Once an Angel, Page 2

needed to be rescued."

  Yeah, right. Some rescue. He'd probably walked up to the harpies as if they were a trio of parakeets and politely asked whether they had any female prisoners to spare. It was also clear to her that he still had no real idea of the amount of pain and suffering he'd caused. Well, if she didn't get them out of here, he wasn't going to have time to learn that particular lesson. Ella scowled. "Never mind that now. We've got to get out of here before the harpies come back for us." Granny could see that Ella needed to be rescued, and she couldn't see that this was the wrong guy to send to do the job? She needed brawn and brains and while angel-boy had some very nice muscle, she suspected he was pretty much just eye candy.

  She returned to her attempt to reach the stick or golf club, or whatever. She needed a lever, damn it! But then she wondered, did this guy have any of his angelic powers left? Could he get them out of here? Ella gave up on the stick and turned back to her fellow prisoner. Hands on her hips, she regarded him. The poisonous lust she felt pulsed within her. Only by an effort of will did she keep her body still, force her face into a calm mask. She. Would. Not. Give. In.

  "Your sister told me that you're an avatar of Gaea, too. Just like she is—and your grandmother and your mother. When the harpies come back, couldn't you just whip out Gaea's sword and cut off their heads?"

  His expression was so hopeful that he couldn't have any idea what a sore point he'd hit on. Okay, so he didn't know what the harpies had done to her, and he was probably still clean himself. She glanced into those golden eyes again. Of course, he was still clean. She was the only magically polluted sort-of-human in this cell.

  Ella stood facing him, clenched hands on hips. As usual when she tried to think about what had been done to her—or worse, what the harpies had planned for her—her mind skittered around the idea, and her thoughts leaped to something else, anything else.

  Of course, the first thing her wayward thoughts jumped to was angel-boy himself. Ella would much rather loose herself in his amazing ex-angel golden eyes than admit just why she couldn't chop off the harpies' heads and send them back into the Dreaming. He might be human now, but he was still innocent enough to break her heart. He was innocent enough to make her feel guilty about even her own normal desire for him, for wanting to touch him, to run her hands through his shining golden hair, to press her lips to his perfect mouth. Worse, if she let her thoughts run that way, the poisonous lust would overwhelm her again. So, she was lonely, and horny, and a little afraid. Okay, a lot afraid. The poison amplified every negative emotion, every wayward thought, as if she were having the world's worst case of PMS ever. She didn't dare touch anyone, not as corrupt as she was now.

  "The sword?" he asked. He leaned toward her as if he, too, felt the attraction pulling them together.

  Ella shook herself and stepped back. "I can't use the sword. I can't call it."

  What was his name? she wondered, as if giving him a name would contain what she felt for him. He'd told her after the youngest harpy had dragged him into the dungeon last night and attached him to the end of Ella's chain. Oh, yeah, Tapp something. Tappani! Tappani, the ex-angel, of the cohort of Tabbris. Do. Not. Touch.

  "Why not?" he asked. She could tell that he had no idea of the struggle going on inside her. "It's Gaea's sword, yours to call to defend the Earth from monsters." Tappani blushed. He actually blushed, and his hand cupped his neck, as if remembering Belle's sword there. "Okay, maybe not always monsters, but anything that doesn't belong here. One whack and the harpies go back to the Dreaming."

  Ella looked down at the silver tattoo of a sword that ran up the inside of her right forearm, beginning at her wrist. It was about three inches long in this dormant state. It still glowed a soft silver in the dim light of the cellar. She looked at it; was it fading? She felt the prickle of cold sweat cover her body—fear sweat.

  "I can't," she said again. "I'm polluted." Tappani looked confused. She might as well spit it out and let him know just what he was chained to. "When the harpies caught me, they made me drink their blood."

  They had forced their vile, filthy, stinking polluted blood down her throat as she lay helpless, too injured to defend herself. She'd followed Gaea's directions to this huge mid-century modern ranch house on the outskirts of Sedona. According to the Earth Mother, the sprawling, one-story house was owned by 82-year-old Elizabeth Goldfinch, who lived there with her cook, two housemaids, and a chauffeur/handyman. Oh, and three harpies, AWOL from the Dreaming. Ella had slipped inside and found Mrs. Goldfinch—a chain-smoking tigress who had been doing the best she could to protect her staff from the harpies. Mrs. Goldfinch—Lizzie, she'd told Ella to call her Lizzie—didn't know where the harpies had come from or how they'd picked her house. Lizzie did know that they'd threatened to kill her staff if she didn't keep signing checks and providing an illusion that all was well in her household.

