As the drops hissed, he fled—effonating out of sight—but he wasn’t fast enough. More guards appeared in the open doorway with their weapons drawn. Eric’s eyes locked with the barrel of the gun. A shot was fired directly into his stomach before his body disappeared, taking the bullet with him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The gun shot diverted Eric’s effonation. He couldn’t concentrate. The pain coursing through his body from the bullet was overwhelming him. As the internal flames of the effonation consumed him, Eric knew he was losing control. The heat built under his skin, increasing in agonizing intensity, but he couldn’t stop it. He was going to be spliced—his skin would be stripped off his body—if he didn’t redirect himself now.
The location that was glaringly bright, the one place he didn’t want to go, was the only one he could still picture in his mind. The vivid paint, the dark colors, the Omen’s wings and Eric’s burning eyes all encased in paint, screaming out like voices in a nightmare. The energy from the effonation diverted and dropped him on the floor of Natalia’s bedroom. He landed hard, at the foot of her paintings, doubled over, clutching his gut. The bullet wouldn’t kill him, but it hurt like hell. He felt warm blood, sticky and slick on his hands.
Natalia gasped when he appeared, “Eric? What happened to you?” She dropped the book and ran to him, kneeling at his side. She tried to pull his hands away to see his wound.
But he snapped at her, “No! Don’t touch me. The blood. There’s too much blood.”
She read his book, cover to cover, several times. Each time she found him more horrifying, and yet, she was kneeling at his side trying to help him. “Demon blood can’t hurt me. You already gave me some, remember? It did nothing. Let me help you, Eric.”
Eric couldn’t remember. He felt like his guts were on fire. He groaned, curling tighter around the wound. Natalia watched him for a moment. She sat on her heels, long hair pulled away from her face in a high pony tail. Her white tee shirt already had a smear of his blood on it.
He rasped, “How can you sit there offering to help me, when you know what I’ve done?”
She was finished waiting for him to comply. Natalia pushed Eric onto his back. A pair of shears appeared and she sliced open his shirt. Eric’s hands kept moving toward the wound, but she slapped them away. “Maybe I’m more sadistic than you think. Stop doing that, or I’ll tie you up.” Taking Eric’s shirt in her hands, she wiped away the blood. The gun shot was clean and went straight into his stomach. The skin was beginning to heal over the bullet hole.
Eric tried to sit up, “I’ll fix it. I don’t need you...”
Shoving him back down, she said, “Yeah, I know. You don’t need me. You’ll kill me. I got it.” She quickly ran around the room gathering the things she needed, and then sat down hard next to Eric. “Don’t move.” Her eyes met his. They were calm, like the sea after a storm. She moved quickly, cutting open the flesh that had healed, using the supplies she had to extract the bullet from his body. Eric winced, gritting his teeth as she worked. Natalia didn’t look at his face, but she could see his skin was glistening with sweat and his fingers turning white, gripping the carpet hard.
She spoke while she worked, not expecting him to be coherent enough to remember anything, “So, every woman you’ve loved has died, either by your hand or because of you. No wonder why you’re so fucked up. And alone.” She shook her head, as she worked the bullet to the surface of his skin. “Angels are loners to start with, but add in the stuff that happened to you and no wonder you’re the way you are.” She eased the bullet out, wiping away the blood with the hem of her shirt. The rag she’d torn from him was soaking wet, unable to hold another drop. His eyes closed when the metal was taken from his gut. His hands were still balled into fists, his muscles tense. Natalia, tore the hem of her shirt off, pressing it to his stomach as it healed. “And the Masterson family was always strict, like the Portelli family. Simone Portelli kind of looked like me. She had the same dark hair and blue eyes.”
Eric’s eyelids peeled open. He stared at her as she spoke. Continuing, she asked, “What do they do to angels when they fall?”
“They’re hunted down,” his gaze didn’t waiver. “Destroyed.”
Her heart was pounding. This was the information she wanted. After years of searching, she’d know why her mother was needlessly slaughtered. “Why?”
Memories plagued Eric, stinging him like a swarm of bees. He looked away, lips parted with his hand on his gut. “When an angel falls, they retain some of their power. They still have angel blood flowing through their veins, and that’s dangerous. Simone fell in love with a mortal. That kind of relationship was always forbidden and she knew it. It was only a matter of time.” Eric didn’t know why she was asking him this, but he recognized the need in her voice. It was more than a question to her, but he was too out of it to realize where this conversation was going.
Natalia nodded. “You’ve always been a bit of an assassin then?”
He arched an eyebrow at her, not speaking. His recent activities weren’t yet logged in his book and he wondered if she knew what he was up to.
She swallowed hard and said, “There were more assassinations tonight. More leaders killed. The President was among them. His men managed to fire a shot before the killer fled—a single shot to the stomach. A lethal shot.” Her eyes were soft, softer than they should have been. “Any other assassin would have died, but not you. So tell me, Eric—what are you doing killing off world leaders?”