Rami had feared that she would enjoy the physical contact feeding on Primori required, and that she’d gradually succumb to sin.
He was right to worry. Drinking blood did more than deliver the brief infusion of power Memitim needed to maintain their ability to flash. It also temporarily connected them psychically to their host, forcing Memitim to, for hours, feel what the Primori felt, whether it be anger, sadness, lust…
Oh, Idess couldn’t wait until the day she Ascended and didn’t need to engage in such intimacies anymore. As it was, she despised feeding so much that she had a tendency to walk a fine line with it, holding off until the last possible moment.
“It’s almost over,” she shouted to the sky. The wind ate her words, but she knew she’d been heard. In Heaven, they heard everything.
The thought brought an instant twinge of fear to her gut, because in truth, she hoped that wasn’t the case. She hadn’t exactly been… an angel.
Still, she was close to being one. She now had only two Primori to watch over, and one of them was the jewel in her crown.
Kynan Morgan was a Marked Sentinel, a human who had been charmed by an angel. Sentinels couldn’t be hurt or killed except by a being of angelic origin, which usually meant that they didn’t rate Memitim watchers. But for some reason he did, and she had been chosen to protect him from the infinitesimal chance that someone could get past his charm. On the other hand, he was immortal, which meant that she could have to guard him for hundreds of years. Thousands, even.
But she didn’t think so. Her other Primori, a werewolf, was long-lived but not immortal, so once he died or had fulfilled whatever destiny made him critical to the fate of the world, she would be left with only Kynan… and everyone knew that Memitim never guarded only one Primori.
Surely the honor of keeping Kynan safe would fall to one of her brethren, and she’d earn her wings for a job well done.
She couldn’t wait.
Earth sucked, as humans these days liked to say.
Sighing, she visualized the living room of her Italian villa and flashed from the mountain to her house. She’d been born nearby, and even after thousands of years, she still felt the pull that brought her home every day.
The soles of her boots clacked on the beige and gold stone tiles as she moved toward the kitchen. Usually she’d turn on the stereo, get some Mozart going, but excitement still stirred her blood, and hunger rumbled her stomach.
She eyed the fruit bowl on her dining room table and the dish of fine Italian chocolate on her kitchen counter, waffled… and then reached for a pomegranate.
Fruit is nature’s blessing, Rami used to say. We shouldn’t defile the bodies God gave us with spirits and unhealthful sweets.
Sure, none of that could hurt her, but Rami had been devout and pure, even before he’d been plucked out of his human life at the customary age of nineteen to become a Memitim, and as her teacher in all things holy, he’d been a strict taskmaster. Which, she thought, as she palmed a candy, was all the more reason to indulge now and then. She actually looked forward to his giving her a stern lecture when she finally saw him again.
A faint twinge streaked across her right wrist. Odd. She twisted her arm to view the two quarter-sized Primori marks on the underside. Chase’s heraldi had been there for eight years, was the same color as her skin, the thin lines raised like a brand or the outline of a fresh tattoo. But Kynan’s was new, only three weeks old, and she still hadn’t gotten used to seeing it. Frowning, she looked closer. The edges were pink… swelling rapidly… it began to burn, glow, and she dropped the candy with a gasp.
Kynan, one of the few untouchable people on the planet, was in danger.
Lore stood at the entrance to an upstate New York mansion, fists clenched and watching Kynan search the huge-ass sitting room, S-shaped stang in one hand and holy water in the other. Apparently, Croucher demons had set up shop in the dwelling, and Kynan intended to take them out before the wealthy family who lived there got too talky about what was going on. And before someone got hurt.
The Aegis to the rescue.
Bunch of do-gooder, holier-than-thou hypocrites. Lore had never liked Guardians all that much, but the dislike had turned to downright hatred two decades ago, when one of his contracted hits had been a Guardian who’d pissed off the wrong demon. The Guardian had been good enough at his job that he’d nearly taken Lore out.