A Slither of Hope (2 page)

The last time we talked, she’d called me a tweaker freak, if I remembered correctly. “Uh, yeah. You too?” I leveled a confused glare at Lee.

What was she doing here? Obviously Lee invited her, but why? What would he be doing hanging out with Luke Harper’s pregnant girlfriend? Especially when Luke was one of the main reasons I was wanted by the cops anyway. The night of the Halloween dance, Cam and I saved Luke from ending up a splat on the sidewalk. When the police found him and Cassie’s body the next day, he’d told them I was there, the day after I’d escaped from the SS Crazy.

I couldn’t help being a little bitter about certain things, Luke and Gina included.

Gina smiled over at Lee. She was just as stylish and fashion-wise as before, but her mocha skin was free of the makeup she used to glob on. She angled her body toward him and sniffed the cup in his hand.

“Ray got us some H.C.” He handed her his cup.

She gulped down several sips. “Mmm!” She licked a tiny bit of whipped cream from her top lip and looked at me. “Thanks. I hope we’re cool. The last time we talked, I was stressed and snippy. Pregnancy hormones, you know. They're crazy.”

I didn't know, not about hormones, but I spent more than my fair share of time being crazy. Still, she didn’t appear apprehensive at all about being so close to a wanted—sort of—fugitive. “Uh-huh.” This made me wonder what she knew and what she didn’t.

“Luke told me you and Cam saved his life. He said he told the police the same thing.”

This was news to me. But that wouldn’t have stopped the cops from finding my fingerprints all over the crime scene on the roof and on Cassie. “I just wanted to say thank you—and that you look kick-ass. Luke and I aren’t together anymore, but when this little bundle is born,” she placed a protective hand over her tiny stomach, “it’s gonna need a father.”

Well. That wasn’t at all what I’d been expecting. It seemed Gina and I were on better terms than I was with my own best friend.

Lee smiled the first smile I’d seen on him in almost a month. But it wasn’t directed at me. Gina scrunched her nose at him and took another sip of
her
H.C. I took a step back, feeling out of place and unwanted. Two things I’d never, ever felt around Lee.

My wings jerked, flaring out on their own before returning to a neutral, resting position.
Whoa. Weird.
Stranger still, an odd hum buzzed at the base between my shoulder blades, amplifying with each passing second. They'd never done that before. The unnerving action spiked my anxiety.

I searched the area. The sky glowed midway between dusk and night, only slivers of the fading light reflecting gold off my wings. Hundreds of people had gathered to watch the ceremony, but I had the tingling suspicion that at least one of them was watching me.

The haunting vibrations didn't subside. I breathed and forced myself to get ahold on the varying levels of insecurity battling their way out of me. For Lee's sake.

He already knew I was nuts. He didn't need a reminder of it.

A group of important-looking people took the stage and started a countdown. Their presence—and them gaining almost the full attention of the entire crowd—helped me push back the reminder of the constant flutter. Everyone in the surrounding area joined in when the group reached ten.

…nine…eight…seven…

Lee’s eyes lit up as he glanced at Gina and jumped in on the countdown.

…six…five…four…

Gina bounced on the balls of her feet.

…three…two…one…

The man in the center pressed down the big red button. As the forty-foot tree lit up, I watched Lee’s hand brush Gina’s and her pinkie twine around his.

Chapter Two

Rayna

I turned the doorknob to Kade’s apartment and stepped in. Night blanketed the room. I flipped the light switch. Nothing happened. Flicking it up and down a few more times produced the same result.

Great. The power was out again. I’d have to badger Kade to call his slumlord in the morning.

I closed the door and shed the blond wig, glad to be rid of it. Two of the bobby pins grabbed my own hair, ripping it and stinging my eyes.

“Damn it!” I flung the wig onto the bed and rubbed the sore spot above my temple. Nothing had gone how I’d expected tonight. I'd hoped my meeting with Lee would grant us both an instant reconnection, but we definitely felt the month apart. Being rejected by my best friend hadn't even been the strangest thing about the night. Even now I could still feel the ghost of buzzing inside my wings. It stopped mere moments after I left the pier, but the sensation clung to my feathers like static electricity.

