Crescendo h-2 Read online

  I spread my hands on the lip of the pool table and leaned in casually, hoping I looked completely in my element, but the truth was, my heart rate was high. Not only had I just come off a confrontation with Patch, but no one in the near vicinity looked remotely friendly. And try as I might, I couldn’t sweep away the memory that someone had bled out on one of the tables. Was it this one? I pushed up from the table and brushed my hands clean.

  “We’re just about to start a game,” Scott said. “Fifty dollars and you’re in. Grab a cue.”

  I wasn’t in the mood to play and would have preferred watching, but a quick scan of the room revealed that Patch was seated at a poker table in the back. Even though his body wasn’t directly facing mine, I knew he was watching me. He was watching everyone in the room. He never went anywhere without making a careful and detailed assessment of his surroundings.

  Knowing this, I tried on the most dazzling smile I had inside me at the moment. “I’d love to.” I didn’t want Patch to know how upset I was, how much I was hurting. I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t having a good time with Scott.

  But before I could head over to the rack, a short man in wire glasses and a sweater vest came up beside Scott. Everything about him looked out of place—he was groomed, his pants were pressed, and his loafers were polished. He asked Scott in a voice almost too muted to hear, “How much?”

  “Fifty,” Scott answered with a touch of annoyance. “Same as always.”

  “The game has a hundred minimum.”

  “Since when?”

  “Let me rephrase. For you it has a hundred minimum.”

  Scott went red in the face, reached for his drink on the table’s edge, and tipped it back. Then he retrieved his wallet and crammed a wad of cash into the front pocket of the man’s shirt. “There’s fifty. I’ll pay the other half after the game. Now get your bad breath out of my face so I can concentrate.”

  The short man tapped a pencil against his bottom lip. “You’re going to have to settle your account with Dew first. He’s getting impatient. He’s been generous with you, and you haven’t returned the favor.”

  “Tell him I’ll have the money by the end of the night.”

  “That line wore out its welcome a week ago.”

  Scott stepped closer, crowding the man’s space. “I’m not the only guy here who owes Dew a little.”

  “But you’re the one he’s worried won’t pay him back.” The short man pulled out the cash Scott had tucked in his pocket and let the bills flutter to the ground. “Like I said, Dew’s getting restless.” He gave Scott a meaningful raise of his eyebrows and walked off.

  “How much do you owe Dew?” I asked Scott.

  He glared at me.

  Okay, next question. “What’s the competition like?” I spoke in hushed tones as I eyed the other players scattered around the various pool tables. Two out of every three were smoking. Three out of every three had tattoos of knives, guns, and various other weaponry climbing their arms. Any other night and I might have been scared, or at the very least uncomfortable, but Patch was still in the corner. As long as he was here, I knew I was safe.

  Scott snorted. “These guys are amateurs. I could beat them on my worst day. My real competition is in there.” He shifted his gaze toward a corridor that branched off from the main area. The corridor was narrow and dim, and led to a room that glowed a luminous orange. A curtain of beads hung across the doorway. One intricately carved pool table sat just back from the entrance.

  “That’s where the big money plays?” I guessed.

  “Back there, I could make in one game what I make in fifteen out here.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Patch’s gaze flick to me. Pretending not to notice, I reached into my back pocket and took a step closer to Scott. “You need a hundred total for the next game, right? Here’s … fifty,” I said, quickly counting the two twenties and ten Patch had given me. I wasn’t a big fan of gambling, but I wanted to prove to Patch that the Z wasn’t going to eat me alive and spit me out. I could fit in. Or at least not get pushed around. And if it looked like I was flirting with Scott in the process, so be it. Screw you, I thought across the room, even though I knew Patch couldn’t hear me.

  Scott looked between me and the money in my hand. “Is this a joke?”

  “If you win, we’ll split the profit.”

  Scott considered the money with a lust that caught me off guard. He needed the money. He wasn’t at the Z tonight for entertainment. Gambling was an addiction.

