Angels target, p.17
Angel's Target, page 17
part #1 of Elemental Angels Series
Titan lowered his weapon and settled his forehead against the cool stone of the stairwell as he ducked his head down. Despite his honed strength and practiced tension, his muscles were moments from collapsing.
Because even though Titan had a limited viewing angle, he easily recognized the soft fall of chestnut hair and the gentle upturn of the inhabitant’s pert nose.
He silently cursed a blue streak. Because Rose’s sister lay imprisoned in that damn chamber.
A chamber that was currently being fondled over by the most lethal viper in the largest poisonous nest.
Chapter 20
Cold stone scraped against the metal at Titan’s back as he retreated his post and slid down the stairwell to face his brothers. Deeply set brows and tightly thinned lips were plastered along all of their faces. But he had no time to address their impatience at that moment. Two of his fingers cut through the air as he waved them back in the direction they came. Understanding dawned on each of their expressions as they silently backtracked. Only when Titan’s boots landed on the stone of the lower level did he relax the grip on his weapon. His fingers tingled at the release of the tension.
“The floor is flooded with charmers of all classes. At least a hundred. With half a dozen open portals shuttling more as we speak.” Titan bit out the words. Eyes of every shade of metal shimmered at the news. Angel fire was high in everyone, which was great when they were gunning for a huge release of power. Not so great when they were up against a whole boatload of baddies yielding weapons both known and unknown.
“Wait. You said all classes?” Chrome whispered insistently. “As in—”
“Apex. At least one.”
Bronze and Chrome both muttered curses as they rested their hands on their hips and shifted their weight on their feet. Hushed murmurs had settled over the barren floor. Brass walked up to Iron and clasped the giant on the shoulder before whispering something in his ear. The newly hardened and stern set to the giant angel’s bearded chin was the only indication Titan had that Iron didn’t like the newsflash. But as soon as the slightest inkling of hesitation appeared, it ghosted away and russet-brown angel fire flashed in his eyes before settling into the silver gray of his metal.
Titan sighed as he prepared to deliver the rest of the bad news. Time to put their other nut in a vice.
“I also saw Rose’s sister, Tammy. It looks like she’s being held in some chamber pod protected by magic. Magic that’s controlled by the apex.” Again, Titan looked toward the decrepit hole they had crawled through, where the water wheel was connected to the mill. The day’s light was barely there now. Only muted cracks of pale glowing orange crested above the rim of the broken stone. They had precious few minutes before the sun would go down completely and the charmers could leave the confines of the mill.
They could leave. Any moment, the charmers could freaking leave! Leave and find Rose huddled in the forest. The sheer number of them alone would be too much for Steel to protect her from, even at his best.
The fierce hardness of his metal gnawed at him as if he were a stubborn bull in a matador’s ring. A stubbornness that oftentimes clouded his better judgment and impacted his ability to lead his brothers. He knew what he wanted to do, what his metallic body thrummed with the need to do. But an all-out attack on a room of surprised and unknown enemies was fine for a suicide mission. Less fine when you had others to consider.
The firm weight of Tung’s strong hand settled on Titan’s shoulder. Their prime’s charcoal-gray eyes bore into Titan. And despite Titan’s willful determination to wallow in his obstinance, he couldn’t. Not when Tung reeked of righteousness and support. The prime angel’s expression was all manner of encouragement, unwavering trust, and gentle guidance. There was no questioning tone, no shutting down of options because Titan had just led his brothers into the shittiest of shit shows. Just solemn and compassionate understanding that the cards were stacked against them, but even more so against Titan. And they would just have to manage that as best they could. Together.
“If it was one of us in that chamber instead of Tammy, do you think any of us would weigh the risks differently?” The nurturing tone of Tung’s wisdom seeped into Titan’s addled mind.
“No.” The answer was firm and quick. “But Rose is not one of us, and neither is her sister. I can’t insist—”
“Are you sure about that?” Tung’s knowing glance and raised eyebrow were infuriatingly insightful. It was all Titan could do not to swallow his tongue in surprise.
