Chosen Angels Read online

  He was right, but still... "There has to be a normal. We can't always be running on adrenaline and killing people."

  The old woman walking her Corgies down the street turned and gave me quite the look over her shoulder.

  Jacob touched his finger quickly to his lips, but he couldn't help smiling.

  I socked his shoulder. "A little late to tell me that I was about to horrify a senior citizen."

  "Sorry," he said, not sound sorry in the least. He pushed the door open for me at the diner, and the bell jangled noisily.

  "You know what I just realized?" I said. "We never go anywhere. We never go out for breakfast..."

  "Why would we go out for breakfast?" he asked. "I can always make you breakfast."

  I rolled my eyes, and he surprised me by leaning down and kissing my cheek, the gesture quick and fond.

  Then he murmured into my ear, "You have no idea what I imagine doing to you every time you roll your eyes at me."

  "I thought you were being sweet." I grabbed the collar of his t-shirt and yanked him close to kiss him back. "But you're just being dirty as usual."

  His lips met mine, over and over, before he murmured, "And you continue to horrify senior citizens."

  I finally looked away from his handsome, smirking face and to the waitress who was standing there with two menus in her hand, looking anywhere but at me as I smooched my half-angel lover.

  I smoothed out his t-shirt and flashed her a smile. "Sorry."

  "This is why I don't take you anywhere," Jacob said.

  I slid into the booth and Jacob slid in beside me. I waited until the waitress had left the menus, and then, when I knew he was looking, I rolled my eyes at him. He shifted slightly, as if he were turned on, propping his jaw in his hand and his elbow on the table, a faint smile quirking his lips.

  I rested my hand on his thigh, because he did it to me all the damn time and turnabout was fair game, and even though I didn't think I had gone that high up, I could feel him through his jeans.

  "Yet another divine miracle," I muttered.

  The bells above the door jangled. Dr. Parrish came in quickly, looking a bit flustered, her hair wild around her face. I hadn't seen her since the asylum, when she had helped us escape when she realized Ryker and Levi were being tortured. I felt a jolt seeing her again. I’d been so desperate and scared that day. It felt as if that day had happened to a different person.

  Parrish’s eyes met mine. She waved off the waitress as she crossed to sit down beside us.

  "Hello, Ellis." Her eyes flickered to Jacob, and she nodded at him. I wondered if she knew his name; after all, the Company had been trying desperately to find him. They'd want a complete Lilith-and-her-four team at their mercy.

  Jacob stuck his hand out anyway. "Jacob Kerr."

  She shook hands with him. My eyes fell to his corded forearm, the thick leather bracelet he wore and the silver watch, his broad, masculine hand. Then he leaned back next to me, his shoulder against mine, and crossed his arms low over his chest.

  "Dr. Parrish," she said. "As you know, I'm sure. I don't have much time. I try to keep moving."

  "Are you okay?" I asked.

  She waved the question off. "You don't owe me anything, Ellis. But I wanted to get in touch with you. There are some things you need to know."

  "I'm all ears."

  "Ashley isn't your sister," she said.

  I cocked my head to one side, staring at her face, waiting for the rest of it. Wasn't my sister anymore, because she was dead? Lost to the Far? What?

  "She's your clone," Dr. Parrish said. "Well. You're both clones."

  She slid a sepia photograph across the tabletop to me. I leaned my elbows on the tabletop, looking at the photo; a young woman stared back at me. She wore her dark hair up in elaborate curls, and a long dress with a full, old-fashioned skirt. Her hands were folded demurely in front of her, but she stared at the camera like she might just hurt the photographer. Her face was eerily familiar, with the same rounded cheeks and small, sharp nose that I'd seen every time I looked at Ash. Or in a mirror. I thought of those old-timey photo booths at fairs that let you dress up like a character out of a Western. I'd never posed in one.

  "The Company wanted access to a Lilith. But they're hard to find. The Company was able to get hands on a Hunter record that led to a grave, and they had the technology..." She trailed off. "The Company gave you and Ash to your mother to raise. As identical twins. She didn't know."

