Page 4 of Angel's Conquest

They would never be so lucky, of course.

Because they weren’t him.

“Uh-uh, if you try to fire up your portal magic, mystic, you might hurt my feelings. Make me think you don’t like my company.” Bronze slowly recalled his metal skin and was afforded a much better view of the scum beneath him. Teal and gold tattoos painted the thing’s face, outlining its golden eyes, and even swirled above the single gold band around the charmer’s neck, which signified its class as a mystic—a magic user.

The thing spat its defiance across the cobblestones, slickening the poor hunks of granite in its black blood. Bronze smiled. Good. He’d nicked something important in the takedown, then. Always a boon.

Through the struggle, the charmer managed to twist as much of its head upward as it could, doing its best to address its captor. Once that golden gaze was pegged on Bronze, the earlier familiar thrill caused him to puff out his chest again. It didn’t matter how many times he looked into those fuckers’ gazes. The stare-down was always what did it for him. Power recognized power, after all, and among immortals, a clash of the eyes was akin to a battle cry.

“We are many,” the mystic wheezed out. “And you are not.”

Bronze leaned forward, yanked the thing’s forehead back so the blade bit in harder to the soft flesh at its throat, and hissed, “Please let that be a threat. Oh, pretty pretty please with a cherry on top.”

“Facts are not threats. They just are.”

The thing was taunting him, playing with him like he was the damn fish on the hook with the boning knife at his throat.

Bronze’s fire punched through his core and raced along the edge of his sword in a sheet of blue flames. The instant the fire touched the charmer’s skin, the demon screamed and bucked against Bronze’s hold.

“Are you not reading the room, my man?” Bronze bit out over the wails. “I know where you all are now. I know you’ll return here. And I sure as shit know how big of a hard-on I’ll be sporting when every single one of you assholes is howling in such agony that you’ll be begging to suck down my fire just to end the suffering.”

The feel of the charmer’s neck against Bronze’s sword was far too comfortable, so much so that Bronze feared the sensation would evaporate before his power even had a taste of what it remembered the kill to be like. After all, there were nostalgic experiences, and then there were addictions.

With Bronze’s angel fire left to operate on a shift worker’s schedule, the line between nostalgia and addiction was fucking clear as mud.

He needed to drag this out, needed this kill to last as long as his power could hold out, because come morning, without recharging his energies, his fire would have no more strength than the shit stain on the cobblestones the sun would make of the demon if Bronze let him live long enough to see it.

Guess he might as well stretch out the intermission on the torture dinner theater?—

A pale green swirl flared to life out of the corner of Bronze’s eye. A twisting flick of the charmer’s fingers, murmured words Bronze hadn’t caught before he put the blade to its throat, and a bolt of vile magic that arced from the demon’s hand, cracking Bronze in the ribs.

The sickle sword sliced across the charmer’s throat in time with Bronze’s bellow. An underhanded blow, he had to admit, but an effective one, if somewhat uninspired.

Too bad the fucker wouldn’t stick around to blow out the candles and make a final wish.

With one hand pressed against his ribs and practiced boredom slowing the rest of him, Bronze stood and peeled his long legs away from the charmer. The thing flopped around like a fish on a boat deck as blue flames worked their way southward from its gaping neck wound and incinerated everything below it in a slow hungry sweep. Blackened ash painted the vintage granite with stucco-studded character, but Bronze wouldn’t stick around to see the final product.

He turned away from the light show, not the least bit interested in the finale, and inspected his side. Blood seeped from a gash that would take more than a few hours to heal fully, but if he got himself underground within the next hour, he should be good enough. Damn, that final hit was a bitch. Not unexpected, but like pain gave a shit whether the end user saw it coming or not?

Once the pile of demon detritus stopped smoldering and Bronze was finally able to inhale without his ribs sputtering in crimson protest, he dispersed the debris over the bridge with the sweep of his boots. He was just gearing up for a second pile to be shuffled overboard when a parched white swath of something floated along the riverbank. The sliver of pale moonlight offered a scant peek at the thing before it stole back its beams and plunged the water’s edge into darkness.

“What the hell is that?”

Sheathing his sword but double-checking that all daggers were present and accounted for in his chest holster, Bronze leaped down and trudged toward the shadowy space along the river that, once again, flashed a bleached wink at him before being swallowed up by the darkness.

He didn’t have time for this shit. He was bleeding all over his favorite graphic tee, and as the hour had just plunged past two in the morning, he needed to get underground and start the healing process. The minerals and elements imbued in the great mountain he and his brothers dwelled beneath were the literal lifeline for recharging his elemental energies and healing small wounds. If he left now, he could get in maybe three good hours of rest before the sun was up and at ‘em again.

His boots stayed put, and try as he might, he couldn’t pull his eyes away from that shadowy copse near the water.

“Fuck,” he breathed out, already regretting how the rest of his night was going to shape up.

Curiosity dragged him along like a toddler wearing one of those leash backpacks mortals put on their kids. As he drifted closer, his responsible brain screamed at him to get the hell back to the den and recharge his power. Screamed, stomped its feet, even did one of those I’m warning you finger-pointing maneuvers. He now had confirmation—fucking confirmation—that Cyro and his boys were showing their assess around their old stomping grounds, and what was he doing with this information? Socking it away in his cranial palace while he, of the injured and weakened state, went to go what? Turn over rocks to check for bioluminescent algae or some shit?

Bronze slowed his pace, grateful that there must still be at least one station for his logic train to pull into, but instead of turning around, he came to a halt not three feet from where he thought he saw . . . whatever it was he thought he saw.

There! The white swath appeared before him again, stealing away some of the shadows at his feet, along with his breath.

He hadn’t known what to expect, but he sure as shit couldn’t have predicted the cascading fall of white hair floating in the shallow water along the river’s edge, nor the unconscious woman attached to it.

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