Free Warrior's Angel (The Lost Angels Book 4) by Heather Killough-Walden Page B

goodness treasure chest . And from what Rhiannon could tell by the way the lid stood lodged open and shining, honey-colored objects balanced precariously over its ledge, it was brimming with honest to goodness gold coins .
    Dangling from the open latch on the chest was a single , simple black object, stark and obvious and oh-so meaningful in its symbolism.
    It was a mask.
    As if in a dream, Rhiannon made her way to the chest and lifted the mask, turning it over in her fingers. Taped to the inside of that mask was a small, folded note. Rhiannon peeled the note off the soft material and unfolded it.
    It read:
    Two down.

Chapter Six
    “No, Gabe, this case has me running laps here.” Michael paced restlessly back and forth across the thick, padded carpet of his newly leased luxury apartment. The extremely thick pile of the soft rug caressed his bare feet, but he barely noticed it. He was agitated.
    He was hungry .
    He ran a hand through his hair and pinched the bridge of his nose as his brother once again attempted to coax Michael back to the Mansion for whatever reason. Michael let the man’s brogue accented words slide in through one ear and right back out the other. I don’t have time for this, he thought. Then he sighed. Just tell him what he wants to hear .
    “Listen, Gabe, the truth of the matter is, I need some time. Alone. To myself. To process all of this.” He knew his brothers were worried about him. He knew what they were thinking because only days ago, he’d been thinking the same things: If he was supposed to be the Old Man’s favorite, why was his archess the last to be found? Why was he the one who would have to worry about bringing on the Culmination if he mated with her? His brothers pitied him because of his seemingly tortured wait, the decision he was faced with, and more immediately, they worried about the fact that Michael’s healing ability had been stolen by Samael.
    And that was fine. It was something Michael could play into right now in order to win the time he needed without interference.
    Gabriel seemed to digest Michael’s words, paused for a long moment on his end of the line, and then said, “Fair enough. You know where we are.”
    They hung up, and Michael tossed the phone onto the couch. He closed his eyes and let his mind expand.
    He was learning things…. The thing about being both a vampire and an incubus was that some of the weaknesses of one were canceled out by the strengths of the other. As a newborn vampire, he would normally have had to contend with the inability to control the influx of powers and weaknesses that came with vampirism. He would not have been able to control the length of his fangs, he would have been so “allergic” to the sun that the slightest ray would have permanently scarred him, and powers that usually came to a vampire only much, much later in life would not have been available to him, such as the ability to read minds and to travel through the shadows.
    However, Michael was no ordinary newborn vampire. He was also a Nightmare, and the strengths of the incubus were riding through him, softening the blow of vampire weaknesses and adding to the potency of his powers. In addition, Michael was not a mortal-turned-vampire or a mortal-turned-incubus. He was the Warrior Archangel. He was a supernatural being born to fight. Every neuron in his body faced the invasion of monster and tackled it.
    The result was that he could make his fangs any length he wanted and even force them to disappear altogether. When he concentrated, he could hear the thoughts of human minds around him. He could travel though the shadows, just as Nightmares, black dragons, and Azrael could. And over the course of the few hours he’d been transformed, he’d gained the ability to stand full sunlight with nothing more than a small headache, even though at first it had caused him immense pain.
    He was also experiencing effects he never would have attributed to any of the three