Page 32 of Roman

“Be calm, brother,” Maalik told him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

Roman spun faster than Maalik expected, shoving him across the room.“Don’t tell me to be calm, Maalik!”Roman yelled, his eyes burning with crimson fire.“They’ve hurt her, written an entire message to me in her blood!How can I be calm?And that’s fucking hilarious coming from you right now!Have you seen your eyes?”

Roman noticed the other angels had backed away from him, leaving Maalik standing alone in the center of the room, hands up in front of him as if Roman were a wild beast he was trying to calm.

A flash of anger moved across Maalik’s face before he closed his eyes, and when he opened them, his familiar green stared back, his body no longer tense.

“Come, brother, it’s me.Take a moment.Why do you care if she’s hurt?You don’t even know her.”

Roman clenched his fists, feeling as though he would break his fingers as he tried to rein in the rage flowing through him.He focused on Maalik’s green eyes, holding him steady as he took a breath and settled his rage.

Maalik’s words rang through his mind.Why do you care if she’s hurt?Good fucking question.How the hell could this mortal girl have so much control over his emotions when he had only just met her?They had heard myths and read ancient scrolls over the centuries of angels having one true soul mate; someone created just for them to walk eternity with.Roman had never met an angel who had a soul mate before, but his crazy behavior was making him question whether Charlotte was supposed to be something more than a strange mortal girl he barely even knew.The feelings he had when he was around her, or just even thought about her, were unlike anything he’d ever experienced in his long life.

He shook himself from his thoughts, staring around the room.The other angels seemed a bit more at ease now that his eyes were back to normal.

“I’m sorry, Maalik.I don’t know what came over me,” he apologized as his brother came up to him.

“It’s okay, Roman.We’ll find out where she is and take her back at all costs.”

Roman nodded.“Yes, we must find her before they head toward a gate, and she’s out of our reach.Lucian, call the clan and ask if any of the Lycan have seen or heard of any demons with a human girl.Phoenix, get down on the street and ask anyone if they saw or heard anything the night Charlotte was abducted.”

“If anyone gives you the make and model of the car they were driving, let me know straight away.I will put a call into one of my police friends down at the precinct and see if they can put an APB out and locate it,” Maalik told Phoenix, the angel nodding as he and Lucian quickly left the apartment.

“Hey, you know this demon is still alive?”Grigori’s voice came from the other room.“I wonder if it was Charlotte who shot him or if someone else was here,” he added as he dragged the unconscious, bloodied man from the other room.

Roman frowned.He couldn’t picture Charlotte shooting anyone.She seemed too timid, too kind to hurt anyone.“Bring him back to the mansion and lock him up.We are going to have some fun with this one, and he will tell us everything he knows.Armaros, how powerful is this witch you say is with them?”Roman added, turning to him.

Armaros stood silently, still staring at the message on the wall.

“Can’t you just scry her out?”Grigori asked.

The tall, tattooed man slowly shook his head.“No, I cannot.She is warding Charlotte.The minute she stepped into this apartment, I lost sight of her.I haven’t felt power like this in eons… since we first fell, and the ancients still walked the Earth.I think the best thing to do would be to talk to the witches.Her power was so close to their coven, they would have felt it.They may know who it is.They don’t like rouges in their city, so they may be extremely helpful with this.”

Roman nodded.“Good.I hate to ask, but I need you to go see Cassandra.I want you to tell her what’s happened and ask the witch in person so you can tell if she is being truthful or not.Maybe they have a way they could scry for Charlotte together, using the coven’s conjoined power.”

Roman hated sending Armaros to meet with the High Priestess of the Witches, but he trusted no one else to deal with them properly.Roman often wondered if the witch’s hatred for Armaros often came from the fact they couldn’t bewitch him and were jealous of the great power buried deep within him.

Years ago, a young witch Roman had befriended once whispered to him,The witches fear him, you know… His power and where it came from.The elders say he holds the power to destroy us all.Roman had never spoken about the drunken witch’s whispers to anyone, but he never forgot the chills that ran down his spine at her words.

Armaros didn’t look happy with the order but simply nodded, making his way to the exit.“Armaros, be careful.We don’t know who we can trust right now,” Roman told him, remembering Ariel’s warning only a few hours before.

He needed to start paying closer attention to the fallen and the people they worked with.He had to find out who was working with the demons and kill them.The thought of someone he trusted working with his enemy infuriated him.He couldn’t imagine any of his fallen brethren turning against him.They were all loyal to a fault.But it was something he would have to put on the back burner for the moment, realizing his to-do list was growing longer every day.His priority was finding Charlotte and getting her safely back to his mansion, and this time, he would personally see to her safety.

* * *

Roman stoodas the fallen sat around the table back at the mansion.It had been hours since they’d been in Charlotte’s apartment.The angels had scoured the city, calling in favors from the witches, Lycan, and vampires.Even the humans who secretly served them had helped.From all the intel they gathered, they’d finally got a lead on where Charlotte might be.

“Are you sure the Lycan are right?”Roman asked Lucian, taking a seat at the table.

Lucian nodded.“Yes, they saw demons with a girl of her description being taken to a warehouse over past Hillgrove.”

Roman looked at his watch.It was two-thirty a.m.He’d spent hours torturing the demon they’d found at Charlotte’s apartment.The information they’d gotten out of the piece of shit was good but not great.Armaros had come into the dungeon toward the end of the torture session and told Roman the demon had had his memory wiped so he could only relay to them what had happened in the apartment and who he was with.

“We attack tonight.We cannot let them move her.My guess is they will try to get her to an airport and fly her to a country that houses one of the gates to Hell.As we all know, there are seven gates, and we only guard one of them, so we can cross that one off the list.I doubt very much they will try to use the one hidden deep beneath the Vatican,” he told them, exhausted.

“My guess is they will take her to the closest one.I can’t see them wasting time flying all around the world.Lucifer will want her as fast as he can get her.He has remained trapped down there for thousands of years.I’m sure we can all agree if it was us in his position and we’d found a way out, we wouldn’t be fucking around, that’s for sure,” Maalik said, frowning into his glass of whiskey.

His brother had been distracted since they’d been at the apartment.After the others had left, Maalik slowly walked around the tiny place, stopping now and then to close his eyes and… sniff the air.

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