Jove lay there for what felt like days. The seizures tapered off, but his muscles were so sore he couldn’t move. His body refused to listen to his brain when he told it to get up, shower, and change clothes. No way was he going to make it out of Berlin tonight, let alone out of the house. Semi could come back at any time and strike him dead. Any of those fallen angels could, and all he could do was lay there.
He closed his eyes, the only function his body could withstand. Even breathing hurt, but nothing was as bad as knowing that he had asked for this himself. By working for Semi, he’d known what could happen, and he’d still done it.
What fallen angel didn’t get swayed by the power his human body could produce? How many of them hadn’t fell and lived the glory that only the devil could give them? Wasn’t that the true question?
And how often did the regret come for all the rest of them? As often as it had come for Jove? Rumors of a mass exodus of fallen angels came to his ears as he worked in the pits of Hell, and he’d been open to leaving. Getting out from under the devil’s thumb, really.
There had been zero interest on his part to become one of Astaroth’s fallen angels, so he’d gone his own way. He’d been content to live his life, traveling, loving, being himself.
Then Semi had crossed his path.
A lone tear trickled out of Jove’s eye, but not for himself. No, his regret was all on him that was certain, but how many people had he destroyed along the way? All for what? For Semi’s idea of what life on earth should be like? For his own sadistic, twisted plans that had nothing to do with Jove’s own?
Now he lay here, waiting for Semi to return, to kill him and send his soul back to Hell where it would remain for eternity. All because he let someone else think for him. All because he hadn’t been strong enough.
Outside in the hallway he heard footsteps.
Here they were, here to kill him forever.
The footsteps moved around lightly, going from room to room. The agony of the wait was almost too much. He wished he could yell out, tell them that he was ready and here he lay.
Then he heard humming.
Not one of the fallen angels who worked for Semi hummed. And this was feminine humming. He tried to move, he certainly tried, but even raising himself up on his arms was too much. He made it half an inch and dropped back down, groaning.
His door opened.
A spate of German he couldn’t follow, then a gasped exclamation and soft patters of footsteps before someone knelt at his side. Weak as a kitten, he couldn’t fight back as the person rolled him to his side, then his back.
“What happened?” she whispered.
Jove blinked. A huge fallacy about angels is that some of them are women. Jove knew for a certainty that no angel was ever created as a woman, but if they had been, this is what they would look like. With not-so-crazy hair, maybe. Satiny purple and black corkscrew curls bounced around her angelic face, batting him in the face as she leaned over him. Her eyes were so blue, he almost didn’t think the color real, but she was close and he couldn’t detect contacts. She smelled like bleach and floor cleaner. Not so angelic.
Leave it to him to be found on the floor by the housekeeper.
“What happened?” she asked again, now feeling for the pulse in his neck. With her other hand she reached in her back pocket and pulled out a phone. He groaned, trying to tell her not to call Semi. She put the pink, blinged-out phone to her ear and waited a few beats. “I need an ambulance. I clean houses and I found one of the owners in his bedroom. He’s had a fit or something.”
Worse than calling Semi, she’d called an ambulance. He tried to shake his head, but nothing worked. Only groans came out of his throat and she wasn’t paying attention anyway.
“He can’t really move, but his eyes are open. Maybe he had a stroke?” She bit her lip and looked down at him. She nodded to whatever the operator was saying. “Okay. Hey, can you smile?”
He tried, but nothing happened. Nothing but his lips pulling back in a sneer. He closed his eyes, his energy almost depleted.
“Yeah, he can’t really smile, but one side isn’t drooping. I don’t think he can talk, and his arms are stuck to his sides like he’s paralyzed.” She glanced around the room. “I came two days ago and he wasn’t here. I don’t know how long he’s been here, though.”
Jove listened as she rattled off more information. The home address, where the door was, everything the emergency crew would need. He must have drifted off because suddenly, there was silence.
A small hand rested against his cheek. “Hey, mister.”
He opened his eyes, but the lids could only go up halfway.
“I’ve got to go let the emergency techs in. I’ll be right back.”
He tried to show his distress at her leaving, but all he could come up with was pleading with his eyes. She still understood.
She ran a hand over his hair. “It’s okay. I’ll be back, I promise. I won’t leave.” She smiled at him and he thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. “By the way, I’m Hildegard. When you can talk, though, call me Hillie.” She smiled again and patted his shoulder, then she got up and sprinted from the room.
Jove closed his eyes again. It was good to know the name of the person who saved him. Hillie. Odd, but he liked it. It fit her.
He thought he felt his lips curling into a smile and he passed out before the emergency crew got to him.
****
They made it out of the store with a phone charger, some jeans and a jacket for Esme, and a burner phone for Rack. Well, that and no bad guys saw them.
Esme plugged her phone in as Rack started the car. “We will go to Berlin, then?”
He pulled out of their parking space and tossed her a sidelong glance. “Esme.”
