Raziel

She was looking at me, clearly annoyed. “Yes, again,” she said. “Women have sex, you know. They find a man, or a woman if they prefer, and if they’re attractive and there’s no reason not to, they have sex. Are you totally unconnected with modern reality?”

“I know people have indiscriminate sex,” I said irritably, feeling foolish. I didn’t like the idea of her with another man. I wasn’t about to consider why; I just didn’t. “And I should have known you’d be one of them.”

“Yes, I’m the Whore of Babylon.”

“Not even close,” I drawled.

“Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Are you always so literal?”

“What other choice is there?”

She was fuming. This was good—I was annoying her as much as she annoyed me. I could keep this up for a while without any difficulty. We struck sparks off each other.

I decided to sum things up. “All right, we’ve decided you can cook, which might be a valuable skill elsewhere. Anything else?”

She looked at me as if considering something, and I had no intention of trying to divine what. That brief glimpse of her sex fantasies had been disturbing enough. And then she smiled, a slow, wicked smile. “You don’t want to know,” she said in a lazy, totally sensuous drawl.

This was a waste of time. In a short while the Council would convene, and they would decide what would happen to her. I could argue, but in the end there wasn’t much I could do to save her. I knew what their decision would be.

It shouldn’t bother me. But it did. And the sooner I got away from her, the easier it would be.

“You’re right,” I said. And I ran.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I WAS ALONE AGAIN IN THE STARK white apartment. The relief mingled with anxiety—it was easier being alone. I knew I’d basically driven him away; all I had to do was mention sex and he ran like a terrified virgin. Though if anyone was a virgin around here, it was me.

No, not literally. I’d had tons of lovers. Well, four, but you couldn’t really count Charlie, who had performance issues, and the one-night stand with what’s-his-name was more the result of too many cosmopolitans and a fit of self-pity. It hadn’t been a pretty sight.

Still, two relatively decent relationships hardly made me a virgin. But compared to Raziel’s thousands of years of sex and marriage, I most assuredly came up short. So how dared he have that “You’ve had sex” attitude? Typical of this patriarchal place, but I had no intention of putting up with it.

At least sex was a weapon I could use when I was feeling far too defenseless. I could get rid of Raziel simply by envisioning having sex with him, and he wouldn’t linger to see the truth behind the erotic fantasy, see just how pathetic a lover I really was. Not that it mattered—I was getting the feeling that I was looking on an eternity of celibacy, just like Raziel. Except in my case, it wouldn’t be by choice.

Who would I have here if I could have anyone? That was a no-brainer. Azazel was nasty, and I’d learned to avoid self-destructive relationships.

Sammael was too young, even if he was millennia older than I was. I just got a wrong feeling from him. There was Tamlel, who seemed quite sweet, but I didn’t want him either. If I was forced to have sex with anybody I’d met so far, I’d choose Raziel. Like it or not, I felt bonded to him, even if it only went one way. He was my man, the only connection with my old world, and I was holding on for dear life.

That bond was going to break, of course. It was temporary, just long enough to get me through to the other side. Hey, maybe I’d get to go to heaven after all, despite what he’d said, a sunny, happy place with angels who actually played harps. I could live among the clouds, visit my dead relatives, and look down on the poor foolish mortals with compassion.

Though an eternity of that could get old pretty fast. This was no trip to Hollywood, but the alternatives weren’t that appealing. As long as I could keep Raziel out of my brain, I’d be able to figure out a way to deal with all this. Or a way to get out of it. There was always some kind of loophole. These things weren’t written in stone.

Well, come to think of it, they probably were, literally, somewhere. And my efforts to keep Raziel out of my brain had only resulted in his abandoning me, which wasn’t particularly helpful. I was probably going to need him if I wanted to get out of here, and making him crazy might not be the smartest thing to do. He might get pissed off enough to agree to the Grace, which was more like a curse. If he was really motivated, he might be able to return me to the one place he said he couldn’t. Home.

Oh, I wasn’t picky. It didn’t have to be the same life, the same job, the same face. I could go back as anyone. I just wanted, needed, to go back.

On the other hand, my only defense was thinking about having sex with Raziel, and I found it . . . distracting. Disturbing. Arousing. Okay, I had to admit it.

He was inspiring some wickedly lustful thoughts, whether he was around or not. I could spend a perfectly delightful afternoon doing absolutely nothing but indulging in sex fantasies about my beautiful, angry kidnapper and enjoy myself tremendously.

Unfortunately, that might leave me a bit too vulnerable, and I couldn’t afford to let him see that. If he saw weakness, he’d exploit it without hesitation.

At least I was alone, with no one watching me. I didn’t have to make conversation, be perky, put on a cheery face. All I had to do was try to make sense of what had happened to me. I didn’t need to be distracted by a blood-sucking angel with the face of a . . . well, of an angel and the personality of a puff adder. Whom I somehow, inexplicably, longed for.

There, I’d admitted it. The 12-step groups were right—admitting it was the first and hardest part of owning a problem. Raziel was most definitely a problem, as far as I was concerned.

He didn’t like me. I shouldn’t find that particularly distressing. Yes, I was counting on him to protect me when my case was brought before the tribunal or whatever the hell it was, and he’d promised he wouldn’t let them Grace me. Still, he’d made it clear that he thought women should be seen and not heard.

Fat chance of that. I’d never been the silent, docile type and even the fear of God, or Uriel, wasn’t going to get me started now.

If it weren’t for Sarah, I’d be feeling completely defeated. I liked her, even if her husband seemed like an even bigger asshole than Raziel. Azazel was tall, dark, and grumpy, his body radiating a kind of bleak disapproval that made Raziel seem warm and fuzzy in comparison. Even Sammael hadn’t been a barrel of laughs. I didn’t know the names of the others, except Tamlel, of course, though I’d seen several of them. There had been at least a dozen men in the room where I’d seen Raziel at Sarah’s wrist. Would Sarah and Raziel and maybe Tamlel be enough to sway them?

Suddenly I could see that strange scene all over again, the odd, unearthly light, the chanting, the smell of incense and something more elemental: the coppery scent of blood. I shuddered, feeling warm and slightly faint. I would have given a lot not to have walked in on that. Knowing about it would have been difficult enough; seeing it gave me a strange, edgy feeling. Like I’d watched someone having sex, or accidentally witnessed something slightly perverse but . . . arousing.

Slightly perverse? He was drinking the blood of his friend’s wife. No wonder I was left with an unsettled feeling every time I thought of it. It felt almost as if someone had touched me.

I wouldn’t make that mistake again. No flinging open doors—I’d knock first and wait for someone to open them. What these . . . these people did in the privacy of their own rooms was fine with me. I just wanted to get the hell away from here.

Though not literally. Being a reasonable, twenty-first-century woman, I had never believed in hell. It seemed to me that there was enough horrific punishment meted out on earth to satisfy the most vengeful god, and why should the universe duplicate efforts? Hell was warfare, children who died before their parents, drug addiction, poverty, violence. It always seemed to me that if someone screwed up big-time, it was simpler just to send them back for another go-round.

Then again, I’d never believed that people who suffered had brought it on themselves, so that sort of shot a hole in my cosmic theory of justice.

Nevertheless, some fiery pit with a chortling devil holding a pitchfork had seemed more of a twisted Disney fantasy than anything else.

Apparently I was wrong.

Though no one had said anything about Satan. Come to think of it, some of the biblical propaganda posited that the first fallen angel, Lucifer, was Satan, king of hell. Which didn’t really jibe with what was going on here.

I was curious, but truth be told, it wasn’t just intellectual curiosity that made me determined to stay right here.

Raziel had something to do with it.

Okay, he was way too gorgeous, and gorgeous men made me feel like a troll. I could make an exception. Whether I liked it or not, I felt drawn to him, tied to him, turned on by him; and while I was putting out a lot of energy fighting it, I was losing the battle. It didn’t matter—he was more than capable of resisting me, and I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself. It wasn’t the first time I’d suffered the adolescent pangs of unrequited, er, lust.

The sun was already setting, sinking into the dark green ocean, the golden color streaking toward me with greedy fingers. I looked down, and I could see Raziel walking on the beach, with Azazel and some of the others beside him. They were deep in conversation, and from such a distance I could barely see their expressions, much less hear what they were saying. But whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

Of course there were no women walking and talking. No women angels. It really annoyed me—the patriarchal control extended millennia, apparently.

I turned away. Apparently the only way to make baby fallen angels was to have female angels in the first place, and someone had neglected to create them.

I was starving. How had he gotten that food up here last night? Was this some kind of fairy-tale world, where all I had to do was wish to make it happen?

I closed my eyes and tried to visualize a quart of Ben & Jerry’s, then opened them again. Nothing on the coffee table in front of me, but on a whim I slid off the sofa and went to the freezer, looking inside to see . . . absolutely nothing. Crap.

Maybe it needed Raziel’s magic touch.

I started moving around the apartment, restless, trying to keep my mind off my stomach. One bedroom—his, with the king-size bed in the middle of it.

Looking at it made me start thinking about points south of my stomach, and I quickly elevated my mind to purer matters. Someone had made the bed, so maybe the place came with maid service, which was a good thing. I wasn’t about to start picking up after him, though chances were he was neater than I was. Most people were.

One closet, and not much in the way of clothing. I’d already rummaged through and borrowed the stuff most likely to fit me. The rest would be impossibly tight on my far-from-coltish figure, assuming I could even get the clothes on. Besides, the black was almost as depressing as the white.

I guess had to give up on the idea of ever being lithe or willowy. I was going to spend eternity being just this side of voluptuous, and I didn’t like it.

On the other hand, I’d never get fat, so that was something.

I wandered into the kitchen. The sun was flame red now, reflecting off the windows in front of me, and only a small sliver was left above the horizon.

Once it dropped, everything would be dark, and I leaned against the counter, watching. If the sun rose and set here, surely this must be the real world, and I must be alive. Otherwise it made no sense. Why bother with all the trappings of normal life when reality was so far removed?

The last shimmer of red dipped beneath the foamy surface, and I didn’t move, almost in a meditative state as I watched the water churn and splash, the air cool and damp against my face. I licked my lips and could taste salt, and I found myself smiling. My mother had told me to lick my lips when we went to the seashore—it was the souls of the dead babies giving me a welcome kiss, trying to drag me down with them.

Hildegarde Watson had never been a bundle of laughs. Why she thought dead babies would end up in the ocean had never made sense, but I never tried to reason with my mother. It was always a losing proposition.

But damn, the old lady would be tickled pink to know that her blasphemous daughter was consorting with angels. Sleeping with one, in fact, though it wasn’t quite the kind of “sleeping with” that I tended to think of. And it was safer not to let my mind go in that direction, not when it came to Raziel.

Actually, it was much more likely to be Neptune or Poseidon who was going around kissing me with salt-chapped lips. The gods of Mount Olympus were always a lot more entertaining than the Judeo-Christian God, who tended to be obsessed with punishment and sin. Not that Hildegarde believed in any god but her own angry, moralistic one who’d somehow morphed out of a gentle, loving Jesus.

I really should have hedged my bets, since it was my mother’s gloomy god who’d turned out to be the one with the power. Though it seemed he was even pre-Judeo-Christian. I wondered what Hildegarde would think of that. She’d flip.

I should try harder to get the hell out of here, and I probably would if I knew where to go. I was on borrowed time with Raziel—sooner or later he was going to sneak into my brain and see the doleful daydreams I was trying to fight, see the unbidden, lustful feelings that were stronger than anything I’d ever felt in my life. And that would be humiliating. If I couldn’t control my—my crush, then I needed to escape. I just needed to know where.

I was so hungry I could eat his pristine white sofa. Someone had cleared away my dishes from the night before, so I couldn’t scavenge for leftovers. The doughnuts were long gone, and I was bereft.

I flopped down on the sofa, putting a hand over my eyes as I moaned piteously. Ben & Jerry’s, I thought longingly. Super Fudge Chunk or Cherry Garcia, to start with. If I hadn’t already embraced the motto “Life is uncertain, eat dessert first,” the last twenty-four hours or so would have convinced me. But Raziel’s refrigerator had been as stark and barren as this apartment. No help there.

