Page 3 of Prince of Ruin
Show time.
“Silent mode, please.”
“Over and out,” Tayla replied. “I’m on your six.Feel free to ogle any sexy men you encounter. I need a few snapshots to add to my spank bank.”
Technowitches. Sera rolled her eyes. “You need to get out more.”
“I like my risk with a side of ‘no, thank you.’”
And then the little buzzing sensation in her head went quiet.
Still there, but if anyone went rifling through her mind, they wouldn’t pick up on the other sentience. To get to Tayla, they needed to smash through the wards shielding Sera’s inner core, and she’d been working on building those mental walls for centuries.
If anyonedidget past them, she’d never know.
She’d be dead.
On an enormous screen across the street, the image of a muscular blond man wearing a black suit appeared. He was Hollywood handsome with a skinny black tie standing in stark relief against his blazing white shirt, and dark shades shielding his eyes. Golden angelmarks decorated his knuckles, the light of his Grace escaping through them as if the raw power within him sought to escape.
Raphael.
Even without his wings, his raw presence, it was a punch to the throat, and despite the screen it was hard to escape the sheerradiancehe emanated.
The screen split and then there was an entertainment reporter saying something seriously into the camera. Probably a soundbite about where Raphael had been seen dining. Maybe he’d been snapped with another angel. Or sentencing demonspawn to death.
It could also be something ridiculous, like whether he’d been seen with Bella—no last name needed—the latest Hollywood It girl. The last she’d heard they’d broken up, and the world seemed to be obsessed with whether they’d get back together. It had been a fairy tale romance. Photos of the pair of them gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes had been plastered over every inch of the net.
It was such a beautiful lie that Sera herself might have believed it if she wasn’t fully aware that archangels didn’t have hearts.
Only obsessions.
And winning the war between Heaven and Hell was the only thing that got that cold prick hard.
When he’d Fallen with the rest of them, Raphael had swiftly deduced that winning any wars on this mortal plane was different to waging war in Heaven.
They were fighting for souls now.
Human souls.
They were fighting not to be overwhelmed by demonspawn, ever since Hell had vomited its residents onto earth.
And setting himself up in Hollywood with the rest of his contingent was the best PR he didn’t have to pay for. Gorgeous, blond, roguish and dangerous, his smile could bring a thousand humans crawling to their knees for him. The sheer aura emanating from him—his Grace—was more mesmerizing than anything a plastic surgeon could create.
Sera stared at that golden face. She’d spent years wondering who was powering him now that Heaven was shut for good. Their power source was gone, their Grace only a distant memory, but some of the archangels still blazed like supernovas.
Best not to ask, Uriel had murmured when she once questioned it.
He alone seemed to suffer as she did.
All across the square, mortals fell to their knees.
It made Sera’s breath catch—that even through the screen they could sense the awe and the shock of Raphael’s power. Imagine what they’d do if he was here physically? The entire city would be struck down—Angelstruck, they called it—and the hospitals would be overwhelmed by those suffering from rapture. Archangels were glory personified and while the presence of regular angels in all their blazing glory might make humans stagger and suffer from memory slips, the full power of an archangel would fry their brains in the short term.
But she wasn’t here to observe the humans.
No.
She was here to revenge herself on the demons that ruled this city.