  Before Ella could go any further, the harpies had found them. The first thing she knew about the sudden entrance of the monsters into Lizzie's room was when she'd been slammed to the floor by a six-foot-long spear through her back. Apparently, the late Mr. Goldfinch had liked to collect antique weapons, and the harpies had enjoyed using them. The spearhead was driven into the floor too deeply into for Ella to free herself. She was stuck to the floor like a bug on a pin, which the harpies thought was hilarious. It was almost as much fun as the good time they'd had tearing apart the chauffeur and eating him while she and Lizzie watched. That was Lizzie's punishment for not calling them as soon as Ella arrived.

  Ella knew the spear wouldn't kill her, but the pain was excruciating, and she could not free herself. But worse than the pain of the spear was the pain of watching those bitches butchering the helpless man. She'd thought that was as bad as it could get, but she'd been wrong.

  Ella shuddered and swallowed back the bile that rose in her throat at the memory. They'd hurt her and humiliated her in every way they could without killing her. Because what they really planned was much, much worse than death.

  She glared at Tappani; it was better than staring at the floor in shame. He frowned. It wasn't fair! He even looked beautiful frowning.

  "Ella," he said, "the purity of your soul comes from within. Nothing anyone else does can tarnish it."

  As usual, her fear came out in the form of anger. "I'm not talking about my soul, you angelic nitwit! The human half of me is fine, just fine! Those filthy bitches worked their magic on the part of me that's an avatar of Gaea. I'm polluted! I'm like an oil slick on an Alaskan beach. I'm killer smog over LA. I'm a red tide. I'm a burning oil rig. I'm filthy, Tappani. I'm too filthy for Gaea to see me. She can't see me, and I can't reach her. And that means her sword is nothing but a pretty tattoo!"

  Ella stopped because her throat had closed up on the sobs that wanted to escape. She felt hot tears running down her cheeks. She was so humiliated, not only by what the harpies had done to her, but by her own horrified, terrified reaction to it. Of the four living avatars, she was always the calm one, the level headed one, the one who never, ever lost her cool. Now, Ella stood with her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She closed her eyes, willing calm on her outraged emotions. It was the blood, it was just the harpy blood messing with her.

  "They want to make me one of them," she ground out. Just saying the words left a bitter taste in her mouth. "They want a fourth sister, one who's just as vile and corrupt as they are." And why did they want her? They hadn't said, but Ella had the impression that someone else was pulling their strings.

  "But they can't do that! Can they?"

  "Yes," she admitted. "They can do that. If I were just a plain vanilla human, the worst they could do is kill me. But I'm . . . I'm a magical human, an avatar of Gaea. That means I have powers beyond the normal, when I'm not poisoned by harpy blood, but it also means that I'm subject to spells and bindings."

  He stepped closer to
her and touched her face with one fingertip. "And you think drinking their blood will make you one of them?"

  "That and doing a few other things." Like corrupting an innocent, Ella thought but didn't say. She had a pretty good idea why the harpies had chained Tappani in the cell with her. Again, she felt that almost overwhelming desire to touch him—and to hurt him. The goddess knew how she longed for the comfort of someone to hold her. But she could feel the filth of the harpy blood inside her, pushing her to lose herself in the kind of mindless rutting that obliterated time and reality. Ella started to shake. Her knees trembled, and she sank down to sit with her back against the cold cinder block wall. She wrapped her arms around her legs and put her head on her knees. This is so lame, she thought, ashamed. She was the strong one, the one who never cried. When she got upset, she got angry; her anger was her shield. So, why was her face wet?

  She felt Tappani sit next to her. His whole body radiated warmth. Then his arms wrapped around her in a hug. His touch was so gentle, so soothing. One hand went behind her head, pulling her close to his neck as he cradled her head against his shoulder. He smelled good, like home and comfort, like summer and growing