After that, lasagna, thick and gooey, with gobs of garlic bread and cheese, accompanied by a nice cabernet. At this rate, I’d settle for a can of Ensure.

I moaned again, turning over on my stomach and hiding my head against the cushions. The thought of food filled me with such longing I almost thought I could smell it. Lasagna, which I’d assiduously avoided during my dieting years. In retrospect, that seemed to be my entire freaking adult life.

“Allie.” Sarah’s soft voice penetrated my misery.

I flipped over, rattled, to find Sarah standing in the living room beside a younger woman holding a tray. “I didn’t hear you come in,” I said, feeling embarrassed. Apparently Sarah didn’t hold with knocking.

Sarah’s faint smile might have been an apology or it might not. “This is Carrie. She’s Sammael’s wife, and she’s one of our newest residents. I thought you two might like to talk.”

I looked at the newcomer. Carrie was another tall one, with long blond hair, a sweet smile, and a shadow in her perfect blue eyes. Clearly the Fallen chose Aryan Amazons to marry, which let me out. Not that I wanted to be in the running anyway, I reminded myself. I even managed a welcoming smile.

“That would be great. That wouldn’t be dinner, would it?” I looked pointedly at the tray, my spirits rising.

“I hope you like lasagna,” Sarah said cheerfully. “I’ll go put the ice cream in the freezer.”

I recognized the Ben & Jerry’s packaging—who wouldn’t?—and I didn’t bother to ask what flavors. I knew.

Carrie set down the tray and sat opposite me, pulling the covers off the plates. “No garlic bread,” she said with a faint smile. “It interferes with the blood flow.”

A stray shiver danced down my backbone. I looked carefully at the young woman, probably five years younger than I was, but there were no marks on her neck or wrists. Then again, there had been no marks on Sarah’s wrist just after Raziel had fed from her. I squirmed, still bothered by the thought.

Though far more bothered by the notion of Raziel at Sarah’s thin, blue-veined wrist than of anyone else feeding from her.

“What blood?” I asked, helping myself to the lasagna, too hungry to be squeamish. I didn’t really want to know, but I was trying to be polite.

“The blood I give Sammael,” she said simply. “Garlic affects clotting time.”

This sounded perfectly reasonable, if you didn’t consider what they were doing with the blood in the first place and how they were getting it. I forcibly swept it out of my mind. “Do you want some of this?” I gestured toward the overburdened plate. They seemed to bring me twice as much as I wanted. At this rate I’d get—no, I wouldn’t.

“I’ll wait and eat with Sammael. He prefers it that way. Right now he and the other Fallen are looking at the defenses before the meeting, making certain there’s no way the Nephilim can break through. There have been rumors that they’re going to try.”

“There are always rumors,” Sarah said softly, coming in from the kitchen. “It’s better not to pay any attention to them. The men can walk around and mutter things and feel important, but in the end the Nephilim will either break in or not, and I don’t think there’s any way we can affect that.”

“And the Nephilim are the flesh-eaters?” I asked, suddenly taking a good look at my bright red pasta. I set my plate down again.

Sarah nodded. “There are no words to describe them. A living nightmare. They’ve never been able to pierce the walls of Sheol, but that’s no guarantee they won’t.” She fell silent for a moment, as if she were looking at something in the distance, something unbearable. And then she rallied, serene as ever.

“In the meantime all we can do is live our lives. They’ve been a threat since the beginning of time—worrying gets us nowhere.”

The lasagna was no longer sitting very well on my stomach, but I knew that the ice cream would take care of my nausea. There was nothing in this world, or whatever world I was in, that ice cream couldn’t fix. I headed for the fridge, pausing to look out the windows at the men on the wide expanse of beach.

“When would they be likely to attack?” I asked, staring at them. At him.

“After dark. The Nephilim cannot go out in daylight—it burns their flesh. They sleep during the day; then the hunger rouses them and they go in search of whatever they can find. And apparently they have found Sheol.”

“Found it?”

“Sheol is guarded by the mists. They were lifted when you were brought in, and we’re afraid that was enough to alert the monsters.”

“You mean, I’m to blame for letting the crazies in?” I turned away from the beach.

“Of course not,” Sarah said in her soothing voice. “They’re not in, and they won’t get in. They can storm the gates and threaten, but they cannot come in unless someone invites them. And no one would invite their own death.”

Suddenly the air felt cold, almost clammy, and there was a feeling of foreboding that I couldn’t shake. So much for a cheerful afterlife. “What about the Fallen? They can go out in the daylight. Do they have to be invited into a place before they can enter?”

She shook her head. “That’s only for the unclean.”

“And vampires aren’t unclean?”

“We don’t use that term,” Carrie spoke up. “They’re blood-eaters.”

“It has too many negative connotations,” Sarah explained. “The roles of the Fallen and the Nephilim have gotten mixed up over the years, and people have made them the stuff of nightmares. Only the Nephilim are the monsters.”

“Who created them? Your just and loving God?”

Sarah ignored my sarcasm. “God sent new angels after the Fallen, to destroy them. To make certain they weren’t tempted, he made it impossible for them to feel. They fell anyway, and were driven mad, and he cursed them as well, made them flesh-eaters and abominations. After that, he stopped trying.”

“But they can’t get in, right? The Nephilim, I mean. And even if they did, they’d probably have a hard time getting to the top floor of this place, wouldn’t they?” I wasn’t usually such a wuss, but I had a horror of cannibalism. Jeffrey Dahmer made me physically ill. I always figured I’d been eaten in a previous lifetime, though the way things were going, maybe that was part of my future and not my past.

“If they get in, everyone will die,” Sarah said. “There will be no place to hide, not even up here.” She must have seen my expression, for she quickly came up with a slight, dismissive laugh that was almost believable. Almost. “But you’re right, they’re not going to get in. The Fallen are worried because they’ve reached our borders, when they never have before. They still won’t be able to break through the final barrier.”

She sounded very certain. And I didn’t believe it for a minute. I needed ice cream.

It was Cherry Garcia and Super Fudge Chunk, which cheered me up, at least partially. I grabbed one container and a spoon and went over to sit crosslegged on the pristine sofa next to Carrie’s silent figure. I was half-tempted to spill some, just to add some color to the place. I gestured with the round container. “Either of you want any? There are more spoons. Sharing Ben & Jerry’s is a very bonding experience.”

Sarah laughed. “We’re already bonded, Allie. The ice cream is unnecessary. You enjoy it.” She took the seat opposite me. “How are you and Raziel getting along?”

“He hates me,” I said cheerfully. If I couldn’t have him, I could at least enjoy annoying him.

“Oh, no!” Sarah said. “Raziel doesn’t hate anyone. At least—”

“Trust me, he hates me. I’m not too fond of him either.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. “He thinks I’m a pain in the ass.”

“Surely not,” Sarah said.

“Surely yes. And explain to me about the hive mind.”

“The what?”

“How does Raziel know what I’m thinking when I’m with him? How did you know I wanted lasagna and Ben & Jerry’s? Does anyone have any secrets, any privacy, in this place?” I knew I was sounding querulous but I couldn’t stop myself.

“Secrets usually cause trouble,” Sarah murmured. “But there is privacy. While most of us can discern what other people are thinking if we listen carefully, it’s more polite not to. We can pick up on your basic needs, if you want food, or would like to go for a walk, or want company. The more important things will only be accessible to Raziel. And I’m afraid he doesn’t have to be in your company. He knows what goes on in your mind even when he’s elsewhere.”

“Great,” I said. “No wonder he doesn’t like me. My thoughts have been less than charitable.” And less than pure. So he knew absolutely everything. If he wanted. He was also capable of turning off the one-way radio. I allowed myself a brief flash of how I’d looked in the racy underwear Jason had bought me in the hopes of rekindling our love affair. I’d really looked quite luscious, but it had been too little, too late.

At least it might help to keep Raziel out of my mind.

Carrie suddenly stiffened. “We need to go,” she said, rising in one fluid motion, more graceful than I’d ever managed.

Sarah nodded, her serene expression replaced with a worried frown, and the dank, anxious feeling that had been slithering around inside me hit with full force.

I was on my feet before I realized it. “Is it time for the meeting?”

Sarah nodded. “Just stay put. If there’s a problem, Raziel will come for you.”

“Fat chance,” I started to say, but they were already gone, abandoning me in the sterile apartment as darkness closed down around me.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I MANAGED TO STAY PUT FOR APPROXIMATELY fifteen minutes. Patience had never been one of my particular virtues. Considering that I spent the time pacing from the window in the kitchen to the living room and back, sitting down and jumping up again, I would have considered five minutes to be quite remarkable. Fifteen was a world record, as far as I was concerned.

But if the Nephilim were coming, I was damned if I was going to stay in these rooms like a sitting duck, waiting to be someone’s dessert. I headed for the door, steeling myself for the endless flights of stairs. At least it was downhill, and if I didn’t end up as stew meat I’d make Raziel fly me back up. The thought sent little prickles down my spine.

The door was locked.

The knob turned—it wasn’t a simple matter of picking a lock. Not that I’d ever picked a lock, but I’d watched enough caper movies that I figured I could probably handle it if I had a bobby pin. Did they even make bobby pins anymore? Probably not in Sheol.

No, the door was sealed, as if there were no separation between the thick walls and the door at all.

I wasted far too much time pounding on it, kicking it, cursing Raziel, since I knew he, not Sarah, was to blame for this particular heinousness. I didn’t waste any time calling for help—no one would pay any attention, even if they heard me. For a very brief moment I considered sitting back down on the sofa and coming up with the most scorchingly torrid sexual fantasy my imagination could create, and I had one hell of an imagination, especially with Raziel for inspiration. But that was a double-edged sword. The more I fantasized, the more vulnerable I felt. The longer I was around him, the more I was drawn to him. And that was far too dangerous.

Maybe they were still arguing over what to do with me. Maybe if the Nephilim breached the walls, my future would be moot.

I wasn’t about to give up without a fight. I looked over at the windows. Sammael had pushed out a section when he’d taken me up to the mountain—

surely there must be some kind of emergency exit from the top floor of this place? I wasn’t sure just how vulnerable the Fallen were, but their wives were certainly mortal.

I moved along the bank of glass, pushing gently, but nothing seemed to shift. I leaned out one window, peering into the darkening night, and shivered, even though the night was warm. In the distance I thought I could hear the muffled sounds of animals, strange growls and strangled screams. The Nephilim, still outside the gates of Sheol. But for how long?

There was a narrow balcony directly below the windows, no more than a yard deep, with a low wall beyond it, the only barrier between the house and a free fall to the ground far below. The lower floors of the building were cantilevered out—surely there was a way to climb down if I was careful. I’d always been relatively sure-footed, at least before I’d taken a header in front of a city bus. I pushed the window open, swung one leg over the sill, and climbed out into the night air.

The sounds in the darkness were louder, the animal howls and cries of the lost souls filling the night, and I almost changed my mind. But the ocean breeze came through, calming my nervousness, and I concentrated on that, trying to shut the other noise out of my mind. I moved down to one end of the narrow balcony, peering over the edge.

It didn’t look promising. I could try sliding down the smooth expanse of what might be concrete and hope I landed on the balcony one flight down, but that would get me down only one floor, and there were multiple flights below that.

I found the perfect spot and climbed onto the ledge atop the retaining wall, then sat, staring up into the inky sky, watching as the stars came out, breathing in the night air and the tang of the ocean as a slow, decisive calm began to fill me. Nothing would get to me. No creature was going to rip me into pieces. At least, not now. I was safe here. I had absolutely no idea how I knew it, but I did. This was where I belonged.

Raziel would see to it. If nothing else, I could trust him. Nothing would happen to me. He was down there arguing my case, and he had Sarah for backup. I knew he would keep me safe.