  "Clones, really?" My voice sounded distant.

  I could not process this. Jacob rested his hand on my shoulder, the gesture protective. Or maybe he was holding me to keep me from going over the table at Parrish. My emotions stormed, but I didn’t know if I was angry or sad or just shocked.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know at the time."

  "You expect me to believe that?" I demanded. Just like she had expected us to believe that she didn't know anything about the Company's decision to stress test—or torture—us all when we were in the asylum.

  "I do," she said simply. "I was trying to help Roxie. But I wasn’t involved, or even aware of, what they did with you."

  Roxie, her dead sister, a dead Lilith. Of course she would have wanted to clone her sister.

  Sisters sometimes go a bit crazy in their grief.

  She pushed the photo across to me. "You can keep it. I stole it anyway. Her name is on the back."

  "What does it mean?" I said. "If Ash and I are... clones?"

  "It doesn't mean anything," she said. "You're still both human. I told you because I think there could be more. With Joseph dead, maybe the Company will stop. I don't know. I left before Joseph was killed, and I can't go back."

  "They cloned Beefy and Burly," I said, thinking of how we'd run into our old enemy again. "Why the hell would anyone clone them? They weren't great examples of homo sapiens the first time around."

  She shook her head. "They were test subjects. Unlike you and your sister, they had...accelerated development. Brains are basically electronic; they were programmed. I tried—"

  "To help us." I filled in, remembering how Nimshi had tried to get us to safety by turning us over to the Company. Beefy had seemed to hate us but still helped us to escape.

  "So it worked?" For a second, pure joy crossed her face. This girl was a serious nerd.

  "It worked." I confirmed.

  "And of course," she said, "Ash might have her own harem. I don't know if there was another group of angels born into this generation, though. We don't have a great way of tracking that. It was a stroke of luck that brought us Ryker and Levi."

  "Luck?" Jacob said. "That's not what we call it in our house."

  "One person's good luck is another's bad," she said. "You need to be careful. I think Joseph's father is trying to destroy any evidence that could ruin the Company."

  "Do you think he'll come after Ellis?" Jacob's fingers tightened slightly on my shoulder.

  "I don't know," Parrish said. "I think he's well aware you're more trouble than you're worth. No offense."

  "None taken," I said. "That's how I like it."

  I still couldn't process the whole thing. But how the hell had it not occurred to me? When I realized they'd cloned Beefy and Burly, I should have realized that they might have cloned me too. We’d been running and fighting without room to breathe, hurtling from one disaster to another. I was missing things I should have put together, if I had time to breathe.

  "So you just wanted to drop another problem into our lap?" Jacob said. "Find out if there are more clones and if there are, make sure they aren’t in danger?"

  She shrugged. "Joseph was very secretive. I'm not sure my facility was his only test facility."

  Jacob rubbed his temples with one hand.

  "It's not good news," she said, already starting to scoot out of the booth with her leather bag thrown over her shoulder. "But you didn't really expect good news from me, did you?"

  I guess I never really expected good news th
ese days from anyone.

  “So that’s it?” I demanded. “I’m a clone, and oh, by the way, the Company is still—”

  I stared after her as she turned and headed for the door. The bells clinked together as she left.

  “Jake.” The tremble in my voice dismayed me, and I tried again. “Jake, what do you think it means, really? Being a clone? Do you think it means I don’t have a soul or—”

  I bit down on my lower lip. We had tried so hard to reunite Nim with his soul, and now I realized that was a mistake. I’d rather have my boy back, safe and solid in my arms and giving me of those teasing winks, soulless as ever.

  I smoothed my hair back into a ponytail, trying to sound breezy. “It’s a lot to take in. I’m just a copy of someone else.”

  “You are not just a copy,” Jacob said firmly. He put two twenties down on the table and then offered me his hand. Together, the two of us headed out of the restaurant, although we were different than when we arrived. I was no longer a real girl. The thought made me want to laugh, because I couldn’t process this.

