Angel in Training (The Louisiangel Series, Book One) (36 page)

My attention switched to the other person in
the room, and I was thankful for the growl of thunder to cover my
gasp of surprise. “Her?” I couldn’t help but mutter in
disbelief.

It was the leggy barmaid from the bar who had
been flirting with Joshua. For a moment, the only thing I could
focus on was the dress she was wearing. Don’t get me wrong, it was
gorgeous. It looked like it was made of silk, and clung to her
curves perfectly. It was the color of ice, and looked like it would
be see-through the second it got wet. It was gathered around the
waist, with beautiful crystal detailing, and the skirt hung down
around her to the floor. As she moved back a step, it also showed
off a ridiculously high and revealing slit that went nearly all the
way to the waistband.

Crazy, I know, but this was the kind of thing
you would wear to your prom – not in the middle of a hurricane, in
the middle of a deserted theme park, in a decrepit room which
looked like it wasn’t going to withstand this hurricane, what with
the iron work creaking under the strain around us.

She took another step back, shaking out those
luxurious auburn tresses, but my eyes fell to the thing in her
hand. I had to wipe the rain out of my eyes to make sure I was
seeing it clearly. It was a sword. Then, before my eyes, it shrunk
to a dagger.

Who the hell was this woman?!

She leaned forward, bringing the dagger up in
front of her face. With his arms tied behind the chair he was
seated on, his chin resting on his chest, was Joshua. He was
breathing heavily, which I was taking as a good sign, until the
woman leaned over and grabbed his hair and yanked it up, bringing
his face up to look at her.

I couldn’t see her lips to attempt to guess
what she said to him, but his two word response was obvious, even
from where I was.

I looked between the two henchmen and the
woman, considering my options. Sure, they looked unarmed, but that
didn’t mean that they couldn’t move to Joshua and break his neck
the second I shot the woman. I wasn’t certain I could take the two
of them out quick enough to eliminate them before she did
something.

I was edging towards taking her out first,
and hoping they would either be too surprised, or would try to
locate me instead of focusing their attention on Joshua, when the
woman, without any warning, took the dagger and stabbed it in
Joshua’s shoulder, causing him to yell out in pain. She left it
there for a moment while she said something else to him as he
gritted his teeth, then, with another yell from Joshua, slowly
twisted it.

I saw red.

Without thinking of the consequences, I
sprinted back around to the front of the attraction, charged up the
steps, and kicked the door to the room open, taking aim at the guy
on the left. For once, my arrow met its target and he dropped to
the floor, dead. I had reloaded my weapon and had it trained on the
redhead before anyone knew what I was doing.

The second henchman took a step towards me,
but I shook my head. “You take another step, and she won’t have a
head.” I flicked my eyes over at the woman. “Now, bitch, step away
from him.”

With her back still to me, she held her hands
up, and turned to face me, smiling. “Hello, Angel.”

“Joshua, are you alright?” I asked, keeping
my attention switching between the two threats in the room, and
ignoring her greeting, despite the fact I had no idea how she knew
my name.

From the corner of my eye, I could see Joshua
watching me. “Nothing a couple of hours alone with you wouldn’t
fix,” he muttered, trying to give me his famous smirk, but only
managing to pull off a grimace.

“I’ve told you, quit with the flirting,” I
responded, forcing myself to smile.

The redhead rolled her eyes. “Oh, for crying
out loud, get a room already.” Then she laughed. “Oh, I'm sorry, I
forgot. You’re not allowed.” I stared over at her, unable to keep
the surprised look from my face. “You think I don’t know about
those stupid rules?” she asked me, laughing.

“How?” I started to ask, then shook my head.
“No, first, untie him.” She took a step back to Joshua, but I
stopped her. “Not you. Tweedledum,” I frowned, nodding at the
henchman. “You can keep your skanky hands well away from him.”

The guy looked over at the woman, and upon
receiving a nod of approval, stepped forward and untied Joshua. As
soon as his hands were free, he grasped the dagger that was still
protruding from his shoulder. I lowered the bow a fraction as I
started to yell, “No!”

