“You just arrived, and so possibly don’t know this, but if you are not purified, you cannot be sent back to Earth to protect the balance. And if you are not sent back to Earth—”
“Yeah, yeah. I get unmade.” I cocked one hip out. “I heard. So let’s finish here and figure out my name so I can get back to the tubs, Growly Bear.”
Suddenly, my feet lifted off the floor, and I windmilled my arms to get my balance. Was I flying? Nope. Mikhail had pinched the back of my toga with two fingers, wrapped the cloth around his hand, and was holding me right in front of him.
I. Was. Naked.
Freaking bare as a baby’s butt, booty hanging out, starkers, birthday-suit-only, buck naked. I looked down to double check no one had magicked an angel bra and undies, or a feather bikini, onto me.
Nope. Honestly, the smut attached to me was as thick as a coat of wet cement in most places. I could make out some general curves, but I had on more than enough oily muck to hide the real goods. So maybe I was only technically naked. And Growly sure as heck wasn’t looking at me to see anything. But still.
“W-what are you doing? I get that you angel types aren’t really body-conscious up here, but this is a little out of my comfort—”
“Silence,” he commanded, and my lips zipped together, the breath I had ready to yell expelling in one long, squeaky exhalation through my nostrils.
It wasn’t a suggestion, apparently. I literally could not speak. Except with my eyes, so I used those to express my extreme displeasure. Extremely silently.
“Excellent.” He lifted me onto and pinned me down on a table with one massive hand. I glanced to the side and immediately regretted doing so. The table was equipped with stained leather straps and rimmed along all four edges with some sort of narrow channel to funnel liquids. Like blood.
I arched my back to get away and tried to scream, though the ability to get free or even make sounds was obviously not allowed. Not with the sort of torture I feared was about to go down.
“Still,” he ordered, as I tried to wriggle free of his nine-hundred-pound hand. Now it was like he’d injected my whole body with lead; I couldn’t move anything. Not even my eyelids. The only thing I could do was breathe, and not very deeply.
Dangit, I knew this was Hell. I was smooshed so flat, the smut on my back oozed into every nick in the surface of the wood.
“Better,” he grunted. What was it with this guy and one-word sentences? Weren’t evil villains supposed to monologue? I needed some time to figure out how to get out of this.
He began lifting my arms one at a time like I was a doll, peering at them through some type of a jeweler’s loupe. Next, he held up what looked like a small silver bell with no clapper. “When I find your name and speak it, the bell will chime. There’s always a mark that should resonate…” He held the bell over my hands, arms, elbows, all the way to my shoulders.
Nothing.
He rubbed under one arm at a spot of muck, which tickled. “You should have a sigil on one of your arms… Hmph. Nothing. It should glow, even through all this smut. Did my Apprentice mark your leg, maybe?” He glared at my face. “No, I must have created you. He’s been gone for centuries. No wings. You can’t be old enough to have been formed by Azazel.”
I had no idea who that was, but I couldn’t ask anyway. He kept moving the chime, obviously not in a mood to explain. I was getting really close to using actual curse words in my thoughts.
“On your foot, maybe? No. Defective from start to finish. How did you ever leave this Hall? You should have been unmade and re-formed correctly at once!”
I should never have been born?Gee, thanks, Daddy,I muttered mentally. I’d heard that enough times in my Earth lives to make the phrase sting more than a little. How had I ever thought of that frowning face as hot? This guy was a jerk, and if I ever got my voice back, I’d tell him…Whoa!
My legs left the table one at a time, and when Growly’s fingers started exploring my feet, dipping in between each toe, scraping lightly at the thick gray smut, I realized there was Hell… and then there wasTickle Hell.
Being tickled while your mouth was sealed shut and you couldn’t move or react was a new form of torture for me, and I’d been tortured by some real experts. I stopped breathing for a second, black stars swimming before my eyes. I would have kept holding it, but passing out might stop me from finding my moment to escape.
Finally, the torment stopped. “Hmph. Nothing I can find.” He paced back and forth, glaring at me. I had a bad feeling he was thinking about just unmaking me and calling it a day—problem solved. I used every ounce of the fading energy I had to widen my eyes.
“What?” Still pacing, he casually waved a hand. “Speak.”
“Number one,” I said furiously, my body still held to the table. “You are the world’s biggest basshole. I. Am. Ticklish.” He lifted a hand again like he was going to do the Silence Thing, so I rushed to get the rest of it out. “I would have just told you my name, if you’d bothered to ask.”
“Feather?” he scoffed. “That’s not a name, it’s a—”
“A nickname, I know.” I closed my eyes. I hated telling anyone my real name. I hadn’t even heard the word for almost four hundred years, and only the nuns at the abbey outside Rome where I’d spent my first life had used it. I should have known there was no escaping who I really was.
Mikhail had stopped pacing. “You know your name?” he asked, quietly for once. “Your true name. The one you were given here, when you were formed, as a Protector.”
“I think so.” I took another breath. “I don’t remember being named, or this place at all. But on Earth… it was different when I was called what might be my real name. Like, I felt it, deep down.”
“At the core of your being, yes. A name is given to every soul formed here. It reflects who the soul is, their defining trait. Sunny is named for beaming light of many kinds.” He mumbled something that sounded like, “Though I should have chosen something more dignified.”