  I could save processing for after we rescued Nim, anyway.

  “You can’t just be a copy,” Jacob told me as he swung the driver’s side door of the Corvette open for me. He leaned down and kissed my cheek, ever so gallant. “Because no one else could annoy me like you do, Princess. You’re one in a million.”

  My car keys were in his hand, which rested on top of the door. “Light fingers,” I accused him, pulling my keys out of his grip.

  He smiled as he closed my door. I was smiling too as I slid the key into the ignition.

  Jacob was kind of a jerk. But he was the jerk who always made me feel better.

  “We save Nim,” Jacob said when he had climbed into the passenger seat. “Then we work on saving the world. Like we were born to do.”

  “Even if we were…” I trailed off.

  “Stop trying to get out of it, Landon,” he said. “You don’t get a vacation.”

  Chapter 20

  When we came home, Jacob and I split up. He wanted to study before we went into the Far tonight, still searching for an answer for what we could do with Dani. I could have joined him, but I knew that flipping through the texts, my brain would continue to fix on Parrish’s news. The few hours we had before we slipped into the Far weren’t enough to process the questionable state of my soul; I needed a distraction.

  I found Ryker in the dojo. He was once again training, wearing nothing but a pair of black shorts; his t-shirt was folded on a chair in the corner of the room. His hard-lined body glistened with sweat as he went through his martial arts routines, his sword gripped in one hand.

  It reminded me of the last time I'd found him like this, when he'd told me that he loved me, and I hadn't said it back. When I'd tried to make up for it by unzipping his jeans, he'd gently closed his hand over mine. There was no rejection soft enough to make that memory not sting.

  I leaned against the doorway, watching him, and reached into my jeans pocket. I still carried Nimshi's pendant; I'd hidden it until the Council was done with us, afraid that it was somehow damning given their hatred of half-demons. But I owed it back to Ryker.

  "You could always say hello, you know," he said. He wiped his sweat off the hilt and returned the sword to the wall, hanging it up reverently. "Announce yourself."

  "I like watching you."

  He leaned over to grab his glass mason jar and took a long sip of cold water, but he still managed to eye me skeptically over the top of it.

  "And I have to pay you back.” I teased. I’d started called him Dreamstalker when I realized he was never going to stop calling me Firestarter.

  He wiped his mouth with one broad forearm. "Not sure how to take that."

  "Usually when I have a nightmare, you're there. My favorite stalker.” My dreams had haunted me after Ash died. I’d set the world around me on fire—literally—when I was trapped in the dreams where I chased my sister. And then, in the asylum, there had been Ryker’s low, sexy voice talking me though my nightmare. He’d coached me through taking my dreams back. I hadn’t woken up choking on smoke since.

  "That is definitely not the way I was hoping." He ambled over to me, carrying the glass loosely between two fingers.

  "You've always come to my rescue,” I said. I wish he had seen that vision of Samael and Nimshi with me; even my nightmares weren’t as terrifying with Ryker at my side.

  "You've always come to mine." He stopped close to me, just on the verge of being in my personal space. His eyes were intent on my face, and I couldn't help looking at his lips, which were lush and kissable.

  "I'm sorry I wasn't in your dream this time, Firestarter," he said, his voice low and rough. "If I had it my way, there wouldn't be any nightmares at all, but there sure as hell shouldn't be any that you faced without me."

  I rested my hands on his forearms, which were crossed over his chest.

  His eyebrows lifted. "You sure you want to do that? I'm gross."

  "You're sweaty," I said, racing my thumbs along the corded muscles of his forearms. "You're never gross. You always smell good.”

  His lips tilted up slightly.

  “It's a bit annoying, really,” I added.

  "You always smell good to me too," he said.

  "I've been meaning to give this back to you," I said, pulling Nimshi's pendant out of my pocket. It was heavy in my hand, heavier than I would expect from silver and gems. I took the chain in my hand and lifted it to dangle between us.

  "I was just holding onto it to give it back to Nim."