“C’mon, Titan. Let’s square-peg-round-hole this shit. I didn’t get all dressed up in my Sunday finest just to have no one see me. Look, I even strapped on my favorite dirk.” Bronze gestured toward his waist and patted the sheath of his weapon.
Brass looked at him wryly, though he couldn’t entirely hide his smile. “It’s Thursday, not Sunday.”
Bronze shrugged. “Same difference.”
“No. It’s either the same or it’s different.”
“Enough,” Tung barked as loudly as he dared and leered at the bickering angels before turning back to Titan. “Well? What’s the plan?”
Titan opened his mouth to speak. But before the words could get out, a whooshing gust of air flew past his ear. The grunt at his back had him and his brothers whirling around toward the stairs.
A charmer stood at the bottom step, mouth agape like a fish. The familiar handle of Iron’s mace dangled from the demon’s neck. The blunt end sat firmly in the charmer’s forehead, not so neatly embedded in his skull. Black blood seeped out of the depression and oozed around the bumps and ridges of the mace’s bulbous end. Rivers of liquid kohl mingled with the gold and teal tattoos as the mystic’s body crumpled to the stone floor.
Titan and the others whipped their gazes around to Iron, who was still standing there with his arm extended in front of him and his powerful legs braced apart. His stance resembled that of an Olympic shot-putter. His chest barely rose, however, as if the exertion required to throw his mace and hit his intended target was no more strenuous than putting one’s socks on.
“Time’s up.” Iron walked toward the charmer, gripped the handle of his mace, and rocked it back and forth in the skull until it sprang free.
Time was definitely up. And Titan had all the votes of confidence he needed.
“Iron, you’re with me. We make a straight shot down the center of the floor to the chamber. I have no idea what kind of magic that thing’s tripped with, so we’ve got to fly it and Tammy out of there in one piece for now. Tung, give us cover. The rest of you three, have a fucking field day. Consider it open season. But the goal is to get in and out with Tammy. Understood?”
Knowing smirks and flashes of angel fire coated the room in crackling energy.
Titan turned, palmed his weapon, and stepped over the charmer as he funneled his brothers up the stairs, no longer caring about their silence or stealth.
All he cared about was getting Rose’s sister out of there. And maybe taking down an apex in the process.
Titan burst through the stairwell with the speed of a search-and-destroy missile. The moment he cleared the confines of the stairs, his wings whipped out behind them. Great sheets of aerodynamic titanium took him above the reach of every charmer in the room. The slack-jawed stances and frantic scrambling of his enemies were so delicious, he sorely regretted that he couldn’t stay and play longer.
But then the bullet brigade behind him swung into action. Shouts and screeches rang out all through the mill as Chrome, Steel, and Brass rained hell down on the scattered ants around the room. Glass and tables clattered to the ground as enchanted words in the demonic language floated up to Titan’s ears.
Magic casting.
Titan turned to Iron and Tung, who had joined him in the air. “I’m going to stun the apex. We can’t get close to the chamber with him hovering,” Titan roared as he loosed an arrow into the chest of an elite near the chamber.
“When the apex is down, I’ll blow out the window. Then we grab and go,” Tung shouted.
They all nodded in agreement as Tung gripped a silver baseball grenade in one hand and his chrome-plated, tungsten-infused 9mm in the other. When Titan turned back to Iron, the angel had already begun clearing a path to the chamber. The giant flew low to the floor and, with his massive arms spread out on either side of him, clotheslined every charmer that came in contact with his ax and mace. The tactic was brutal, yet highly effective.
“You’re too late, you know.”