I leaned back, lying down on the ledge to stare at the sky overhead. I wasn’t used to counting on someone else to look after me—I treasured being selfsufficient, needing nothing and no one. My crazy-ass mother had brought me up practically isolated from a normal environment, awash in her extremist religion that was a combination of fundamentalist Christianity and survivalism, seasoned with an odd touch of anti-Semitism. Odd, because my mother had been born Hildegarde Steinberg, of devoutly Orthodox Jewish parents. I never knew who my father was, though she’d insisted they’d been married. I always figured she’d bitten his head off after mating.

It was little wonder I had always considered myself an atheist. I had firmly consigned gods, angels, and demons to the ranks of mythology.

Wrong. I could imagine who was having the last laugh now. Trust me to have found an afterlife ruled by vampires instead of cherubic babies with bare bottoms and tiny harps. I suppose it was better than no afterlife at all, but the Elysian fields would have been preferable.

The animal howls were fading—the walls of Sheol must have held, at least for now. Raziel was on his way back—I seemed to know that as well. Was his annoying mind-fuck a two-way street? Or was it some kind of cosmic GPS? He was coming back to me, and I felt my skin heat beneath the clothing.

His clothing. I should take it off.

I did nothing, lying there on the ledge. I kicked off one loose shoe, letting it drop onto the balcony, then the other. It slipped and went over the edge, and I could hear it, bouncing, hitting against things as it fell, it fell—

I automatically sat up, trying to reach for it even though it was too late, and at the last minute I sat back before I went over as well. I lay back on the ledge, trembling slightly.

I closed my eyes, concentrating on the sound of the surf. For a moment I could feel his hands on me, on my breasts, and my body lifted instinctively, then sank back, wiping the image from my mind. Where had that come from?

Two-edged sword, I reminded myself. Was it possible it had come from him? No, it couldn’t be. And I was much better off thinking about Super Fudge Chunk.

Wasn’t there a song about love being better than ice cream, better than chocolate? Did that go for sex as well? And, damn, why was I suddenly plagued with the one-track mind of a horny adolescent boy?

So, I wouldn’t think about ice cream. And I most definitely wouldn’t think about sex. Even though I could almost feel his hands on me, feel my nipples harden in the warm night air, feel him—

Shit, I thought, jerking in protest.

And immediately fell over the edge.

I KNEW THE MOMENT I walked into the council chamber that things were going to take a very ugly turn. Azazel stood at the head of the table, wearing an expression that said there was no negotiating, and the others, most of them, looked equally grim. Only Sarah and Tamlel looked concerned, and that wasn’t enough to keep the rest from disposing of the unfortunate female in the most logical way possible.

I didn’t want to call her by name. For some reason, if I called her by name it would make the damnable tenuous bond between us even stronger. Allegra.

Allie. A thorn in my side, a pain in my ass. But I wasn’t going to let them get to her.

“We will discuss things in order of importance,” Azazel said. “Starting with the Nephilim. They are at our gate. For thousands of years we’ve kept Sheol hidden from them, and suddenly they have found us. They are gathering there—I do not know their number, but all it would take would be a moment of inattention, a slip, and they would overrun us.”

“We can fight,” Michael said. “I don’t know why you assume they would have the upper hand. I say let them in, and we’ll get rid of them once and for all.”

“Assuming we managed to prevail.” Azazel’s voice was stern. “And assuming our numbers are not too greatly diminished, we still have the problem of other Nephilim. They roam throughout the world in search of the Fallen, and if these know of us, then others will follow. It will be battle after battle, death and carnage.”

“So?” Michael said.

“Not all of us are warriors, Michael.”

“We need to be. We are at war, with Uriel and his legion, with the Nephilim who roam and devour at his behest. This won’t be over until the Nephilim are wiped from the face of this earth.”

“And then what do we do? Uriel will send someone else, sooner or later, and I sense it might be sooner.” He turned his cold gaze on me. “What do you know of the girl?”

I tensed. “I was sent to take her. I was about to pass her over to the next life when I saw the flames and pulled her back. I don’t know why—instinct. She had done nothing to merit eternal damnation.”

“And that’s your place to judge?” Azazel said.

I’d known Azazel too long to react. “No. But we shouldn’t follow blindly when our instincts say it’s wrong. That is why we fell in the first place—because we questioned. We failed to follow orders but followed our hearts instead. It’s bad enough when we have to face Uriel’s merciless wrath. If we judge each other, then we are doomed. She didn’t deserve eternal damnation. She’d done nothing.”

“She fornicated outside of marriage. She mocked the covenants. That would be enough for Uriel to condemn her.”

“But not enough for us.” Sarah’s voice broke through, calm and assured. As the Source she had a voice on the Council, one she seldom used. Tonight was different. “Do we aspire to Uriel’s level of perfection? Have we ever considered mindless punishment a reasoned response?”

Azazel’s glance softened for a moment, but he said nothing.

“There’s another possibility we need to discuss.” This was Sammael, usually silent during these meetings, and I looked at him in surprise. I had always been one of Sammael’s closest friends, a mentor of sorts. He hadn’t been among the first of the Fallen, despite folklore, but followed soon after, and his adjustment had been more difficult. Eternal damnation was never easy, but Sammael had once been an idealist. Until Uriel had done with him.

“Yes?” Azazel’s eyes narrowed.

“Her presence here might not be accidental.”

For a moment I was speechless. “You think I betrayed the Fallen—”

“No, my brother,” he said. “I think Uriel might have tricked you. Who is to say she’s not a demon, sent into our midst to betray us to the Nephilim and to Uriel himself? How did the Nephilim suddenly arrive at our gates, when we have remained hidden for thousands upon thousands of years? We have never had a stranger come among us. You, Raziel, have never before stopped to consider who a traveler was or where he or she was heading. You’ve never believed it to be your concern, and the rest of us have felt the same. There are too many to deliver—we can’t stop to pass our own judgment. But something made you stop.” He looked at me, his brown eyes earnest and troubled. “I think she may have cast a spell on you.”

I laughed. “Now you’re saying she’s a witch? I believe we left all that behind many hundreds of years ago.”

“I’m saying she’s a demon. Sent by Uriel to infiltrate and destroy us. You cannot deny he has demons at his command.”

“No,” I said slowly. Uriel ruled over both angels and demons, using them for whatever task he deemed necessary. Once long ago, in a moment of weakness, he’d explained himself: that it was far better for him to rule the demons and dark spirits of the world than let them fall into the hands of the Evil One.

The Evil One he believed to be Lucifer.

We knew there was no source of evil. No Satan, no Iblis, no Prince of Darkness. Evil came from within, just as love and beauty did. Evil was the price humans paid for being alive.

It was a price that had never entered the hallowed confines of Sheol. Unless Sammael was right, and Allie Watson was one of Uriel’s servants.

It would explain a great deal. The attraction I felt to her was irrational, when I had sworn to mate with no human. I liked soft, sweet women, not females who talked back and questioned my decisions and dared to enter my consciousness, as only a bonded mate should do. If she’d been sent by Uriel, then we had only one choice.

Azazel had turned to me. “Does this seem likely? You know her best. Has she been sent to open the gates of Sheol and bring us all to ruin?”

“No,” Sarah said before I could speak. “Absolutely not. She has a reason to be here, one I don’t yet understand, but there is no evil—”

“I was speaking with Raziel,” Azazel said in a cold voice, and Sarah’s mouth snapped shut. I could almost be amused—he was in for trouble tonight—

but I was in no mood to laugh.

“It’s possible,” I said reluctantly. “It would explain a number of anomalies.”

“I think we have no choice, then,” Azazel said. “Either she was properly judged and sentenced to hell, or she is here to destroy us. She needs to be returned to the eternal fires.”

He was right. For her to have been sent there in the first place, there had to be a reason, even if I hadn’t been able to discover it. And if she was a traitor, a demon in our midst, then hell was where she belonged.

“You don’t have to be the one to take her,” Azazel added with a trace of compassion. “One of the others can go.”

I said nothing, refusing to accept their ruling. They couldn’t do this. I wouldn’t let them.

“You’re idiots, all of you,” Sarah snapped, finally having had enough. “Do you no longer trust your Source? Do you think I have no knowledge of what is to be and what is right? None of you count divination among your gifts, but I have seen things.”

“What?” Azazel said sharply.

But Sarah shook her head. “That is not for you to know. Not yet. You may either ignore my counsel and destroy a woman because you think she might be a witch, just like the wicked ones of old. Or you can give her time. Give Raziel time to discover why she’s here.” She turned to look at me. “Are you certain she’s not your mate? That would explain everything.”

It would indeed. It would also be a lie. I had known the women I loved from the first time I saw them. There had been a recognition, a knowledge, a peace that was far removed from the anger I felt around Allegra. Allie.

But I wasn’t going to condemn her to death, not without being certain.

So I lied.

“There is a strong bond between us,” I said, with at least a bit of truth. “And an attraction.”

“Then go to her, Raziel,” Sarah said. “Look into her eyes. You would know a demon if you looked deep enough. Touch her. A demon cannot make love;

they can only steal your essence. It’s a simple test.”

A simple test. Put my hands on Allie Watson and see if she turns into a monster. I would kill her then, if she did. Demons were easy enough to kill as long as you recognized them. Their throats were delicate, easily crushed. All I had to do was taste her. . . .

I wouldn’t do that. I was ready to prove she wasn’t a demon, but I was far from willing to perform the one act that would bind us irrevocably.

“I’ll give you this night, Raziel,” Azazel said. “But no one is to let her move around the compound without a guard. We cannot afford to take any risks. If she’s human, we need to discover if she was sent by Uriel. If she’s a demon . . . kill her. Do you understand?”

“I believe I’ve never been particularly slow,” I said, keeping my anger in check. “If you think I’d have any hesitation about destroying a demon, then you don’t know me very well.”

“In the meantime, no one is to disturb them unless Raziel calls for help,” Azazel warned the others.

“And what if she’s simply an ordinary human woman, unfairly judged by Uriel, who has thrown herself on our mercy?” Sarah demanded.

“We can’t afford to have mercy when Uriel shows none. Whether he’s behind this woman’s presence here or not, we can’t let down our guard.”

I looked at Azazel’s stony face. He was right, of course. I knew it, Sarah knew it. I pushed back from the table, letting no expression cross my face. “I will let you know,” I said, and left the room.

I stopped four flights up, finally alone in the dimly lit stairwell. I leaned back against the wall, closing my eyes. I didn’t want to touch her. She was everything I wanted to keep away from—I didn’t want her mouth or her body, I didn’t want her soul or her heart. It would have been so easy to get rid of her.

To say nothing. Even Sarah had been helpless to stop the inexorable judgment.

I could see her, practically feel her beneath my hands, her breasts, the sweet taste of her skin. It burned inside me. At least my own thoughts and fantasies were shielded from her inquisitive mind. It was the only thing that made the hunger bearable.

I shoved away from the wall, furious with myself. Who the hell did I think I was? I had never shied from a task before, and this was simple enough. Touch her, look into her eyes, and I would know. If the answer was the wrong one, I would snuff out her already dubious existence. I put my hand on the railing and closed my eyes, listening for her.

And then I flew.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I WAS GOING TO FALL, I KNEW IT. MY hands were numb and slippery with sweat, and even though I’d managed to gain a tiny bit of purchase on the masonry with my bare foot, it wasn’t enough to hold me. It was a long way down. How many times can a woman die? I thought wildly. This time there wouldn’t be any coming back from it—if you died in heaven, or whatever the hell this place was, then you must be really dead.

Maybe Raziel could get out of trouble by scooping up my dead body and dropping it into that hole in the middle of nowhere. Would I perk up once I was roasting in hell, or was I going to be lucky enough for a big fat nowhere?

I didn’t want to die. Not again. I didn’t want an endless night, silence, nothingness. I wanted whatever I could grab at, food, sex, music, laughter. But my fingers were slipping, my foot lost what small hold it had, and I felt myself let go, falling backward into the darkness, the brightness of the stars overhead the last thing I was going to see.

