West Third St.
Cleveland, Ohio
1:40 a.m., Dec. 24
Finn stepped into the frigidly cold night, the rush of wind exhilarating him. He never got used to this either—the walls that mankind erected to stifle the very air that surrounded them, the lights they burned to hold back the night. Even after so many thousands of years, they battled their own world, counting it as enemy, not friend. Now, two thousand years after the birth of Christ, mortals had begun to harness electrical waves, magnetic fields—and their own highly disciplined brains. But there was so much more they could do.
So much he could teach them.
He blinked. Where’d that thought come from?
Finn breathed in the pollution-choked air to ground himself, feeling it burn as it entered his lungs, electrical pulses rushing through his system with equal parts pain and pleasure. Deliberately, he refocused, centering again on the human.
He would follow Dana Griffin.
She was his easiest point of access to Lester Morrow, since the man had never returned to the ballroom. And Finn would absolutely reach her before the rogue Fallen did.
He grinned. He’d rout whatever demons he’d sensed up in the ballroom, subdue the rogue Fallen, and hand over both the Fallen and the list by midnight to the archangel. That should be more than enough to earn his keep.
Then there was the matter of his Christmas bonus…
Forcing himself to relax, Finn sucked in more of the foul air and turned his head to catch the imprint of Dana’s passage. He still didn’t feel quite right, but he’d only been a Fallen for about ninety minutes. Maybe there was an adjustment period. Either way, his body was too tense, too tight, his emotions too close to the surface.
And as his mind focused on Dana, he felt the stirring within him again. His response to the mortal was dangerous. Forbidden. And yet…
Finn rubbed his eyes, remembering it all. The woman had practically burst with light, unlike anyone else around her, her body calling to his with a power he’d never experienced in a human. And, though he’d merely sought to give comfort, he’d been able to completely eliminate her pain with a touch.
Moments later, she’d fled from him in horror, her eyes wide with the knowledge of what he’d done, her body full and strong again, shimmering with energy. And he’d felt her departure like a physical blow—a crushing loss.
He shifted in the darkness, frowning. He simply needed to adjust, he told himself again. The mortal was not the problem; he was.
Still, she had reacted to his touch too strongly. Mortals had never been that sensitive. Even Warrick’s human, the cop, had been helped along by her blessed cross. The ornate pin Dana had been wearing at the gala was nothing more than a trinket in the hands of anyone other than a high priestess.
Unless she’d already encountered the rogue Fallen in some fashion, and he’d made Dana stronger—more open to being healed?
An unexpected surge of fury raked through him. He’d had no right.
But then neither had Finn. Yet he couldn’t forget the way Dana’d felt beneath his hand, her reaction to his touch, to his kiss on the back of her hand.
Finn grimaced. He needed to get moving.
He glanced up and down the short access street, his breath steaming out in a curling white cloud. Though humans had upgraded their methods of transportation over the centuries, he was much faster on his own. He allowed his senses to point the way.
Dana had departed the ballroom nearly ten minutes ago, but she’d left her mark on the very air as she’d moved through it. She’d stopped here, at the entrance to the Ritz Hotel, then had left the hotel at a fast, steady pace. He could still pick up her light, exotic scent as he stepped out onto the sidewalk. It had been buried in the chaos of powders and perfumes in the ballroom far above, but here, in this moment, he could almost taste it, whispers of jasmine and vanilla blending together in a sweet, intoxicating swirl. Her scent was richer than those of the other women he had been surrounded by, and far more memorable.
Everything about her, in fact, had been burned into his brain. Her strength, her passion. The unadorned beauty of her full mouth and flashing eyes. Reliving every sensation he’d felt in the last two hours, Finn nearly groaned at the memory of the mortal’s fingers against his lips. Dana Griffin felt more real to him than anything he’d touched in more than six thousand years. So vibrant, so angry, so excited, so…alive. She was fully, gloriously mortal.
And she’d been horrifically damaged.
All too recently, a bullet had caught her leg at an excruciating angle, exploding her tibia into a dozen fragments. Mortal surgery remained barbaric, so after the bullet had been removed, the real violation had begun. A steel plate and screws now held together her bone as her muscles knit together furiously to bear the weight not only of her body, but of the work she forced herself to endure. She’d added new muscle as well recently, the flushed pink layer hanging boldly over the old. A cry of determination against her own weakness.
Finn’s own ungainly heart seemed to enlarge in his chest cavity. From what his senses told him, Dana had received that injury within the past few months. No human in the world could heal that quickly, that cleanly, without outside help.
Focus on the prize, buddy. Dana isn’t the goal, the list is. Finn’s orders from the archangel had been clear. If he didn’t complete his mission and stand before the portals of heaven at midnight, he’d lose his freedom for good. As would the rest of the Syx. He needed to bring his A-game. He owed that to his team. To himself too.
Finn followed the curve of the street, pausing in the shadows as he saw Dana’s willowy form silhouetted against brighter lights in the distance. His need surged again, hot and insistent, but something else cut across his reaction as he moved down Prospect Avenue—the unshakable awareness that he wasn’t alone on the streets of Cleveland.
“Here, demon, demon, demon,” he murmured.
He hadn’t been mistaken in the ballroom when he had felt their presence. There were demons here—maybe even the bad seed Fallen as well—all of them coming to take him down. Finn’s jaw hardened. Bring it. If there was one thing he was good at, it was tossing demon asses back across the veil.
Finn deliberately slowed to let the demons catch up with him. He projected his senses forward, draining his energy as he scanned the city streets within a solid half-mile radius. The shadows ebbed and flowed on the far side of Dana, but there were many streets through this city, many paths for the horde to find Finn.
“C’mere sweethearts.” Resisting an urge to goad the pack with a sharp whistle, Finn moved onto the balls of his feet. Dana ranged farther away from him, and he focused more heavily on the horde. Their thoughts, their fears. These weren’t straight-up demons, he decided, but possessed humans. Totally had to be the rogue Fallen at work. Finn hadn’t fought a Possessed since the Dark Ages, but he imagined the process hadn’t changed all that much. True, demons could be torn out of humans and thrust back into their own plane while preserving the lives of their human hosts. But such “exorcisms,” as mortals termed them, took too much time. Incapacitating their human hosts was quicker.
Finn made no effort to hide his presence, and he could tell by the shift in energy the moment both the demons and their possessed humans finally realized he was there. On the faintest whisper of wind, he could feel the creatures stirring, somewhere deep within the concrete canyons. Then the coiling, jibbering force of their excitement heightened, keening on the wind, and they gathered together as one quivering being before bursting apart again, slipping into the darkness. He waited, his body charged and ready for the fight.
But no one came for him in the still of the night. No one attacked in the shadows, far away from human eyes.
And in that moment, Finn knew.
They weren’t coming for him.
They were coming for Dana.