The unknown origin of the words, spoken in an icy hiss, flustered Titan and nearly broke his concentration as he let loose another arrow at a mystic muttering a spell under the table supporting Rose’s sister. As bullets and blades laced with angel fire found their marks, the room quickly filled with the smokeless scent of charred flesh and boiling blood. Bodies writhed under Titan’s feet as he rolled his shoulders back and grabbed another arrow from his quiver. The table with Tammy was largely empty now. Most of the demons had fled to other parts of the mill or jumped through the few remaining open portals, the mystics especially. But one remained.
And apparently, the nasty motherfucker liked to talk some good game.
The apex reached behind his neck, grabbed fistfuls of his robes, and yanked them over his head. Three gleaming gold bands sat snuggly around his neck and biceps, culminating with solid gold cuffs at his wrists. Eyes of saturated, glinting yellow swirled with magic as the apex’s tattoos, moving rivers of teal and gold against a wall of muscled translucence, rippled like snakes slithering over desert rocks. The markings ended against the belted waistband of black tailored slacks that hugged powerful, braced legs.
“You’ll never save this one. Cyro made sure of it.” The remarks were delivered with a menacing sneer as golden and teal flames bloomed up from the apex’s tattoos and engulfed the charmer in crackling electrified magic. “And I’ll make sure you don’t even try.”
Titan read the maneuver and cursed. As soon as the muscles in the apex’s arms gave way to the barest hint of bunching and straining, Titan yelled to his brothers, “Get down!”
Before the last word left his lips, he dropped and flattened himself against the black blood-soaked stone. With his cheek to the floor, he watched as the others did the same. At least the ones he could see in front of him. He exhaled a brief sigh of relief at the sound of metal thuds on his opposite side, what he presumed were the other angels hitting the deck. But dammit, had they all heard him? He couldn’t tell for sure.
A deafening clap shook the building. As pulsing teal and gold light shot through the mill, hunks of stone crumbled from the wall, though not enough to allow in the final wisps of daylight. Electrified tendrils fanned out in a great lashing arc at waist height, decimating anything it touched that was not of the dark realm. Had it not been for their metallic forms, the heat of the caustic fire would have singed them all from the proximity overhead, never mind the instant cauterization that would have befallen them had the blast been a direct hit.
Titan winced against the lingering heat as he struggled to raise his head. The apex still stood on the opposite side of the table, arms bunched and hands clasped in front of him. If they stayed down too long, the charmers would regroup. Since the demons were unaffected by the dark magic, they were no doubt doing so already.
Titan squinted at the chamber. At Tammy. For as close as she was, she may as well have been a million miles away. She was close enough for Titan to make out the rise of her cheek through the barrier and how much like Rose’s it was. Yet too damn far to reach. Too far to protect from all the darkness that had befallen her and Rose’s family.
Rose.
The simple stamp of her name in his mind reinvigorated his grit. Rose, his petal, was hunkered down in the woods outside this putrid den of disgrace while he promised he’d bring her sister back. The sister he’d failed to protect and whose life and light he was ultimately responsible for.
That realization was all the ignition he needed.
A great roar thundered through Titan’s gritted teeth as his angel fire consumed his metal form. Blue flames of celestial power thrummed over his body as he shot into the air, wings spread and scorching.
“Now!” The bellowed war cry left his throat as he angled his body parallel to the floor and fucking flew. As he launched himself across the room, flaming fists were punched out in front of him in a classic Superman pose.
The impact of the titanium missile of his body against the apex’s bare chest sent the charmer flying into the opposing wall. As the impact reverberated down his spine, Titan roared through clenched teeth. The apex’s residual electrified magic still swirled around the behemoth’s pale body and latched onto Titan where it connected. Titan’s eyes flew open in pain, but his hands never left the stunned charmer beneath him. Instead, grunted pants of agony left his throat as he moved his hands from the center of the magic user’s chest to the bald shell of his head and slammed that thing down against the stone once . . . twice . . . a third time . . .
An explosion off to Titan’s left threw him off balance, causing him to fall even more into the hold of the apex’s magic. A deafening cry erupted through him as flames licked and engulfed his form. But then light, barely glowing and desperately seeping through the stone in a trickle, settled over him and the charmer.