  He swiped the money and jogged over to the short man in the sweater vest, whose pencil was furiously but meticulously scribbling numbers and balances for the other players. I stole a glance at Patch, to see his reaction to what I’d just done, but his eyes were on the poker game, his expression undecipherable.

  The man in the sweater vest counted Scott’s money, skillfully lining up the bills so they all faced the same direction. When he finished, he gave Scott a tight-lipped smile. It looked like we were in.

  Scott returned, chalking his pool stick. “You know what they say about good luck. Got to kiss my cue.” He stuck it in my face.

  I took a step back. “I’m not kissing your pool stick.”

  Scott flapped his arms and playfully made chicken noises.

  I glanced to the back of the hall, hoping to confirm that Patch wasn’t watching the humiliating scene unfolding, and that was when I saw Marcie Millar saunter up behind him, lean in, and cross her arms around his neck.

  My heart dropped to my knees.

  Scott was speaking, tapping the pool stick against my forehead, but the words went right past. I fought to recapture my breath and focused on the blur of concrete straight ahead to ground my complete shock and sense of betrayal. So this was what he meant when he said things with Marcie were strictly business? Because it sure didn’t look that way to me! And what was she doing here after having just been knifed at Bo’s? Did she feel safe because she was with Patch? On a split-second thought, I wondered if he was doing this to make me jealous. But if that were the case, he would have to have known I’d be at the Z tonight. Which he couldn’t have, unless he’d been spying on me. Had he been around more the past twenty-four hours than I’d originally believed?

  I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands, struggling to focus on the pain there, and not the choked, humiliated feeling rising inside me. I stood that way, numb and holding in the threat of tears, before my attention was pulled to the doorway leading into the corridor. A guy in a red muscle tee leaned on the frame. Something was wrong with a patch of skin at the base of his throat—it almost looked deformed. Before I could take a closer look, I was paralyzed by a flash of déjà vu. Something about him was startlingly familiar, even though I knew we’d never met. I had a strong urge to run, but at the same time was overwhelmed by the need to place him.

  He picked up the white cue ball from the table closest to him and tossed it lazily a few times in the air.

  “Come on,” Scott said, waving the pool stick back and forth across my line of vision. The other guys surrounding the table laughed. “Do it, Nora,” Scott said. “Just a little peck. For luck.”

  He slipped the pool stick under the hem of my shirt and lifted it.

  I slapped the pool stick away. “Knock it off.”

  I saw movement from the guy in the red muscle tee. It happened so fast it took two beats of my heart to realize what was about to happen. He cranked his arm and hurled the cue ball across the room. An instant later, the mirror hanging on the far wall shattered, shards of glass raining to the floor.

  The room fell silent except for the classic rock playing through the speakers.

  “You,” the guy in the red muscle tee said. He aimed a handgun at the man in the sweater vest. “Give me the money.” He motioned him closer with a flick of the gun. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Beside me, Scott pushed forward to the front of the crowd. “No way, man. That’s our money.” A few shout
s of agreement rose up from the room.

  The guy in the red tee kept the gun trained on the man in the sweater vest, but his eyes roved sideways to Scott. He grinned, baring teeth. “Not anymore.”

  “If you take that money, I’ll kill you.” There was a calm fury to Scott’s voice. He sounded like he meant it. I stood frozen in place, barely breathing, terrified of what might happen next, because not one part of me doubted that the gun was loaded.

  The gunman’s smile grew. “That so?”

  “Nobody in here is going to let you leave with our money,” Scott said. “Do yourself a favor and put the gun down.”

  Another murmur of agreement circled the room.

  Despite the fact that the temperature in the room seemed to be rising, the guy in the red muscle tee lazily scratched his neck with the barrel of the gun. He didn’t appear the least bit worried. “No.” Switching the gun to aim at Scott, he ordered, “Get on the table.”

  “Get lost.”

  “Get on the table!”

