Death Takes Wing Page 4

  “Exactly,” he replied, gripping his drink tighter. “I’m working on a case right now that’s a…touchy area. Humans and angelus are both involved.”

  “Can’t say much else?” she said as she cocked her head.

  “Nope,” he replied with a shake of his head. A cold breeze gusted around them, making him pull his wings even tighter against his back. He was grateful for the warmth and wind-block they provided.

  “Gotcha,” she said, starting to stand when she decided her ass was frozen enough to keep a fridge cold for a week.

  He looked up at her, confusion on his handsome face. He shifted his weight to look at her better.

  She cocked an eyebrow at him and grabbed his arm, tugging him out of the seat. “C’mon. I’m cold. Moving warms me up. So let’s walk.”

  He slowly smiled and let her pull him to his feet, picking up his drink as he stepped away from the table. “To the bridge?”

  “It’s going to be colder there,” she said petulantly deciding that he made a better wind-block when she stood closer to him.

  “Are you complaining?” he asked, deep voice rolling around her in the darkness.

  “Nope, just stating the facts,” she said pertly, pulling her heavy coat tighter against the fall chill.

  “Sure you are,” he teased. He felt his heart thud as she pressed herself against his side. “Are you using me as a windbreak?”

  “Probably,” she said nonchalantly. “I mean, really, what else are the wings good for?”

  He laughed, the dark sound echoing in the night. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” he asked suggestively as they started towards the bridge.

  She laughed at his question, but was glad for the surrounding darkness when she felt her face flush.

  His wings brushed against Amalia, and he inwardly cringed, quickly pulling it closer to himself. This was often when human women got weirded out. Surprisingly, she seemed to take the large feathers in stride, just lightly brushing them behind her without a second thought. He was coming to realize that there was a lot more mettle to this human than met the eye. He relaxed the wing, letting it rest in its natural state.

  “So,” she said softly as they walked down the dimly lit path towards the wooden bridge.

  “So,” he responded amiably, enjoying her presence.

  “So,” she repeated, stepping a bit closer to him and further out of the wind. “What does it take to be an Enforcer?”

  “Experience. Education,” he replied, “same qualities as a police officer, I gather.”

  “So you have schooling?” she asked curiously.

  “Yeah, I have schooling,” he said with a low chuckle, wondering where the conversation was going to go if she kept repeating herself. “And so do you,” he replied lightly.

  “And just what do you know about me?” she replied pertly, a more than little unnerved at the thought of how much he might know.

  "I know that you have a Bachelor in Psych as well as your library degree."

  “Have you been stalking me?” She stopped, making him turn to face her. She didn’t like the turn of conversation. She suppressed a shudder when she remembered Eric stalking her to work, to home, shopping…anywhere she went, it seemed like he was always there, always watching.

  “Facebook is forever, darling,” he replied with a smile teasing his lips. He reached out and gently took her small hand in his as he started back towards the bridge.

  “Funny, I have my page set so that no one can see it,” she quipped back, relaxing enough to tease back when she realized he hadn’t been creeping on her like Eric. She enjoyed the feeling of her hand in his…she hadn’t realized just how much she missed that feeling.

  He grinned. “You might have, to outsiders, but your friends, however…well, let’s just say that their pages are surprisingly easy to hack.”

  “I can’t believe you’d hack-wait, was it someone named Morgan?” she asked, curious.

  He tried to hide his grin as he answered, but wasn’t fully successful. “Perhaps.”

  “Well,” she said, sitting back and trying not to grin, “serves her right then. Last month, she hacked my page. Changed my screen name to ‘Pretty Little Pony Sparkles’. And a whole lot more than that,” she finish with a bright laugh, regaling him with the fact that she’d been ‘in a relationship’ with ‘Godzilla’, and Sasquatches sister. As he laughed that that, she continued, “it wasn’t just Facebook, was it? I mean, I really need to know just what I need to speed-delete, and if it’s just my Facebook, that makes it a lot easier.”

