Free The Fallen 03 - Warrior by Kristina Douglas

my supposed husband. “I locked the door. How did you get in?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. Locked doors won’t keep me out.”
    “Then what will?” I asked pointedly.
    “Nothing.”
    He was wearing all white, something similar to the clothes I had found in my closet, and I realized their resemblance to a martial arts uniform was intentional. “What makes you think I’m interested in training?”
    “There’s a war coming. You’re the goddess of war.”
    I speared the last sausage on my fork and leaned back on the sofa. “So you say. I doubt it. I have yet to notice that I have any supernatural powers, and a god deserves to have some. And what the hell makes you think I’m on your side? You practically kidnapped me—”
    “Bullshit. You’ve had a choice all along. You have one now. You can stay in this room and read romance novels, or you can come and train with the others. I’ll put Metatron in charge of you—you won’t even have to see me.”
    How the hell did he know about the romance novels? I wasn’t about to ask. Instead I said, “Who’s Metatron?”
    “Former leader of the Armies of Heaven, and the most recent angel to fall. You’ll like him. He’s a surly son of a bitch.”
    “So are you and I don’t like you.”
    I don’t know if I expected a reaction to that, but I didn’t get one. “As it should be,” he said. “Are you going to eat that sausage or fellate it?”
    Fellate it? For a moment I couldn’t place the word, and then I remembered. My education had been unlimited, and I had run across some extremely interesting books.
    I looked at the sausage critically, met his gaze, and took a sharp bite out of it, hoping to make him flinch. He didn’t.
    Tossing the fork down on the plate, I rose. “I’m ready.”
    “I doubt it,” he said. “But you will be.”
    T HE A RCHANGEL M ICHAEL was going to send word down to the kitchens. No matter how much she wanted sausages, she wasn’t going to get them. This situation was absurd enough—he didn’t need her taunting him with her food.
    There were more than two score men and women in the main room going through their moves, and more outside in the private courtyard. He could hear the clash of metal, the knock of stick against stick,the kick against the bag, the grunt as something hit hard flesh. The smell of clean sweat and discipline. And then everything stopped as they all turned to look at the goddess of war.
    She met them look for look, not the slightest bit intimidated. He liked that about her. She didn’t seem to have an ounce of fear in her body—except, perhaps, when it came to him.
    “This is Victoria Bellona, Goddess of War. Victoria Bellona, these are the cream of the fighters among the Fallen. You’ll have to be very good to belong with these soldiers.”
    She looked at them with a measuring gaze, probably underestimating them. The weakest of them could take her in under a minute; the strongest could kill her in seconds. He could only hope Metatron could teach her enough tools to keep her alive.
    Assuming there was any possibility she might live. He suspected she’d die whether he touched her or not, but he wasn’t going to take the chance. She had less than a month, and she had no idea. He didn’t want to watch her die. Though as far as he knew, he could die before her. Martha hadn’t shared that particular information.
    She probably didn’t have it. Her gift was completely inconvenient, knowledge coming too late to help, some of it useless, some of it of earth-shattering importance. That was why Azazel and Raziel—and, yes, he had to count himself—treated her prediction about the Roman goddess so seriously. That was whyhe’d agreed to go. If this was one of the times she was right, they couldn’t afford to let it slip past.
    “Metatron,” he called out. “I want you to take over her training. See what she knows and what you can teach her in the next month.”
    “Why the next month?” the man