“There are things there that I need to do—”
“Yeah, so you keep saying. What are these important things you need to do? If it’s pick up your clothes, I swear I will replace everything there just so you don’t go back.” He raised his brows. “Well?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. How could he be so infuriating when he’d been so…accommodating before, and how could she explain the full file on her cousin? All the pictures of Fleur and Lisette? He hadn’t mentioned any family at all, so how could he understand the loss of her cousin? How could he know how much she needed Fleur back?
“You would not understand.” She turned to look out the window.
“Why don’t you try me?”
But she remained stubbornly silent. Before starting the car, Rack had opened his phone. Now she heard him flip the case open and begin to dial. When he spoke, it was in German and that was easy for her to ignore. Her grasp of the language wasn’t the best and she was irritated with him.
How dare he make her feel the things he did and then dismiss her needs? She hugged herself closer as she thought of their interlude in the dressing room. What was she, a teenager? She bit her lip as she relived the moments in her mind. The feel of him as he pounded into her. Even the feel of his shoulders beneath her hands, powerful and hard, holding her up so he could thrust deep inside her.
She shifted and squirmed in her seat. She needed to stop thinking about this right now, or she’d make him pull over and ravish her again.
His voice rose and the German came out harsher. She glanced over and saw his hand tighten on the wheel. The flames tattooed on his fingers seemed to leap off his skin. Tiny blue flickers appeared, licking up his arms….
And suddenly were gone.
“Nein! Berlin!” Rack said loudly.
Startled, she turned to look at him.
He was angry. Very angry. And it seemed to her that his hair, a dark blue-black color, seemed even bluer than normal. Almost like the flames on his fingers….
He shouted something else, said “Berlin” again, and shut the phone. He tossed it into the tray on the dashboard and ran a hand through his hair.
Esme sat silently. Then a thought occurred to her.
“The chains,” she said suddenly.
“What?”
In a moment of clarity, Esme knew how she could get Rack to Berlin even if he didn’t want to go. From day one, he’d accused her of stealing those chains out from under him, so she’d give them back. There was no doubt in her mind that those chains were stolen in the first place, and Rack did tell her that they belonged to his friend.
“There is a room in the house in Berlin,” she explained. “It holds all of the items Jove and I have purchased since coming to Germany. Those items and many more.” She looked over at him and saw him glance at her. “I have a list of everything there.”
His eyes left her to watch the road, but she saw his hand tighten on the steering wheel again. “You want to steal it? The list?”
“Non,” she said with a firm headshake. “I want to steal everything on the list.” She grinned at him when his jaw dropped. “I want to steal everything in that room.”
****
He certainly had to hand it to her; she knew how to blow his mind. First with her tight-ass pussy and now with her words. He had a hard time keeping the car on the road. “Esme….”
“We will need to contact Jove for help.”
Rack briefly closed his eyes. “Esme, what makes you think Jove will help?”
“Well, he will have to. We both have to be present to enter the room.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her pick up her phone and turn it on. Her little plan had a lot of holes. Not to mention she didn’t need to give him this. He’d already called Sam and told him he was heading to Berlin. Told him to take care of Dell. Now that he knew Dell had family in the world, him dying, losing his soul and never coming back wasn’t as big of a worry. At least, not for those he’d leave behind.
Because he’d decided something. Something big. Kneeling on the floor of that dressing room, his jeans sagging and his ass hanging out, he realized that Esme was strong. Not just for herself, but for her cousin, her family and even little Dell. And while he hadn’t been the reason for her cousin’s death, he’d been the reason that Dell hadn’t returned home when she should’ve. All for his own selfish motives.
Giving Dell back was the least he could do, considering what Esme had lost. So he’d tell her that he knew about her cousin and the baby, and then he’d hand Dell over, or Sam would, in case Olivier got him.
“Esme, Jove isn’t going to help.”
“You do not know that.” She stared intently at her phone while she talked. He could almost hear her silently willing the electronics to work faster. “He was disillusioned with what Mr. Semi was doing. Besides, I do not think the items I procured were entirely legal.”
“I can assure you that is the case.” Rack snorted.
“Ah, here we are,” Esme murmured. She began to run her fingers along the screen. “Let me call him, see what he says.”
“Esme—”
“Just let me call him,” she insisted. She sighed and looked over at him. “Please, Rack. Just let me try.”
How could he say no to that? Her soft voice and her pleading tone. He nodded once and she made the call.
Rack hoped Jove wouldn’t answer.
More than anything, he didn’t want to drive to Berlin and help her. Mostly because she’d hate him afterward. Mostly because he already hated himself. He sighed inwardly and leaned back. Looked like they were in for a drive. Especially when he heard Esme say, “Allo?”
****
Sam wanted to toss his phone again but he didn’t have another one or any idea how to get one. He glared down at the now silent screen. Maybe Paige could figure it out.
He heard a decidedly childish squeal, a dog bark, and Paige’s delighted laugh. All of those sounds helped dispel the anger he harbored, but it didn’t go away completely.
After talking with Rack, he wanted to crush something using only his bare hands. Preferably crush Rack’s skull. The bastard was going to walk right into Semi’s house. Walk right in so that he could take his woman back to get whatever it was she left in that house in Berlin. Waltz in and have his ass handed to him by Semi and Olivier.