And then something moved in front of them, the dark iridescent blue of death, I thought dreamily, when death should have been black, and I smiled. It wasn’t pain after all; it felt as if I were being cradled in someone’s arms. If this was death, then I shouldn’t have been afraid of it. It felt safe, warm, as if I were exactly where I belonged and—

Bright light slammed into my eyes, and I let out a howl as I put up my arm to cover them as someone dumped me on my back. Maybe I was going to end up in hell after all, I thought grumpily, refusing to move my arm. If I didn’t look, maybe it would all go away.

But curiosity had always been a character defect, and the sound of his footsteps was enough to make me move my arm and look. I was back in the apartment, on one of the pristine sofas, and Raziel was just slamming the window shut before turning to look at me, furious. As usual.

“How big an idiot are you?”

I ignored him, sitting up and looking around me with a blazing smile. “I’m not dead,” I announced.

“That depends on your definition,” he said, moving to the door. So he was going to abandon me as quickly as he’d saved me. I couldn’t complain—it was better than being smashed to bits on the terrace below.

But he wasn’t going anywhere. He simply locked the door. I was going to point out that it was already hermetically sealed, but figured he knew what he was doing. He waved his hand and the lights dimmed, and I wondered whether it was cosmic power or some kind of motion sensor. A celestial Clapper.

“What did you think you were doing?”

Well, at least he was talking to me. “I just wanted some fresh air,” I said hopefully. “Someone locked me in, and I don’t like being shut up. I’m claustrophobic.”

“No you’re not. Not anymore. You were looking for a way to get downstairs, weren’t you? So you could see what was going on.” Ah, he knew me too well. Already. “Curiosity is not a trait we value in Sheol. You’re lucky I came in time.”

“Yeah, what about that?” I said in a calm voice. “I thought you knew what I was thinking. I was sending you every distress signal I could come up with.

Why didn’t you come?”

“If I had to spend all my time in your convoluted mind, I’d immolate myself,” he said. “I’d prefer to keep away, but I was coming up here anyway and I thought I’d find out whether you were asleep or not.”

“Hardly asleep. I haven’t had dinner yet.”

It was too dark to see if he rolled his eyes, but I had the definite impression that he’d done the angelic equivalent of it. “You don’t need to eat as often here.”

“It’s not a question of need, it’s a question of want. I eat for the same reason I read. Not for nourishment, but for sensual pleasure,” I said brightly. And then regretted it. Mentioning sensual pleasure opened up a subject that was far too sensitive, as far as I was concerned. I didn’t want him wandering around inside my mind, reading my irrational and badly banked desires.

He was holding himself very still, looking at me, and there was something in the air, a tension that slid beneath my skin. I could feel my heart beating, not the terrified flutter of minutes ago as I’d faced death, but a slow, relentless thudding that seemed almost audible. Damn, I thought.

He made a gesture, and the lights in the kitchen dimmed. The room filled with shadows, making me even more nervous. “You know, a gas fireplace would be nice in here,” I said in a conversational tone, trying to lessen the tension that rippled beneath the surface. “It would make it cozy.”

I half-expected him to wave his arm and a magic fireplace to appear, and then I shook myself. He wasn’t a genie, granting my three wishes. Though I wasn’t sure exactly what he was, at least as far as I was concerned.

“Since even a match could end up destroying me, I don’t find fireplaces cozy at all. You’ll have to do without one.”

I’d forgotten. “Good point,” I said brightly, trying not to look at him. I’d always had a healthy interest in sex, in men, but more often than not I found better things to do. I had better orgasms on my own, something that would doubtless shock the slightly prudish Raziel, and I’d often found boyfriends not worth the trouble. So why did I suddenly have to become obsessed with someone?

“I’m not prudish.”

“Shit!” I shrieked as if I’d been pinched. I could feel the color flood my face. How could I have forgotten? His ability to hear my thoughts was almost the worst thing about this entire experience.

“Worse than dying?”

“Stop it!” I snapped, thoroughly flustered.

“How are your hands? Are you hurt?”

I looked down at them. My fingers were red, cramped, and I pushed off from the couch. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll just run some water over them.” I wanted to get away from his far-too-observant eyes.

“You don’t need to.”

He was standing between me and the kitchen, effectively blocking the way. “I think that’s my decision,” I said, trying to circumvent him.

He was too big to get around. Before I could guess his intention he’d taken both my hands in his, and his touch zinged through my arms like an electric shock. I jumped back, tripping over my own bare feet in my effort to get away from him.

He caught my elbow as I fell, righting me, then releasing me immediately. “You’re very clumsy, aren’t you?” he observed.

It didn’t do any good to guard my tongue—he already knew what I was thinking. “You make me nervous.”

“Why?”

“Let me count the ways,” I said. “You’re a guardian angel who tried to toss me into the flames of hell; you’re a vampire; you think I’m a pain in the butt;

and if it weren’t for you, I’d be alive and living in New York City, minding my own business.”

For a moment he said nothing. Then he spoke. “First of all, I’m not a guardian angel, not yours or anyone’s. Guardian angels don’t exist—they’re just folklore.”

“Sure they are. Like vampires.”

He ignored that. “Second, you are most definitely a pain in the butt. You’ve disrupted my life as badly as I’ve disrupted yours—”

“I doubt that,” I broke in dryly.

“Let me finish. If it were not for me, you’d be in hell right now. You were scheduled to die, and nothing can contravene that. Normally you would have simply ended up in the dark place. Most people don’t have escorts, only the ones Uriel deems necessary. I have no idea why he thought you were so important—at first glance, you seem ordinary enough.”

“Thanks so much,” I said.

“But he had something in mind. You must have offended him with your books. Uriel is easily offended.”

“I’m harmless,” I protested, fully believing it.

“I doubt that. As for my being a blood-eater, that is no concern of yours. It has nothing to do with what is between us.”

His words gave me an uncomfortable jolt. “What’s between us? There’s nothing between us.”

“Of course there is.” He moved away from me then, and I found I could breathe normally again. Or at least more normally. Apparently I’d been holding my breath, though I wasn’t quite sure why.

I could see him quite well through the thick shadows. The light from the bedroom pooled at the entrance to the main room, and I could see the glitter of his strange eyes, the expression of weariness across the elegant lines of his face. He pushed his hair away from his face, as if pushing something unacceptable away from him. And then he lifted his head to look at me.

And I knew what was coming next, as clearly as if I’d thought of it myself.

“No,” I said flatly.

A faint smile curved his mouth. “No, what? I didn’t ask you anything.”

“Just no,” I said, refusing to show how nervous he made me. I moved, suddenly busy. “Do you have extra sheets, maybe a pillow? I can make up the couch for the night until we find someplace else for me to sleep. I certainly don’t want to drive you out of your bedroom, though you were very kind to have brought me in there last night. At least, I assume it was you—maybe Sarah was responsible, which is very like her. She’s quite kind, and I’m sorry I ever suggested she was—”

“Be quiet, Allie,” he said.

It was the first time he’d used my name. Not my full name, but the more familiar nickname. I froze, my words vanishing, as if he’d shut them off with a wave of his hand as he had the lights.

He approached me slowly, and a part of me wanted to run. Not that there was any place to go except straight off the balcony. He’d locked the front door.

Why?

He stopped directly in front of me, too close for me to escape, crowding me and yet not touching me. “Look at me,” he said in a low, soothing voice.

“I am.”

He shook his head and made another gesture, and overhead lights I hadn’t known existed blazed on. They should have been blinding, but I was already in some kind of daze. “Open your eyes and look at me,” he said again, and his soft voice had steel beneath it.

So I did. Looked up into his gloriously striated eyes, almost like those of a cat. Looked up and felt him invade me, as surely as if he had me underneath him, skin to skin. He was inside me, an act of complete possession, and I tried to say something, to protest, but all that came out was a soft, defensive mew of pain. He didn’t retreat, and I felt staked, like a butterfly with a giant pin through my heart. I could feel my body lift, rise slightly, and I knew I was no longer touching the floor. I tried to push him out, but he was much too strong to fight. All I could do was remain there, suspended, as he scoured my body, and I felt a scream inside my chest, my heart, desperate to escape.

And then, as quickly as it had happened, it was over, and he released me. The bright lights vanished, my feet touched the floor, and I collapsed, nerveless.

He caught me as I fell, and I wanted to scream at him, to hit him, but I couldn’t summon the energy. He set me down on the sofa with unexpected gentleness. “Lie down,” he murmured. “It will pass in a moment.”

I had no choice. I lay back, trying to catch my breath, trying to fight the sharp pain between my breasts, as if he’d caught my heart in his fist and squeezed it. I closed my eyes, and felt everything begin to fade. I had long enough to wonder if I was dying all over again, if Raziel had done something to end me. And then darkness came down.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I SAT BACK ON THE SOFA ACROSS from her, watching her. Even in the shadowy light she was color against the soothing white, the richness of her thick brown hair, the warm tones of her skin, the black silk of the clothes she’d taken from me. She was heat, she was fire, deadly to me, and yet somehow irresistible.

She was no demon. I was as sure of that as I could possibly be, short of taking her blood. She was human, and vulnerable despite her attempts to shock me. She was vulnerable, and the best thing I could do was leave her alone.

I couldn’t. Not after the Grace of Knowing. Looking so deeply into her had been an act of intimacy from which there was no coming back. There was a bond between us that I didn’t want, but it existed anyway, and it was purely sexual. An animal need that I wasn’t going to fight anymore. I was going to fuck her. I could imagine Uriel howling, and I thought the word again. Fuck. I was going to take her bed and wear myself out with her, and when she was climaxing I would look into her eyes and know the last bit of her, the place where even a demon couldn’t hide. I would fuck her and make her come and know her.

And if she was a demon, I would kill her.

She stirred. She was going to be angry with me for what I’d done to her, and I didn’t blame her. It was an invasion, one she’d accepted. One of many she’d accept.

I could scoop her up and carry her into the bedroom, have her clothes off before she realized what I was doing. It would simplify matters. But just as she had allowed me to look inside her, she would have to allow me to be inside her. And if she had any remaining defenses, they would shatter as she did.

She moved, then lay still. “You son of a bitch,” she said quietly.

“I’m not the son of anything. How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been violated.”

“That’s about right.”

She sat bolt upright and glared at me, ready for battle. “And I don’t suppose you feel any remorse.”

“Why should I? I needed to see if you were a demon.”

She looked at me blankly for a moment. “A demon? Do they even exist? Hell, of course they do. Angels and demons and vampires and cannibals.

What other treats do you have in store? Shape-shifters? Werewolves?”

I didn’t move. I was hard, and had been since I’d gone into her, my body desperate to follow. And I knew, even as I’d pulled back, that I’d left enough behind that her defenses would be down.

I needed them that way. More than anything on this earth or the next, I wanted to be able to walk away from her. To leave my rooms, report to Azazel that she was an innocent, and leave her disposal up to them.

But I was afraid disposal would be the operative word. And even in such a short time, we’d come too far for me to let them take her. Too far for me to turn my back on her.

If Uriel had sent her to infiltrate us, then he would have sent her well armed. The Grace of knowing was powerful, but underestimating Uriel was always a mistake. I was sure she was innocent, caught by a series of coincidences. But I couldn’t afford to be wrong.

She was still glaring at me, her eyes shuttered. I had seen all she would let me see. If I wanted to be certain, to protect Sheol as it needed to be protected, then I had no choice.

I was prepared for resistance. I had kept out of her head as much as I could, but there was no mistaking that she felt the same bond I felt. The same intense, sexual need that I was an expert at denying, had been denying since the moment she had come into my world, thanks to those terrible shoes that had caused her death. I’d been counting on that resistance, along with my own, but that was out the window. The Grace of knowing was not enough.

I rose, and reached my hand out to her. “No,” she said.

I waited. I could do anything I wanted with her. I could force her, then wipe the memory from her brain. I could simply take her blood, just enough to read her, not enough to make me sick. Blood from anyone but the Source or my bonded mate was dangerous, even in small amounts, but it was a risk I had to take.

“Come with me, Allie,” I said. And I made her move, because I could. “Come.” And she rose.

