Page 104 of Kiss of Wrath

Mordr had told her over and over that Michael would never let him stay with her. Until now, she’d thought it was still a possibility. “Michael?” she whispered.

Ivak nodded.

Anger was now replaced by worry. What would the archangel do to Mordr? There was sure to be some punishment for his involvement with Miranda. Mordr had told her so.

Suddenly, she realized that Ivak wasn’t headed toward the suburb where she lived. “Where are we going?” she asked in a panic.

“The airport. When all hell broke loose last week, we took the other children to my home in Louisiana. For protection. That’s where we’re going now.”

She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t asked about the other children, first thing. Maybe she was in more shock than she’d realized from this whole experience. Even though she was now out of danger, even though Roger would be gone for years to come, a delayed reaction was setting in, and she began to weep . . . silently, so as not to alarm Linda, who’d fallen asleep.

“Everything has a way of working out, Miranda. Just relax. Enjoy a few days at Heaven’s End. Maybe you’ll even get to meet our good friend Tante Lulu and her friend St. Jude.”

Why that last statement brought a mischievous gleam to his eyes, she had no idea. “St. Jude? I thought St. Michael was the saint du jour.”

Ivak laughed. “Mike is our saint du jour. Jude is Tante Lulu’s.”

That made no sense at all. “Heaven’s End? Is that like some celestial planet or something?” she asked, just to make conversation. Oh God, she hoped they weren’t going planet hopping now, on top of everything else. If they could teletransport, she assumed they could do that, too.

“Don’t ask,” Ivak warned. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

Turned out Heaven’s End was the name of Ivak’s run-down—really run-down—plantation in southern Louisiana. Mordr had told her about it one time, she recalled now. For several days, she and the children stayed with Ivak and his wife, Gabrielle, on the property they were going to restore as soon as she had her baby, which would be any day now.

Miranda learned a lot about vangels from Gabrielle, another human brought into this web of angel vampire beings, or whatever they were.

“No offense, but you’re a lawyer, presumably an intelligent woman. And yet you married a vampire angel! Didn’t you have reservations about that?”

“Plenty. Especially since vangels are sterile. But Ivak’s swimmers never got the memo.” Her eyes twinkled merrily as she relayed that information. There was a story there, Miranda was sure.

They were sitting out on the verandah, Miranda with a mint julep and Gabrielle with a cold sweet tea. The children were off with Ivak trying to trap more of the snakes that plagued the property.

“There are a thousand different snakes in the world, and nine hundred and ninety species are in residence here at Heaven’s End,” Ivak had told her on her arrival. Heaven’s End, clearly an oxymoron, was the name of the former slave plantation.

“How does it work . . . this vangel/human thing? Don’t they live forever, or for centuries anyhow?” Miranda asked Gabrielle.

Gabrielle nodded. “Michael allowed me . . . and my two sisters-in-law . . . to marry vangels. We will live as long as they do, and no longer. We will not age, same as them. If they die tomorrow, though, we would die, too. As for the baby . . .” Gabrielle’s voice quivered. “Ivak and I will not age, but our child will. In other words, we will one day bury our boy. That is what we are having. A boy.”

“That seems rather cruel.”

Gabrielle shrugged. “It’s a choice I made.”

“Why aren’t I being given a choice?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Ivak tells me that Mordr is being held prisoner or something back at the castle in Pennsylvania, that he’s not permitted to contact me.”

“It’s not you personally. It’s the whole idea that Michael objects to. Vangels and humans are not meant to mix, or at least that was the way it was originally intended. I think it has something to do with fallen angels having sex with human women in biblical times, or maybe that’s just a story that has no merit. In any case, after Ivak and I married, Michael swore it would be the last time.”

Miranda nodded. She’d been told this before, but somehow it didn’t seem fair. “The children miss him so much. I don’t know how he bonded with them so well in such a short time, but he did. To give him credit, he fought their touch a lot.”

“And how about you?”

“Did I bond with him?”

“Do you love him?”

“I think so.”