Angel's Mark

One

"The point of a target is to hit it, Blondie."

This was another of Zev's antics: trash-talking. The more time I spent with him, the more I realized that over half the things he said were just to stir me up. It all seemed counterintuitive to me. He was here to make me good at my job, not anger me over it.

I mopped sweat from my brow, retrieving another arrow from the quiver. I set it upon my finger, calming my breath, and drew the string back towards my chin. There was a twang as I released; the arrow sailed through the air, landing just outside the bullseye with a hearty thud.

I lowered the bow with a sigh.

"Better," Zev allowed, "but not good enough."

I gnawed at my lip, then hid my bow and arrow away again, letting it sink into the feathers of my wings. I was still getting used to that—the whole wings thing. It was strange, like having an extra set of arms that had to stay hidden half the time. Not that I wasn't used to staying hidden by now.

As my wings furled back into my shoulder blades, I whirled, facing Zev. He was reclined in a yard chair, despite the fact we were indoors. When Zev had moved in to the Horne residence—which was way more populated these days—we'd all worked for weeks to turn the guest room into a training space. The reno hadn't been fun, and Zev hadn't helped much. "You can't expect me to train you without an arena of some sort," he'd announced. "I'd be like a plumber with no pipes."

The hardwood floors were covered in rubber matting, slate gray like an asphalt road. One corner was the fighting dummy corner. We'd bought three of them: Kevin, Dumbledore, and Carlisle. Cian had been left in charge of the names, which might have been kind of a bad idea.

The other corner was where all the wooden targets were stored, and there were a ton of those. Most of them had been worn by days and days of use, all holes and splinters and cracking paint. And the walls had mostly been reserved for all of Zev's knives and swords, which, considering he only needed one, he owned way too many of.

The training room had a set of rules along with it. No one was supposed to enter without knocking. The blinds had to be pulled shut twenty-four seven. Unattended children (Nura) were not allowed in. And no one ever, ever, ever touched Zev's weapons.

Unless they had a death wish.

Zev shifted around in his lawn chair, taking such a large bite out of the Gala apple in his palm that only half of it remained. "We've just got to get you up to speed," he said with a shake of his head. "Never know when you'll be needed in the field."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "I'm not a secret agent."

"Yeah, you're right. You're a secret angel."

"I'm going to punch you."

"No, you're not."

And I didn't fight him, because he was right. What Zev lacked in amiability he made up for in intimidation. The guy was just scary. Not more scary than Caprice, but scary nonetheless.

I leaned against the wall beside the lawn chair, resting my head against it. "Cian said he'd stay out of trouble," I said then, and when Zev laughed, I honestly wasn't even surprised. I mean, this was my brother we were talking about. Trouble followed him around like a lost puppy.

"We'll see how long he keeps that up," huffed Zev. "I mean, there was that whole thing where he was a demon for a few weeks. That wasn't troublesome at all."

Right. That. It wasn't something I enjoyed thinking about in the slightest. It had only been a few weeks, as Zev had said, but those few weeks had been some of the worst I'd ever lived through. In fact, I hadn't exactly lived through them.