I DIDNT WANT TO MOVE. It didn’t matter. He pulled me up and stood over me. I hated tall men—they made me feel weak and inconsequential. I was still wearing his clothes, his black jacket, his black T-shirt, his black silk trousers. He took the lapels of the jacket and pushed it off my shoulders, down my arms. I stood still, knowing I ought to argue, protest, anything but stand there and let him slide the jacket off me and toss it behind him onto the sofa.

He reached for the hem of my T-shirt, and I wanted to back away, but my feet were rooted to the floor. I tried to stem my panic. This was the fulfillment of a fantasy that obsessed half the teenage girls in the world. It didn’t matter. Having sex with a fallen-angel-slash-vampire was a really bad idea.

“Please don’t,” I said, trying to sound calm and sure of myself. If he did this, I’d have nothing with which to fight him. If he did this, it would matter too much, and I wouldn’t be able to break away. If he did this, it would break my heart.

He pulled my T-shirt up, and I unwillingly lifted my arms to let him peel it off, so that I was standing there in nothing but his loose pants low on my hips. I felt conspicuous, vulnerable, and it took all my self-control to just stand there and look at him.

“I should point out,” he said with surprising gentleness, “that my favorite period of time was the Renaissance.”

With all those voluptuous beauties. He was probably lying, but I gave him points for trying. I still didn’t move.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. He was leaning down, his mouth so close I could feel the warmth of his breath on my face. “I wouldn’t do this to you if it wasn’t necessary.”

I’d been ready for his kiss, but at this my eyes flew open. “What do you mean, ‘necessary’?”

I was silenced, not by one of his slight gestures, but by his mouth on mine as he pulled me into his arms.

It was no sweet kiss of seduction, no chaste, heavenly kiss. It was full and openmouthed and carnal, and I stood frozen in shock as he put one arm around my waist, pulling me against his hard body, and the other had caught my chin, his long fingers cradling my face.

I’d been kissed before, of course. But never like this, with an almost cosmic sense of urgency and longing. I could feel my nipples harden against the solid warmth of his chest, and I could feel the heat between my legs, the clutch of longing in my belly. Who the hell was I trying to fool? I was turned on every time he was in the room.

He dragged his mouth away. “Stop thinking,” he said a little breathlessly, and if it were anyone else, any other circumstances, I’d have thought he was turned on.

In fact, I could feel his cock against my belly, a hard ridge of flesh. Must be some angel trick, I thought dizzily, to be able to perform on command, even if he was doing it for obscure reasons that had nothing to do with desire—

“Stop thinking,” he said again, his voice hot. “I want you. All right? I don’t want to—you’re nothing but trouble. I wish I could just walk away from you. But I can’t.”

“I’m not getting into that bed with you,” I said, one last attempt to preserve my self-control. “If you say so.”

There was no escape. Particularly because I didn’t want to escape. I turned my back to him, but he simply pulled me against him, his arm around my waist, and carried me into the bedroom.

After the dimness in the living room the lights were blindingly bright, and I shut my eyes. I was pressed against him, his strength and heat spreading through me, and I wanted to sink back into him, letting my body flow into his, and I knew I was past protesting. Who was I fooling? I wanted this so badly my heart was pounding, my hands shaking, and I knew I was already wet. Ready for him.

He must have felt it. “Yes,” he said, a low murmur of approval as he set me on my feet, my back still turned to him. His hands were on me, pushing the silk trousers and my underwear down with one movement so that they pooled around my ankles. He lifted me out of them and turned me so that I faced him, naked, totally vulnerable.

He looked at me, and the heat in his strange eyes was palpable, burning away the last of my doubts. And the last of his. I could feel his reserve melt away in the heat between us, and his breath was coming sharp and fast. “Were you sent here to torment me?” he whispered, sliding his arm around my waist, pulling me against him. “Did he know exactly what I needed, what I couldn’t fight?”

He? Who? But before I could ask the question, he kissed me again, and I was lost, needing to get closer to him, needing his skin beneath my fingers.

His tongue was in my mouth, and I welcomed it, reaching between us and pulling his shirt apart so I could touch his skin, his hot, smooth skin. His heart was racing, and I wanted to put my mouth against it, wanted to taste his flat nipples, wanted my mouth all over him.

Before I realized what he was going to do he slid his arm under me, lifting me. I twined my fingers through his thick hair, kissing him back, using my tongue, hearing my own quiet moan of surrender as surely as he unbuttoned his jeans. And then I could feel him against my sex, hard and heavy, and I knew it was going to hurt. He was too big, and he hadn’t even touched me there, and I was the kind of woman who required a lot of foreplay, and if he was going to try this he was going to have trouble and it was going to—

He slid into me, smoothly, no pulling, no resistance, and reaction spiked through my body. I was sleek and wet and welcoming, and I shivered in primal delight. The more I had of him the more I needed, and the heat of his skin against my breasts was unbearably arousing. I was burning with need, shaking with it. He started to pull out, and I clutched at him, suddenly terrified he would leave me.

But he was already pushing back into me, deeper than the first thrust, slick and sure, deeper, thicker, harder, and when he pulled back I let out a cry, desperate.

This time he slammed into me, all the way in, pushing me hard up against the wall, and my body suddenly shattered. I let out a muffled scream, burying it against his shoulder, against the smell of clean cotton and warm skin, and another wave hit me, and then another, until I was sure I couldn’t take any more.

If anything he seemed to grow bigger still inside me, and he pulled away from the wall, supporting me in his arms, and he was so strong it seemed effortless. He was moving faster now, filling me so deeply I thought I could taste him, and I convulsed in helpless pleasure at the thought. He gave in, pushing deep inside me, and I felt the hot pulse as he climaxed, my body milking him with answering contractions, and as the final wave washed over me I lost myself, as everything dissolved around us.

It was darkness, shimmering, shattering darkness, iridescent blue folding down around us, tightly, as soft as feathers wrapping around my back, sealing me into a cocoon of such infinite delight that I felt a stray climax sweep over me before everything vanished and there was nothing but pure, healing warmth.

I had no idea how long that blessed, velvet darkness lasted. I must have fallen asleep, because I opened my eyes to find that I was lying in the middle of his bed, naked, a sheet wrapped around me, and Raziel was nowhere to be seen. Of course. What man stayed around long after the fact?

I tried to turn over, then groaned in sudden discomfort. It had definitely been too long since I’d had sex, I thought dimly.

It must be the middle of the night. I managed to sit up, wincing slightly at the discomfort between my legs. I still felt the faint lingering of postcoital bliss, that heavenly warm feeling that washed over me, when I knew I shouldn’t be quite so happy. Something was wrong, something was off, yet I couldn’t remember what. I still felt as if I were floating, so pleasured that I probably could have climaxed again just thinking about it.

I’d told him not the bed, and he’d taken me at my word. Up against the wall. I hadn’t ever done that before—my erstwhile lovers weren’t what you’d call adventurous. That was good as well—the up-against-the-wall part. Everything was good, except for that nagging worry.

I needed to put it in perspective. It was sex, for God’s sake, no big whoop.

Though in truth it certainly had been a big whoop. This was a far cry from the pleasant little shimmers that Jason had been able to coax from me at his most creative. A far cry from the fast, efficient orgasms I’d managed on my own. This was like nothing I’d ever experienced.

I was wet, dripping between my legs, and I realized with a shock that he hadn’t used a condom. Well, why should he? There were no pregnancies in Sheol, and presumably no sex-borne illnesses. God, this was the first time I’d ever had sex without a condom.

That was it. That explained the whole multiple-orgasm, best-I-ever-had, oh-my-God-I’m-going-to-die reaction. Sex must be impressively better without a condom. It was the lack of a thin rubber sheath getting in the way. Nothing at all to do with Raziel, thank God.

I heard the shower stop, and for a moment I panicked, looking around me for escape. I hadn’t even realized the water was running—otherwise I would have been up and out of there. It was too late, and in truth, there was nowhere I could go. If I were a good virginal Victorian heroine, I could fling myself from the ramparts, though I would have to do so stark naked, somewhat ruining the effect.

But I was neither virginal nor a heroine. It had been fast and erotic and inexplicably wonderful. And for some reason I expected it was something he wasn’t going to want to repeat.

He walked out of the bathroom, and he was naked. Totally and comfortably naked. He had something in his hand, not that I was looking at his hand, and he tossed it to me.

I reached out and caught it automatically. It was a warm, wet washcloth, presumably to clean myself off. I didn’t move, holding it in my hand, slightly dazed.

He was exquisitely beautiful, even more so without clothes. I’d always found naked men to be sort of silly, with their drooping parts bouncing as they walked. Raziel wasn’t silly. He was magnificent, with white-gold skin stretched over a lithe, strong frame, and his sex didn’t bounce. I jerked my face away, refusing to think about it.

I felt the bed sink beneath his weight, and I turned and looked at him, startled. He was looking at me with a troubled expression, one I couldn’t read. He took the washcloth out of my hand and pressed me back against the bed, his hand gentle. I clutched the sheet that covered me, but he pulled it away effortlessly, and I let it go rather than get into an undignified tug of war I was bound to lose.

“Open your legs,” he said, putting one hand on my thigh.

I considered ignoring him. I didn’t want to face him, didn’t want to talk to him after that hot, urgent coupling that undoubtedly meant far more to me than it had to him. I closed my eyes, letting him pull my legs apart, and the wet warmth of the washcloth made me shudder in unexpected reaction. Those were his hands, washing me with an unlikely tenderness, and for some reason I wanted to cry.

I lay perfectly still beneath as he took care of me, my eyes closed, just wishing he’d go away and leave me. He was going to, sooner or later, and he might as well get it over with.

“I’m not going away,” he said.

“Stop reading my mind!” I cried, my voice catching on a sob. I didn’t tend to become emotional after sex, but this was an anomaly on every front.

He cursed under his breath. And then he simply moved over me, between my legs, and before I realized what he was doing he’d pushed inside me again, fully hard, and I let out a little yelp of shock as I shifted to accommodate him.

He held very still, and I opened my eyes to look at him, to see the expression on his face. He was staring down at me, his long fingers cupping my face, his gaze intent.

“Don’t move,” he whispered. He made a small gesture, and the lights dimmed, covering us with shadows. His head dropped, his mouth against my neck, his breath on my skin. “Am I hurting you?”

I tried to find my voice. It felt as if I were sinking into a dark place of pleasure and forgetfulness. The feel of him inside me was like nothing I’d ever known before, and now that the first, fevered rush was over I could let my body experience it fully. It felt like a blessing, a benediction, a powerful act of claiming that still somehow eluded me. I shook my head, unable to speak, and I knew he smiled against my skin.

“Good,” he said softly. He kissed my shoulder, and I could feel his tongue, his teeth, lightly graze the base of my neck, and I suddenly went into overdrive. My body reacted instinctively, tightening around him, and I could feel his smile again. “No,” he whispered. “You don’t want that.”

I wanted to tell him yes, I absolutely did want that, but my voice had disappeared. Just as well—I would probably have begged him.

“You don’t have to beg,” he said. “Just hold still and let me do this.” He slid his hands beneath my butt, pulling me up close against him, and I wrapped my legs around him. The faint ache disappeared in a second, almost before I felt it, and the shift of position brought him in deeper still, and I reacted once again with that instinctive tightening.

He lifted his head to look down at me, and I stared up into his strange eyes, mesmerized. I no longer wanted to hide, to look away. He was invading my soul again, just as he had earlier, only this time he was invading my body at the same time, and I wanted more.

“There’s a limit to what you can take, Allie,” he whispered in my ear, reading me again. “I don’t want to hurt you.” And he began to move, a slow, sweet slide, and I found I could make noise after all, a deep, longing moan, as I slid my arms around his back and held him close, feeling his muscles bunch and release against my hands, wanting the feel of him, the taste of him, all around me.

