Tying her scarf into his belt loop, wearing it like a knight would wear his lady’s colors before entering the field of battle, he went into the basement, taking the stairs three at a time. He walked past the reloading press and the digital gunpowder scale he used to make his own bullets, then headed straight to his gun safe. He’d never had a safe before the baby had been born, but things had had to change along with a lot of his ways of dealing with the world. Ever since Faith had come into his life. But one thing that had not changed, that would never change, was that he knew with cold truth what evil there was in the world. Evil that had almost destroyed him. And not just on a physical level. He would have been able to tolerate the physical destruction of his body. Had even anticipated it, never once thinking he would die a natural death after a long lifetime and a tenure as an old man.

But Chatha had nearly obliterated his mind, nearly eradicated who he was at his heart. If not for Faith, there was no telling what would have become of him. He would have descended into a dark hole, become something else. Become something he would have hated.

He keyed the safe, pressing his thumb to the scanner for the fast release fingerprint combination. The safe clicked open and he pulled the heavy door forward. Not many people had a gun safe big enough to walk into, but then again, he was not many people. They had built the house around this safe. It couldn’t possibly have been brought into the basement otherwise.

In a rack, above the assault weaponry, were his handguns, both the collectible and the serviceable. He passed over the shiny stuff and went right for the cold stone killers. He grabbed his gun belt, the weight and style of it almost exactly like the ones most law enforcement used, but with a few personalized tweaks. No cop would be walking around with seven spare clips along his back. Handcuffs were in their usual place, but in a loop at the rear of his hip was a bunch of zip ties. There was nothing handier that a strong zip tie, he had discovered over time.

He changed out the spare ammo on the preloaded belt, however, to armor-piercing ordnance. They would get through just about anything, and then cause as much damage as possible once they hit flesh. As powerful as she was, Marissa still had a human, mortal body. She could be killed. It was just a matter of whether he would be able to get some rounds off before she saw him coming. But with Faith and the baby in the mix, she would definitely be expecting him. After all, that was the whole point, wasn’t it?

He slung the belt around his h*ps and put his Desert Eagle into the holster. But that was just his first backup. His second backup, a Glock G29 10mm, was strapped around his ankle in a holster. Then he shrugged into his shoulder holster and grabbed his primary weapon. It was a Smith & Wesson 500. It used 50 caliber bullets and he had made damn sure four of his spare cartridges were loaded with the beastly armor-piercing rounds he had made for it.

Yes, she could die just like any other human if enough damage was done too quickly for her extraordinary healing processes to work, but he was more worried about the Gargoyles that protected the property. Their ability to turn to stone made them nearly invulnerable.

Nearly. Fifty caliber bullets would take a hell of a bite out of them no matter what they were made of. They too could be killed, he’d learned some time ago, it just took a lot to pull it off.

He didn’t care. He’d use every skill he had, every bullet he’d ever made, to get his daughter and wife back.

Then he grabbed his assault rifle and a flack jacket with flash bang and tear gas grenades attached to it, and left in search of his family.

“I swear to God, Marissa,” he said, his breathing heavy and his whole body shaking with the agony of the injuries he had sustained. “I’ll kill you where you stand. Give me my family.”

His family was locked behind glass in an enclosure about thirteen feet by thirteen feet, a few mere strides away from him. But Marissa stood between him and them, in spite of a bullet wound that had hit just to the left of her heart. He’d used the 10mm to do it, having burned through all but half a cartridge for the S & W 500, and he needed that half cartridge to blow that glass apart and get them back off the property. All he could do was pray no more Gargoyles materialized. And they would in time, so he had to hurry and get this done.

“I’ll kill you where you stand first,” Marissa hissed at him, the fever of her rage and hatred burning in her eyes. He knew the feeling well. She looked utterly unfazed by the promise of death he held targeted onto her forehead. One clean headshot and it would all be over.

But he couldn’t kill her because she held a remote control in her hand, her thumb pressing down on a dead man’s switch. If he shot her, the instant she let go his family would fall victim to whatever it was that she had rigged up to murder them. Faith was kneeling on the floor of the glass room, their child clutched to her bosom. She was weeping…no, sobbing uncontrollably and rocking forward and back in some kind of attempt to comfort herself. He had never seen her like this, not even during the terrifying and long labor she had endured while in fear for her and her baby’s life. It wasn’t like her to fall apart like this. It made his mind race with fear and anger, made him wonder what had been done to her.

“Just give me my family and we’ll both just walk away from this,” he lied. There was no way he was going to let an open threat remain alive, especially someone with her position of power and endless resources. There would be no rest for him and his, no safe harbor, unless he ended this here and now.

“You’re going to know what it feels like to lose everything you love,” she said, “and I’m going to watch while it happens.” She held up the remote tauntingly. “Prepare for the worst moment of your life.”

“Puta, the worst moment of my life has already happened, believe you me. And if you throw that switch you’ll never have the chance to enjoy my pain, which I know is why you’re doing this.”

“My enjoyment is in the knowing. My delight is in using my empathy powers to feel the raging, painful emotions you are both suffering this very instant. And I can watch your agony from the Ether as well. I do not need this body for that. Do you think I’m afraid of death? If you kill me you will send me back to my beloved who waits for me in the Ether. I will win this day no matter what you do, Leo. Now say goodbye to your wife.”

Leo exhaled and prayed with every fiber of his being. Please, God, let me be fast enough.

