Fallen Angels 06 - Immortal by J.R. Ward

witnessed from the window flashed before her sunken eyes: Jim sprawled on the floor, the idiot bitch Sissy cradling him like she was in a Nicholas Sparks movie, Adrian across the room making like a throw pillow on the sofa … and Colin, the archangel, on his ass, staring at Jim like something unthinkable had just happened.
    “Devina! We need to get him back!”
    She was beyond uninterested in whatever Ad was screaming at her … except that expression on the archangel’s face nagged at her. Colin’s war-minded nature had long commanded her respect, kind of in the way anyone would get careful when a loaded gun was cocked at their head: You either moved carefully around the damn thing or vital shit started to leak.
    That archangel was never one to hesitate in conflict, and never the kind who was surprised when he prevailed in an attack.
    So why had he been staring at Jim like that?
    “Devina! You stupid cunt!”
    Reaching across Jim’s heavy chest, she picked the crystal blade up off the carpet and brought it to her nose. One deep breath through the Swiss cheese of her rotted sinuses and she knew a horrific truth.
    Colin might have come here to kill Jim, but that was not what had gone down.
    Jim’s own blood was on the weapon.
    He’d taken his own—
    “No!” Devina’s heart pounded. “You fucking didn’t!”
    If he’d committed suicide, he’d gone to Purgatory … which was the one place, win or lose, she couldn’t get to. Jim was gone to her forever if he—
    Devina twisted around, her exposed spinal cord cracking like popcorn. “Be gone!” she commanded her servants. “Be gone!”
    The swarm of oily black minions disappeared faster than a gasp. And in the wake of their departure, Colin’s bracing spell had nothing to push against, so his energy exploded into the room, rattling the windows and creating a gust that blew her Gollum hair back. The archangel’s own body was affected, too, his weight tipping forward so that he had to catch himself in a tucked roll that brought him right to her. Naturally, he was on his feet in a defensive stance a split second later.
    Across the way, Adrian went into a slump, his body landing badly on the rug, all arms and legs going everywhere. Sissy was the only one of the three who remained exactly where she was, a crystal dagger in her hand, her arm up and ready to stab. The girl’s eyes were wide as headlights, though—no doubt from her first fight, and maybe, probably, because of what Devina looked like.
    But again, the demon didn’t care about appearances. No more than somebody who, having been in a motorcycle accident, gave a shit that ambulance people had to strip them naked to save their leg.
    “What did he do?” Devina heard herself ask. Gone was the voice of the seductress, the luscious, affected American pronunciation lost in favor of a sandpaper rasp that had the accent of the ancient.
    The three of them were heaving to get breath into their lungs, and just as she was about to scream for one of them to quit the panting-dog bullshit, Adrian cleared his throat.
    “He went over to get Nigel back.”
    Devina felt her own lid-less eyes get large in their sockets. She’d been hoping there was another explanation. “Not … possible.”
    “Has happened,” Colin said. “Purgatory.”
    “That’s not…” She didn’t bother with the “possible” again. She was holding the evidence in her own hand. “But why…”
    Adrian said something. Then Colin. But none of that registered against a flush of warmth and love that spread throughout her whole body. “Oh, Jim … you’re so romantic.”
    Of course he’d go over there and risk his eternal existence. It was the only way the pair of them could be reunited: If he could find Nigel and bring him back, then Jim didn’t have to go up to Heaven—and the two of them could be together regardless of the war. They could either quit and start enjoying their eternity side by side now. Or they could know the exquisite