  The guy in the red tee was two-handing the gun, aiming at Scott’s chest. Very slowly, Scott raised his hands level with his shoulders and scooted backward onto the pool table. “You won’t leave alive. You’re outnumbered thirty to one.”

  The guy in the red tee crossed to Scott in three strides. He stood directly in front of Scott for a moment, his finger poised on the trigger. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of Scott’s face. I couldn’t believe he didn’t wrench the gun away. Didn’t he know he couldn’t die? Didn’t he know he was Nephilim? But Patch had said he belonged to a Nephilim blood society—how could he not know?

  “You’re making a big mistake,” Scott said, his voice still cool, but spilling the first drop of panic.

  I wondered why nobody made a move to help him. As Scott had pointed out, the crowd had the guy in the red tee outnumbered by a landslide. But there was something vicious and frighteningly powerful about him. Something … otherworldly. I wondered if they were just as spooked by him as I was.

  I also wondered if the queasy and uncomfortably familiar feeling inside me meant he was a fallen angel. Or Nephilim.

  Out of all the faces in the crowd, I suddenly found myself locking eyes with Marcie. She stood across the crowd, with something I could only describe as bewildered fascination written all over her expression. I knew, right then, that she had no idea what was about to happen. She didn’t realize Scott was Nephilim and had more strength in one of his hands than a human had in his whole body. She hadn’t seen Chauncey, the first Nephil I’d ever met, mangle my cell phone in the palm of his hand. She hadn’t been there the night he’d chased me through the halls of the high school. And the guy in the red muscle tee? Whether Nephilim or fallen angel, he was likely just as powerful. Whatever was about to happen, it wasn’t a mere fistfight.

  She should have learned her lesson at Bo’s and stayed home. And so should have I.

  The guy in the red tee shoved Scott with the gun, and he flew back on the tabletop. Out of surprise or fear, Scott fumbled his pool stick, and the guy in the red tee snatched it up. Without pausing, he leaped onto the table and held the pool stick pointed down at Scott’s face. He drilled the stick into the table an inch from Scott’s ear. The pool stick went down with such force, it smashed through the felt surface. Twelve inches of it were visible beneath the table.

  I swallowed a scream.

  Scott’s Adam’s apple quivered. “You’re crazy, man,” he said.

  Suddenly a bar stool flew through the air, knocking the guy in the red tee sideways. He caught his balance but had to jump off the table to keep it.

  “Get him!” someone in the crowd shouted.

  Something like a war cry went up, and more people grabbed for bar stools. I went down on my hands and knees and looked through the forest of legs for the nearest exit. A few bodies away there was a guy with a gun holstered in an ankle strap. He reached for it, and a moment later the splintering sound of shots rang out. What followed was not silence, but more mayhem: swearing, shouting, and fists hammering into flesh. I got to my feet and ran in a crouch toward the back door.

  I’d just slipped through the exit when someone hooked the waistband of my jeans and hauled me upright. Patch.

  “Take the Jeep,” he ordered, shoving his car keys into my hand. A hasty pause. “What are you waiting for?”

  My eyes teared up, but I angrily blinked them away. “Quit acting like I’m a huge inconvenience! I never asked for your help!”

  “I told you not to come tonight. You wouldn’t be an inconvenience if you’d listened. This isn’t your world—it’s mine. You’re so bent on proving you can handle it that you’re going to do something stupid and get yourself killed.”

  I resented that, and opened my mouth to say so.

  “The guy in the red shirt is Nephilim,” Patch said, cutting me out of the conversation. “The branding mark means he’s in deep with the blood society I told you about earlier. He’s sworn allegiance to them.”

  “Branding mark?”

  “Near his collarbone.”

  The deformity was from a branding? I shifted my eyes to the small window set in the door. Inside, bodies swarmed over the pool tables, punches being thrown in every direction. I didn’t see the guy in the red tee anymore, but now I understood why I’d recognized him. He was Nephilim. He’d reminded me of Chauncey in a way Scott hadn’t even come close to. I wondered if this could somehow mean that, like Chauncey, he was evil. And Scott was not.

