Angel Tormented (The Louisiangel Series Book 3) (11 page)

Houston was considerably cooler than New
Orleans. The few people who were out were wearing jackets, and even Joshua was
starting to shiver. “You should take this,” he said, offering me the jacket.

I pushed it back towards him. “I don’t
feel the cold anymore. You should keep it.”

“That won’t look particularly chivalrous
of me,” Joshua objected.

“Whereas it wouldn’t actually be
particularly guardian-like for me when you come down with pneumonia,” I returned.
“It’s late and the store’s not busy. Let’s grab some things and find a hotel.”

Joshua nodded, pulling the jacket on.
Despite my short sleeves, no one in the store seemed to pay much attention – I
was certain my wardrobe choice was exceptionally boring compared to some of the
things that had been spotted in there.

We grabbed a cart, picking up some snacks
(Maggie’s jambalaya was still filling our stomachs) and some toiletries. The
trip to the clothing section was brief as there wasn’t a lot to choose from,
and then we were getting soaked as we again made a run back to the car.

By the time we arrived at a hotel, it was
late, still raining, and we hadn’t had a chance to dry out anyway. When they
gave us a key to a room which meant going back outside, we didn’t even bother
to try to shelter ourselves from the downpour. “Well at least we missed the
storm,” Joshua said as a crack of thunder grumbled above us.

“Go shower,” I instructed Joshua as he
started to pull groceries out of the carrier bags.

The room was pretty basic though it
boasted a comfortable looking queen bed. There was a large flat screen TV
opposite the bed, and a small kitchen area – or at least a section of sideboard
with a microwave, coffee maker and small fridge. I busied myself putting the few
groceries in the fridge which needed it, then hovered around the small tiled
floor area beside it, not wanting to drip water everywhere.

When Joshua came out, I darted into the
bathroom and into the shower. I was quick – it was late and although I didn’t
really feel physically tired, I was still feeling drained from everything that
had happened over the last couple of days. I dried myself off, toweling my hair
dry as best I could, and then pulled the pajama set on. As soon as I had, I
regretted my choice.

I hadn’t been paying that much attention
to the pajamas. I’d gone for something flannel, so it wasn’t that they were too
revealing or sexy, but at the last moment I had changed my mind from something
plaid to something patterned. I had thought they were spots, but now I was
looking at them, I realized they were covered in tiny angels. Cherubs. Hell,
they could have been little cupids for all I could tell. As the other options
were either sleeping in my wet clothes or nothing at all, I kept them on and left
the bathroom.

The room was lit only by the television
Joshua was watching (a quick glance told me one of the Bond films was playing)
and he was already half under the covers, claiming the side of the bed closest
to the door. His gun and badge were on the bedside table beside him.

Suddenly, I felt awkward. It wasn’t our
first time sharing a bed together, and I had worn less clothing around Joshua
before, but for some reason, I could feel my cheeks flaming, and I lingered by
the doorway.

Joshua’s eyes left the film and flicked
over to me, where he tilted his head and grinned. “What on earth are on your
pajamas?”

“I think they’re supposed to be cupids,” I
shrugged. I tilted my head as I looked at Joshua. “Are you even wearing
pajamas?” I asked as I stared at his bare chest.

“You’re just gonna have to find out,
darlin’,” he smirked. “Or are you chicken?” I folded my arms and glared at him,
at which point he sighed. “You’re no fun,” he declared, before pulling back the
covers to reveal the plain black pajama bottoms.

I bit back a smile and grabbed a packet of
Twizzlers from the sideboard before heading to the other side of the bed and
getting in. I didn’t particularly care about the film Joshua had chosen to
watch, but I ripped open the candy and settled back. Before I could eat one,
Joshua had reached over and grabbed a handful. “Hey!” I objected.

Joshua just grinned and wiggled his
eyebrows at me.

In retaliation, I reached over, stealing a
handful of his M&Ms, and, even though I wasn’t in the mood for the chocolate,
proceeded to eat it.

“Thief!” Joshua accused in mock outrage.
The next thing I knew, M&Ms were going everywhere as Joshua launched
himself at me and began tickling me.

I let out a squeal and tried to wriggle
away from him. “Real mature,” I cried.

“You started it,” Joshua said, leaping at
me, stopping my escape.

We fell backwards with a bounce, but
before I could right myself, Joshua had sat on top of me, pinning my arms down
by my sides. “You were the one who stole my Twizzlers first,” I informed him, staring
up into his blue eyes.

“I beg to differ,” Joshua disagreed,
leaning closer. “I’m the detective, I should know.”

