Minutes to Midnight by Phaedra Weldon Page A

but couldn't, so I put my
hands on her wrist and coughed. It took her a few seconds before
she relinquished her hold but she stayed very close, making it
impossible for me to roll off the bed away from her. I swallowed a
few times before speaking and my voice came out a little huskier
than usual. "Leave me the fuck alone."
    "After what you did when you got here? No
damn way, Guardian. You endangered everything by going into
Alfheim. I wrote a part of me on the page I placed in that book."
She arched a pale white brow. "That way I always know where you
are. So when you disappeared the other day, I sensed it."
    "You've been watching me this whole
time?"
    She moved so close we were nose-to-nose.
Ever been nose-to-nose with an Angel? It's freakin' terrifying.
"Why did you go back?"
    Wait…the other day? What day was today?
    "I…I don't know where we went." So I gave
her an abbreviated version of what'd happened after Officer Jones
and I stepped into the alley between the two bars.
    When I was done, she grabbed my injured
shoulder and squeezed, then slapped her other hand over my mouth
when I tried to yell out. She leaned in and sniffed, and then
abruptly let go and took several steps back. I propped myself up on
my good elbow. "What?" My shoulder throbbed so bad my eyes teared
up.
    "I told you—I threatened
you—I ordered you
to never return to that World."
    I frowned up at her. "Uh…what World? The one
with the trees and the ruins and ash? I've never been there—I told
you, I didn't recognize it."
    She came back at me, her
hand once again around my neck. She didn't cut off the air supply
this time, but held me down on the bed. "Don't play the fool with
me. You went back to Alfheim—you went back to the
' Pheral ." She
hissed.
    I narrowed my eyes at her.
The 'Pheral? The same place Darius told us about? The sixth world?
"You mean…Alfheim is the Peripheral?"
    "Alfheim is one of many
places inside the Peripheral." She released me and stood back. "Now
that I know where you've been, I can smell it. I can smell her . The place reeks
of her . But…" She
looked away and appeared to be staring at something I couldn't see.
I don't know, divine communion? I stayed where I was, wondering
where Mike was. If he walked in now, I was afraid she'd blast him.
Gabriel didn't care about anything except what Gabriel wanted. I'd
known that the moment I met her.
    That was a day I didn't like remembering.
Although it was one of the clearest memories I had.
    She moved again and pushed her hand against
my chest and then through it. My body went rigid and I nearly bit
my tongue. Thomas the Rhymer had recently shoved his own hand into
the book to place a page inside. The sensation wasn't as much
painful as uncomfortable. I couldn't move and my sight was
restricted to what was in front of me, which was the top of her
head and the ceiling. Whatever she was doing pulled at my spine,
and I whined and hissed through clenched teeth. The only thing I
could compare it to was having my backbone ripped out through my
ass.
    When she pulled her hand out, I nearly lost
control of all my bodily functions before I curled up into a fetal
position. I was a roly poly bug, protecting my soft middle, baring
my hard outer shell. Inside I cried with fear and hatred because I
couldn't do a thing to stop her. I felt violated, and utterly
helpless. My skin was hot; I had a fever. I started shivering
again.
    "I double-checked the page of your memory,
to make sure you didn't lie to me. You are lucky you didn't, and
the book's still intact. But what I don't understand is how a Djin
could have escaped from the 'Pheral…" She paced, her trench coat
billowing out behind her. "How would it know to take you? Or even
what you hold within you? You told me they never knew who or what
you were. You told me Maab was destroyed. That World has no
entrance or exit save what we make and take. It's not possible such
abominations could have grown to such a power as to break the
barriers.