Earthbound Wings: An Earthbound Novel (The Psychic Seasons Series Book 6) Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Earthbound Wings

  ReGina Welling

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to all of my angels, but to one in particular.

  To the only person from whom I would accept being called Pond Scum and laugh about it.

  Love you, miss you, Kathleen.

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  © 2016 ReGina Welling

  All Rights Reserved, worldwide.

  No part of this book or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied, modified or adapted, without the prior written consent of the author, unless otherwise indicated for stand-alone materials.

  Prologue

  The odor of spoiled food mingled with something acrid enough to set camp in the back of my throat like a squatting demon pulled me back from gray nothing to frowning awareness. Cracking an eye open just far enough to take in my surroundings made the world spin with sickening force.

  Dim shadows and brick walls shivered into focus, then out again as I breathed into the moist heat weighing heavy against my body. More minutes passed before my eyelids fluttered open again.

  A desultory breeze whirled tattered bits of paper into the corner across from where I huddled in the shadows of a loading dock beside a hulking metal dumpster. Horns blared in the street at the end of the alley that was currently providing my dirty but relatively safe haven.

  It had happened again. Waking up in weird places was starting to become my thing.

  I am the angel Galmadriel.

  Sort of, anyway. It’s complicated. One or two bad decisions, a stupid mistake, and the next thing I know I’m yanked out of heaven and shoved into a human body.

  Don’t get me wrong, I know I deserve what happened to me, it’s just that with no better plan for my new mortal life, the Powers That Be have decided to turn me into some kind of spiritual bounty hunter—minus the bounty. At least that’s how it worked on my first assignment. Maybe this one would be different. Probably not.

  Heat shimmers teased a cloud of buzzing flies toward a sticky puddle on the ground while, ignoring a few muscles twinging in protest, I levered myself off the concrete ledge and landed on the pavement.

  “Thanks for not dropping me into oncoming traffic again,” I grumbled, in case anyone up there was listening. The council of angels in charge of assignments was a group of poker-faced sticklers for a series of protocols so strict it was impossible to know how many steps there were between them and the divine. One thing I did know was just how seriously they took the job of caring for the souls on this physical plane, and for the ones in transition to the place I had recently called home.

  Heaven, Earth, Valhalla, Olympus. Worlds within worlds—each considered both a myth and a reality depending on who you ask—exist alongside scores of realms in a honeycomb of darkness and light. Take a poll among the beings of each world and most will insist theirs is the more important, the ultimate one. Yet, there are those who haunt the fringes, who brave temptation and preying darkness to glimpse the glories and horrors of legend. Witches, the fair folk, ghouls that feed upon blood, or flesh, or spirit, and even angels like me walk in the gray places where shadow meets light, and balance is the only thing holding back chaos.

  I am the angel Galmadriel, yet I am also the human known as Adriel. I live between worlds. I am earthbound.

  Chapter One

  A second gust of wind, this one slightly cooler than the last, carried with it another scent. Fresh blood has a metallic tang to it, and enough of it had spilled nearby that the smell lay strong and coppery on the air. Dreading what I would find, I hurried toward the source despite certain instincts urging me to run the other way.

  Three steps past the end of the dumpster I walked right through a ghost. Little shivers of sensation ran across my skin, and not in a pleasant way. In my line of work, being scared of spirits makes about as much sense as hating the sight of blood and becoming a surgeon. You might be able to get the job done, but you’d never be really good at it. I was really good at my job, so ghosts don’t bother me, but this experience had the element of surprise going for it.

  In that one brief touch, I saw and felt everything the ghost had endured during her final moments, and none of it was pretty. A black hood shadowed the upper part of her murderer’s face, leaving only a glimpse of a stubbled chin to identify him by. Rough hands in her hair. The hot sting of the blade as it sank between her ribs. And the long, slow slide of lifeblood pooling into a sticky mess beneath her. The voice of someone begging her not to die, then cursing himself for being too late.

  So caught up was I in the voyeuristic vision of the woman’s death that I didn’t see the man standing guard over her body. Or the seething blackness darker than a shadow reaching past him toward the spirit cowering behind me. In the split second before chaos broke loose, I got an impression of white blond hair spilling across broad shoulders and a red garment billowing around him like a cape. Exactly like a cape.

  “Mine.” The word hissed out of the dark mass in a gust of fetid breath.

  “Never.” Her protector shouted as he gathered energy into a crackling ball of light and threw it at the shadowed figure. The smell of ozone hit me just before a small blast of heated air tossed my hair into my face. Nothing but a haze of smoke remained.

  “Eat fire, Jackwad. She’s not for you.” His voice ragged from the force of his battle cry, the blond man pumped a fist in the air, then whirled to make sure his charge was safe. He took two steps before he noticed me and I had to give him credit for how successfully he covered his surprise. His eyes, clear and crystal blue, roved over me from head to toe, searching for any evidence of my involvement in the crime.