In less time than it took for me to blink,
the henchman had moved from the back of the room to me, disarming
me and sending the bow skittering across the floor. I then actually
blinked, and he punched me so hard, I swear I could feel my brain
vibrating in my head as I hit the floor. Nothing human could move
that fast, which meant one thing...

“You’re angels?” I gasped, staring up at the
two redheads who were staring down at me.

“Technically, I'm an archangel. I haven’t
fallen yet, unlike my colleagues here,” she told me, gesturing to
her henchmen.

The two figures slowly became one. “Who the
hell are you?” I groaned.

“Angel,” she tutted at me. “Does Michael
allow you to use Hell out of context like that?” At my startled
look, she crouched down in front of me, sweeping my wet hair from
my face in a motion that was almost motherly. “Yes, I know who
Michael is, although I'm not surprised to see that you don’t know
who I am.” She leaned forward, whispering into my ear. “Lilah.”

My mouth fell open. “You’re Lilah? But
Michael said you had fallen.”

She cocked her head, stood up, and smoothed
out the skirt to her dress. “In the flesh, although,” she laughed.
“This isn’t my actual flesh – I couldn’t risk Michael bumping into
me and recognizing me. And no, I haven’t fallen.”

“But I thought angels couldn’t kill people,
or you’d fall?” I muttered.

“Who said anything about killing anyone?” she
asked, with a twisted smile.

I shook my head. “No, Michael said that you
had fallen.”

“That pompous ass doesn’t have a clue. I left
that convent, yes,” she explained. “But I haven’t fallen, yet. I
still have my wings.”

My head was already throbbing without trying
to work this out. “But if your vessel isn’t dead, then you must be
possessing her. Angels can’t do that.”

Lilah rolled her eyes at me. “That’s a load
of crap. If you wanted to possess someone, you could, just like you
are that body of yours. It’s probably better manners to do it your
way, but this is so much more fun.”

“I don’t understand. Michael said you fell
because you slept with your charge – you broke a rule.”

“I haven’t fallen,” she said carefully. “Yes,
I did sleep with my charge, but that won’t make you fall. It’s just
going to piss Michael off enough to throw you out.”

“Hang on,” I muttered. I needed to keep her
talking long enough for my brain to formulate some form of plan to
get us out of there. “I'm confused. Where does Joshua fit into all
this?” I looked behind her to him, almost wishing that I hadn’t. He
was leaning against the pile of rubble behind him, his hand pressed
tightly to his wound as he watched us.

Lilah paced back and forth for a few minutes,
the clicking of her heels was the only thing I could hear over the
storm that was still raging outside.

“Joshua is a key,” she told me,
eventually.

“The key to what?” I asked, slowly pulling
myself into a more upright position. “Is that why I need to protect
him?”

Lilah laughed. “God knows
why
you’re protecting him.
He’s
a
key,
not
the
key.”

I was definitely getting a headache, and it
wasn’t from the hit to the head. “You make no sense, you know
that?”

“I know,” she smiled, leaning back down to
me. “But this is where the bad guys go wrong in the movies – they
tell you their plan too soon, and just in case – I'm not about to
make that mistake.”

The second time she pulled away from me, it
sparked a memory. “You’re the one who killed me!” I exclaimed.

“For God’s sake,” she muttered, rolling her
eyes. “Don’t tell me – you’re a blonde under all that red? I'm an
angel, not a fallen angel. You can’t stay an angel if you kill
someone, idiot.”

Under normal circumstances I would want to
slap her – the blonde jokes really pissed me off – but now, I was
remembering other things from the night I was murdered. Like the
dagger I was stabbed with. A dagger that looked exactly like the
one that had been in Joshua’s shoulder. “I remember you, and I
remember that dagger,” I told her, shaking my head.

She let out an exasperated sigh. “They gave
you a bow, so you have clearly been in that armory. Please tell me
you have seen those swords on display in there?”

“Michael’s and Lucifer’s,” I nodded.
“Michael’s had turned black from killing Lucifer.”

“So they are teaching you something,” Lilah
muttered, shaking her head slightly. “Swords go black when they’re
used to kill. Even I can see from here, underneath Joshua’s blood,
that blade is white.”