  He shook his head, still smiling. He squeezed her hand gently before letting go. He’d enjoyed the feeling more than he wanted to admit, but he didn’t want to be that guy. Like Matt, he reasoned, who was usually that guy that always did things too soon, or at the wrong time completely.

  Looking at her questioning face, he replied, “Google is a great search engine. Especially with a name like ‘Amalia’. Now, if you were a Jennifer, or an Ashley, you’d be a hell of a lot harder to track down. I should thank your parents for that. Really, I should.”

  “So, first, I need to purge all of my online data. And hope that you don’t learn to use Google cache. And then, curse at my parents for giving me such a weird name. For that, though, I’ll need to pick up some candles and sage,” she teased with a smile.

  He grinned at her, and she grinned back at him, her gleaming smile making him want to stay by her side for a lot longer than just a short date. Luckily for him, he thought, he had quite a bit to discuss with her. He felt a pang of guilt as he remembered Ivy, but it didn’t make the feelings he was developing for Amalia diminish. It had been nearly a century and a half…according to Matt, it was more than time to move on. It usually didn’t feel so long ago, but now, here – with Amalia…that seemed like centuries ago.

  “Well, you know about my education and work experience. So tell me about yours,” she prompted, breaking through his thoughts.

  He ran a hand through his hair and twisted his lips into a grimace. “That’s a long story.”

  “Condense,” she prompted. “Just the highlights. Enough to keep me interested, at least.”

  “Still a long story,” he warned with a smile. “Several degrees. Human, that is. Psych, sociology, criminology. Those are my big ones. Deviant psychology was the most interesting.”

  “Work history? Angelus education?” she asked, her curiosity begging to be fulfilled. Her green eyes stared at him, wanting to know more.

  “I’ve been an Enforcer for more than two centuries. In terms of angelus ranks, it’s one of the higher ones.”

  “I thought you said the castes were outlawed?”

  “They are. The ranks are separate. The ranks are more of the ranks you’d find in any political system. Think of them as a pyramid. Bottom ranks get the worse work, and they’re mainly for younger angelus trying to get experience. Higher ranks get the prime jobs. Enforcer is second from the top. Only the council outranks us,” he said slowing his walk as he heard their footsteps echo.

  “Who outranks the council?”

  “No one,” he replied.

  “Huh,” she said, considering the repercussions of not having anyone to report to. “So, angelus education is different than human?”

  “A bit,” he replied as he sipped his drink. It was almost cold, and the taste didn’t sit well in his stomach, so he dropped the drink back to his side.

  When he didn’t offer to elaborate, she asked, “How so?”

  “You are just full of questions,” he replied with a wry smile, cocking his head to stare at her.

  “Librarian, remember?” she said pertly.

  “Librarian or cop?” he shot back.

  “Both. Just call me Miss Polibrarian,” she tossed airily to him, leaning against him for warmth.

  He chuckled before responding. “We don’t have degrees like the humans do. Instead, we have experience.”

  “Explain, please,” she prodded with a smile and elbow. “You know, if you don’t elaborate, I’ll be forced to keep repeating explain, please’, and you really don’t want me to keep saying that.”

  “What if I’m hoping you’ll forget about that?” he asked with a smile.

  She shook her head empathetically. “Nope, not gonna happen. SO, explain,” she finished with a head toss.

  “If I want to learn more about something, I go straight to an expert. Say I wanted to learn about horticulture,” he said as he looked out over the bridge into the dark waters below. He leaned on the rail, staring down into the smooth waters. “I’d go straight to a horticulturist who’s taking students. Learn as much or as little as I want, then I’d move on when I was done learning. Either to another horticulturist if he’d taught me all he knew, or on to a new topic.”

  “So what kind of angelus education do you have?” she asked curiously.