“Is this the point where you pull your
handcuffs out?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “Because I’m fairly certain I could
break out of them.”

Joshua brought my arms up beside my head,
the action bringing him close enough that our breathing was resulting in our
chests touching. “I don’t need handcuffs,” he whispered.

No. No, he didn’t.

I raised my head from the ground to
capture his lips with my own. Joshua’s hands left my wrists, tracing their way
along my arms. I could feel Joshua smiling as we kissed, and I pulled back,
frowning. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re wearing little cupids,” he said,
sitting back. “I feel like they’re all watching me.”

My frown turned into a scowl.
“Unbelievable!” I exclaimed. “We’ve got to be over 300 miles from that convent
and Cupid is doing the exact opposite to what his reputation says he should be
doing.”

“What? I think these pajamas are
adorable,” Joshua grinned.

“Exactly the look every girls aims for:
adorable,” I grumbled.

“Darlin’, I don’t care if you’re wearing
cupid covered pajamas, or nothing,” Joshua declared. When I arched an eyebrow,
he smirked. “Okay, I’d much rather you were wearing nothing, I...” he trailed
off.

I blinked. “You, what?” I propped myself
up with my elbows, watching Joshua with bewilderment. Joshua swung himself
upright and paused, looking down at me. “What?” I repeated, hesitantly.

“Nothing,” he said, reaching over and
grabbing his jeans. He pulled something from his pocket and handed it over to
me. “I was going to give you this last night.”

I quickly sat upright and I took the item
off him: a small velvet pouch. I tugged it open and tipped the contents into
the palm of my hand. A silvery chain glinted up at me, the light from the
television reflecting off a small pendant. I pulled it free: it was perhaps the
size of a quarter overall, a small fleur de lis made with a blue stone.
Surrounding it was a pair of wings. “It’s beautiful,” I said, holding it up in
front of me. I looked past it at Joshua. “I love it,” I added, putting the
necklace on. It was a long chain, the pendant hanging low, beneath my top.

The look he gave me then was enough to
make my insides melt: they could join the quivering heap that was my heart. This
time, it was my turn to launch myself at Joshua.

It was still cold and blustery, but the
weather had improved significantly overnight; although, the dark clouds racing
towards Houston on the horizon hinted that it wouldn’t stay that way for long.
Joshua and I had a quick continental breakfast before checking out and making
our way to the glass fronted office Darell worked in.

His office was on the fourteenth floor.
The elevator opened up into a reception area with a confused receptionist who
didn’t seem to understand how the phones worked. “They’ll call back?” she said,
doubtfully as we walked over.

“Good morning,” Joshua greeted her. “We’re
here to see Darell Ford.”

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.
“Because he usually doesn’t see anyone this early.”

“Could you tell him Angel is here,” I
said. “From New Orleans.” We weren’t supposed to tell people where we lived, but
I hoped that was vague enough.

The girl rubbed at her temple as she
picked up the phone. With a face that did not instill confidence, she hit a
random button on the phone. “Mr. Ford…? Sorry.” She pulled another face and hit
another button. “Mr. Ford…? I have an Angel from New Orleans to see you.” She
listened to whatever he said, and then hung up. “You can go straight in,” she
said, pointing to a corridor. Before we had even left the desk, she had pulled
out a bottle of bright yellow nail polish.

I followed Joshua down the short corridor.
Before we could knock on the only door, it opened and a man who took up most of
the doorway – his arm muscles were enormous – appeared. He spared a glance at
me before turning his attention to Joshua. With a calculated look, he stepped
back and allowed us in.

He closed the door behind us, but rather
than head for his desk, he stood there, flipping his jacket out of the way to
unholster his gun and point it at Joshua. “Why is an angel packing?” he asked,
addressing Joshua.

“Joshua’s not an angel,” I blurted out,
fighting my instinct to step in front of Joshua. I didn’t appreciate how many
times I’d witnessed a gun being pointed at either of us.

“Tanya said an angel was here,” he said.
His eyes remained on Joshua, but his hand didn’t move from the gun. “Angels are
not allowed to tell anyone what they are, which means you’re probably the
Fallen.”

“If we were the Fallen, you know that
wouldn’t do much, right?” I asked, nodding my head in the general direction of
the gun.

“My bullets are coated in platinum,”
Darell responded, with a shrug. He looked at me then. “You want to try them
out?”

“I’m not one of the Fallen,” I shrugged.
Rather me than Joshua, if I had to prove a point.

“Neither of us are fallen angels,” Joshua
interrupted, shooting me a silencing stare. “I’m a detective with the NOPD,
which is why I am carrying a weapon. We did not mention angels – your
receptionist did. Her
name
is Angel. However, it’s clear we all know
about angels.”