I blindly took another two steps into the room when something cold and hard pressed into my neck. I swallowed. The lump in my throat snaked around the object. I should have known Kade’s refusal to lock the apartment door would one day kick us in the tail—and of course it was my tail on the line, not his.

Though my pulse thudded like a jackhammer, I sorted options in my brain. “There’s a… small stash of cash in the first drawer, and the TV might be worth a few bucks.” I waited for the threatening object to pull away from my neck. When it didn’t, my head swam, backstroking in fear.

“What if I want something else?” the gruff voice asked, the length of his towering body pressing against the back of mine.

This was not happening. My wings beat a wild rhythm against his chest.

The cold edge of what I had to assume was a knife bit deeper into my flesh. It came on then: deer-in-the-headlights syndrome. I froze in place. White spots flitted through my vision.

It was happening again.

My mind transported me back to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. I could hear the waves crashing around us. I stood, bare toes curled over the edge, looking down into the green lights of Hell through the hole Azriel had ripped in the Pacific Ocean.

I sealed my eyes closed and focused on my breathing. “Take the cash. I won’t tell anyone. Please,” I squeaked, on the verge of tears. The bead of sweat trickling down the column of my neck did nothing to soften the hard pressure digging into my skin. It was the only thing keeping me on my feet. Panic revved up inside me, intensifying the flashback on the bridge. I felt the wind of that night blasting my cheeks and flapping my skirt, urging me forward, off the bridge. A strange whine escaped my throat.

The metal against my neck retreated and the robber’s arms folded around my midsection. “It’s okay. Don’t… don’t let yourself go back there again.” He dragged me to the bed and set me down, which only sparked more fear—fear I easily retreated into.

By the time the bedside lamp clicked on, I’d huddled in a ball on the bed, biting my lip to keep from screaming.

The other robber must have fled as Kade rushed to my side from the lamp, kneeling beside the bed. “Ray.” He ran his fingers through my hair. His voice was soft, but firm. “You’re in our apartment. It’s November. You’re safe. No one else is here. It’s just you and me.” His hand cupped my cheek. “Just you and me.”

I let his words tow me back to reality, fought the snarls of fear and emotion tangled in the past, and reminded myself the threat was long gone.

When I finally started to measure my breathing, blood still roaring in my ears, Kade tilted his forehead to mine. “I won’t force calm on you. It kills me, but you have to do this on your own.”

Kade's power, his influence, was different. He’d said it came from a darker place than the angels’.

Or more specifically, Cam’s.

Longing for the angel ripped through me.

Kade drew back, his eyes centered on me. His other hand never stopped stroking my hair.

I could have closed my eyes and pretended. Pretended that Cam was the one here, touching me, but I didn’t.

Cam had to leave.

Kade could have left, too, and rid himself of the sixteen-year-old human girl with odd wings and a history of mental illness, but
he
didn’t.

Guilt ripped through me as if my chest was protected by paper instead of skin, muscle, and bone, and Kade was a skilled surgical knife.

“You sure got a raw deal,” Kade said, brushing my hair away from my face. “All the drawbacks of wings with none of the perks. Not to mention your swan dive off the bridge gave you one hell of a case of post-traumatic stress disorder.”

I blinked away Cam and the guilt of it all, not to mention the last shadowed images of the night I almost died and forced myself to sit up. “I told you before, I don’t have PTSD.” I was crazy enough before Cam and Kade showed up, shattering everything I thought I knew about life. And love. No way would I allow myself to add another issue to my already lacking garden of existence.

Kade pulled away and sat on the bed. “If you say so, Blondie.” He flipped a strand of the tangled wig lying above me on the bed.

Great, now I’d have to leave extra time tomorrow before work to brush the tangles out.

Remembering the traumatic incident that brought on my PTSD—no, panic attack—I jerked my head toward the door. “Where’d the robber go?” I almost expected to see a ransacked room and the robber’s soulless, crumpled body on the floor, thanks to Kade’s Fallen hunger. But everything looked in order, even the drawer I kept my half of the rent in was closed. The rent money Kade never touched.