Daylight.
Raging cries rang in Titan’s ears. They were no longer his own, however, but belonged to the apex beneath Titan. The charmer was covering his face and thrashing around in the sun’s muted glow.
Titan’s gaze shot to the wall, which sported a sizable hole in its more-than-a-century-old shell. Beside it stood Tung, leg propped up on a pile of rubble and his chest sucking wind like he needed recycled carbon dioxide from a paper lunch bag. Titan’s hazy vision finally slid into place as Tung jumped down and ran toward him.
“Grenades are highly effective at relocating stone, my brother, but less effective at relocating this chamber. C’mon, we need to move now. The daylight is almost gone. We don’t have much time. Minutes at best.” Tung waited for Titan’s angel fire to recede before he put his hands under the angel’s arm and got him to his feet.
Iron was already at the chamber, assessing the best way to transport it and completely ignoring the writhing bodies of charmers who were doing their best to scramble away from the sun’s meager rays. Loud pops and sharp slices quickly followed as Chrome, Brass, and Bronze knocked off as many of the sitting ducks as they could.
“You each take an end and get her airborne. Once she’s up, I’ll fly under her and keep the thing steady,” Iron said.
Titan forced his legs to get with the program and jogged over to Tammy’s head, with Tung at her feet. The chamber was beyond clumsy to grip, let alone fly with, but their choices were sort of shit at the moment. He spared only the barest of seconds to glance down at Tammy before they got her up in the air. By the mages, she hadn’t aged a day. Her hair, her clothes, her complexion . . . It all looked like a time capsule from six months ago.
Images are deceiving. She’s been imprisoned by demon magic. Don’t think for a second things are all hunky-dory inside the shiny shell.
As they awkwardly lifted the capsule out of the mill, with his brothers flying behind them, he should have been relieved. The mission had been a success, and he could return Rose’s sister to her as promised.
But as Steel joined their flock, with Rose clinging to the angel’s neck and worry etched on her face as she looked at the chamber, Titan wasn’t sure what he was returning to her.
Or whether any of them were prepared for what the chamber really held.
Chapter 21
If Rose ever wondered whether it was possible to feel more helpless than she had the past six months, she’d just gotten her answer. Turns out, yes, it was completely possible to feel as useless as a Band-Aid on a severed limb. Especially when seven hulking metallic angels were standing around her preserved long-lost sister with more blood oozing out of them than in them.
The hard circular rim of the stool bit into her butt as the angels all mulled around the den in various states of healing (or was it seeping?). Rose sat next to Tammy’s head with her arm draped over the top of the chamber. She peered through the transparent barrier for the third time in ten seconds and tried to dissect all that had happened.
The whole battle had taken no more than fifteen minutes, not even long enough for her butt to fall asleep on the log she’d occupied in the woods, but hell, had it seemed like a lifetime. One moment, she had her hand over her eyes like a visor as she squinted at the glinting light reflecting off the angels flying toward the mill. The next, a huge explosion rocked the scraggly stone structure and out popped a coffin-like capsule held in suspension by said angels. Who, putting it mildly, looked like shit. Once they all made it home and their metal forms receded, all manner of acid burns and corrosive pitting marred their formerly smooth flesh. And no amount of aloe vera was going to make a dent in that type of healing.
And then there was Tammy. The long fall of her sister’s voluminous chestnut hair lay cushioned against the floor of the chamber. Unlike Rose’s hair, Tammy’s locks still retained the vitality and color of health, despite her long imprisonment. The warm lushness of her sister’s complexion still radiated off her full cheeks and the softly angled slope of her nose and chin. There were no hollow planes or sunken bags to speak of. Even her clothes sported the crisp seams and lint-free trademarks of her prior profession at the marketing agency. The light blue button-down blouse, black slacks, and leopard-print ballet flats Tammy had donned six months ago were still as work ready as Tammy looked.
