Page 4 of Dark Shadow of Guilt

The only thing she could connect to his rants were news shows where talking heads had discussed another being they called an Immortal. What was his name?Yes.Angel.No.Ohngel. They identified him as a winged assassin. They’d even flashed pictures of him on the screen. Despite his title, they said he was a good guy who had helped the Firebrands save humans.

None of this explained how she was here or why he chose her. When the answers to those questions eluded her, she trembled, her calmer thoughts scattering. She swallowed the bile rising in her throat, determined not to upchuck.

When she was young, Maddy and her sisters had played what-if games. What if one of their mother’s gentleman callers visited the wrong room? What if they had no money for food? What if their mother fell against the edge of a table and died? But the current dilemma with Praevus was worse. Scary. Not a game.

Her captor stepped closer. He tangled his fingers in her hair and yanked her head down. She turned her cheek to the cold concrete wall but could not escape his oily touch.

“Wait here, my pet. Don’t leave before I return,” he whispered. Stroking her lower lip, he chuckled as if he had made a joke. “Our time together is just beginning.”

She listened as the pounding of his boots faded, the lights went out, and a metal door slammed shut. “Control,” she murmured, again ticking off major classes of the Dewey Decimal System. “Science. Technology. Arts and Recreation...”

Madeline clenched her fists, commanding her fear to dive deep into her heart where she buried it. One thing was for sure. She refused to break. Her sisters had prepared her well.

Chapter Two

Dominion shoved hisway through the crowded bar, patrons scurrying out of his way and his entrance causing a brief lull in the noise. He pulled alongside his fellow winged assassins. Deep in conversation, Ely greeted him with a nod and Remi a slight smile. Dom cocked his foot onto the railing, his usual grim frown in place.

The Angor Management Club was the only sleazy tavern in this dimension where the Feard, aka the winged assassins of the OneCreator, could find a good drink without being hassled.

Elysium perched beside Dom on a barstool, his hand cradling an imported Demon Brew, his icy wings snapped tight to his spine.

On the other side of Ely sat Remiel, drinking a local rum. Leaning forward to include Dom in the convo, he said, “I need to kill something.” His jittery fingers tapped on wood marred by centuries of use. The bronze spike-winged assassin was high-strung, always seeking action, never satisfied unless he was fighting or buried cock-deep in a female.

Just then a dominatrix decked out in leathers, ankle-breaking thigh-high boots, and a shit-ton of metal strolled by their stools. With rumpled blonde hair and eyeliner that would do a raccoon proud, she was dressed for a little BDSM play later that night.

Remi winked at the female, halting thetap, tap, tapon the bar. The eternal playboy.

Returning his admiration, she cracked her whip overhead and grinned, her tongue sweeping across black lips. Then her eyes widened when she spotted Dom. The dolled-up Scourge shuddered and scurried on her way, putting distance between herself and the grim onyx-winged assassin who enjoyed his rep.

Ely studied the female’s retreating backside as she shot a nervous glance over her bare shoulder. In a delayed response to Remi’s need-to-kill-something statement, he said, “Downtime. Killing. It’s all the same now. Ho-hum.”

The ice-winged assassin was struggling with the boredom of eternity again. The last time he got bad, he sought stasis for a millennium. Dom had missed him, but if it was something his brother-in-arms needed, well...

Dominion, able to launch sharp obsidian-bladed feathers from his wings with little more than a thought, didn’t bother to track the dominatrix rushing off. He was accustomed to patrons giving him space and speaking in whispers. Maybe it was the patch over one eye. As a rule, Immortals were not scarred. Not on the outside.

Yep.

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