How Semi survived the crushing of his lower body and the explosions that rocked his damn club, Sam had no idea. Honestly, he didn’t really care. All he knew was that it pissed him off. He’d lose Rack over this shit, too. All because of a woman.
The thought both enraged and terrified him, so he tried to let it go. He, Paige, the dog, and Dell had checked into a resort about an hour away from Triberg. They had their own tiny house complete with a covered porch that Paige and Dell were playing on right now, the dog standing guard.
Sam needed to get his shit together before joining them.
He grabbed the remote and flipped the television on. He hadn’t watched anything for two days, since he and Paige had bugged out. Right now, he could go for a mindless sitcom.
He didn’t get a mindless sitcom.
Instead he got a news report with a grainy surveillance video from a gas station showing an SUV getting rammed in the driver’s door. The SUV got pushed across the lot and behind the building. Luckily for him, the gas station had other angles of the “accident” so Sam was able to see the SUV roll down the hill.
He stood when he saw the tall man with the slick backed hair get out of his vehicle and march straight down that hill. He saw him smash his fists on the hood. He even saw him try to pull a woman out of the driver’s side window—a woman who looked remarkably like the antiquities procurer he and Rack met at the castle. The woman fought with the fucker and managed to get the limping SUV away from him.
Then Sam watched the man sprout wings and fly off.
“Motherfucker!” he shouted.
He didn’t throw anything, but he sure as fuck didn’t have his shit together when he stomped out to the covered porch. Paige looked up, a smile on her face. The smile came crashing down and even Dell looked scared.
“He’s going to Berlin,” he said in English without preamble. “The son of a bitch is going to Semi’s house in Berlin.”
Paige glanced at Dell, whose eyes were as round as saucers. “Sam—”
“No.” He held up a hand to stop her. “No, Paige. I can’t calm down, don’t even ask. He’s going and I can’t stop him, but that’s not the fucking worst of it.”
“Sam,” she said again, this time raising her eyebrows and nodding her head to Dell.
He knew she was trying to tell him not to swear, but he was way too far gone for that shit. He closed his eyes and made a half-hearted attempt. No dice. His eyes popped open and blazed at her. He felt the anger boil over and out of him.
“They have one of us on camera. One of us with fucking wings. One of us with fucking wings fucking flying and fucking getting away from a fucking car accident that he fucking caused.”
“That’s a lot of fucks,” Paige murmured.
“It sure as fuck is,” Sam retorted. He shoved his hands into his hair and pulled. “FUCK!”
“Was it Rack?”
“With the fucking wings? Hell no!”
“No, in the car accident.”
Sam dragged his hands down his face and neck. He looked up at the ceiling and again tried for patience. His chains writhed along his skin.
“Yes,” he hissed.
“Is he all right?”
“He sounded fucking fine when he announced that he was walking into that house to get fucking killed by Semi.”
Paige glanced down at Dell, who still looked from one adult to the other, her eyes wide. “Is she all right?” She asked softly.
“Who?”
Paige looked perturbed. Ordinarily he didn’t mind Paige perturbed, but right now it irritated the fuck out of him that she seemed perturbed with him. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Rack was the one traipsing all over the countryside getting the shit kicked out of him on surveillance cameras at gas stations—
“The woman.”
“The fucking woman.” Sam put his hands on his hips and for the first time really looked at baby Dell. For all the anger coursing through him, for all the unmitigated irritation, he felt a lot of it melt away as he looked at the little girl. He blew out a breath and dropped to his knees. “Come here, princess.”
Dell smiled and ran into his arms. She cuddled against him, safe in her Uncle Sam’s embrace. Sam breathed in her baby scent and closed his eyes. He felt Paige’s hand on his head and he looked up at her.
“Go to him,” she said.
“Where the fuck do I find him?” he asked.
Paige shrugged. “I don’t know. But he came for you when you needed him. Dell and I will be fine.”
He hugged Dell tighter and got to his feet, the sweet baby girl cradled in his arms. He hefted her to his hip and used his free hand to cup Paige’s cheek. Switching to French, a language Dell wasn’t fluent in, he leaned close to Paige.
“We’re having one of these,” he said with a head toss to Dell.
Paige’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, are we?”
“Yeah, we are. No arguments.”
She laughed. “We’ll see.”
He leaned down and kissed her, just a soft peck on the lips. “Yeah, we’ll see.” He kissed her again and sighed. “Let me call Gres, get him close. I don’t want you alone.”
“We’ve got Hound.”
“You’ll have Gres,” he insisted.
Paige fisted her hand in his T-shirt and pulled him close. “You better not let anything happen to you.”
“I’ll try.”
“Or to this little one’s daddy,” she said with a head toss to Dell.
Sam felt his jaw harden at the thought of Rack and his stupidity. Walking right into a trap….He blew out a breath and tried to relax. “Yeah, I’ll do what I can.”
Paige reached up and kissed him. “Do everything you can.”
Sam pulled her to him and hugged her with his free arm, all while cradling Dell. His anger might have waned a bit, but he had no doubt it would come raging back when he found Rack.
Mostly because he was afraid he wouldn’t find Rack alive.