He pulled the trigger three times. Once to blow up her hand and the remote within it, once to send her brains blowing out the back of her head, and once to shoot the glass keeping him from his family. All within a single breath of time.

Glass shattered and fell. He had been afraid it was bulletproof, and was relieved to find it was not. But he did not take even an instant to enjoy his victory because until he got them out of that room, until he could pull Faith and the baby out of there, he couldn’t so much as blink. Shooting a dead man’s switch was no guarantee that the signal would not be sent. He had to get them before they could be harmed by whatever it was Marissa had planned for them.

He leaped over the sea of broken glass and grabbed for his wife and baby. But Faith was not moving, not reacting in the least. Instead she just knelt and rocked, and clutched their child.

“Faith, move! Get up! We have to get out of—”

She opened her eyes, tipped her head back and looked up at him, devastation written all over her face. Then she turned her attention back to the quiet baby, hushing softly to her, as if she were just as upset as her mother was.

And that was when he knew.

“No,” he rasped aloud, falling to his knees as all of his strength left him. He reached for his daughter with a trembling hand, his soul shredding apart, his whole essence sucked clean out of him in a savage rending that left him gushing out his life from every pore of his body.

At first Faith cried out and jerked the baby away from him, then she doubled over, her body bending into her devastation.

Leo reached out once more, and this time he touched his cold child.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Leo roared out with agony. It was an agony of the heart and soul that left the bitterest of all tastes in his mouth. He choked on blinding, pent-up sobs, gasping for his breath, clawing at the ground with both hands as if trying to root himself to the spot.

It was the feel of soil in his hands that made something inside him pause a moment, made him realize on some minute level that things were not as they were supposed to be.

He opened his eyes and found himself kneeling on hard-packed earth, not shattered glass, the room nearly pitch black as opposed to lit brightly in order to best show him the plight of his family.

Family? As his furious gasps for breath finally sent enough oxygen to his mind, he became aware of more things. There was no gun belt around his hips, no shoulder holster under his arm, no gun resting tightly to the inside of his left ankle. He was not injured from the pounding of a stone fist into his ribcage.

The only thing that was as it should be was the colorful scarf tied through the front loop of his jeans. He touched the thing with shaking fingers, feeling the silky texture of it, watching the silver in it shimmer, grounding himself further with it. Confusion warred with the white-hot grief that was still dragging at his heart and soul.

And then he heard a feminine outcry, the wail of it filled with the same insane grief his soul was bubbling over with.

“No!” she shouted out, and he recognized her voice instantly.

“Faith!”

He crawled over the floor to reach her, not caring about what dangers he might find in the darkness. All he wanted was her, to touch her, to ground himself with her.

“Leo?” she cried out just as they made contact with each other. She threw herself into his body, her arms locking like a vise around his ribs just under his arms. He held her just as tightly in return, her head cradled in one of his hands, the other on her back. The skin at her back was electric, turning blue, the eruption of her wings imminent.

“Where are we?” she asked, her voice hitching with her emotions. “Where is…”

She floundered, searching for something, and he knew it was about the baby. Their child. Floundering for…

A name. What was the name of his daughter? Why couldn’t he remember?

“I-I don’t un-understand,” she stammered, her grief faltering. He stroked a hand over the sugar white of her hair, the loose and tousled sheet of it the only thing visible in the dark.

“Extend your wings,” he instructed her gently. “The light will help.”

She did so, the blue energy unfurling right through his hand and wrist. The sensation was like receiving a thousand electrical shocks conducted through the tips of a thousand needles spread out all over his skin, but more stimulating rather than painful. It had a surprising quality to it. A newness. As if he’d hardly ever felt it before. But how could that be if they had been lovers for over two years now? If they had been wedded to each other? Surely he would have felt it over and over again in that time? Hadn’t she wrapped up his whole body in her wings during their lovemaking?

The light from her wings was blinding at first, but then lightened the entire room as they stretched to full breadth. The blue light cast a strange, ghostly illumination over everything.

…Like the iron bars and locked door that was caging them.

“How did we get here?” she asked, loosening her hold on him enough to look around, but not even coming close to letting him go. He was as much an anchor for her as she was being for him.

As he looked around he absently brushed his thumb over his left ring finger. The ring that should be on it was gone. As if it had never been there at all.

All of it was as if…as if he had never been married to her at all.

And the more he thought about it, the more he realized he didn’t actually remember their wedding ceremony. Not because it was a lost memory, he realized, but more like it had never been. How could that be? How could he remember asking her to marry him, remember all the feelings that had gone with it, yet not the wedding? He remembered when he had asked, remembered that they had conceived their first child that very same day, and yet…nothing about the wedding itself. He remembered the birth of their child, all the pain and fear, all the excruciating joy but remembered nothing beyond that event. Had she been christened? Given a name? Why couldn’t he remember dressing her or changing her or playing with her? All the things that should have been burned into his memory and onto his heart were missing.

“Leo…what’s happening? How did we get here?” She was growing stronger in his embrace, her body tensing with her strength. He could feel it eddying into him, feel it under his hands. This was the woman he had changed his entire life for, who had somehow made him heal from the trauma Chatha had subjected him to…and yet he recalled nothing of that process. How had he begun to feel his attraction for her? At what point had he confided in her about the deep-seated, horrific things Chatha had done to him…all the things he had stolen away from him.