Fallen Angels 06 - Immortal Read Online Free PDF

help Sissy. Now was the crisis time for the war, though.
    Besides, the rounds had been coming faster and faster. Forty-eight hours. Maybe seventy-two—and he could refocus on her.
    “I’ve got to go over and bring him back.”
    “Jim, you’re fucking crazy—”
    “What’s my other option?” Jim narrowed his eyes. “If Devina’s right, and I’m supposed to succeed Nigel? I can’t let that happen. I don’t trust anyone else to do this job—I can win this, Ad. I can goddamn win this.”
    All he had to do was think back to the way he’d spent the night. Devina had a critical weakness … and it was him. She wasn’t suggesting they both throw in the towel because she was scared of losing—it was because she didn’t want to lose contact with him: Unless he quit, he was apparently going to have to step into Nigel’s spats and she didn’t want to fight with anyone other than him. Fuck the rules, fuck the archangels, fuck the Creator—Devina was a parasite addicted to acquisition and he was her number one target.
    And she was going to take that weakness to her grave.
    Because he was going to personally escort her there with it.
    Adrian’s one functioning pupil roamed around Jim’s face, and Jim held himself perfectly still. He was prepared to take any scrutiny, because he knew, down to his soul, what he needed to do … and how he was going to do it.
    “Ad,” he said in a low voice, “I can do this.”
    The other angel almost hid the tremors that crept into his hands. But the fine tic that teased his bad eye was nothing he could camo. “No, you can’t.”
    “What put you in there, Ad. How’d you get over.” Not questions, because he knew the answer. “Devina got into you, didn’t she. She got to you somehow, and you couldn’t take it—so you ate a bullet. You slit your wrists. You hanged yourself—”
    “A cliff.” The voice that interrupted was so hoarse, it was made of ninety percent air. “I, ah … I had made a deal with her to save someone.”
    Jim waited for the story to roll out. When it didn’t, he said, “What happened.”
    Ad cleared his throat and covered his face with those shaking hands. “I made an arrangement to save someone and I turned myself over to that demon. I was down on that table of hers for … it felt like years. Eddie told me later it was two nights of earth time. When I came back, after she released me, I wasn’t the same.”
    Like bats out of Hell itself, memories of Jim’s own time down there swarmed and descended, clouding his brain. He knew exactly what Ad was talking about. He’d been on that table, too.
    That was how his path had first crossed Sissy’s.
    After he’d found her body, that was.
    “I thought I was okay.” Ad shook his head. “I wasn’t. I lasted about a week, made some excuse to Eddie about going somewhere. I was going to shoot myself, but I’m an angel, right? I wanted to die flying. So I jumped and did nothing about it … the canyon was about seventy feet deep. I hit hard and that was all it took. Split second later—shit, I thought I’d survived. I woke up in Purgatory—I thought it was gray because of moonlight or some shit.”
    Finally, Ad dropped his arms. His eyes, both of them, were red ringed from tears he refused to let fall.
    “Eddie went there because of me, but he was also the reason we got out. The Creator has a thing for love.” Ad stared at his own hands, watching them shake. “I mean, Eddie sacrificed himself for me, and that’s love, right? Not the dumb-ass romantic kind … but the real shit. So yeah, when Nigel went to the Creator and argued for us—that was what worked. Nigel was able to strike an arrangement that freed us about a month before you came along. If we see you through this war? We’re free. It’s our penance.”
    “So you can help me find that archangel and get him back.”
    “Maybe Devina is talking out of her ass, though. Not like that bitch has a problem lying—”
    “So you can help