  A loud noise seemed to rupture my eardrums, and Patch yanked me to the ground. Fragments of glass hailed down around us. The window in the back door had been shot out.

  “Get out of here,” Patch said, pushing me in the direction of the street.

  I turned back. “Where are you going?”

  “Marcie’s still inside. I’ll get a ride with her.”

  My lungs seemed to lock, no air going in or out. “What about me? You’re my guardian angel.”

  Patch sliced his eyes into mine. “Not anymore, Angel.” Before I could argue back, he slipped through the door, vanishing into the mayhem.

  Out on the street, I unlocked the Jeep, jerked the seat forward, and floored it out of the parking space. He wasn’t my guardian angel anymore? Was he serious? All because I’d told him that’s how I wanted it? Or had he said it to scare me? To make me regret saying I didn’t want him? Well, if he wasn’t my guardian, it was because I was trying to do the right thing! I was trying to make this easier on both of us. I was trying to keep him safe from the archangels. I’d told him exactly why I’d done it, and he was hanging it over my head, as if this whole mess was somehow my fault. As if this was what I wanted! This was more his fault than mine. I had the urge to run back and tell him I wasn’t helpless. I wasn’t a pawn in his big, bad world. And I wasn’t blind. I could see well enough to know something was going on between him and Marcie. In fact, I was now all but certain something was. Forget it. I was better off without him. He was slime. A jerk. An untrustworthy jerk. I didn’t need him—for anything.

  I rolled the Jeep to a stop in front of the farmhouse. My legs were still trembling, and my breath rattled a little when I exhaled. I was acutely aware of the quiet all around. The Jeep had always been a place of refuge; tonight it felt foreign and isolated, and far too big for just one person. I lowered my head onto the steering wheel and cried. I didn’t think about Patch driving Marcie home in her car—I just let the hot air from the vents rush over my skin and breathed in the scent of Patch.

  I sat that way, hunched and sobbing, until the needle on the gas gauge dropped half a bar. I dabbed my eyes dry and let go of a long, troubled sigh. I was just about to shut off the engine when I saw Patch standing on the porch, leaning on one of the support beams.

  For a moment I thought he’d come to check on me, and tears of relief sprang to my eyes. But I was driving his Jeep. He’d most likely come to take it back. After the way he’d treated me tonight, I couldn’t believe there was any other
reason.

  He walked down the driveway and opened the driver’s-side door. “You okay?”

  I nodded stiffly. I would have said yes, but my voice was still hiding out in the vicinity of my stomach. The cold-eyed Nephil was fresh in my thoughts, and I couldn’t stop wondering what had happened after I left the Z. Had Scott gotten out? Had Marcie?

  Of course she had. Patch had seemed bent on making sure of it.

  “Why did the Nephil in the red shirt want money?” I asked, climbing sideways into the passenger seat. It was still sprinkling, and even though I knew Patch couldn’t feel the damp chill of the rain, it felt somehow wrong to leave him standing in it.

  After a count, he got behind the wheel, closing us into the Jeep together. Two nights ago the gesture would have felt intimate. Now it just felt tense and awkward. “He was fund-raising for the Nephilim blood society. I wish I had a better idea of what they’re planning. If they need money, it’s most likely for resources. Either that, or to buy off fallen angels. But how, who, and why, I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I need someone on the inside. For the first time, being an angel puts me at a disadvantage. They’re not going to let me within a mile of the operation.”

  For a split second it occurred to me that he could be asking for my help, but I was hardly Nephilim. I had an infinitesimal amount of Nephilim blood running through my veins that could be traced back over four hundred years to my Nephilim ancestor, Chauncey Langeais. For all intents and purposes, I was human. I wasn’t getting on the inside any faster than Patch.

  I said, “You said Scott and the Nephil in the red shirt are both part of the blood society, but they didn’t seem to know each other. Are you sure Scott’s involved?”

  “He’s involved.”