Growly Bear echoed him. “A flare? Of what?”
“If I didn’t know the current Protectors we have on Earth are all too weak, I would have said it was a Great Sacrifice. A flare of pure soul energy. I arrived to find this fouled thing covered in stains and blood, a knife in her hand. A man dead at her feet. She’s a murderer; she admitted it.”
Growly Bear muttered something in a language I didn’t know that kind of hurt my ears. Then he asked, “What caused the flare? Was there another Protector there?”
“No. And when I looked back in the minds of humans around her, they all remembered it the same way. This thing took the knife from a child’s hand and turned it on the man, killing him.”
“Then she’s…” Growly Bear sounded so sad, I wanted to leap up and hug him.
But then Gavriel went on, “Yes. She must be unmade.”
Unmade. Did he mean they might kill me?
Growly Bear said another string of words that literally hurt, like needles poking my eardrums. “We don’t have enough Protectors as it is.”
“I know. But can we afford to expose the others to the evil she carries? It could spread…”
It felt as if someone was pounding across a floor toward me. Was unmade the same as extracted? It sounded bad, anyway. Maybe permanently bad. I held everything, even my eyeballs, completely still.
Growly Bear spoke again, nearer this time. “Why didn’t you take care of this before now? You brought her here. What else happened, Gav?”
Gavriel sighed. I could almost feel his indecision. “When she took the knife, she prevented the child from committing murder.”
“She saved the child?”
His next words sounded like they were being forced out of him. “Yes. She saved the girl and kept her from killing. Then, after this Protector murdered the man, she took his soul smut as well.” A long pause. “She cleansed his soul. Redeemed him before he died.”
Growly Bear grumbled two words. “Aw, hell.”
“Exactly,” Gavriel answered. “She may be an agent of the Abyss, but she changed the balance in Chicago. For the first time in a century, it’s more light than shadow.”
“She shifted the balance that much? Be that as it may, if she murdered…”
“You see the challenge. Don’t worry, I know how attached you are to your creations. If she cannot be cleansed, I’ll unmake her myself.”
The silence was almost unbearably heavy. I was almost positive now that unmaking meant killing.The H E double hockey sticks with that! I am out of here.I opened my eyes a tiny crack, although everything still looked dim.
“Good, she’s waking. I’ll leave her with you. Find out her name,” Gavriel said, his voice growing faint. “But be careful. If she’s truly as foul-spirited as she smells, then her smut might not only be dangerous to her own soul. It could spread to the others.”
“Did you say I stink?” Oh good, my mouth was working now. The dimly lit room swam as I whipped my head around. “What a judgmental jerk you are, you big buttmunching—” I blinked and rubbed at my crusty eyes, bringing someone into focus. But to my dismay, it wasn’t Sexy Voice—er, Gavriel. There was only one person in the room with me.
It was Growly Bear. And he was pissed.
“You dare,” the giant man said, too calmly. “You dare to call a High Angelus such degrading names?” He loomed over me in a sort of long, golden toga robe that gaped open, revealing a torso covered with dark whorls of hair and silvered scars. A lot of scars. And even more muscles. Abs.
So many abs.
The giant had muscles on top of the muscles most guys had. Like tiny little muscles in the cracks between the big bulgy ones. Was this my Greek bodybuilder fantasy? I glanced at his huge, scarred hands. Nope, no grapes. They always fed me chocolate-dipped grapes in that dream. And they were naked. Growly Bear would probably put them all to shame though…
Wait.I was getting distracted. But when I scooted back and focused, I decided I had good reason to be.
The guy had to be six foot six, and who knew how many feet across. My original thought that he was a bear wasn’t too far off the mark—there definitely could be some Kodiak back in his family tree. He must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, all of it brawn. I swallowed hard as his forearms swam into view. Why was I suddenly so desperately thirsty? Maybe I should stop staring at Growly’s arm muscles.
I succeeded, but only because I caught sight of something behind the massive arms… Feathers. Long, sweeping, feathery appendages.
Holy swizzle sticks.Wings.Made of luminous, tawny bronze feathers that were just the slightest bit darker than Growly’s shining, golden brown skin. The feathers touched the marble floor and went all the way up over his shoulders. His deep chestnut hair was wavy and shining, sweeping over his forehead, then down almost to his cheekbones. What I could see of his face was strangely textured, the skin on his neck and along his jawline rough, but not with stubble. With marks. Were they more scars, burns of some kind? Like a rug that had lain too close to a fire, covered and scattered with popping embers. Whatever had happened, it had marred what had obviously once been a perfect canvas.
Perfection was overrated, I decided, as my fingers itched to feel that texture, to see if his skin was as rough as I imagined.
