Familiar Angel Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Hanging by a Thread

  Flying

  Plainly

  Under Orders

  In the Time It Takes to Blossom

  Fighting Naked

  Crossroads

  Dissipation

  Empty Spaces

  Amy’s Alternative Universe Romance

  Readers love Amy Lane

  About the Author

  By Amy Lane

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  Familiar Angel

  By Amy Lane

  One hundred and forty years ago, Harry, Edward, and Francis met an angel, a demon, and a sorceress while escaping imprisonment and worse! They emerged with a new family—and shapeshifting powers beyond their wildest dreams.

  Now, Harry and his brothers use their sorcery to rescue those enslaved in human trafficking—but Harry’s not doing so well. Pining for Suriel the angel has driven him to take more and more risks until his family desperately asks Suriel for an intervention.

  In order for Suriel to escape the bindings of heaven, he needs to be sure enough of his love to fight to be with Harry. Back when they first met, Harry was feral and angry, and he didn’t know enough about love for Suriel to justify that risk. Can Suriel trust in Harry enough now to break his bonds of service for the boy who has loved his Familiar Angel for nearly a century and a half?

  Mate, Mary, and Karen. And Lynn for laughing at parts. And E for believing. And the kids for being patient with me.

  Acknowledgments

  THANKS, MARY, because I only read a little bit of Paradise Lost in college and now I have three copies on my Kindle.

  Prologue

  “EDWARD! FRANCIS! Are you here?”

  Harry McTavish prowled around the clearing by the Sacramento River nervously. He’d barely managed to elude Big Cass, Golden Child’s most fearsome enforcer, and his breath came fast in the chilly November night. Oh, of all the times to make their escape—but it couldn’t be helped. Conrad Ames, railroad tycoon, gambler, terror of the brothels—even Golden Child, which catered to a specific type of taste—had finally set his sights on Francis.

  Francis was barely fifteen.

  Edward and Harry—they’d been around a year or three. Long enough to both have the pox, long enough to know their days were numbered. Harry’s mother had died whoring at Golden Child, and Edward’s had wandered in, delirious with pneumonia, a few years later, and they’d been bending over to stay alive long enough to feel a thousand years old. But Francis—he was young. Young and gentle. They’d spent the last two years protecting Francis, keeping him out of sight of the customers and Big Cass, making sure he had the jobs no one wanted to touch. Cleaning an outhouse was a filthy vocation, but it beat bending over and trying not to scream by a hot mile.

  But Conrad had seen him, and Mistress Bertha would do anything to turn a coin.

  Harry was the oldest. It was his job to protect the littler ones. That’s what his ma had said before she’d died, after she’d managed to earn the coin to send his little sisters back east, to their gran. Didn’t bother him that she’d had to do it on her back, and that he’d had to stay alive that way after. Fucking was just another trade, best he could see. But Francis’s mother had died in the brothel, a used-up whore who had begged Bertha to please, for the love of God, send her little boy to an orphanage, a relative, anything.

  Bertha had promised her just so she’d shut up and die.

  Harry and Edward had heard, though. Edward hadn’t been whoring by that time, but they both knew it was coming, even then. Edward had the square jaw and lush mouth of a cowboy angel—wasn’t a bugger on the planet who wouldn’t have wanted to bend Edward over. Harry was plain and serviceable, but by then he’d learned to suck cock like a dream, because that way he got tips, plain and simple, and then the cock would be wet when it got shoved up his arse.

  Together, they’d made a sort of silent pact to get Francis out of Golden Child before he had to clean more than toilets.

  “Harry?” Edward sounded breathless and worried. “Harry—Big Cass almost got us.” He burst out of the thicket of trees with Francis’s arm over his shoulder, his body bearing the bulk of the weight. “Big Cass was right there. He clocked Francis a good one, Harry. He’s out cold.”

  Harry swore and snarled—and kept his shiver to himself. “Goddammit all, we need to get out of here—now. The cargo train leaves at twelve. That’s our way out of—”

  A woman’s scream stopped them in their tracks.

