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David didn't like the implication of that, but that wasn't his problem at the moment. "A promise is a reflection on the one giving the promise, not the one accepting it. If I make a promise, I keep it."
"No matter to whom-or what-it's made." The red lights in her eyes flickered, disconcertingly, as if the monster behind them was assessing his answer.
"I'm making a promise to you." He closed that last space, touched her chin with his fingers. She pressed her lips together.
"Will you remove your daggers?"
"No, I won't lay aside the best weapons I have to protect you. Plus, you just threatened to kill me, and you haven't promised me anything."
"You don't trust me. You think I'm a liar." When her slim jaw flexed, he saw a glimpse of the unscarred part of her face.
"I know you're a liar," he said gently. "But I'm learning when to trust you. Where's the chocolate?"
She lowered her gaze in quick, mistrustful darts, then allowed herself a more thorough search of her robe when David kept his stance relaxed. "So, there've been angels who guarded you, that acted like those mermaids?"
She lifted a shoulder. "It wasn't Marcellus. He and his two pretended like they were guarding something inanimate, so they wouldn't have to talk to me. That suited me fine, except when they tried to order me about.
"Before that, a couple of them passed the time by speculating on names to call me, throwing pebbles and other trash to disturb whatever I was doing. They were bored, and of course they considered guarding me a waste of time." She freed one of the blue foil squares and stared at it, holding it loosely closed in her hand so it wouldn't float away in the water. "On that at least, we were in complete agreement."
"Is that why you turned Marcellus's wing into a bat's?"
"He was pompous, overbearing and he bored me." When she looked up this time, he was relieved to see the red hue that had flared in her blue eye was toned down, all but gone. "I figured if I goaded him enough, he would try to kill me. I could prove I could handle myself against him and wouldn't need any of you. He didn't try, though he looked angry enough to do so."
"Marcellus is honorable. Plus, he never would have defied Jonah that way."
"You answer to each other. You look at the world differently when you answer to no one." She took one square to her mouth. Made a face. "This is metal."
"A wrapper. A covering like the orange," he agreed. "Only man-made, and easier to remove." When he started to help her, she shrank back, did it herself despite some obvious trouble freeing the wet, closely wrapped foil from the candy. He had to command himself to patience. Rolling the foil in a ball, she tucked it back into the recesses of her cloak.
"Who were the two who threw things at you?"
"It doesn't matter. They're two of the four who died. They might not have died, but they didn't trust me behind them. They divided their attention."
"They were probably just making sure a Dark One didn't come up beneath you, or from overhead."
"No. They felt like what they were fighting was no different from what they were guarding." Raising the now naked square to her mouth, she bit. Blinked. Took another bite, slower this time. Then she appeared to roll it around in her mouth until it melted. "Wow," she said, matter-of-factly. David would have smiled, except her previous comment didn't make him want to smile at all.
"They shouldn't have picked on you like that, Mina. But they took their assignment seriously. They died for you."
"No. Angels fight Dark Ones. I was irrelevant, except that I was the unknown variable that split their attention and got them killed. Sshh. Don't talk during this." Rummaging for the other three pieces, she backed up to a rock and anchored herself with her tentacles to continue her consumption.
She had moved to the right of the defile. Her body language might not be as defensive, but she still didn't trust him enough to let him between her and her portal.
David waited, trying not to let the distracting vibrations coming down that tunnel cloud his thinking. Much as he didn't want to admit it, she was right. Because of the purity of their blood, angels were compelled to eradicate Dark Ones, unable to tolerate their unnatural presence.
Mina had enough of her mother in her that she didn't send that meter immediately into the point of no return, but enough of her sire that most angels were ready to write her off. Just now, when she'd stood before that corridor, her cloak floating around her, her eyes flat, purposeful, he'd seen what it was they all saw in her. In fact, if he'd been Jonah or Marcellus, he'd have seen enough to seal her Fate.
But there was more to her. It was impossible for him not to see it as she curled up on the rock, savoring chocolate as human females had since the cocoa bean was discovered.
She was alone. No expectations about her life except what she herself or circumstances of survival imposed. Friends, family, a larger purpose-those were the factors that gave a life a path, an arrow, when choices arose. What if a life had no compass? What did one become if there was nothing and no one guiding her, except the insidious whisper of a doorway?
She insisted on keeping it open, but she continued to resist. Could she want to keep it open, at least partly, for that specific reason? Perhaps the only true meaning to Mina's life was saying no to that which most wanted her to say yes. For if she said yes, the tide of evil would take her, swallow her, and that would be the end of any sense of individual existence she'd ever had.
She was holding the last bite in her hand, and abruptly she looked up at him. "Did you want it?"
"Yes. But no." He couldn't smile. She wasn't generous. Did she force herself to offer that last bite, the one she would want most of all, because she viewed any temptation as an enemy?
At her curious expression, he summoned a shrug. "Angels don't eat, not in this sense. We consume a bread, what the human texts call manna. It comes from the Lady and nourishes us. Nothing else has taste for us, though older angels have some ability to experience it. But I used to like chocolate."
"Like. Not love." She put the last piece away, an obvious effort, and leveled that penetrating stare on him. "What was your favorite food?"
"I was fourteen. Just about anything that moved. Pizza was good. Chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven, those were the best." He stopped there. "I didn't have wings, though. Or really cool daggers."
When she cocked her head, he raised a brow. "What?"
"The way you said that. You sounded... like a fourteen-year-old. You meant to do that."
He gave a half smile. "I thought it might amuse you."
"Or yourself, so it wouldn't make you sad. Did you want to be an angel?"
"It's not like that. I am an angel." Pushing aside her intuition, which stirred up shadows too close to what the doorway had violated him to find, he searched for an explanation. "It doesn't really matter what you were at another time. It's there, just waiting. The first time I opened my eyes, felt the wings, felt it inside me, I knew. There were other things I had to work through, but I never had to work through that."
She shifted her tentacles on the rock, adjusting her hold there. "That's what I wonder about the doorway," she said, glancing at the dark opening. "If stepping through it would be like that. This feeling, all of a sudden, of being exactly what I was supposed to be."
"No." David glided closer, slowly. He didn't want to spook her, but she was too close to that damn door. He wanted to be within pouncing distance.
She tilted her head, met his gaze. "Every day I don't give in to it is another day that I have chosen my own path," she said, confirming part of his theory. "But each day, it gets harder. Everyone wants me to be evil, so they don't have to deal with me anymore." Her expression became more resolute. "You can't take this door from me."