The slow, steady rhythm of it was shattering. All I had to do was hold on to him as he moved, and each time he filled me I felt a dancing shimmer of delight wash over my body. There was something devastating about the measured, steady ease of it, no rush to completion, no rules, no judgment, just the thick slide of him inside me, touching places I hadn’t known existed, building toward a climax so powerful I wasn’t sure I could survive.

It would be a good death. He pulled me tighter against him, going deeper, and I cried out as the first climax hit me.

We were both covered with sweat, sliding against each other, and I bit his shoulder, tasting him, tasting the salt-sweat of him, and I wanted faster, harder, but he wouldn’t be rushed, thrusting into me at a steady rate that was going to make me scream, I knew it, he needed to stop, I couldn’t bear any more, I needed him to go faster, harder, I needed more, and I clawed at his back in desperation, reaching for a completion like I’d never known.

He reached behind him and took my arms, slamming them down on the mattress as he rose up, pumping into me. The second climax hit me, and then I couldn’t stop. I needed nothing more than the steady movement of him inside me to bring me to a place I hadn’t believed existed, and I threw myself out into the stars as his hands pressed down on mine and the iridescent darkness closed around us once more.

I could feel him inside me, coming, and I arched back, wanting his mouth on me, wanting his teeth on me. Please, I thought, and I felt his mouth against my neck and the first sharp bite of his teeth.

And I was complete.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I COULD TASTE HER BLOOD ON MY tongue. I touched my mouth, drew my fingers away, and saw the blood on them. I brought my hand back and licked it, the richness of her blood pulsing through me. It had been nothing. The slightest puncture. No veins, not the pulsing artery at the base of her neck that was only allowed for bonded mates. This was barely more than a scrape of my teeth against her soft skin. And it was intoxicating.

I had left her asleep in the middle of the big bed, a small figure wrapped in a down blanket. She looked exhausted, as well she might. I had done my level best to wear her out, and she’d sleep for a long time.

I could see the mark on her neck, the place where I’d bitten her. At least some tiny portion of sanity had remained and I’d managed to pull back. There was a love mark where I’d sucked at her, and the tooth marks were already fading. It had been dangerously close, though. We were already too tied to each other, with breath and now with semen. If I took any more of her blood, there would be no way out.

It had been enough to give me the answers I needed. Uriel could cloud a great many things. He had the harsh powers of a Supreme Being, without the mercy or compassion or any interest in them. But even Uriel couldn’t keep a veil up when she reached her completion and lay cocooned in my wings. And there was no way her blood would be so pure, so rich, so nurturing, if Uriel had touched it. It would have been as bitter as acid.

I should have stopped with the one time. No one in Sheol could deny her right to be here from this point onward. I had claimed her, tasted her. No one else could touch her now. She was my responsibility, nothing more, I reminded myself. Little wonder that I’d lost myself in the sweet welcome of her body.

I’d been celibate too long.

But with my mouth on her neck, breaking through the frail barrier of her flesh, I had almost made an irrevocable mistake. At least I’d managed to pull away before I’d poisoned myself. She’d been reaching for it, not knowing what she sought. Arching her neck against my mouth, offering herself, but it was my fault, my responsibility. And after that first light taste, I was consumed with need.

It was a need I could control. I washed and dressed, then headed out onto the narrow balcony. I could sense where she’d been sitting, and it jarred me.

It was a long terrace—she could have chosen any number of places. Why had she sat in the same spot where I usually stayed, looking out over the ocean, my wings outspread to the night air?

I didn’t think she’d noticed my wings wrapped around her. She’d been too caught up in her climax to realize when my wings unfurled and surrounded us tightly, a protective hood.

It doesn’t always happen. It hadn’t with any of the women I’d used over the last decade or so to relieve my needs. It should have surprised me that it happened this time, but it didn’t. Nothing about Allie Watson surprised me anymore.

My body was still humming with satisfaction and rekindled desire. I could have stayed in that bed, but the closer to her I got, the greater my hunger.

It would be so much easier if I could send her somewhere else to sleep, but that would cause too much gossip. With luck I’d be able to convince the Council that she was no threat, and I could keep my distance, keep the ties between us from growing any stronger. I’d been very careful not to touch her more than strictly necessary in a vain attempt to keep the act impersonal. If I could just shut off this sudden raging need for her, I’d be fine.

Her sleeping mind was a blank to me, and her waking mind was fading with each sex act. If she’d known that, she probably would have jumped me earlier. Between bonded mates, the mental link lessened and evened out between the two. It was easy enough to read human sex partners, but after multiple couplings that ability lessened, probably from lack of use. The women I’d slept with were straightforward and simple to read, just as Allie had been in the beginning. I’d known perfectly well that she wanted me, or at least thought she did. But I’d also known she was uncertain about something as simple and logical as sex, despite her experience. And that she didn’t like her body, which amazed me, since I thought she was close to perfection. Her body had distracted me from the very beginning, the sheer lushness of her curves, the delicious softness of her thighs, the high, round butt. I’d done very well not thinking about it, skittering out of her mind whenever she allowed herself to fantasize.

I’d been too caught up in my own reactions during sex to see hers, beyond her blind pleasure. For me the sex had been disastrous—so much worse than I’d expected, because I’d been shaken by it, so overwhelmed by the power of it that I’d had to repeat it immediately. The wiser thing to do would have been to walk away from her. Instead I’d thought I’d tend to her, be gentle and distant, and within moments I’d been inside her again, lost in her.

With luck, she’d be disappointed. I’d heard and seen her fantasies—no one could live up to that. With luck, my ability to read her would have faded enough that I wouldn’t see anything that might . . . precipitate something. Touching her again would be very unwise.

Now, if only my cursed body understood that.

IT WAS EARLY AFTERNOON WHEN I finally awoke, alone. I knew he wasn’t in the apartment, though I wasn’t sure how. I could drag myself out of bed and into the shower without running into him. It was a small blessing, but I’d take it.

I wasn’t sure what I’d say to him. How to react. I knew instinctively that this wasn’t the start of a love affair. If I went up to him, touched him as a lover would, I could just imagine his reaction, and I shuddered. I would have to do my best to read him. If he was suddenly affectionate . . . the thought was seductive in ways far more dangerous than simple sex. Not that sex was simple, in particular sex with Raziel. Sex with an angel. Sex with a vampire. The best sex of my life, afterlife included.

But that wasn’t the way it was going to be. As sure as I knew he was gone, I knew he was going to act as if last night had never happened. And I could damned well do the same.

I was going to have to be careful, though. He could read my thoughts, see my fantasies, and he’d never believe my lies. Really, that was as close a definition of hell as any. A place where you couldn’t fool your lover.

Your lover. He wasn’t my lover. He was the man who’d taken me to bed last night for reasons I hadn’t quite understood. It had been necessary, he’d said. For an act of duty rather than desire, he’d managed pretty damned well, I thought, letting the shower pound down on my body. But why had he done it a second time?

I wrapped myself in one of the huge bath towels, white terry cloth, of course, and went to the closet, resigning myself to white cult couture. Instead my eyes were met with an explosion of colors, rose and green and aqua and pale yellow. For the first time, my heart lightened. Sarah had come through. And how Raziel would hate it. It was enough to cheer me up.

I pulled out a swirling dress of rainbow colors. The neckline was too low, exposing my abundant charms, and I almost chickened out. But I pulled it on anyway, heading back into the bathroom to check it out.

It fit perfectly. I stared at my face in the mirror, shocked. I looked like me, and yet like a stranger. My thick brown hair curled around my face, my eyes were huge, my lips . . . I had to admit it, they were swollen from his mouth.

But that wasn’t the only place his mouth had been. I saw the mark on the side of my neck. Not the distinct puncture marks from vampire movies, but a scrape, made by something sharp. His teeth? He’d tasted me, I realized, but he hadn’t fed.

He’d had sex with me, but we hadn’t made love. And I was suddenly depressed.

As far as I could tell there were no clocks in Sheol, but I surmised it was somewhere around midday, both by the level of the sun in the misty sky and by the growling of my stomach, which was impressive. I climbed out one of the windows and went out onto the parapet. The damp sea air caught my hair and tossed it back, and I breathed in deeply. Suddenly looking at the ocean wasn’t enough—I needed to be down there, walking barefoot in the grass, wading in the gentle surf. I was tired of being a pariah.

The apartment’s front door opened easily, to my relief. I passed people on the stairs this time, but the hostility I’d felt from them seemed to have disappeared. No one glared at me—they even managed a friendly smile here and there—but clearly I was the least of their worries. Something was going on, and my self-centered mopiness faded as a real sense of anxiety began to intrude.

I made it all the way down the endless flights of stairs, though I knew that was the easy part. I half-expected one of the angelic gatekeepers to stop me as I went toward the door, but no one seemed to have any time for me, an absolute blessing.

I stepped outside onto the thick green grass and quickly kicked off the sandals I’d found. The wind was blowing in from the sea, and I let the damp air sweep over me, closing my eyes in pleasure. My skin would taste of salt, I thought. His skin would taste of salt. And that familiar/unfamiliar heat surged between my legs. Where he had been.

I walked over the grass, then the layer of small stones, then onto the sand, leaving wet footprints as I moved toward the retreating waves. It was odd that I’d never learned to swim, when I loved water so much. I think I’d always been slightly afraid of it, certain that I’d drowned once in a past life. How strange to think that in truth it had been in an afterlife, while trying to save a fallen angel.

I looked around me. The grounds spread off to the right, and for a moment I stared. It almost looked as if there were a shimmer at the distant edge, like a heat mirage, but the weather was temperate and there was no bright sun. I started toward it, walking in the sand, half-expecting it to move. Would I be able to touch it? Put my hand through it? Could I walk through it, to the other side and the real world that Raziel insisted no longer existed for me?

I would be a fool not to try.

I thought it might coalesce as I got closer, but it didn’t. I was close enough to feel it, and I stopped short, staring at it. It was some kind of Star Trefe-ian energy field. It pulsed, almost as if it were alive, and I reached out my hand to touch it—

“Move away from the wall, Allie,” Sarah said, her tone sharp, and I jumped back, startled.

“Is that what it is?” I said disingenuously. What else could it possibly be? But for some reason I didn’t want Sarah to know I was thinking about running away.

“That’s what it is,” she said, her usually warm blue eyes flat. “What were you doing?”

I shrugged. “I was curious.”

She surveyed me for a long moment. “You’re lying,” she said eventually. “And I don’t know why. Raziel told us he lay with you, that he used the Grace of Knowing and even tasted your blood, and that there was no darkness within you, so it must be true.”

“He told you?” I said in a strangled voice. “All of you?”

“All of us. Otherwise you’d be back where he was told to leave you. Most of the Council wanted you gone anyway—only Raziel and I fought for you.”

“Raziel fought for me? Why?”

A small smile curved Sarah’s mouth. “You’ll have to ask him. I know you have a reason to be here in Sheol, but I see things others don’t. Maybe Raziel was simply being stubborn. Maybe it was something more. But you need to come away from the wall. The others won’t be as open-minded. They still think Raziel might be blinded by . . .” She let the words trail off, and her smile widened.

“By what?”

She threaded her arm through mine. “Never mind. Let’s just get away from here. It will be getting dark soon, and the Nephilim are near.”

I shivered, suddenly cold, remembering those howls during the long night when I’d watched over Raziel’s body. Time seemed suspended, moving oddly. It seemed so long ago that I’d curled up next to him, and it was only three days.

I’d heard those unearthy screams last night as well. Before Raziel gave me something else to think about.

By the time we reached the grass, I’d almost managed to shake off my feelings of dread. Until I looked into Sarah’s eyes. “What’s wrong? Where is everyone?”

She looked at me for a long moment, considering. “They’re going to break through. Everyone knows it, we just don’t know when. Someone has led them to the gate, and someone will let them in.”

“Not me!” I said in horror.

“No, not you. Though the others suspected you. And still would, if they saw you lingering down there. But someone inside is going to open the gates, and the Nephilim will overrun us.”

“Why? Why now?”

She shrugged. “Who knows how Uriel’s mind works? He’s wanted to destroy us for millennia, and he is very patient. We believe he finally has found a way in.”

