Leo realized his blunder a second or two too late. By the time he thought to apologize she had turned away from him, and buried her face into the chest of her mate. Ram’s big hands engulfed her with a comforting hug, rubbing her back gently as she began to weep. It had been one hurt too many in too short a period of time, and she dissolved into tears under the stress of it all. Ram’s touches and soothing words were all sweetness and comfort, but the blazing look he leveled at Leo should have set the mortal man on fire. At least he had the decency to look and feel regretful. But he didn’t try to verbally apologize. He made himself listen to Docia’s pain and flagellated himself with the sound of it.

“I doubt you could ever find a Djynn on your own,” Faith said to him, drawing his attention. “They cannot be tracked by mortal means.”

“Anything can be tracked.”

“True,” she acquiesced. “But unless you know of a way to track smoke and energy, your problem remains the same. You will need my help to find her. Hunting for her in daylight presents its own problems, but since time is of the essence we have little choice. Perhaps the nearness of her nik will entice her into using her magic to make it possible for her to contact us in spite of the sun. I know there are Templar spells that can create this possibility, perhaps there are Djynn abilities as well.”

He stewed in those thoughts for a moment.

“So what is it with sunlight and you Night Angels anyway?” he asked. “Does it paralyze you like it does these people?”

The way he said “these people” was yet another nail of pain driven into Docia’s light. He had to know how much he was hurting her, so why did he persist? His scroll read of a deep love of Docia, one that was a lifetime written into his heart. How was it possible for him to keep hurting her even though it hurt him to know he was doing so? To feel he was doing so. Everything about him was a wash of contradictory emotions and agendas. She sincerely felt sorry for him, because he was well and truly lost in the miasma of these feelings. He needed an anchor in this storm of emotion, and he needed one fast, or he would lose himself, drown himself in them completely.

She didn’t particularly care for humans. Their minds were so small…so unwilling. Unwilling to learn, unwilling to adapt. Not that she hated them, but she didn’t understand them. She didn’t understand why everything in their eyes had to be so defined. Spelled out. Understood. For her it was the magic of the unexplainable that was so delightful. For instance, the conundrum of emotion, prejudice and love that this man was. It was tragic and beautiful and indefinable.

“If you had a vulnerability, would you wish to announce it to the world? Or do you wish to know so you can find some sort of equal footing with me?” She stepped toward him and heard him draw in his breath as she came close enough to say softly. “Will it make you happy if you know exactly how to kill me?”

“It might,” he said sharply. But even as he spoke reactively, she felt him floundering, felt him question his own motives, saw him scrawl the word “bastard” across his light.

“Then I will help you, by all means.” She left his side, crossed the suite of rooms to the balcony doors just outside the sitting room. “Step back,” she instructed Docia and Ram, and they, as well as Kamen, hastened to do so.

The polarized glass had blocked the rising sun so thoroughly that it had seemed to be night until she opened the door and let the newly risen sunlight in. Docia and Ram pressed even farther back, no doubt feeling the numbing edges of the paralysis the light brought to them, as well as the accompanying fear that came with it. Deservedly so. Who would want to be caught frozen and helpless in the cold light of day? Certainly not her.

But for these purposes, she had very little choice beyond exposing her vulnerabilities to these strangers. Especially this one particular stranger. This was meant to help him feel equalized, meant to quell the fear she knew was fueling his suspicions of her. Of them all.

She turned her face into the sun, felt it cascading over her, the feeling like a million pricking needles along the underside of her skin. Under the light her beautiful black skin lightened to a charcoal color, then lightened again to a silvery gray. The effect continued, making her the very lightest shade of pearlescent gray before progressing into the colorless realm of white. Not human white, but the white of a human without pigmentation. The white of an albino. The blue beauty of her energy wings seemed to shrivel up until it was nothingness. The warm yellow-gold of her eyes washed away, leaving very normal looking irises…except for the fact that they held no pigmentation save the tender tinge of pink from the blood vessels running through them. With her white hair and brows, the effect was complete.

“Jesus Christ,” the man called Leo uttered. His eyes raked over her from head to toe, stopping baldly at the barely pink crests of her ni**les and the nakedness of her sex, its pinkness also showing clearly what the beautiful black of her skin had hidden away.

“There now. Does this please you?” She stepped up to him, the warmth of the sunshine burning against her right cheek. “Does this comfort you?”

He didn’t deny that it did and she saw the word “human” draw itself into his light.

She said on a soft breath, “You can believe that if it gives you comfort. If it allows for us to work together. But with this human guise comes limitations you will not find so very pleasing. I cannot access my wings, so I cannot fly. I cannot access the power I used to protect you less than an hour ago. The repulsion force field. Suffice it to say, this will allow us to work in daylight together and will, perhaps, quiet your unrest about my appearance, but we’re in for a hell of a time if we run into trouble.”

Faith reached out and caught the door, slamming it shut in order to protect the other people in the room. There was white-hot fear written in each of their lights. She could not understand how the mortal could ever find any kind of satisfaction in something so terrifying to another. Especially to ones he professed to love.

Loved, she realized with correction. He had loved Docia. Then she changed and now…now he was too afraid of what she had become to see beyond it. But the Night Angel had faith that it was still inside of him somewhere, still a very large part of his makeup. In fact, she knew it to be a truth, however lightly scribed it might be in that moment. It was still there, embedded into his soul. But he was grieving that love as though he had lost her…as though she weren’t standing there right in front of his face. It was, at its very heart, a tragedy and Faith felt very sorry for him. She did not let her pity cloud her caution however. Humans were, by their nature alone, dangerous to a Nightwalker being. That fear he held on to was the heart of that danger. When a mortal human feared what they couldn’t allow themselves to understand, they became unpredictable and a constant source of potential risk.

