Angel of Chaos (Imp Book 6) by Debra Dunbar Page B

like I was going through the motions. I didn’t climb, didn’t hike, didn’t want to do anything but be with him.” Harper’s eyes narrowed. “Now I look back and wonder who that was. It seems like I was watching someone else living my life. It wasn’t me.”
    “What did you do together?” Nyalla asked. “Besides have sex, obviously.”
    Harper didn’t seem disturbed by the girl’s bluntness. “I … I don’t know. I remember going out to eat, although, now that I think about it, he never ate or drank anything. He just watched me.”
    Creepy. Yeah, Gregory watched me sleep sometimes, but I always called him out on it. “How did you find out your boyfriend was an angel?”
    “When I got pregnant.” Harper bit her lip and turned her head, hiding her eyes from me. “As soon as I saw those two purple lines on the test, it was like I’d received a shot of sanity — like I woke up from whatever groggy state I was in. I wasn’t ready for a baby, and we’d never discussed marriage or anything long–term, so when I told him the news, I proposed getting an abortion.”
    Nyalla caught her breath and held Harper’s hand with a reassuring squeeze.
    The woman smiled at her and continued. “Ben went crazy. These huge wings exploded from his back in a swirl of gold light, and he glowed. For the first time since I’d met him, I was afraid. He told me there would be no abortion, and if I ever even thought of such a thing again, he’d take away my freedom and lock me up somewhere.”
    “Asshole,” I snarled. “I hope you hit him in the face.”
    “Nah. I stabbed one of his wings with a butcher knife.”
    I liked this woman. I liked her a lot.
    “He screamed and batted his wings around. There was pinkish–white blood flying everywhere. It burned holes in my carpet and drywall where it splattered. Then he disappeared. I packed a bag and was gone within five minutes.”
    “How long did it take him to find you?” She was carrying his baby, and I was pretty sure he’d marked her somehow. Baby–Daddy was probably on her before she reached the city limits.
    “Five months.”
    “Five months?” I sputtered. This angel sucked.
    “I know! He always seemed to know where I was before — which coffee shop I went to, stores I shopped in. Even if I did something completely impromptu, Ben always knew where I was and when. By the time he caught up with me in Boston, he looked like he’d been put through a wringer. I almost felt sorry for him.”
    “Five months?” What the hell? I glanced down at the woman’s rounded stomach and wondered if her pregnancy somehow negated the ownership mark, or if the unborn child was instinctively protecting his mother. Gregory said she would benefit from the Nephilim’s power until it was born. No doubt that was Harper’s feeling of ‘waking up’, why Ben couldn’t locate her.
    “He was contrite, affectionate, and ecstatic that I was obviously still pregnant. We’d be together always, he told me, but something had changed inside me. I could see beyond his beauty and loving words. I didn’t trust him.”
    “When did he start insisting you give the baby away?” Nyalla asked, still holding Harper’s hand.
    “This past week. Like I mentioned, he started getting nervous that I needed to go somewhere, and that’s when he ‘informed’ me I would be giving the baby up.” Harper’s mouth set in a firm line.
    So he could no longer track Harper — at least not as easily as he’d once done, and he couldn’t influence her. Somehow I doubted Ben was giving up that easily. I planned on poking this angel a bit, just to see what was inside him, but I had one last question to ask Harper.
    “What made you decide that shacking up with a demon was better than these ‘monsters’?”
    She shrugged, a smile at the edge of her lips. “If an angel could be this much of a jerk, I doubted a demon could be much worse.”
    Fair enough. “You both stay here with Boomer. I’ll be back in an