  “Stuff that most humans don’t know about,” he replied cryptically, turning away from the water to look at her.

  “Not going to elaborate?” she asked with a smirk, leaning against the railing, but wishing she were leaning against him. It was much warmer that way, she thought to herself.

  “Not a chance,” he responded. “I can’t have you learn all of my secrets so easily, now can I?”

  “I suppose not,” she said. “So I have a question,” she started, rocking back on her heels.

  “And that question is?”

  “How are you not cold?” she asked as she leaned a bit closer to him, shivering as a cold breeze whirled around them.

  “Who says I’m not? Wings make everything better.”

  “Everything?” she said doubtfully.

  “Most everything. Not riding a bus or anything like that, but anything worth doing,” he said lightly. He leaned over
the bridge, looking down into the water that swirled with bits of dropped colorful leaves as the wind picked up again. He extended his wings, instantly changing his silhouette to something more like a bird of prey.

  Amalia stared at the picture he created. She briefly wondered how wide his wingspan was.

  She turned around and started walking again, across the bridge, only pausing to look out over the dark water, curious as to what caught his eye. He stopped behind her, closing his wings with a soft rustle.

  "I’m getting a bit cold,” she said as she turned to go back across the bridge before realizing that he had stopped on the other side of the bridge, and was once again staring into the water.

  She narrowed her eyes before rejoining him, setting her empty cup on the boards below their feet. “Okay, seriously. What are you staring at?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I see something,” he said, gesturing in a faint, downward direction.

  She stopped, waiting for him to continue. “And what do you see, Captain Obvious? All I see water and leaves, that’s it,” she replied, vainly trying to see whatever he was searching for.

  “There’s someone down there,” he said shortly, deciding that he needed to make sure that there was someone, rather than something, down there. Although, he thought to himself, something would be far preferable to a body.

  Someone? What the hell did that mean, she thought. There hadn’t been a death in North Shore since Williams – not one that she’d heard about, at least. She peeked over the edge, but didn’t see anyone standing near the bottom of the bridge. She turned to ask him what he meant when she realized that he was already making his way over to the side of the bridge. Looking one more time, she had to hustle to catch up to him.

  They made their way down to the land, where he carefully picked his way down to the shore, over the strewn boulders, where, to her, it looked like animals could be waiting to jump out at her. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, per se, but rather what was waiting for her, in the dark. All of her years as a cop taught her to be extra cautious about doing into dark spaces. She followed him, knowing that she wasn’t dressed for an off-trail trip, but not caring enough about that minor detail to wait.

  She scurried down the rocks, much quicker than Gabriel had anticipated, and he met her standing on the rocks, offering his arm to her. She declined it, having years of experience from her previous job.

  At the edge of the water, the waves of the river softly lapped at her shoes. She could feel the icy water through the rubber soles. She pointed towards the center of the river, at a pale shape in the darkness. The darkness of the bridge allowed her to focus more clearly on the light that reflected around the shadows on the water, and the pale shape that morphed into that of a body before her eyes.

  “That’s a body,” she stated blankly. She swallowed and pulled the hair off her face. She felt the cold seep around her, but she ignored it. Staring at the body, she memorized as many small details as she could, knowing her former comrades would need as many of those details as she could recall.

  He nodded vaguely and looked at the path between the shore and the body. There was no good path, he thought with an inward sigh, at least no path that would keep him dry, and since the person was decidedly deceased, he elected to stay on shore. He let out a huffed sigh and proceeded to call the police, alerting them to the problem.

  After he placed the call, he reached out to grab Amalia, who slowly tiptoeing towards the body. She gripped him arm tightly for a moment, trying to keep her balance on the uneven, slippery rocks. She nodded when he looked at her. Gently prying her fingers off his bicep, he searched among the rocks until he saw a shiny object partially hidden under debris washed up by the moving river.

  It was an ID bracelet, he realized. Like the ones they give out at hospitals. Had the body been a patient somewhere?