Darell eyed Joshua and then nodded. “ID.”

“Back pocket,” Joshua announced, waiting
for Darell before slowly reaching for it. He held it up for Darell to see.

Darell refused to lower the gun. “How do I
know you’re not being possessed by one of the Fallen?”

Joshua looked to me and I frowned, trying
to come up with something. “Platinum!” I suddenly realized. “You know about
platinum. Give us a bullet,” I suggested. “Without shooting us!” I added
hurriedly.

Darell considered it, and then reached
into his jacket pocket pulling out a spare clip and throwing it at Joshua. He
caught it and promptly released a single bullet from it, holding it up for
Darell to see, before wrapping his fist around it. When Darell nodded, Joshua
passed the bullet to me. I mimicked Joshua’s actions, until finally; Darell
lowered his weapon and holstered it. “I swear, if she wasn’t my niece, I would
fire that girl,” he muttered, making his way around to his desk. He sat down
and then indicated to the seats in front of it. “So how do you know about
angels?”

“I have a guardian angel,” Joshua
explained.

Darell looked at me. “You don’t look like
an angel.”

“Angel, the angel,” I said, narrowing my
eyes. Screw the rules. He already knew about angels, and I was sick of people
judging me. “Don’t tell me: it’s the hair.”

Darell shook his head. “No, you’re…” he
trailed off, his brown eyes going wide. “You’re like her.”

“Lilah?” Joshua asked.

“
She’s
your guardian angel,” Darell
realized. He sucked in a deep breath, before taking just as long to exhale. “Lilah’s
dead, isn’t she?” he finally asked.

I nodded, fighting back a wince from the
pain that normally throbbed at a manageable level but had just pulsed to a
stronger thrum.

Darell closed his eyes, growing still. “I
thought so.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. Lilah may have tried
to kill Joshua, and I would never regret saving him, but this was the cost:
there was someone who had loved her who was no longer able to be with her.

“We were hoping you could answer some
questions,” Joshua gently requested.

Darell nodded. “I’m not sure what help I
can be. I hadn’t spoken to her in months.”

“You two were together?” Joshua asked.

“As together as an angel and a human could
be, I suppose,” Darell nodded.

I chewed at my lip. What did that mean?

“When did you last see Lilah?” Joshua
asked, continuing in his questioning, like Darell was a suspect.

Darell’s eyes narrowed. “What is this
really about?” he demanded.

“We’re just trying to gather some
information,” Joshua replied, coolly.

“Lilah was helping the Fallen,” I said,
jumping in. Darell looked like he was close to asking us to leave and I didn’t
want this trip to be wasted. “I know she became an archangel, and then I was
told she fell because she slept with you.
That
makes sense. What doesn’t
is that apparently she was helping the Fallen to raise Lucifer and that
couldn’t be accomplished if she didn’t still have her wings. We’re trying to
understand,” I explained. “I need to know if there’s a chance that Lucifer is actually
out there.”

I could see the emotion building up in
Darell as he stared at me. Finally, he bowed his head. “I met Lilah nearly a
year ago. I was assigned as her charge. That didn’t sit right with me: I had
just got back from three tours in Afghanistan – that’s where I needed the
guardian angel, where my men needed guardian angels.” Pain flashed through his
eyes. He took in a deep breath. “I got my discharge in Georgia and headed to
New Orleans. I have family there, so it was somewhere to be while I worked out
what to do next. I was helping out my brother in his construction business for
a while. Then I met Lilah. She told me what she was and that I was her charge.
I still haven’t worked out why I needed one.”

I thought back to something Michael had
said: Darell still needed a guardian angel, but there wasn’t anyone spare to be
assigned to him. Michael kept checking in on Darell. Maybe I needed to get
someone to do that too.

“She didn’t know why I was important, but
that didn’t stop her helping me out where she could. Most of the time, she
would just turn up on whatever site I was working on, and just join in. It
turns out there’s nothing sexier than a woman who knows her way around power
tools. I fell in love with her, but it was a long time before I told her that,”
Darell continued. “She was my guardian angel and she had rules, one of which
was that nothing could happen between us. It turns out the only reason she
hadn’t said anything was because she didn’t think I had felt the same way about
her. She was shy.”

I had to work hard not to react to that
statement. There was nothing shy about the Lilah that I could remember. She’d
even flirted with Joshua in front of me. Okay, so maybe we weren’t actually
together at that point, but we
had
been sat together.