  “Who?” Edward whispered, eyes wide.

  “Hide!” Harry had just enough presence of mind to grab Francis’s other side to help Edward pull him through the thicket of brambles that lined the river. Bleeding, dirty, breathless, they slid to a halt in a hollow between the blackberry bushes and the hill, lying on their stomachs, Francis sandwiched between them. Francis, who had received a terrible scratch from the corner of his mouth to the corner of his eye, moaned in pain. Harry shushed him, and Edward placed a gentle hand over his mouth.

  A woman, clothed in blinding, glowing white, burst into the clearing with a man—man?—draped over her shoulder. His clothes were red velvet, and thick curly hair grew all over his face and large skull, like a goat’s.

  His back feet were cloven.

  “Leonard,” she begged. “Leonard… darling. Wake up. Wake up. I need your help.”

  Leonard—the thing… man—rolled his head, much like Francis had done, and moaned. “Emma, leave me. If they find me with you… if they find Mullins here….”

  “Mullins!” the woman whispered. “Mullins—I’m losing him. Oh please—Mullins, he’s losing himself again.”

  “I’m losing myself again!” came a terrible growl, and another Leonard-like thing stepped into the clearing—this one very obviously glowing red. “Emma, we need to do the ritual. I can’t….” The monster thing, Mullins, let out a horrifying series of snuffling grunts and growls. “I’ll turn,” he said, sounding tearful—if a beast could be in tears. “I’ll turn and gut you both.”

  “I understand,” she whispered. “You’ve been very brave. Here.” She set Leonard on the ground then and started to pull items from a leather satchel across her shoulder. “We’ll do it right now.”

  “This isn’t the ceremonial place!” Mullins said, sounding despondent. “It’s not cleansed, it’s not prepared—”

  To Harry’s surprise, Emma put a tender hand on the beast’s cheek. “My sweet boy, you’ve been too long in hell. We don’t need the trappings of the spell—although the things in those hex bags should help us focus. We just need ourselves, and our good intentions, and our desire.”

  Mullins’s grunt was self-deprecating. “The road to hell is the one paved with good intentions,” he said gruffly.

  “That’s only because the demons trying to get to earth walked that path first,” she said, sounding cheeky. In their quiet interaction, Harry got a better look at her. Not young—over twenty—but not old either, she was beautiful in every sense of the word. Straight nose, even teeth, perfectly oval face, and blonde hair that streamed, thick and healthy, to her waist, she was what every boy should dream about when he went to sleep hoping for a wife.

  Harry didn’t dream about girls, but he could look at this one and know the appeal.

  But it was more than the physical beauty—and she had it all, soft hips, small waist, large breasts—there was the kindness to the beasties. The gentleness and calm she radiated when Mullins had threatened her.

  Suddenly Harry had a powerful yearning for his mum, when she’d been dead for nearly five years.

  “Here,” Emma said,
breaking the sweetness of the moment. “Take the hex bags—there’s ten. Make a pentagram with me and Leonard in the center. I’m summoning an angel, love. You may want to leave when you’re done. I’ve no guarantees he’ll be friendly to you.”

  “That’s not news,” Mullins said dryly and began his task. “Do you…. Emma, I know you’re powerful. You summoned my master for knowledge on power alone. But all else you have done, you have done out of love.”

  “Including persuade you to our side,” she said. While he set the hex bags, she was stretching Leonard out before her, stripping his shirt with deft, practiced movements. The skin underneath the clothes was smooth and human, and Harry felt nauseated at the abomination of beast and man.

  But Emma seemed to care for him.

  “It would be worth any torture,” Mullins said softly, pausing in his duties, “to know Leonard will live.”

  “Come with us!” Emma begged. “I may not love you like I love Leonard, but you’ve been a good friend to us. Please—”

  Mullins shook his head. “It’s not enough to break me free,” he said, and his bestial smile would haunt Harry and Edward for years. “Someone would have to love me enough to sacrifice for me, and make no mistake, Emma. This will come down to your sacrifice. You will be stripped of your power, your youth—are you sure you want to do this?”