  "Playing it cool now, huh?" I slid my hand up his chest to rest it on his shoulder, tugging his big shoulders down. He lowered his head slightly, and I slipped the necklace over his head. "It means something to me that you care about Nim, even the littlest bit."

  "I care more than the littlest bit." But now that he had confessed that, he shook his head. "I don't want to talk about my feelings, Firestarter."

  "Because it went badly last time we talked feelings in the dojo?" I bit down on my lip as I smiled, trying to lighten the mood. I couldn't believe I'd just had the nerve to say that out loud. If there was one thing Ryker didn't want to discuss more than his emotions about his lost little brother, it was probably the time he said I loved you and I said nothing.

  Ryker rubbed his hand over his face. "Have you always been this blunt?"

  "It's because I trust you. You know, because you're fated to love me despite my social awkwardness."

  He grinned slightly, shaking his head. "You are impossible. But yes, I do love you. For your social awkwardness and all the other pieces of your Ellis-puzzle. Not despite them."

  "That has got to be magic," I said lightly. Because I knew I didn't deserve to be loved like that, no matter how much of a joke I made of it.

  He reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, but his touch lingered, his fingers resting gently against my neck, just below my ear. "Not magic. Just you."

  "So I'm all forgiven?" I looked up at him from underneath my lashes. "For everything that went wrong with Nim?"

  He took my face in his hands, his palms warm and firm against my cheeks. "Ellis. I'm sorry I doubted you."

  I shook my head, not that I could move very far. "No, you had good reason to. I lied to you and acted crazy. When I thought Jacob had been killed—"

  I broke off, feeling my eyes tear up slightly as I replayed the memories.

  Ryker's eyes widened. "Ellis," he said, and then he seemed to flounder. "I know. I was so..."

  "Angry?" I supplied, because that was his emotional default.

  "Yeah," he said. Then in a low growl, he added, "Lost."

  I reached up and ran my fingers through his short, dark blond hair. "We were all ready to kill Nim then."

  "I'm glad I was wrong," he said. "About Nim. The whole way through."

  I nodded.

  "We'll get him back, Ellis. We'll make him a part of this family.” His eyes were serious, and then
sparked with humor. “Even though, if he has any sense, he won't want to be."

  He could never just say something nice and let it be. I felt myself grin. Ryker leaned down and kissed my smiling mouth.

  I rested my hands on his broad shoulders. When our lips parted, I whispered, "I love you."

  "I love you too." He said it softly into my hair, his hands spanning my hips.

  I rested my cheek against his broad chest, pressing my body against his. "Can we have a complete do-over on that day?"

  "Right here?" He murmured, his lips against my hair. "Right now?"

  "I'm not really one to procrastinate." I stepped back from him and crossed the mats to the door, which almost always stood open between the dojo and the office outside where the monitors hung. I closed the door and turned the lock on the knob.

  "We wouldn't want anyone to distract us when we were training," I said.

  "Smart," Ryker said. “Stay focused.”

  I bounced across the mats to him. There was a dirty wisecrack on the tip of my tongue about just what my focus applied to. But then I stopped, our bodies so close together I could feel the heat coming off Ryker's body. His chest still expanded with deep, quick breaths from his training. I felt suddenly shy. My lips pressed closed.

  I reached up and traced my finger over his shoulder, following the path through a labyrinth black rune just below his clavicle. "What does this one do?"

  "It prevents demonic possession." His fingers fell over mine, pressing my finger to the center of the tattoo, where a sword stood buried hilt-deep in a rock and wrapped with rose vines. The roses’ thorns twisted out to form the symmetrical walls of the maze. "The sword at the center says we're marked by God. Off-limits to demons. The labyrinth is part of a spell to confuse them, so they can't find their way into our hearts."

  "Have you read anything about what it's like? Being possessed by a demon?"

  He nodded. "It's terrifying. The human is locked inside while the demon controls their body. Demons take pleasure in breaking a human however they can, from the inside or out."

  I cocked my head to one side. "Do you think Dani could be possessed?"