Guardian Angel

Prologue

Prologue

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

He could hear them coming. Branches and twigs snapped and popped beneath steel toed boots, harsh breaths and code speak that confused the shit out of him, not that he had the time to stop and listen to the gibberish.

He dropped his eyes down to the weight in his arms. His charge's head dropped back, her long brown hair matted with blood near her temple, her dark eyes closed and her lips parted ever so slightly, and he definitely did not like that bluish tint to her lips. Their lives were tied. If she died, so did he, and he was not about to lay down now. Not with the impending doom on the heels of his people.

"Yanket, this is Ronny," the sound of a walkie crackling made him go absolutely still and he crouched down low, hiding among the dark pines and listening for the walkie, "211 on Martha's Street, no rest area in sight. Repeat to Hugo Way, over." It made absolutely no sense to him, and he'd tried to learn English for fun. He shook his head and peered up through the pines, grimacing as the summer sun seared his face. He ducked his head back down, his dark hair collected around his face, having long since fallen loose from his ponytail. He looked up as sweat poured down his face.

"Ronny! 211! Let's hop the wagon!" A voice called from somewhere to his left. He snapped his head around, ducking behind the branches and peering through, lifting a gloved finger to pull the branch down just enough to get a view of two dark clothed figures making their way back in the direction he'd come.

Holy fuck, he actually got away?

He looked down at his charge's head. That head wound was bad. Very bad, and while he was pretty good at healing himself, he wasn't all that good at healing others. Not to mention if he put his hands on a female in such an intimate manner, his own mother would rip his soul out through his ass and stuff his corpse into the darkest hole in Hell. He cursed under his breath, looking up again to see that the figures had gone.

Still, he didn't move. He didn't dare. The last time he'd thought they were safe, his charge had ended up with her head cracking against cement. He flinched at the memory, that horrible sound of bone against rock. Her dark bloodshot eyes had gotten wide for a split second before she'd slumped to the ground, nearly falling off the side of the building she'd been scaling. If he hadn't swooped in at just the right moment, she would've never survived that fall, immortal or not.

"Fuck," he whispered again. He gently placed his charge on the branch, scooting around as best he could without making too much noise or falling off the fucking tree. The last thing he needed was to whack his head on something too. He grimaced as the sunlight fell across her face and revealed the true severity of her injury.

That wasn't just a bump on the head.

That was a fucking hole in her head.

"Oh my God." If his mother heard him, she'd fucking deck him for that. He glanced up at the sky expectantly, but there were no thunderbolts or smiting to be seen. Breathing out a sigh of relief, he turned back to his charge. He cleared his throat and waved his hands warily.

"God forgive me, but I really need to see if this chick is alive," he groaned, then closed his eyes and tilted his head down, pressing it against her flat chest. Or at least, that's what he told himself. There definitely wasn't a pair of soft mounds under her shirt, cupping his ears. Nope. No titties.

He paused and listened.

Silence.

"Oh, no, no, no," he managed, pulling away and looking down at her, "You can't die, honey, you gotta wake the fuck up." He waited, sitting back on his heels, praying to see her chest rise, but he couldn't tell. He was panicking and he could feel it. He could feel his wings shifting under his skin, reacting to his anxiety. He looked around, but where was he going to find help? In the trees? Did any squirrels in the area know how to do a lobotomy or whatever? Was that even the right kind of surgery?