“We tried to be professional about it, for
her sake,” Darell added, a small smile creeping onto his face. “The archangel
she answered to wasn’t too big on rule breaking. I certainly didn’t want to get
her into trouble. The problem is, when you have such an attraction to another
person, and the feeling is mutual, you start to question what you want more. I
guess I won: she decided she wanted us to be together. The morning after, we
awoke expecting things to be different but they weren’t. I know she confronted
Michael, accused him of lying and left.”

They
had
been together? So Lilah
had been telling the truth? This revelation had emptied my mind of any other
thought as the room started to wobble around me. Lilah had been telling the
truth?
Michael
had been the one lying.
Lying
? I sucked in a deep
breath, earning a stare from Darell. Michael lied?

“Do you know how she found the Fallen?”
Joshua asked, though I could sense his attention was directed at me.

“How she found the Fallen?” Darell repeated,
looking surprised. “She never told me exactly what happened, only that if
Michael had been lying about that, he’d been lying about everything else too.
She changed after that. She was no longer as shy, always out: she started
hiding things from me. Then this opportunity came up,” he gestured to his
office. “I tried to get her to come with me – it wasn’t like she was tied to
Michael anymore – but she refused and she ended things with me. I thought a bit
of space was what she needed, that I could convince her to join me when I’d
gotten settled.” He ran a hand over his close cropped hair and shook his head.
“I should have fought harder.” He shook his head, more firmly this time. “But
the Fallen? No, Lilah, wouldn’t have sided with the Fallen, unless…”

“Unless what?” I asked, impatiently.

“She said if Michael had thought she had
fallen she was at risk of Michael hunting her – that was part of the reason
that she wouldn’t come with me here. Maybe she found people she felt safe
with?” Darell suggested.

I was ready to tell him that was a stupid
suggestion. Michael wouldn’t just turn his back on her. But when I thought
about it, he had always been so adamant that the Fallen were evil, and let’s be
honest, the Fallen I had met so far hadn’t painted the best of pictures. Maybe
I was just trying to cling onto my memory of him? “And you think the people she
felt the safest with were the Fallen?” I asked, dubiously. No, this was Michael
we were talking about. No matter what his opinions were of the Fallen, there
was no way anyone would feel safer with the likes of Beelzebub than Michael.
Not unless they had some nefarious intent to start with.

“I think that if I had Heaven’s greatest
warrior wanting to kill me, I would go to the only people who would be able to
protect me from them,” Darell stated, staring me down.

I didn’t blink. “You don’t think that
would perhaps give more reason to be hunted?”

“We’re not trying to start an argument
here,” Joshua quickly jumped in. “We’re just trying to understand what has been
happening.”

Darell looked to Joshua and his expression
softened. “Look, the woman, the angel, that I love, didn’t fall, and there’s no
way she would go with the Fallen, unless it was the only way she could stay
alive. I can’t even begin to believe that she would try to raise Lucifer. Are
you sure that’s what happened?”

I nodded, wondering whether I should tell
him what had happened or not. He deserved to know the truth. I sucked in a deep
breath, when Joshua reached over and squeezed my hand. “I wish we had known the
Lilah you had,” Joshua said, releasing me.

I gave Joshua a sideways glance, but his
attention was on Darell: surely he didn’t know what I was about to say? I
looked back to Darell but found his gaze on me, a look of understanding
suddenly appearing – a look of pity. “You two are together,” he realized.

I could feel my cheeks heat up, but I
nodded.

A sad smile appeared on Darell’s face. “Lilah
and I both knew that we could never really be together – she was immortal and I
was not – but that didn’t stop us. To us, all that mattered was that we loved
each other: as long as she loved me, I was happy to be with her, and the same
with her. Even when we slept together, I still thought that could have been
possible, but I didn’t take Michael into consideration. I truly believe Lilah
didn’t fall. I know she would have told me.”

“Then why did Michael banish her from his
House?” I asked.

“She said it was because he was jealous.
He had feelings for a human girl he could never be with,” Darell said
thoughtfully. “I suspect that he could have been if he wanted to. I don’t think
he would have fallen, but I do think the other angels would have reacted the
same way to him as he did to Lilah: they would have banished him from Heaven.”

If I was still alive, at that point I
would have said that my heart had stopped beating. As it was, it barely beat
anyway. It was more like something got released into me; a mixture of emotions.
Michael had once told me he’d seen me years ago and been attracted to me. I
hadn’t realized how strong those feelings had been back then. I certainly never
expected that Lilah would have known. She’d never mentioned it that night. I was
sure it would be something that she would love to point out, so perhaps she’d
never known who I was in Michael’s eyes?