Angels Dance

been born, convinced the archangel Jessamy was mature enough to be trusted on her own.
    Over the years, her aloneness had become something she’d embraced, as much a part of her as her twisted wing and brown eyes. But today, she wanted nothing more than to be held, to be protected by the big stranger who was currently going through her assailant’s pockets with grim efficiency. She should’ve hopped down from where he’d put her, ordering her to “Stay” like she was a pet or a sack of potatoes, but the truth was, she wasn’t sure her legs would support her.
    “What have you found?” she asked when he withdrew something from the vampire’s pocket.
    Rising, he walked over to hand her the piece of paper. She opened it, felt her heartbeat shudder. “It’s a time and a place. My house, at this time of day—I often come home to eat something before going to the library to work.” It was in the mornings that she usually taught, though she did sometimes change the lessons to the afternoons, especially when the days grew dark and cold. The children never wanted to wake up.
    “So,” Galen said, his shoulder flexing as he put one hand on the table beside her hip, the primal heat of him unfamiliar, but not unwanted, “someone either knew, or watched you long enough to learn your patterns.”
    Her eyes lingered on the dead vampire’s body. “What a waste.”
    “He made his choice.” With those pitiless words, Galen looked at the body again, at the wall splattered with red congealing to black. “I’ll clean that up, but first, I have to inform Dmitri. We’ll fly to him.”
    “No.” She pushed at his shoulders when he went as if to gather her up in his arms.
    Galen’s scowl turned the pale green of his eyes into stormy seas. “I won’t drop you.”
    “It’s not that.” Her resistance to being flown had its genesis in the agony of a realization she’d had long ago—that each taste of the sky only deepened the bruise of loss. Not even the best of friends could ever take her flying for as long as she needed. “I don’t fly with anyone.”
    “I’m not leaving you here alone.” Deep voice, a wall of unyielding muscle.
    “I’ll be fine.” Her eyes skated away from the bloody ruin of the corpse. Fighting the bile burning her throat, she said, “I’ll wait in the front yard.”
    Galen snorted, put his hands around her waist, and picked her up so her toes hung above the ground. Grabbing onto his shoulders, the heat of him burning through her palms, she said, “What are you doing?” her voice breathless.
    He answered by carrying her out of the kitchen—to her silent thanks—and to the paved courtyard she’d bordered using colorful pots spilling a wild cascade of blooms. Where he finally put her on her feet and glared. “Wait.”
    “Stay. Wait,” she muttered to his broad back as he strode inside, doing her best to be insulted—but the truth was, he’d not only saved her from unimaginable agony; he’d made her feel safe enough that she’d cried . . . and then he’d held her with a sweet, rough tenderness. Anger was not the dominant emotion she felt toward Galen.
    When he returned with her sandals and went down on one knee to slide them onto her feet, his wings a rich, dark gray against the paving stones, she started to argue that she could do it herself. But Galen, as she’d already begun to learn, was an irresistible force when he wanted something, and he had her feet in the sandals moments later, the skin of his hands callused, the touch intimate in a way that made her abdomen clench. Rising, he took her hand, enclosing it in his own. “Come.”
    She didn’t break the proprietary hold, vestiges of the terror she’d felt as she fought not to be thrown into the serrated jaws of the gorge continuing to whisper cold and oily through her veins. “My closest neighbor, Alia, is through there.” She pointed to the narrow pathway between the rocks up ahead. “I’ll stay with her, while you fetch Dmitri.”
    Galen wove his warm, strong fingers with her own, spreading one wing protectively behind her at the same time, the feathers that made up the white striations glittering with hidden threads of white-gold.
    Beautiful.
    Galen spoke on the heels of that wondering thought. “Did your father take you flying?”
    Pain twisted through her heart and she stepped up her pace in a futile effort to outrun the question. “Don’t ask me such things.”
    “Should I simply ignore the fact