I glanced over at the blade, which was still
in its dagger form, and sure enough, under Joshua’s blood (which
made me wince), it was white. “Then how..?” I trailed off, as I met
Joshua’s eye.

Lilah looked over my head at the fallen angel
who was standing behind me. “She doesn’t remember you,” she told
him. “Maybe you should refresh her memory?”

He stepped around me, and my eyes went from
his steel toe capped boots, up his black combats, to the hand that
hung by his hip, holding a small, black dagger. As I stared at the
metal blade, it grew in front of me. Before my brain could register
what was happening, he slammed it down, into my thigh. I screamed
in pain, clutching at the bloody wound.

“Why?” I sobbed, wishing I was strong enough
not to be crying.

“I’ve told you,” Lilah said in exasperation.
“I'm not telling you my game plan.” She began walking towards
Joshua. “But it is time to get that plan under way.”

I was staring at my hands, watching the blood
slowly seep through my fingers. I didn’t think it had caused enough
damage to kill me, but if I was going to make a move, this was it.
The fallen angel was still standing in front of me. I could see his
boots just in my line of sight, my blood pooling at the end of the
tip of the sword, hovering just above his right foot.

I had one option and I was going to take it.
With a speed that amazed even me, I brought my fist back and
punched the one place I prayed would hurt enough for me to be able
to slow someone of his size. My fist went up and connected with his
privates hard enough to lift him from the ground. His hand released
the sword to grab his injured parts and I lunged for the sword,
grabbing it and swinging it with all my might. He hit the floor
before he knew what I was doing.

A fraction of a second later, I was flying
backwards through the air, only to land on a collapsing steel beam,
sending part of the wall crashing down around me.

All I was aware of was pain. Every inch of me
hurt, and it was a good job I didn’t need to breathe, because the
wind had been knocked right from me. It was like someone had hit a
mute button, then as the air started to return to my lungs, so too
did the sound to my ears. The thunder, the rain, the howling wind,
a cackling laughter, and someone shouting my name.

That someone was Joshua. He was only a few
feet from me, trying to drag himself over to my side as he clutched
at his shoulder. The laughter stopped and a heel came between me
and my view of Joshua, kicking him back away from me. “You want to
be paying more attention to yourself then to her,” Lilah told his
crumpled form. “I'm about to kill you,” she stated simply.

I watched, unable to muster any strength to
move as she bent over and, with her eyes on me, wrapped her hands
around his neck. He was struggling to pry them away – he would have
been struggling, even if she didn’t have supernatural strength.

“The plan was about to unravel when you sent
that old coot away,” Lilah told him. “I wasn’t sure how to get you
out of that precinct, but I was right when I guessed you would
believe the cop if he told you she had returned to her home. But
then again, even if he wasn’t one of the Fallen, he can be quite
persuasive – he’d have sent you out if he had to. And then I set
that tree falling too late and I thought again I had failed and
killed you in a car wreck. You were unconscious way too long. But
now … now I get to squeeze the life right out of you.”

There was a cop working with the Fallen? He
was one of the Fallen? I could feel the tears trickle down my face.
I had failed in my duty to protect Joshua and I had failed to
recognize a fallen angel for what he was. To add insult to injury
was the fact that I had stupidly allowed myself to fall for Joshua,
so she might as well have been squeezing the life from me.

I swallowed away a lump in my throat, tearing
my eyes away from Joshua’s dimming stare, and up to the ceiling.
“Help me,” I begged. “Please, God, help me.”

I didn’t expect an answer, and I didn’t get
one. My eyes dropped to the ground in front of me, falling on the
dagger, still gleaming from Joshua’s blood, just behind Lilah. I
raised my hand, merely inches from the ground, and held it out
towards blade, willing it to come to me.

The dagger wobbled.

Refusing to believe I was hallucinating, I
glanced over at Lilah. I could see her staring into Joshua’s
wonderful blue eyes, grinning sadistically as he clawed at her
hand. With a frown, I focused my attention back on the
dagger.
Come
to me
.