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“Miss, I need a moment to—”
She pulled up the main screen of the phone, clicking through pages in a haze until she found the number herself. “112 03 0577.”
“Miss, the records are—”
“112 03 0577!” she screamed into the phone. Over and over. “112 03 0577!”
It was all she could remember. That stupid number.
“Miss—holy gods.” The line crackled. “They’re coming,” the responder breathed.
He tried to inquire about the injuries on the male, but she dropped the angel’s phone as the drugs pulled her back, yanked her down, and she swayed. The alley warped and rippled.
The angel’s gaze met hers, so full of agony she thought it was what her soul must look like.
His blood poured out between her fingers. It did not stop.
6
The half-Fae female looked like Hel.
No, not Hel, Isaiah Tiberian realized as he studied her through the one-way mirror in the legion’s holding center. She looked like death.
Looked like the soldiers he’d seen crawl off the blood-drenched battlefields of Pangera.
She sat at the metal table in the center of the interrogation room, staring at nothing. Just as she had done for hours now.
A far cry from the screaming, thrashing female Isaiah and his unit had found in the Old Square alley, her gray dress ripped, her left thigh gushing enough blood that he wondered if she’d faint. She’d been half-wild, either from the sheer terror of what had occurred, the grief sinking in, or the drugs that had been coursing through her system.
Likely a combination of all three. And considering that she was not only a source of information regarding the attack, but also currently a danger to herself, Isaiah had made the call to bring her into the sterile, subterranean processing center a few blocks from the Comitium. A witness, he’d made damn sure the records stated. Not a suspect.
He blew out a long breath, resisting the urge to rest his forehead against the observation window. Only the incessant hum of the firstlights overhead filled the space.
The first bit of quiet he’d had in hours. He had little doubt it would end soon.
As if the thought had tempted Urd herself, a rough male voice spoke from the door behind him. “She’s still not talking?”
It took all two centuries of Isaiah’s training on and off the battlefield to avoid flinching at that voice. To turn slowly toward the angel he knew would be leaning against the doorway, wearing his usual black battle-suit—an angel who reason and history reminded him was an ally, though every instinct roared the opposite.
Predator. Killer. Monster.
Hunt Athalar’s angular dark eyes, however, remained fixed on the window. On Bryce Quinlan. Not one gray feather on his wings rustled. Ever since their first days in the 17th Legion in southern Pangera, Isaiah had tried to ignore the fact that Hunt seemed to exist within a permanent ripple of stillness. It was the bated silence before a thunderclap, like the entire land held its breath when he was near.
Given what he’d seen Hunt do to his enemies and chosen targets, it came as no surprise.
Hunt’s stare slid toward him.
Right. He’d been asked a question. Isaiah shifted his white wings. “She hasn’t said a word since she was brought in.”
Hunt again regarded the female through the window. “Has the order come down yet to move her to another room?”
Isaiah knew exactly what sort of room Hunt referred to. Rooms designed to get people to talk. Even witnesses.
Isaiah straightened his black silk tie and offered up a half-hearted plea to the five gods that his charcoal business suit wouldn’t be stained with blood by sunrise. “Not yet.”
Hunt nodded once, his golden-brown face betraying nothing.
Isaiah scanned the angel, since Hunt sure as Hel wasn’t going to volunteer anything without being prompted. No sign of the skull-faced helmet that had earned Hunt a nickname whispered down every corridor and street in Crescent City: the Umbra Mortis.