  My presence drew his focus so tightly he was looking the wrong way when the single wisp of darkness that had escaped being vanquished by his light deepened to shadow and resolved itself again into something vaguely man-shaped. It rose up behind him so quickly there was no time for warning. Desperate to save him, my instincts took over and did something I had been unable to accomplish on my own for quite some time. With a whisper of sound and a flash of dazzling white, my wings flared out and folded over the man, the spirit, and me.

  Just in time, too.

  The dark thing slammed up against pure, feathered light with a sound like a bug hitting a zapper—if the bug was the size of a car, and the zapper was the size of a house. It had about the same effect, too. Little flecks of burnt shadow shot up, then fell back to earth like black snow, each flake disappearing just before hitting the ground. Several buzzing seconds passed before I could gather my senses enough to realize I was up close and personal with the blue-eyed man. It was the first time since becoming earthbound that I had
been able to exert any control over my wings.

  Half a second later, I had to amend that thought. No one was in control of my wings—particularly not me. All efforts to fold them away failed, and the harder I tried the more they fouled against the close confines of the space in which we stood. Physical body, physical wings. Huge ones. Great. Just what I needed.

  “We have to get out of here unless you want to explain this,” he gestured to encompass the area around us: dead woman on the ground; bits of shadow still floating lazily in the air; the foul, brimstone smell of burnt darkspawn so strong it was an almost visible haze. “There’s not much time.” The distant wail of sirens bore out his claim.

  “Did you kill her?”

  “No, I didn’t kill her. Look, not a drop of blood on me.” The hands he held up were clean and I chose to believe him. “We need to go.”

  “I can’t. My wings are stuck open.”

  “Put them around me again.” It was an order, not a request. “Hurry up.” He stepped close enough to press against me. “Now,” his voice thundered in my ear and I did as he asked. It might have been the reaction to his order, or that I had stopped actively struggling with them, but the white feathers fell into place without a fight.

  All I felt was a little tug in my belly—maybe a ripple of motion—and then everything went still and quiet.

  “You can let go now, we’re safe.” The man gave me a warm, slightly crooked smile that set my nerves tingling and made me stumble away from him with all the grace of a newborn giraffe. The only bright spot in all the awkwardness was when, because I wasn’t thinking about them, my wings folded back effortlessly and vanished from sight. Guilt for having shown them to a mortal played around the edges of my thoughts, but I rationalized it away since the man had already shown me he was more than merely human.

  “My name is Adriel.” I held out my hand for the preferred greeting, but he ignored it.

  “Leith. And I know who you are. Tell me you brought the dead girl along.” He glanced past me as though I might be hiding her somewhere behind my body.

  “Technically it was you who brought us to…where are we?” A dozen pines circled the clearing where we stood, the previous year’s spills creating a rust-colored carpet that gave off a pungent, earthy smell. A ring of stones marked a second circle inside the larger one. This was a place of power. His place, if I wasn’t mistaken.

  Leith ignored the question. “Tell me you didn’t lose the girl’s shade. If she’s not with you, we’ll have to go back for her.” He paced a few steps before turning back to face me forcefully. Tight leather pants molded over his lower body, leaving very little to the imagination below a white shirt with puffy sleeves. Was he going for pirate or handsome prince? Or was this the preferred look for arrogant jerks this year?

  “No one wears capes anymore. Or is there a runway somewhere missing its model?” That came out snarkier than I meant it to.

  “I know you did your best back there, but I had things under control until you stuck your nose in where it didn’t belong.” He, on the other hand, totally meant to be that condescending.

  “Under control? Another ten seconds and you would have been spook kibble, Obi Wan.”

  Centuries of watching over humans hadn’t given me a tenth of the perspective I’d gotten in the past couple of months living as one of them. I now understood why people treated each other badly sometimes—the irrational fire that burned hot in the belly and turned the brain to thoughts of wanton destruction. Don’t get me wrong, angels get mad, but it takes a lot more than being treated to a bit of attitude to get one riled up to the point of unleashing their wrath upon the world.

  Therefore, I concluded that since my own wrath-o-meter was now calibrated to a matter of small degrees, anger response must come from something bred into the flesh or bone. Leith pushed it to the redline with no more effort than it took to breathe. Hot words gushed against my tongue, so it was a struggle to keep my tone mild, “Explaining your motives would go a long way toward enlisting my help.”

  The girl must have crossed over. Somewhere between the time when my wings closed over us and when they’d turned into a demon zapper, I remembered hearing her say eek, and then I think I saw a flash of leg racing away toward white mist backlit by a bright light.

