Crimes of Cupidity (Heart Hassle Book 3)

As soon as I’m inside the building, I get to work. “Lex.”

When she appears, she starts to hand over her new bow and arrow, but I shake my head. I quickly relay my plan, and as soon as she hears it, she nods. “That might just work, Madame Cupid. Good thinking.”

“Here goes nothing.” I blow out a breath, praying that this will work.

“Raziel? Jerkahf?” I call. Nothing happens. “Oh. Right.” I clear my throat. “For heaven’s sake can you both get the hell down here?”

To my delight, white and black puffs of smoke appear, and then, there the angel and demon are, in all their pissed-off glory.

Raziel glows with irritated righteousness. He whirls around, pinning me with a furious glare. “I told you before, cupid, do not summon us!”

His eyes start to glow white. Whoa. For an angel, he really seems to have an anger problem. I thought he’d be more, you know, angelic.

“Wait!” I say, throwing my hands up in front of me. “No more walking towards me all menacing-like. It’s rude,” I tell him pertly. He actually does stop, so that’s something.

Jerkahf is dusting off his suit, making bits of ash and charcoal fall onto the floor. “Why did you call us here, cupid?” he asks.

“I need your help,” I confess, motioning outside where the fighting is happening.

Raziel barely spares a glance, but Jerkahf walks closer to the hole in the wall to peer out. “Oh, I love a good massacre,” he says cheerfully.

I glare at him. “That massacre happening is what I need your help to stop.”

The demon shakes his head. “Angels and demons do not interfere in the battles of the living.”

“True. Unless the living are breaking the Laws of Life,” I say with a flourish. They stare at me. “Boom.” I pretend to do a mic drop to really drive the magnitude home.

Raziel’s beautifully sculpted brow creases. “Breaking the Laws of Life?”

I nod emphatically. “Yep. Prince Harming out there performed mind control magic to create that horde of soldiers that’s currently winning.”

Raziel looks outside and then back to me with a shrug. His angel wings look super good when he shrugs. “So?”

Gods, he’s pretty, but he sure is slow. “So, he took away their free will. He’s broken the number one Law of Life.” Lex passes over said book of laws, and I hold it up triumphantly. “And according to the Veil Lawbook, you angels and demons are obligated to intervene when that happens. So there.”

Raziel and Jerkahf stare at me. I watch the emotions flit over Raziel’s face. First it’s surprise, then anger, then a begrudging look that’s just conniving enough that I suspect he’s trying to think of a way out of it. So I throw the rulebook at him. Literally.

I take the book in question and chuck it at Raziel’s face. It’s heavy, though, so I only manage to throw it as high as his stomach. It grazes off his middle and lands with a thump on the floor. His eyes go from the book and back up to my face. “Don’t throw books at me.”

“Sorry. I got a little carried away,” I confess. “But will you help?”

Raziel sighs like it’s some huge inconvenience. “Fine.”

Jerkahf looks far more amused. He rubs his hands together, making fireballs appear in his palms. “Fuck, yeah. I could do with a bit of killing. Torturing immortal souls gets pretty old after a few thousand years. I haven’t had a good killing in ages.”

I crinkle my nose in distaste. “Yeah…umm. How terribly boring for you.”

He nods nostalgically. “Yeah.”

“You can’t kill them, though,” I tell him. I swear, his face falls like I just told him his demonic kitten ran away.

“Why not?” he asks petulantly.

“They’re mind-controlled, Jerkahf,” I say with exasperation. “No killing. They need to be, like, incapacitated. I’ll try to put some to sleep, too. Just go stop them from killing each other! Hurry up!”

Jerkahf takes a second to pout, and Raziel looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. The angel sighs. It’s a long, dramatic, long-suffering sound. But then he snaps his fingers, and a dozen more angels appear. They’re all loin-clothed, shiny, and prettier than sculptures crafted by the best artists, but they also look deadly and fierce.

“Umm…there are thousands of soldiers out there,” I point out helpfully. “I’m pretty sure you’re gonna need more than twelve angels.”

Raziel looks at me with unconcealed distaste. “Twelve angels can defeat hundreds of thousands of these puny fae soldiers.”

Wow. Cocky much?

Raziel turns his back on me, wasting no time commanding his dozen shiny cherubs, and then they’re off, flying into the fray.

Jerkahf points a smoking finger in my face. “I get to hit them very hard,” he says resentfully.

“Fine, fine. Just go!”

He claps his hands together, and the flames of hell rise up in a circle around him, making me squeal and jump back, tugging Lex with me. The room fills with demons, and the smell of sulfur is so strong that I have to plug my nose.

Lex wrinkles her nose. “That is a terrible smell.”

“I know. They’re real sensitive about it though, so don’t say anything.”

Jerkahf sends me a glare, letting me know that he heard, but then he leads his demons outside to join the fight, too. “Remember! No killing!” I call behind them. I hear multiple sets of grumbled complaints.

“Come on!” I say, tugging Lex behind me.

Running outside, my heart leaps with hope when I see the angels and demons making short work of the prince’s forces. There may not be very many of the Veil Major entities, but they’re freaking powerful. But then, I suppose when you hold the powers of hell and heaven, you would be.

The demons round up huge groups of soldiers with flaming circles of fire, and then make quick work of knocking them all over the heads. While grinning. It’s a bit gratuitous and…evil? But what can you really expect from demons? The angels are also wasting no time in taking down the fae left and right. The angels come popping up, teleporting to different spots and taking the fae by surprise. Some of them are wielding swords of holyfire that flicker in white flames, and I watch as Raziel blasts hundreds of the fae soldiers with the white light of the heavens, temporarily blinding them in an instant.

Huh. Impressive.

Not that I’ll tell him that. He is one pompous seraph.

Now that I see them in action, I’m actually realizing how much I should not have ever poked and prodded them. They’re super scary.

My eyes dart around, but I know we should move so we’re not so out in the open. “Lex, I need to find my genfins.”

“Send me back to the Veil,” she says stoically. “I’ll search for them and return to you.”

Nodding, I push her back to the Veil, and then run back over to Okot. He’s still sleeping, but his eyes are moving rapidly behind his lids.

I press my palms against his cheeks. “Okot, please snap out of it,” I plead. “Fight the mind control. Please. I need you back.”

He doesn’t stir, and it breaks my heart just a little. There’s a raging battle going on, everything is coming to a head, and I could really use my strong, gentle giant of a bull man to wake up and be my mate again.

Just like I did when I went invisible, I crawl up next to him and lay down in the crook of his body. I bury my head into his neck and, even still asleep, his head turns at the movement.

The battle rages around us. Smoke, shouts, explosions of power, ringing of swords—all of it is a cacophony of conflict that rings in my ears and makes my body tremble with fear.

“I need you,” I admit, holding him tight.

I breathe him in, my eyes closing with the spiced scent. Just smelling him again eases my dread. I can’t explain it exactly, but it ties me to him somehow—it grounds me in a way I don’t understand. I smell him, and all I feel is—I’m home.

“Please, Okot,” I say again, feeling his hot breath as I press my neck against his nose. “Please.”

And then, at the next rise of his chest, his breathing changes.

Instead of the slow, steady breath of sleep, I feel and hear him take a huge inhale. His breath catches on it, and he makes a low noise that I feel in his chest more than I actually hear.

Before I can react, his hands suddenly shoot up to my head and back, pinning me in place. He rolls, and suddenly I’m beneath him and his body is poised over me, his face buried into the crook of my neck.

His nose presses against my skin, right beneath my ear, and the long, slow inhalation he takes in makes his entire body shudder.

Then I hear two of the best words ever spoken in any language.

“My beloved.”