“Through the Nephilim?”

“And the traitor.”

I looked out to the churning sea, breathing in the fresh salt spray. “So we’re all going to die,” I said in a flat voice.

“Not all of us. You have got something—”

“Raziel’s looking for me,” I broke in, startled.

She looked just as surprised. “Where?”

I looked around. There was no one in sight. The lawn and beach in front of the house were deserted in the waning light. “I’m sorry. I must have imagined it. What were you saying?”

Sarah shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Don’t do that—I’ll die of curiosity!” I protested. And then I heard him. His voice, calling me. “He’s sounding really pissed off,” I said regretfully. “I’d better go to him.”

“How do you know this?”

I hadn’t even considered it. I shrugged. “I have no idea. I just know.”

A slow smile curved Sarah’s mouth. “How lovely,” she said in a soft voice. “Then you’d better go back. The two of you will have a lot to talk about.”

“I doubt it. I don’t think he’s going to want to talk to me at all. Couldn’t you come with me?

Sarah shook her head. “We’ll talk later. Just don’t let him bully you. Raziel can be very strong-minded.”

“I don’t really want to be left alone with him,” I said, feeling desperate.

“Why?”

“He’s either going to want to talk about it, which will be excruciatingly uncomfortable, or he’ll pretend it never happened, which will be even worse. If you’re with me, then it will be a moot point.”

“Sheol isn’t that different from the world,” Sarah said. “Men never want to talk about things.”

“That’s what I figured. But still—”

“You’ll be perfectly safe ignoring the entire situation until you decide not to ignore it any longer,” Sarah said smoothly. “Go on now.”

I had started walking up the slope when her voice trailed after me: “By the way, that’s a very pretty dress on you.”

I turned back, mortified. “And I never said thank you! It’s gorgeous, and so are all the others that I found in the closet. Thank you so much, Sarah!”

Her eyes twinkled. “I haven’t had time to get you new clothes, Allie. Raziel must have seen to it.”

I stared down at my dress. “Impossible,” I said flatly.

“If you say so. You’d better hurry. You probably don’t want to keep him waiting.”

I didn’t give a damn if he was kept waiting, I told myself as I double-timed it up the stairs. I had no idea which way he was coming, only that he was near, and sprinted toward the apartment.

I didn’t bother wondering how I knew. Presumably just part of the magic juju of this place. I made it to the apartment ahead of him, gasping for breath as I slammed the door behind me. I grabbed a loose sweater to pull around the less-than-generous top. Why did dresses in Sheol have décolleté? I wondered. Wouldn’t a nun’s habit be more fitting?

Apparently not. This place, unlike the celibate, puritanical afterlife I’d always envisioned, was practically seething with sex. I raced into the bathroom, shoved rough fingers through my hair, and headed back out to the living room, taking a flying leap and landing on the sofa seconds before the front door opened.

“Where were you?” he demanded.

“I went for a walk. With Sarah,” I added. “I didn’t realize I was supposed to be a prisoner in here.”

“You’re not. Not anymore. But it would still be better if you went out with someone else. Someone told me you were at the gates, alone. Why?”

I saw no point in lying, particularly since he was able to read my thoughts whenever he wanted to. “I was thinking of leaving.”

“That would have been a grave mistake. The Nephilim are out there. You wouldn’t have survived five seconds once the sun went down.”

“Maybe I could have gotten past them—”

“Don’t you realize there’s no going back?” he demanded. “That life is over. Gone.”

Frustration filled me. “And what do I replace it with?”

“If Uriel has his way, absolutely nothing.”

“You think the Nephilim are coming as well?” I shivered, pulling the sweater more closely around me.

“Sarah told you that, did she? We all know it. We just don’t know when. But it seems as if your arrival was some sort of signal. One last piece of disobedience on the part of the Fallen.”

“You mean it’s my fault?” I said, horrified. “I’m the reason everyone is going to die?”

“If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine, for pulling you back. But the truth is of little matter. Uriel would find a way sooner or later, and the presence of the Nephilim at our gates means it will be sooner.”

I digested this. I’d died once in the last three days. If it happened again, at least I’d have some experience.

I was watching him as he sat on the coach opposite me, wary. “Would you answer a question?”

“It depends on the question.”

“Why did we have sex last night? You said it was necessary. Sarah said it had something to do with finding out whether I was evil or not. Why don’t you tell me the truth.”

“Sarah’s right,” he said. “But you don’t need to worry. It won’t—”

“Happen again,” I jumped in. “You needn’t bother to explain—I already knew what you were going to say.”

He looked disturbed at the idea. “You did?”

“Isn’t it obvious? You needed to find out if I was evil, and for some reason having sex with me was the only way to do it. That seems far-fetched, but I’ll accept it. But we’ve done it, it’s over, I passed inspection, so there’s no need to repeat it, right?”

“Right.”

“So why did we do it twice?” I said it to make him uncomfortable, not because I expected a real answer.

He didn’t look the slightest bit uncomfortable. He leaned back on the sofa, watching me, his eyelids drooping lazily as if he weren’t paying much attention. But he was, I knew it instinctively. I was beginning to understand a lot about him on a purely instinctive level.

“Just to remove any doubts,” he said deliberately. “A quick fuck up against a wall might not have given me quite enough information. Which is why I had to . . . taste you. Blood never lies. People do. Bodies do. Blood, never.”

I squirmed. “What kind of angel uses words like quick fuck?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Fallen ones.” He tilted his head, observing me like I was a scientific specimen he was about to stick a pin through, and I remembered that feeling from the night before as he searched inside me. “In truth, it might be better if everyone thinks we’re in the midst of a torrid sexual affair. The Fallen don’t like anomalies, and if you can act as if your only interest is being in bed with me, it should make everyone less nervous.”

Not much of a stretch, I reflected, then tried to slam down the thought.

Too late. “That’s good,” he drawled. “It’s what everyone will expect—anything else would be a red flag.”

“You’re supposed to be that good?” I mocked him, trying for distance.

“It’s the nature of the beast,” he replied “Bondings are never casual. Intense, consuming, occasionally dangerous, but never casual. You can spend most of your time up here, if you prefer not to have me touching you. It would probably be safer.”

He was hoping I’d choose that option—it didn’t take a psychic or someone with angelic superpowers to figure that out. He wanted—needed—distance from me even more than he had before. I just couldn’t figure out why.

“There’s no need to overthink things, Allie,” he said. “We simply have to keep things quiet until Uriel forgets about you.”

“The archangel Uriel is forgetful?” I said doubtfully.

“No. But we can hope.” And if he doesn’t forget, I’ll take Allie away from this place, somewhere Uriel can’t get to her without sending his avenging angels, and one small human female won’t be worth the effort. He won’t forget, but there will be other things demanding his attention—such as punishing me for disobedience.

I stared at him. “No.”

“No what?” he said, rising and heading for the kitchen, secure in the belief that the conversation had ended.

“You’re not going to sacrifice yourself for me, you’re not going to stash me where Uriel can’t find me, and this conversation has not ended.” And with a mixture of dawning horror and delight, I knew I’d read his mind.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE FIRST FLOOR WAS DESERTED when Sarah made her way up from the kitchens. Everyone was too tense to eat, the kitchen staff were in disarray, and it was up to her to keep things running smoothly. The long hike made her a little breathless, and she waited for a moment to regain her composure. If Azazel realized she was having trouble breathing he would overreact, and the Fallen couldn’t afford to have that happen right now.

With everything else he was calm, measured, unemotional, able to make the hard decisions without flinching. He would have condemned Allie to Uriel’s hell, and he would have been the one to take her, if necessary. He wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

But if he knew Sarah was getting weaker, it would distract him, and right now Sheol needed his undivided attention.

The Nephilim were at their gates. She could hear their howls and moans in the night, the hideous, bone-chilling sounds as they attacked the impenetrable door. Impenetrable for now, but sooner or later they would get through. Someone was a traitor, the Nephilim horde would be shown a way to break through the barriers, and there would be a bloodbath.

She knew it. Azazel knew it. She wondered how many of the Fallen were aware of what awaited them. Quite possibly most of them.

Her breathing had steadied now. She checked her pulse—it was slow and even. People lived longer, healthier lives in Sheol. But they couldn’t live forever, and her life was drawing to a close. Sooner than it should have in this sacred place, but she accepted it. Azazel, however, would not.

She pushed away from the long sideboard in the front hall and went to her husband. He was down by the water—her knowledge was instinctive and sure. She knew him so well, knew how he’d fight to keep her. But in the end there was nothing he could do. She would have to leave, and he would go on.

He didn’t turn when she joined him on the moonlit beach. He was sitting on the grass, and she sat beside him, leaning against him as he put his arm around her waist. She pressed her face against his shoulder, breathing in the familiar smell of him. Her blood kept him alive—their joining was so complete they seldom had need for words.

But tonight she felt like talking. “I’ve been talking with Allie.”

He settled her more comfortably against him. “He really did bed her, didn’t he?”

“Most thoroughly. Though there was only the slightest scratch on her neck, and it hadn’t healed. But he would have taken enough to be certain—Allie is not your traitor.”

“I know,” he said, not sounding happy about it. “And how is she?”

“That poor creature,” Sarah said with a laugh.

“She’ll manage,” Azazel said with his customary lack of sentiment.

“I’m talking about Raziel. He doesn’t realize what he’s gotten himself into. She knew where he was.”

That was enough to make Azazel sit up straight and look down at her. “Are you certain? Maybe she just guessed.”

Sarah shook her head. “She knew. It won’t be long before she can read his thoughts just as he reads hers. And he’s not going to like it.”

Azazel managed a dry laugh. “He’ll hate it. So you’re telling me this woman really is his bonded mate? And she can already hear him? That’s extraordinary.”

“So it appears. No wonder he hauled her back from the pit Uriel had consigned her to. Clearly it wasn’t an accident. What bothers me is why Uriel set it up. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that Raziel was supposed to dispose of his bonded mate.”

“Why should it surprise you? If Uriel can deprive us of our bonded mates, it weakens us. He can’t kill us, can’t send his legion of soldiers against us without sufficient reason. All he can do is torture us. As long as Raziel has no mate, he will remain at less than full strength. That’s the way Uriel wants us, if he can’t have us dead. Too bad for him it backfired.”

Sarah smiled. “Raziel’s still fighting it.”

“That’s his problem, not ours. He needs to claim her and feed, but he’s a stubborn bastard. He’s going to have to figure this out on his own. I just hope it doesn’t take him too long. We need him at full strength, the sooner the better.” He looked out toward the ocean, his blue eyes wintry. “What about the woman?”

“Oh, I think she knows, deep inside. She may have always known. She’s probably going to fight it as well.”

Azazel sighed. “Just what we need. Soap operas in Sheol.”

A bestial scream rent the night air, and Sarah shivered. “The Nephilim are coming closer,” she said in a low voice.

“Yes.”

“They’re going to get in, sooner or later.”

“Probably sooner,” he said in his pragmatic voice.

She managed a shaky laugh. “Couldn’t you at least lie to me, tell me everything will be all right?”

He looked down at her, reaching up to brush her moonlit silver hair away from her face with a tender hand. “Now, what good would that do me? I don’t shield my thoughts. Unlike you,” he added.

“You really don’t want to know some of the things that go on in my tortured mind,” she said lightly. If he knew what was going to happen, he would try to do something to stop it, and there were things that couldn’t be changed. Her death was one of those things, whether she liked it or not.

He rose, pulling her up into his arms, against his hard, strong body. Once her body had almost equaled his, lithe and young and beautiful. Now she was old, and he still looked at her, touched her, like she were twenty.

“Let’s go swimming,” he said as another howl echoed in the distance. He reached up to push her loose robes off her body.

She let him, and a moment later he was naked as well, and they ran into the surf, holding hands, diving under the cold salt water as the bright moon shone down. She swam out, secure in the knowledge that he could get to her at a moment’s notice, and once past the breaking swells she rolled over to float on her back, letting her hair drift around her. Ophelia, she thought. He had to be able to let her go.

