Retribution by L.M. Pruitt

Author:L.M. Pruitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: angels, archangels, demons, paranormal romance, paranormal, romance
Publisher: SP Press
Published: 2018-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

JOANNE

“If you’ll excuse me.” I forced myself to smile, to act as if I hadn’t goaded my baby sister in to doing something which had the potential to drive her insane. Or kill her. “I’m not feeling well. I think I need to rest for a bit.”

I wasn’t lying. Not entirely. The thought of sending Julie in to the same hell I’d never been able to thoroughly escape did make me more than little sick to my stomach.

But I also knew we’d reached a point where my presence was more hindrance than help.

I shook my head when Raphael started to rise from his seat. “No, you stay here with her. I’ll be fine. I just... I need to lie down.”

“I’ll walk you back.” Barry glanced at Julie, waiting for her nod before continuing, even though we both knew her approval really didn’t matter. “I can check on Olivia, see if she’s calmed down some since this morning.”

“Stay here.” I didn’t look at Michael before striding out of the room. I knew he’d follow me, if for no other reason than to ask me what kind of game I was trying to play.

I wasn’t ashamed to say at the moment I didn’t know.

He waited until we were out of sight of the house before taking my elbow. There was a slight moment of disorientation and a split second of blindness caused by the brilliant light before we were in the courtyard of the apartment building in Rio. He steered me up the stairs and through the maze of hallways, finally pushing open the door to our home.

In the nearly two hundred years since he’d first brought me here, little had changed. Oh, art would appear and disappear, furnishings would be changed out when the mood struck one of us. But those things meant nothing. It was ours. It would always be ours. The place where we went when the world was too much and we couldn’t breathe. Where we went when we needed to remember who and what we were. We didn’t bring work here.

But then again, Azazel wasn’t work. He just... was.

I lowered myself to the sofa, my joints creaking in protest. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how stiff I’d been holding myself. Bending over, I untied my boots, taking care to pull them off slowly, not yank them, because I knew if I let the reins slip even a tiny bit it would only open the floodgates. I straightened only to stretch out on my stomach, mounding pillows under my head, watching as Michael settled himself in the chair opposite me.

The silence closed around us, something as familiar to me as breathing. We didn’t need to talk, Michael and I. We never had. Still, after a few minutes, I said, “I had to do it.”

“I know.”

Of course he did. There were times I was convinced Michael knew me better than I knew myself, in either incarnation. “Am I horrible for doing it?”

“No.” He shook his head. Some

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