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He’d had free will, however, so he’d gone to the golden arches first, in a little thumb-of-the-nose at the Big Guy. Yeah, but then he’d realized food was probably the best place to start anyway. Tohr had been AWOL in the Adirondacks, living off the blood of forest animals—and Jesus, who didn’t need a hamburger on a good day, much less after going Naked and Afraid for how long?
Unfortunately, he’d eaten most of the fries on the way in to the brother.
Hey, he was an angel, not a saint. And that had always been his problem. But his rescue had worked. After a time, the fighter had emerged from the mourning of his murdered shellan and found a new life, solidly back in his old role as the King’s second-in-command. The calmest and most level-headed of the Black Dagger Brotherhood remained scarred at the soul level, but he had carried on, as survivors had to, as the living must do.
With the job done and dusted, Lassiter had figured he’d be called back home, but not all that long thereafter, a second promotion had been offered by a third party that Lassiter sure as hell hadn’t seen coming. As with the Tohr thing, he hadn’t had any interest in the job, but when the Scribe Virgin told you she was turning the vampire species over to you, and good luck with all those souls and their bright ideas? Well, there you had it. Your time card was punched… for infinity, or whenever you gave up the job, whichever came first.
Lassiter stared out over the valley below. He’d assumed he’d last a little longer than this. Like, at least five years. Ten. Fifty. A century.
Except here was the problem. When he’d arrived on the scene in Caldwell, he hadn’t particularly cared about the people, and that had made things really easy because the outcomes hadn’t mattered as much. Besides, the TV had been good, and he’d enjoyed a non-lucrative but highly satisfying side hustle of irritating the everliving shit out of Vishous, son of the Bloodletter.
Smooth sailing. Until then, sure as a case of the flu, the feelings had crept up on him, a contagion caught from the courage and the loyalty around him. Before he knew it, he’d started to worry about the vampires in that old stone mansion. Worry had led to motivation. Motivation had led to him blurring lines, bending rules… breaking the non-interference contract the Creator held all angels to.
Destiny, after all, was—or should be—a game of solitaire. Each individual had their spread to play, their own choices to make, and nobody else was supposed to be slipping them extra cards so that they could get unstuck when that pesky three of hearts just wouldn’t come up in the stock.
At first, it had been little things, but like all bad habits, he’d gotten more and more comfortable with violating his principles.
And now he was here.
Kind of ironic, really, that doing what he was explicitly not supposed to had culminated in him breaking himself.
Memories of the demon Devina barged in, and as he shriveled in his own skin, the irony wasn’t lost. Way back when, he’d gotten in trouble in the first place for dabbling with sexual expression. His higher order of angels were not supposed to bang, and even though he’d been careful to never, ever let things get to actual penetration, his I-did-not-have-sex-with-that-woman had ultimately failed to get him off the hook.
Who knew he’d end up saving his virginity for a demon.
To save the soul of a male of worth, he’d given his body over to Devina. And now he was here, standing alone in front of a dying sunset, trying to remember details about a McDonald’s order that was three years old so he could avoid thinking about all the people he was letting down… as well as the one vampire he missed with a yearning and sadness that was worse than all the humiliation and disgust he was carrying around from his time with the demon.
A different image came to him, of a female with hair that had the gleam of polished sterling silver, and eyes that were the same shimmering color, and a face that tilted up at him… as all around at her feet, wild flowers bloomed in a swirl even though it was not the season.
Why bring your girl a bouquet when you could give her a meadow full of blooms? he’d thought at the time. Especially if you were saying goodbye.
He could still picture his Rahvyn’s delight as she had twirled about, and in this, he had every single detail with pristine clarity, her hair shining as it spooled out into the moonlight, her body lithe in her civilian clothes, her smile not shy but a revelation of feminine beauty and mystery. She had been in his heart before that moment. Seeing her that night? She had entered his immortal soul.
