Ivory Guard Read Online Free Page A

towards hers. “You can stay and have more of that if you want to.”
    “ Thanks. I might do just that.”
    After a nod of good bye Raz spread his wings and disappeared out of the room.
    While hell was a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later kind of organization, heaven was running in circles in their bureaucratic machinery. As a result it seemed only fitting that the heaven he knew was an office.
    Depending on Micah’s mood the walls and furniture could be blinding like soft, white clouds under a summer sun or boiling in all shades of gray as if a storm was brewing. Today it was somewhere in between, the walls where mostly white but the desk and chairs in front of it where flashing from light gray to bluish white, their surface a living swirl of intertwining nuances.
    The angel of the divine plan stood up from his leather chair radiating the power of his office. Raz didn’t like him. The man could have come straight out of one of those glossy human magazines; his dark skin was covered in a black suit and white button down that only added to his already regal poise, and the too friendly smile pasted on his lips never quite reached his dark eyes.
    “Raziel, how nice of you to come so quickly.”
    As if he had much of a choice. If he hadn’t answered the heavenly call, the ringing in his ears would have increased in volume with every passing minute. Saying that it could be rather annoying was an understatement; that stuff made your ears bleed, literally.
    Raz only gave a sharp nod with his head in way of greeting. “Micah.”
    The angel sat again, leaning back into his chair and relaxing into that buddy-buddy pose superiors liked to assume to make their employees feel safe although they weren’t. Raz didn’t know whether to feel insulted at such failing, and obvious, subtlety or laugh.
    “ Everything going as planned with the Ivory in Montana?”
    “ Yeah, we’ll be heading for the safe house in an hour actually.”
    “ Oh good, good. That’s why I summoned you. Sariel had some troubles in Washington and they lost theirs. Seems the Ebonys are hot on our tails this time. We’ll try to shut them down, but be careful you two. Okay?”
    “Sure.”
    Another false smile. “Great.”
    Knowing when he was dismissed Raz nodded and got the hell out of heaven. The moment his feet touched ground, the pain hit him like a sledgehammer. Amber.
    After one last glance at it , Lillian folded the letter and placed it on her bedspread together with a small, gift-wrapped box. It held the lighter she had bought for her Dad’s birthday.
    A glance at her wristwatch told her that it was nearly time for the angel s to pick her up. Twelve minutes.
    With a nervous sigh Lillian sat down on her bed and looked around her room. It held so much, and yet not. There were traces from the little girl she had been; the old clown, his colors faded with time, that she had shared her bed with as long as she could remember. The pink wall paint her small self had loved so much had changed with the years and been replaced by a light, bluish violet. The hard core pubertal phase had left her walls covered in posters and books, fortunately only the books remained. Some of them, those her parents had read to her when she was a child, were boxed and stored in the attic. ‘For your own kids’, her mother had once said. The memory stabbed her heart and hammered home that her parents had hoped for her to have a normal life. God, kids. She was eighteen years old and hadn’t thought of having a family just yet. Only had a vague idea of it and even that had been taken away from her. Now that, too, had to go into the box of forgotten dreams Lillian had put in the absolutely farthest corner in the back of her mind.
    Somewhere in the house a wooden plank creaked. Usually Lillian would have thought nothing of it but then a shiver, like cold fingers playing on her vertebrae, ran up her back and she was alert, her senses stretching out. Her ears strained to hear