rebellion.
This was bad. No, this was worse than just bad.
I didn’t even try to reach for a weapon. I knew it was useless. I could barely hold my own against low-ranking demons. I wouldn’t win a fight against one of the most powerful demons in existence.
He was different than what I would have expected. He looked so young and wild and human. He was dressed in nothing but a pair of leather pants that looked like something Nate would wear, and ink decorated his chest, arms, and some of his fingers. A silver chain hung around his neck with a small canister dangling from it, the kind people put ashes of their loved ones in.
“Now, you’re going to finish healing him,” he said, his voice low and full of dangerous promise. His hand lowered from my mouth to wrap around my throat. “Do you understand?”
“It’s not that simple,” I whispered.
Frustration twisted the demon’s expression, making him look more like a caged animal than a deadly prince of Hell who could easily kill me if he wanted to. His hand tightened around my neck, and I couldn’t help wincing at the shock of pain.
He let go with a growl. “Explain.”
“That accident was serious. He would have died if you hadn’t brought him to me. That kind of trauma isn’t so easy to get over. The process of physically healing can be good for his mental healing.”
“Fine. If you can’t heal him, we’ll make a deal.”
Yeah, I had no intention of making a deal with a prince of Hell. I’d rather have let him kill me.
“You are going to ensure he makes a full recovery, notjust this time but every time I command you to heal someone in the future. You fail to save any of them or tell anyone about our deal, and I’ll go after your family.”
“Go after?”
“Even the best-trained angels in the world can’t fight off an infinite number of demons.”
I went cold all over. I had no doubt he could make that happen. He was a ruler of Hell—I bet he had legions of demons at his command. “And if I don’t agree to your terms?”
He chuckled darkly. “It’s not that kind of deal, angel. It’s more of a… choice. You can either be at my beck and call when I need a healer, or you can say goodbye to the angels you call brothers and their families. You decide.”
No. No, no, no, no, no. This could not be happening.