  Emma let out a sigh. “I would live a mortal lifetime without worry,” she said softly. “But I do not want him all alone without me. ’Twould be cruel.” She closed her eyes for a moment, and then—

  Harry gasped and heard Edward do the same.

  She was looking right at them.

  “I’m about to do something very wrong,” she said, great conviction carrying in her serenity. “But I think something very right too. Carry on, Mullins, but run as soon as you are done.” Her voice dropped. “Please, my friend—I’ll have enough weighing on my soul for tonight’s doings as it is.”

  Mullins continued to bustle, and as he set the last hex bag down, Emma began to chant. Mullins traced a circle in the dirt around the outside bags, and then, when the circle ends touched, he pulled out a knife.

  Emma nodded unhappily at him and then bit her lip as he cut a line on his palm and let the blood drip on the sealed ends of the dirt line. He and Emma looked at each other again, a strong friendship locking their gaze, before he turned and lurched away, his gait awkward and crippled on his cloven hooves. Harry felt some compassion for him then, poor beast, good friend—but his gaze didn’t linger.

  He was too busy watching the white light around Emma grow larger, filling the space inside the pentagram like a bowl.

  The light exploded outward, filling the clearing itself, and then one more time, just a few feet more.

  Harry and Edward stared at each other, terrified.

  They were in the light circle as well.

  “Glory!” Edward whispered, and Harry was too shaken to quiet him.

  Francis stirred between them and opened his eyes slowly. For a moment Harry feared that he’d startle and scream—Harry certainly would have raised a bloody great hue and cry—but then, Francis wasn’t Harry.

  He parted his bruised lips and smiled.

  “An angel,” he breathed, and Harry turned his attention back to the center of the clearing.

  Where an angel appeared.

  Harry’s heart stopped in his throat. Tall—because of course, right? An angel would be tall. Clothed in robes that glittered like diamonds, whiter than pearls he was. His hair was a marvelous flame-gold color, red like a sunrise or an ember. His face was more handsome than sin—bold, straight nose, full lips, a square jaw, eyes of warm, solid brown.

  Harry’s groin gave a painful throb, and he almost wept. Those things—those dirty, filthy things that were done to him by rough miners and haughty bankers with gold in their grubby fists—those things were not right here.

  Not with an angel.

  Not with this angel.

  Harry’s eyes burned with the perfection of this angel.

  “Suriel,” Emma breathed. Her voice held the same note of kindness, of friendship, that she’d had with Mullins. “How are you? Are your studies treating you well?”

  Suriel looked away, and the face he turned toward the three interlopers in the brambles held such bleakness that Harry did weep. Not his angel, please. Not that despair for his angel.

  “They are,” he said, his voice resonant with a thousand church bells. “Emma, this thing you’re doing—I’m not even sure God can make it true.”

  “Of course he can,” she said, her voice rippling like water. “It’s all about love, Suriel. And belief. Don’t tell me all your laws forbid love!”

  “I can’t see anymore,” Suriel said gruffly. “I am bound so tightly to every rule, to every law. Emma, I cannot even see my master’s hand in the events as they unfold.”

  Emma dashed away a tear—but Harry let his fall.

  “Then help me break this rule,” she whispered. “I love him. I summoned him for knowledge, for healing. He was supposed to kill me—investigate my use of blackest magic.”

  “That’s not what you practice,” Suriel said, sounding puzzled. “You couldn’t—”

  “I couldn’t talk to angels with a black heart.” She smiled. Harry thought maybe she was much older than she looked—decades older. Centuries. “He learned that, in our time together. His protégé told me that….” Her chin wobbled, and for the first time Harry saw something besides serenity. “They suspected. His superiors suspected he’d been… tainted. He was supposed to bargain for my soul, and we spent hours just talking, with no bargain in sight. We….”