He smirked and twirled the end of a silver shoehorn around his finger. “You froze again.”

“It was you?” Anger buzzed through my whole body.

“One day soon you’ll be a hot commodity in the angel and Fallen world. You need to be able to defend yourself.”

“So you held a shoehorn to my neck to prove
what
exactly?”

“That you need more practice.” He tossed the shoehorn over his shoulder and pushed off the mattress.

“You…you—” While his back was turned, I leapt off the bed and onto his back. Kade flared his wings. My grip slipped, knocking me to the ground.

Over his shoulder he said, “Glad to see you’re feeling better.”

Fire flamed in my face and burned up my throat. “You’re such a—”

He ambled toward the bay window. When he slid it open, cold fall air pushed its way in, boring through my jacket to chill my skin. “Language, Ray. Geez. I had my reasons.” He tucked his wings back and ducked through the opening. The rickety metal fire escape clanged under his weight.

Strangling the air in front of me, I imagined wrapping my hands around his neck. “One of these days, I’m going to murder you in your sleep!” I called out to him as he climbed the ladder.

“Good. I’ll be on the roof, if you want to give it a try now.”

I didn’t budge from my spot on the floor. No way I’d take orders from him. On the other hand, the prospect of that day being today was way too good to pass up.

I slammed my fists into the cheap, scratchy carpet. Time to seek some revenge.

Chapter Three

Rayna

Kade waited with his arms crossed while I pulled myself up over the roof’s overhang. “Okay, because I feel a tiny bit guilty, the first one’s on the house.” He uncrossed his arms and tapped an index finger to his jaw.

The teeth of my jacket's zipper protested when I tugged it up. Damn it was cold up here. “I don’t need your freebies. I can get there myself this time.” Though I’d never been able to land a blow anywhere near his face yet, we’d been practicing almost every night for weeks now.

I widened my stance the way he taught me on day one of practice, but decided to forego the stretching and centering. I had enough anger in me to make it through his defenses.

After a sharp breath, I charged at him. He whirled around, slapping me forward with his wings like some sort of twisted revolving door. I tumbled forward, barely missing the planter boxes Kade built for me weeks ago. “I can’t believe you,” I threw over my shoulder, trying my best not to scream.

“I get it. I’m a jerk, scum, the lowest of the low.” He faced me, backing up several steps so he was once again centered on the roof. “But I did it for your own good.”

“Say that again and I’ll…” I slid my feet underneath me and lunged, keeping low, aiming for a hit in the stomach. He jabbed an open palm into my shoulder and sidestepped me.

I seethed and dove in again, miraculously dodging his fist block. I tried for several different hits, high and low. He blocked them all, half with his hands and forearms, and the others with his wings. Each of my failed attempts brought me closer into the fold. After five or six more moves, I was near enough to wager a power hit. I shifted my weight onto my back leg and let loose, aiming my fist toward his chin. It traveled all of half a foot before he swept my leg out from under me with his wing.

The loose rocks on the roof cushioned my fall, but shifted when he lowered his forearm over my neck. He applied just enough pressure to keep me from wriggling out from under him.

“Where’s your head tonight?”

With both my hands, I struggled to push his one arm off. “If I wanted to talk, I wouldn’t be up here fighting with you.”

“Bad night?” he asked, that irritating fake concern slinking thorough his usually sexy voice.

“None. Of. Your. Business.” With each word I pushed harder, desperately needing to
not
be this close to anyone right now. Especially him.

His arm didn’t budge when he exhaled. Damn those sighs of his. Each one had a different meaning. I was fairly certain that quiet exhale of breath combined with the contemplating way his eyebrows knitted together meant a change of attitude was coming.

“All right. Let’s try something different.” He released me and offered his hand.

I pursed my lips. The rocks were starting to dig into my back, but I didn’t move, never one to give in to the handsome soul-sucker if I could help it.

He sighed again. His loud,
you exhaust and frustrate me
sigh. This one I heard ten times more often than all the others combined.

I bit back a smile.

“Let’s try this again.” He reached forward, grabbed my hand, and yanked me to my feet. “New rules. For every hit you land, even a minor one, I’ll answer one of your questions.”