  All of a sudden, it was bathed in a blue-tinged light. He glanced over and found that Amalia was shining her cell phone’s light on the ID.

  “Just numbers,” she replied, disappointed that there wasn’t more information on the plastic tag.

  “I know who that is,” Amalia said as her breath slowed, her brain forcing her back into ‘police officer mode’.

  His eyebrows drew together in confusion.

  Amalia stared at the body, the bloated face that blankly stared at the sky.

  “Who?” he asked impatiently.

  “You don’t recognize him?” she asked, confusion flitting over her face as she looked from the body to him, quickly followed by horror, then the professional mask she’d learned while being a cop.

  “If I knew I wouldn’t be asking you, now would I?” he snapped, impatience turning his barritone voice harsh.

  She glared at him and shook her head. “He’s missing his wings, but that’s Vince. That’s Sam’s boyfriend. What the hell is he doing in the river?”

  “Shit,” Gabriel muttered. “They didn’t tell me it was this bad.”

  “They? What was this bad?” Amalia demanded, staring at Vince’s body. No wings. None at all that she could see. No feathers floated on the water, and none were caught by the shore.

  “The case I’m working on,” Gabriel answered slowly as he stared at the corpse.

  “What the hell does Vince have to do with your case?” Amalia asked sharply.

  “The missing wings?” Gabriel pointed toward the corpse, “Those were probably forcibly removed. It’s a mark of shame among the solan. It’s becoming a signature of this case.”

  “Donovan,” Amalia state, flatly, feeling all the emotions pour out of her body.

  “Yes,” Gabriel replied, staring at the body, wishing he could turn him over, but knowing with the police coming that it wouldn’t be such a good idea. If he’d known it was an angelus, he wouldn’t have worried about calling the police. He’d just deal with it himself. Damn.

  “You’re sticking around?” she asked, looking at Gabriel from cold green eyes.

  He grimaced, not enjoying the thought of staying in the cold wind, but seeing no better option. “I’m going to. You can go home. It’s wet down here, and getting colder.” Actually, he thought bitterly, it felt like snow, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to mention the ‘s’ word.

  She stubbornly refused to leave until the police had retrieved the body, reminding him that she’d need to leave a statement anyway. He sighed but stopped arguing. Noticing she was shivering in the biting wind, he offered his coat. She shrugged it away, knowing her reaction wasn’t because of the biting wind but because of the adrenaline due to her seeing a corpse for the first time in over a year.

  After a cursory examination, Gabriel waited patiently for the police to document every meticulous detail they could scrounge before talking to the coroner who waited for the body to be released. Then, he had to wait for them to question Amalia in extreme detail about the body, and her personal life. She must have worked with them, at some point, he realized as it dawned on him. They must still care about her.

  When they were finally through getting his and Amalia’s statements, Gabriel had to convince the coroner to let them see the body before she took it away. After quite a bit of persuasion and charm, she finally relented. Together, they stared at the naked, bloated corpse.

  Tightening her jaw, Amalia stared at the body. There were ligature marks around the ankles, wrists and neck. Bruises on the face. Lips split. When they’d seen the back of Vince, Amalia hadn’t been able to stop the gasp, even knowing that Gabriel had told her how the wings had been removed. Not just removed, she told herself, but torn off. The trauma was visible. The flesh torn, bones and strands of meat hanging out. Shaking her head, she felt pity for the solan, who she knew had probably been conscious when they’d done this to him.

  Gabriel looked at her sharply, but didn’t say anything as she shook her head, covering her mouth with her hand as she tried to breathe deeply and not remember Donovan. And not picture Donovan in front of her. That was the hardest.

  When the coroner was able to slide the body into the ambulance, Gabriel turned to Amalia. “What was it?”

  “What was what?” she replied, knowing what he was asking.

  “What made you react? The whole time you had on the professional mask, and then it was gone. What made it break?”