Assassin

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

He shut the door behind them, Monica right next to Zophiel. He didn’t want her wandering off in the dark. That’s a good way to get axed, and it wasn’t happening on his watch. Monica was a friend, through his association with the Thomas brothers, and he wasn’t going to let any of them down. Especially not because some adaphat punked him when he should be watching over her.

She tried to step off the porch without him, but he stopped her with a look. “Wait up. Never know what fool is out here wanting to start trouble.”

“You know I’m a cop, right?” Monica shot back at him in that country bumpkin accent, grin firm on her face to show she was teasing. “I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah, well, demons.” Zophiel frowned when she sobered up real quick. s**t. He hadn’t meant to say that. “Sorry.”

She shrugged at him. “You gotta point there. It’s not something I’ve had to deal with before.”

Zophiel let it roll off him. He knew he didn’t do levity well and sometimes people took what he said too seriously. After a quick look around with both sets of sight, Zophiel planted a hand in the square middle of Monica’s back and led her to her squad car, one of three on the force around these parts. She hopped into the driver’s side without any debate and popped the passenger side for him.

“Thanks,” Zophiel said. He meant it too. As much as he tried to avoid it in the past, Zophiel had been in a cop car a time or two. They weren’t situations he ever wanted to repeat, though he’d escaped the encounters with only some damage. Others weren’t so lucky and he couldn’t break his camouflage unless necessary. One officer, a few years back, did meet the business end of his coercive power though, the abusive f**k.

“Should I just head out of town? Or do I have time to stop and grab my stuff from home?” Monica started up the squad car and clicked the mike. “Dispatch, be advised, I’m signing off for the night.”

The county services switchboard acknowledged Monica with a short reply. Now that she was off for however long, Zophiel directed her back to her little apartment right next to the only motel in town. The place was single story, a scattered gathering of tiny duplexes. Monica parked in front of hers, near the middle.

“This will only take a few minutes and I’ll call the Sheriff to tell him I’m taking a leave of absence while I pack.” Monica tossed her keys in the small plain wooden bowl on her entry table after she let them in. Zophiel shooed her off with a look and leaned against the white wall right next to the door. There was no reason for him to go farther into the apartment. He could sense her moving around in the back, presumably her bedroom, and the rest of the standard, tidy place was in view. A woman’s bedroom was always off limits unless invited, that was his personal belief, and he wasn’t entitled to follow her.

All of ten minutes later, she hauled two suitcases out into the front room. “I’m ready.”

“Good. Let’s blow this place.” Zophiel lifted up the heavier of the cases, but she snatched the other one up before he could. All right, then. “We can take your car.”

“Sounds like a plan. You need to use it to get back, or do you have some magic voodoo that’ll bring you back?” Monica gave him a searching look. He stared back at her, placid as a lake. She broke down inside a minute. “Wait, don’t tell me that s**t you did earlier is the only thing you can do.”

Zophiel barked out a laugh. “Hell no. Don’t worry about me. I’ll get back to the guys, no problem. We’ll stick your car in long term holding.”

She hustled him over to her old compact yellow Nissan and once they stuffed her things in the trunk, they were off into the dark to the only airport in the area. Dawn would be on them by the time they rolled up to the airport, so Zophiel wasn’t worried about Monica running into the adaphat while she waited in the terminal. She’d be on the first plane out, with no time to be snared again.

His skin prickled. Chances were good the adaphat would follow them for as long as it could track the car, but it’d keep its distance with him as Monica’s escort. Adaphat might be mindless destructive beings, but even they had some instinct for self-preservation. Zophiel kept his observation to himself. No need to worry the human.

As the car ate up the miles, he turned his mind to his mate. Levi’s intolerance of lies was legendary. Except for the very smallest little lies, his human was prone to irrationality and isolation. He loved to cut that sort of s**t off at the ground.

Zophiel was there for the precipitating event. That’s how they’d met. Some ratchet asshole that Levi thought was a friend had hurt him, right in the middle of a huge mall crowd. The asshole’s buddies wanted to know why he hung out with some fag and, of course, the asshole had torn apart Levi’s heart in the vilest terms. f**k that guy anyway. Zophiel had made sure that fucker paid for his actions.

And yeah, he saw Levi’s point. It was a pretty big deal to withhold what he was. But what the f**k was Zophiel supposed to do? It hadn’t been malicious. He was protecting Levi, and his mate had to know that.

“I can hear your gears grinding,” Monica said. Her eyes stayed on the road, but her attention was on him. “This about Levi?”

“How’d you know?” Zophiel was always blown away with people. They may not be able to read minds like he could, but their ability to guess and spot bullshit served just as good.

“He didn’t even look at you when he showed us the door,” Monica said, blunt as she always was. He admired that in her. No f*****g pretense. “You guys have a fight or something?”

“Got nailed to the wall.” Zophiel let loose the pained laugh bottled up in his chest. “I didn’t tell him what I was.”

Monica glanced at him. “Oh.” She frowned at the windshield and the darkness beyond. “Buy him flowers?”

“What?” Zophiel squawked.

“s**t, I don’t know! There’s not really a card out there for ‘Sorry I lied about being an angel’.” He couldn’t see it from the passenger seat, but he knew she just rolled her eyes at him. “You know how he is.”

Zophiel didn’t respond. He had nothing to say to that.