  “Look, Adriel, the world is going to hell, in case you missed it, and I don’t have time for the tea and cookies version. I’ll drop you somewhere safe before I get back to the business of aiding defenseless spirits against the darkness.” His gaze measured me; the sneer on his lips indicated I had been found wanting.

  My gut reaction must have triggered the center of my power, because I felt it flare to life in a prickling haze of energy. It felt good, I have to admit. His eyes went wide when he felt the electric heat of it slide over his skin, and to his credit, I think he paled a little at the sensation. Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed, Leith held up a hand. “Okay, okay. Take it down a notch. No offense, but I heard you wouldn’t be much of a player in your current condition.” His eyes raked over me a second time while his words made me sound like an invalid. It rankled.

  I bit down on a quick retort and channeled the extra energy back into the seat of all power. It went smoothly, which gave me hope that I might get beyond the stage of just being reconnected to my abilities and be in control of them again soon. Instinct is good and it had saved me—us—today, but I preferred predictability to this feeling of riding the edge.

  Needing a minute to think, I stalked to the edge of the inner circle where a fine sense of protection buzzed through the energy signature, along with something more. Curious, I lifted a hand to test the swirling current. Behind me, Leith’s breath whistled on a sharp intake. The merest brush across the curtain of his will gave me a better sense of the intention behind it, and I dropped my head back to let the sensations come.

  A complex series of emotions washed over me. Helplessness, burning anger, determination to protect the innocent. I needed more, and so I ruthlessly thrust both hands into the energy field and sifted through it to find the deepest truth: utter certainty that this work would eventually cost him his life, and an unfailing resolution to continue on despite the consequences. I found him admirable. Pigheaded, stubborn, and reckless, but admirable.

  Oh, and attractive. Let’s not gloss over that.

  “I think she crossed over right before…” And my world went black. Again.

  Chapter Two

  For the second time in what I hoped was the same day, I woke up in an alley. What was that saying people used? Déjà vu all over again. If I were making a list of wishes, not being bandied around in space without my consent would be right up there in the top three.

  No coppery scent of fresh blood mixed with the stench of hot garbage, so at least that was different this time. Looking around, I concluded one city alley looked much like another, and what with all the chaos, I had been a little too busy that first time to memorize the exact layout.

  A moment spent in the attempt to orient myself to place and time only got half the job done. Four blocks east would take me to the park where my friend Pam parked her food truck. Place was the easy part, how long had passed since my first visit, or since leaving Leith’s clearing was anyone’s guess.

  Tall walls on either side of me blocked out enough sunlight to cast the alley into partial shade, though with the shade came no sense of coolness. The narrow city canyon was sticky, dank, and redolent with dumpster odors. Though I could see vehicles and foot traffic passing outside, the small space inside felt as remote as a desert oasis. Wobbling to my feet, I began to pick my way toward the mouth of the alley and civilization.

  I managed fewer than five careful steps when I sensed a disruption in the energy around me. Something was coming in fast.

  Chapter Three

  Slapping a faerie out of the air is considered impolite if she is feeling generous, and a grave insult any other time—but when said faerie is about the size of a dragonfly and only inch
es from getting tangled in your hair, these things happen. The tiny creature burned the air with a trail of curse words that flowed along behind her as she spun out of control. The force of her ire left an arch of sparkling motes that made me think of wisps of smoke and put the image of an angry cartoon character into my head. I think I might have watched too much TV during my last assignment. The sound of the thud when she hit the ground was disproportionately loud enough that I clapped my hands over my ears.

  “Sorry.” When the echo of the impact died down, I infused the word with heartfelt emotion and still knew it came out sounding lame. Light flared behind three or four upended wooden pallets where the indignant fae had crashed, and while I watched in fascination, the insect-sized figure grew to a height several inches taller than my own. “I didn’t mean to...”

  “Save it.” She twitched a lock of hair the color of Caribbean water back into place. Her hand was tipped with nails that had a glittering finish so clear they reminded me of mirrored puddles and reflected every filthy detail of the narrow alley. “Follow me.” A swirl of dark blue material and a flash of pale flesh moved in a blur toward the mouth of the brick-sided city path before I could get a closer look at her face, but I held my ground.

  “I said follow me.” The command fell all around me like the notes from a gong, sparking an impulse from that part of me anchored to flesh and bone. I wanted to follow the creature before me—was nearly compelled to do so—and yet, my feet remained firmly planted. Angel trumps faerie in the compel-by-supernatural-means department. Every single time.

  A little flick of my own iron will and the command cease blew the faerie’s water-colored hair back into disarray.

  “Let’s not get into a contest over which one of us has the bigger…stick.” The faerie held up a hand. “I’m Evian.” Irises the color of a white-capped wave surrounded luminous black pupils in eyes narrowed to convey her annoyance with me for requiring even that brief explanation. “You want to help Julius, don’t you?”