Summon Lyght(80)

"I don't mean to intrude on your thoughts Mr…Toren." Robert kept his voice low and timid. "But I can't help it. You're practically placing them into my mind. To be sure, Peggy is merely doing what she feels is necessary for the operation. She helped us obtain our wardrobe and physiques. She's quite proficient in that department it seems. We're all grateful."

As Mr. Toren should be went all but spoken. Cocky diamond prince. Toren didn't miss the sweet smile Peggy flashed him. All of it rubbed his mercury wrong. There should be no joy at this time. None. It was frivolous and ridiculous.

"I think the idea is a good one." Dorn raised a hand asking for time to explain. "Aside from the boy going, of course. We'll find a place for him in the operation to be sure, but not on the field. Too dangerous."

"I've been trained in survival, I—"

Toren cut him off cold. "You were found in a warehouse of sex traffickers, scheduled for rape and prostitution. And you're attempting to argue with the Brotherhood. None of this reflects well on your survival training." A chill out glare came from Kassern, but Toren ignored it. His every fiber vibrated with mercurial wrath, forcing him to stand and pace next to the table. "We are not doing one more reckless thing in this operation. No one is to move unless we say so. No one is to use any powers unless we say so. As it is, we aren't certain if our location has been compromised. There is something about the boy that upset the creatures, and until we find out what that is, he stays put."

"You act as though he is a spy." Peggy's voice went shrill, betraying the degree of her anger. "He's just a kid."

"I am not a kid." The kid's brows lowered in a genuine frown.

Peggy grabbed his arm. "I'm sorry, Tyler. Truly, I don't mean it in a bad way." She lay the back of her fingers against the boy's cheek. "Pure and-and innocent is what I mean and not someone who would spy and betray us."

Toren stood openly smirking at her desperate display of affection. "If you're getting tied in knots over that term, human, you're definitely not mature enough to go in the field, you'll get yourself killed and compromise the operation just to prove yourself. That's not happening. Get over it."

"Do you have to be so mean about it?" Peggy glared at him.

"He's right." Tyler put his free hand over Peggy's where it rested on his arm. "I'm sure there's something I can find to do here. Francis will train me for whatever job there is for me. That's fine by me." He turned to Toren and the other Archangels. "But I can tell you, I didn't do anything to those creatures. Nothing. Didn't say a word to any of them. Didn't look at them wrong. Whatever's wrong with them isn't coming from me."

"Not that you know of," Dorn said. "The doc has agreed to stay around to see if he can learn something. In fact, that's something you can do while they carry out this mission. You can continue to work with him on figuring out what it is about you that triggers them."

Peggy threw up her hands. "So don't let him on to the dangerous field, but put him with the monkeys that tried to tear him to pieces. Real intelligent."

Monkeys? Toren couldn't believe his ears. He stared at her, floored she'd just referred to what had been her children until just a second ago, as monkeys.

Dorn turned to him, puzzlement on his brow. "When is the last time Peggy went in the Purifier?"

Well thank God he wasn't the only one that noticed her left field behavior. He looked at Peggy. "I think you've been only once?"

A guilty look crossed her face.

"You haven't been? Once?" Toren reached her in two strides, yanked her up, and headed to the chamber, with her making excuses as they went.

"I was going to, but you know I don't like boxy spaces, and I know how to detoxify, you taught me that."

"That's different, Peggy, this is Earth, the rules and laws aren't the same. You're definitely in need of it. You are full of symptoms. God, you are like a walking contagion, I have to wonder if you're not the one that brought these problems."

"What? What do you mean, I haven't left from here."

He stopped and jerked her to face him. "You haven't left from there. When you come inside this sanctuary, you carry that into here." He pointed toward no particular exit. "And that's why we have the damn purifier in place, Peggy, to ensure we remain free from demonic influence."

"I'm not influenced."

He continued hauling her down the hall. "Bullshit! You are soaked in influence."

"Because I have an eye for fashion?!"

"And a sudden enamor with that human?"

She screwed up her face. "E-what with that human?"