But still…Faith found humans to be very beautiful, despite these shortcomings. This man in particular was very beautiful. Just as a male specimen alone, with his coal black hair that curled in wide, lazy waves and soulful eyes the color of warmed whiskey. There was nothing boyish or innocent to his face, nothing soft or fatty to his hard, purposely honed body. It took a great deal of work and effort to be in that kind of defined physical condition. Muscle did not sculpt itself. Denim clad thighs did not show their strength unless they were, indeed, full of strength.

He was not overly built with that muscle and she could tell from his scroll that he was not aiming for appearances. If he had cared that much his vanity would have been written all over him. No, he had much different purposes for the physical condition he kept himself in. She was not blind to the word that was deeply ingrained onto him.

Killer.

This was a man capable of taking lives. More than capable, he was an expert at it. However, she could see he was not a psychopath. Psychopaths or sociopaths had blindingly egocentric lights. Lights full of twisted thoughts and deeds. Lights without feeling and without empathy.

This man was neither of those, but that did not make him any less dangerous or deadly. She would have to be very careful if she was going to spend time in his company…especially while in a weakened state and considering what he thought of supernatural beings.

Faith found herself touching the whiteness of her own fingers, inspecting the pink of her nail beds with a discomfort she couldn’t help. She thoroughly disliked herself when the blackness that was natural to her was robbed from her. She was also weary, she acknowledged. She had traveled far and fast in order to get here as quickly as possible, and it disheartened her that she had been too late to properly warn them. But she had not been too late to help, and she must be satisfied with that. She had given them time to do what was by far the most important thing.

“We should go,” she said just as her pigmentation was starting to turn back to normal. “The imp god will only grow stronger the longer he remains in his new corporeal body. And there will be no defeating him without your male pharaoh. Many of our prophets have seen this clearly. The pharaoh will be instrumental in the curtailing of this evil god…but only if he survives. The injury the imp suffered at my hand is not a very serious one and he will recover quickly. When he does he will come at you all with even more vengeance. And you must assume that he knows what the prophets know, or else why would he have come here?”

“I can think of a reason,” Leo said icily, shooting a scathing look at Kamen.

“But…but Jackson tried to use his power and it had no effect…” Docia said, her voice trailing away as if she realized that Faith might be insulted by the contradiction. Faith could see the stark fear on her. Fear for the life of her brother. Fear of her own inadequacies. Fear for the love that stood strong and sure at her back at the moment but had come close to meeting the same fate as Jackson. Faith watched as Ram reached out to brush his thumb over his love’s cheek, his arm crossing her waist and drawing her tightly back against him, as if to say “I’m here. You’re safe. I love you and we will be strong together.”

Faith had to blink, lowering her lashes to try to defray the brightness of their complementary lights. Whenever they grew closer to each other or touched each other it became a blinding thing; a stunningly blinding thing.

Faith turned away when the tightness in her own throat threatened to reveal her emotions. She did not wish for them to see the envy she felt. There were much more serious things she should be considering beyond the loneliness she felt within her own life. What she could do, she thought, drawing herself back onto task, was see to it that nothing happened to tear these two asunder. Them and the two inside. They were, in a word, remarkable and it would truly be tragic if something she failed to do resulted in their loss.

“We should begin.” Faith ran the scarf through her fingers thoughtfully. “I don’t think she is very far.”

“Then why don’t you tell me where she is and just send me after her?” Leo wanted to know.

“Because the journey to her is not the journey that should concern you. You should be satisfied that I am allowing you to come with me, despite the encumbrance you could prove to be.”

Faith turned her back on him, unable to look at that white-hot light of fury that burned within him. She knew he would think she was dismissing him, and she supposed she was, but she couldn’t be concerned with that. There were far greater things at stake than the state of his fragile male ego.

“Come along if you will. If not, I am happy to do this on my own.”

She left the room without looking back at any of them. No matter which corner of the room she looked at, no matter which light, they were all far too bright and hot for weary eyes to tolerate.

And she was very weary indeed.

Kamen moved into the hallway, following in the Angel’s wake.

“There must be something I can achieve here,” he said to her, his hand gripping the balustrade as she paused on the first step in order to look up at him. “I am a Templar. I have a cadre of spells that could perhaps—”

“I think you’ve done more than enough,” she said softly, baldly meeting his eyes. There was no misinterpretation. She knew just by looking at him that this was entirely his fault. He was to blame and he felt the weight of it on his soul.

“Back off,” Leo snarled at him, thrusting his body between Templar and Angel. “Why don’t you go hide in that room Jackson assigned to you and figure out a way to defend this house in case that thing you’ve called up from hell comes calling again.”

Kamen wanted to argue, was used to feeding ideas to others and hearing his opinion heard with great value. But he had no worth here, he reminded himself. Not with these people. And he did not deserve otherwise.

“Perhaps you are right,” he said quietly, acquiescing with a dip of his head, readily allowing the Hispanic male to be dominant over him. He could already tell that it took large amounts of energy and self-control for the other man to keep from lunging for his throat, and in a way he had to admire his ability to maintain that control. He also had to admire the fact that it wasn’t fear keeping him from doing exactly that. It was something else…a loyalty he wasn’t all that sure of—one that Kamen could have told him was very much alive and well.