  Suriel tilted his head, as though looking at something from a great distance. “You fell in love,” he said, sounding surprised.

  “We did.” She dashed the back of her hand against her cheek. “His protégé and I barely got him away. Leonard was in my summoning circle, and the claws of the damned began to shred him. I pulled him and Mullins from the circle, and we were heading for the church, but—”

  “This is your church,” Suriel said, looking at the little patch of privacy in the wilderness. “I understand.”

  “I have the human power of sorcery, Suriel. Given me through my bloodline and decades of study. All I ask is for your divinity. We have the three of us here—divine, profane, and human, the mix of the two. We can cure him of his wounds—and set him free.”

  Suriel frowned. “You would give up your immortality?”

  Emma bit her lip and winked, as bawdy as a dance house girl. “Now I didn’t say that.” Abruptly she sobered. “Now, Suriel—it needs to be now. A mortal is about to crash through our little church here—and not a nice one.”

  Harry and Edward looked at each other.

  “Big Cass?” Harry asked, and Edward shrugged, nodding. Oh hells.

  Suriel was cupping Emma’s cheek. “I shall miss our talks,” he said formally.

  Her grin, bright and impish, spoke of such kindness. “We may still talk,” she told him. “I won’t lose it all in a rush. I’ll be here for a while.”

  Suriel shook his head, and the stoicism, the worry that had beset the angel lightened fractionally. “Emma, I’m not even going to ask.”

  “Good.” She sobered. “It’s not altogether a heavenly thing I’m about to do. But I’m going to by God do it.”

  Suriel took her hands. “Shall we?”

  Together they began to chant, a language Harry had only heard when he passed the Catholic church during mass. Their voices rose, then fell, then rose… then rose and rose and rose… reaching a pitched crescendo, leaving the air around them in the brilliant bowl of light, ringing like a bell.

  The light grew too bright, the sound too great, too terrifying for mere mortals, and all three of the boys closed their eyes and cried out.

  In an explosion of glory, they felt great things change about them—inside them, around them, and just when Harry thought his heart would stop with too much magic, the world aroun
d him went abruptly silent.

  And then Francis and Edward meowed.

  Harry spat and hissed, surprised, but Edward, a ginger tomcat with green eyes, sat abruptly down on his haunches and whimpered piteously, a lost kitten in the rain.

  Francis—a cross-eyed Siamese—batted his paw in front of his eyes continuously, like harrying at an imaginary spider.

  And Harry realized what had happened.

  He darted out of the bramble bushes, hissing furiously, intent on ripping that woman’s robes to shreds until she turned him and his friends back.

  “Hush, hush, puss.”

  A strong hand grabbed him by the ruff and pulled him into equally strong arms. Harry struggled for a moment, but that hand, pulling at the fold of skin at his neck, oh, that was immobilizing.

  But even more so was the strong arm wrapping around his body and holding him still—not cruelly, just… still.

  He growled, anger a vicious turn in the pit of his stomach.

  “Hello there, my little spy,” Emma said softly. She was still on her knees by Leonard, who had… changed.

  In place of the bestial head and cloven hooves were the long, plain features and big, clumsy feet of an average man. He groaned softly, and Emma whispered, “Stay still for a moment, my love. We have some things we need to do.”

  She stood heavily, and Harry got the feeling that, whatever she’d done, a great deal of her energy had gone into the result. Peering at her through his cat’s vision, he saw that some of her brilliance had faded. She was still beautiful—and still glowing faintly.

  “Welcome,” she said softly, scratching him behind the ears. Harry hissed and batted out a black paw, but she dodged neatly. “Yes, you’re our fighter, aren’t you? I could feel you in the bushes, the three of you. You probably want to know what I’ve done.”

  Harry snarled. Oh, he knew what she’d done. He was a cat. He twitched his tail angrily, still growling, although Suriel’s hand kept up an even, gentle stroking that soothed him in spite of himself. Being held kindly, firmly—this was a touch, a kindness, Harry had never experienced.