He came up beside her, and she kissed his mouth, cold and wet and salty, and wrapped her body around his, floating, peaceful. There weren’t many moments like this left to them, and she was greedy, she wanted everything she could get.

He smiled against her mouth. “Shall we go back to our rooms? Or is Raziel’s soap opera going to demand your services again tonight?”

“You’re the only one who gets my services tonight,” she murmured, letting him pull her in toward the distant shore.

They were back in their bedroom, the doors open to the night air, when she heard the screams of the Nephilim once more.

“Close the windows, love,” she said softly, sliding between the cool sheets.

He did as she asked, not questioning, and then came to bed.

“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” I stared at the woman with horror. I’d been having a hard time not thinking about taking her to bed, but her blithe announcement had driven that straight out of my mind.

“I knew what you were thinking,” she said smugly. “Is that because we had sex? Earlier I knew you were coming here long before you showed up. I realized that was odd because of Sarah’s reaction, and now I can sort of pick up your thoughts.”

“Can you indeed?” I said calmly, wondering if I could get away with throwing her off the balcony and telling everyone she’d slipped. No, I couldn’t, but it was a nice thought.

One she didn’t pick up on, fortunately. So her ability to read me wasn’t that well developed. Yet.

Shit. Under normal circumstances, there was only one reason a woman would be able to read me—because she was my bonded mate. But for me there would be no bonded mates ever again. This was just an anomaly.

“Not now, of course,” she said, frowning. “Just the occasional thought sort of drifting through my brain. Are you doing that?”

“Letting you read my thoughts? No,” I said, controlling my instinctive shudder. I couldn’t let her know how she affected me. “This is a fluke—by tomorrow, it should have passed. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worried about it. I like it. It gives me something to fight back with,” she said.

Interesting. “Why do you need to fight me?” I asked her.

That stumped her for a moment, and I tried to touch her mind. A mistake. She wanted me, I could feel it quite clearly. It was almost a physical touch, even though she was trying hard to suppress it. That was what she needed to fight.

“I feel powerless here,” she said finally.

“You are powerless here.” I moved over to the bank of windows that faced the sea. They were open, the sheer white curtains fluttering inward on the strong wind. I could hear the soothing sound of the ocean as it beat against the sandy shore. It almost—almost—drowned out the screams from the world beyond. I glanced back at the woman sitting curled up, a stain of color against the pristine white of the sofa. I had an easier time resisting her when she was dressed in white. Why had I ordered those clothes for her? The colors assaulted my eyes, assaulted my senses. They drew me. “What else did Sarah want?”

“To welcome me into the fold of Sheol sex slaves.”

She was trying to annoy me, as usual, and succeeding, as usual. “No one is a sex slave around here.”

“The women don’t seem to have much else to do. Fuck and let you drink their blood. I’m assuming that only goes one way.”

I tried to keep my face blank. “Of course.”

“Then why don’t you take my blood?”

I turned away from her. She’d have a harder time reading the truth if she couldn’t see my face. “I took enough to make certain you were innocent. That was all I needed or wanted. The Fallen can feed only from a bonded mate or the Source, and you’re neither.”

“Then what am I? Besides a nuisance,” she added, immediately reading my mind.

It unnerved me, but I was determined not to show any reaction. “I don’t know.”

She rose, saying nothing, and the dress swirled around her bare ankles as she moved past me into the kitchen. Her skirts brushed against my legs like the caress of a warm breeze, and without thinking I reached for her.

But she had already moved past, and she didn’t even notice, thank God. She turned, as if aware she’d missed something, but by then I was leaning negligently against the counter, concentrating on the almost imperceptible pattern of the white Carrara marble.

She’d pulled out a glass bottle of milk when a louder scream split the night, and she dropped it. If I hadn’t been so attuned to her, I wouldn’t have been able to catch it in time and set it on the counter.

“What the hell was that?” she asked in a harsh voice.

“The Nephilim. They’re getting closer.”

She turned pale. “They can’t get in, can they?”

“Presumably not. There are all sorts of wards and guards placed on the borders. The only way they could get inside is if someone let them in, and whoever did that would die as well.”

“What if someone would rather die than spend eternity trapped here?” she demanded, rattled.

“You won’t be here an eternity. I’ll find some way to get you out.”

“God, I hope so. I don’t want to live to be one hundred and twenty without falling in love,” she said, and I winced. “But I wasn’t talking about me. What if someone else has a death wish?” She shivered, and I wanted to warm her, calm her. I stayed right where I was.

“There is no one else. The Fallen chose this life. Their mates have chosen the Fallen. No one’s going to sneak out to the walls and let the monsters in.” I could lie about my reaction to her. Lying about the danger we were in was beyond me. “The truth is, I don’t know,” I said. “They’re beating against the walls, frustrated because they can’t break in. There’s no way they can break through the walls that guard this place, no way that anyone can. It’s inviolate.”

She didn’t believe me. I didn’t need to pick up specific words to know that she was filled with distrust. If I knew how to reassure her, I would have. I didn’t even know how to reassure myself.

“I don’t think the milk’s going to do it,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I thought some warm milk was going to calm my nerves, but I don’t think it’ll work as long as that caterwauling is going on. I don’t suppose this place comes equipped with whiskey? No, I forgot—whiskey isn’t white.”

“There’s vodka,” I said.

“Of course there is.” She opened the refrigerator to put the milk back, then emerged with a chilled bottle of Stoli. “You really need to let a little color into your life, Raziel.”

I looked at her in the brightly hued dress I’d given her. Everything about her was vibrant, colorful, disrupting the calm emptiness of my world. She poured two glasses, neat, and pushed one toward me across the marble counter.

It wasn’t a good idea. Keeping my hands off her was requiring every ounce of concentration I had. Even half an ounce of alcohol might be enough to weaken my resolve.

Then again, getting her drunk would be an excellent idea. I found drunken women completely unappealing. And if she passed out, I wouldn’t be tempted to put my hands on either side of her head and draw her face up to mine, to kiss her. . . .

She’d already picked up her glass and drained it, giving a delicate little shudder. “I don’t really like vodka,” she said in a small voice. She looked pointedly at my untouched glass. “Clearly, neither do you.”

I said nothing. She wanted me to put my arms around her. I knew it, and wished I didn’t. The noise of the Nephilim was growing louder, the howls and screams, the roars and grunts deeply disturbing. I knew the horror that lay beneath that sound. I thought I could smell them on the night air, the foul stench of old blood and rotting flesh, but it had to be my imagination. I tried to concentrate on them, but her thoughts pushed them away. She wanted my arms around her; she wanted to press her head against my chest. She wanted my mouth, she wanted my body, and she wasn’t going to tell me.

She didn’t need to tell me. There was a crash outside, followed by a louder roar, and she jumped nervously. “If you don’t like vodka, why do you even have it?” she said, clearly trying to distract herself.

“I like vodka. I just think it might be better if I didn’t let alcohol impair my judgment in case something happens.”

If anything her face turned whiter. “You think they’re going to break through?”

I had to laugh. “No. Worse than that.”

“Worse than flesh-devouring cannibals?”

“Is there any other kind of cannibal?” I pointed out.

“What’s worse than the Nephilim?” she said irritably, some of her panic fading.

“Sleeping with you.”

Shit. And I meant to not even mention it. She stared at me for a long moment, then tried to push past me. “Enough is enough,” she snapped. “If you prefer the Nephilim to me, you can damned well go climb over the fence and fuck them.”

I caught her, of course. My arm snaked around her waist and I spun her around, pushing her back against the wall, trapping her there with my body pressed against hers. “I didn’t say I preferred them,” I whispered in her ear, closing my eyes to inhale the addictive scent of her. “As far as I’m concerned, though, you’re worse trouble.” I kissed the side of her neck, tasting her skin, breathing in the smell of her blood as it rushed through her veins. So easy just to make one small piercing, just take a taste. I moved my mouth behind her ear, fighting it.

She was holding herself very still. “W-w-why?” she stammered.

“I can kill the Nephilim,” I whispered. “I can fight them. But I have too hard a time fighting you.”

She turned her face up to mine, and her hands reached up to touch me. “Then don’t fight,” she said in a tone of such practicality that I wanted to laugh.

“At least I won’t rip out your heart.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I said. And like a fool, I kissed her.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I KNEW PERFECTLY WELL THAT I WAS an idiot to do this, but right then nothing could have stopped me. His body was pressed up tight against me, and the heat and strength of it calmed my panic—but brought out a whole new raft of fear. His mouth was hot, wet, carnal, as he kissed me, his slow deliberation at odds with the crazed rush of lust that had overwhelmed us last night. He slanted his mouth across mine, tasting, biting, giving me a chance to kiss him back, his tongue a shocking intruder that somehow felt right. In my somewhat limited experience, men didn’t really like to kiss; they simply did it to get to the part they did like.

Raziel clearly enjoyed kissing—he was too good at it not to enjoy it. He was in no hurry to push me into bed, no hurry to do anything more than kiss me.

He lifted his head, and his strange, beautiful eyes with their striated irises stared down at me for a long, breathless moment. “What are you doing?” I whispered.

“Kissing you. If you haven’t figured that out yet, I must not be doing a very good job of it. I must need practice.” And he kissed me again, a deep, hungry kiss that stole my breath and stole my heart.

“I mean why are you kissing me?” I said when he moved his mouth along my jawline and I felt it tingle all the way down to . . . I wasn’t sure where. “You just told me you’d rather face the Nephilim—”

“Shut up, Allie,” he said pleasantly. “I’m trying to distract both of us.” He slid the dress straps down my shoulders, down my arms, exposing my breasts to the cool night air, and I heard his murmur of approval. “No bra,” he said. “Maybe I’m going to like your new clothes.”

He moved his mouth down the side of my neck, lingering for a moment at the base of my throat, to the place where he’d left his mark, and I reflexively rose toward him, wanting his mouth there, wanting . . .

But he moved on, and I stifled my cry of despair. And then forgot all about it as he leaned down and put his lips on my bared breast, sucking the nipple into his mouth. I caught his shoulders, digging my fingers into them as I arched up, offering myself to him. I could feel the sharpness of his teeth against me, and I knew a moment’s fear that he would draw blood from my breast, but his hand covered my other breast, soothing, stimulating, so that my nipple became a hardened button to match the one in his mouth, and I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, not there, not anywhere, he told me, and I felt his consciousness enter my mind, a deliberate invasion as intimate and arousing as his tongue and his cock.

His eyes were black with desire now, and he pushed the fabric of the dress down to my hips, baring my torso, nuzzling beneath the swell of my breast;

and then his hands were on my thighs, drawing the dress slowly upward, and I was feeling rushed, greedy, desperate for him, wanting him inside me, wanting him now, and I raised my hips, mindlessly searching.

He wants this, I thought dazedly, reveling in the certainty of his need. He wanted me. He wanted nothing more than to bury himself in my body, to soak in the forgetfulness of lust and desire and completion, to lose himself, and to bring me with him on a journey of such transcending desire that the very thought frightened me, and I tried to pull away. I hadn’t had time for second thoughts during our frantic couplings. Now I could be calm, detached, dismissive as I needed to be, except that I needed him even more than I needed calm, and his hands were running up my bare legs now, his fingers inside the lacetrimmed edge of my panties, touching me, and I let out a muffled yelp of reaction, followed by a moan of pure pleasure as he began pulling the panties down my legs.

And then he jumped away, so quickly I almost fell. The blackness was gone from his eyes and at the moment they were like granite, and I wondered what the hell had happened. And then I heard the screams.

Different from the distant howls and shrieks of the Nephilim, safely beyond the borders of Sheol. These were closer, the guttural howls echoing through the five floors of the building. These were here.

“Stay here,” he ordered tersely. “Find someplace to hide. If worse comes to worst, go out on the balcony and be prepared to jump.”

I stared in astonishment at the angel who’d just told me to commit suicide. “What . . . ?”

“They’re here.” His voice was flat, grim. “The walls have fallen.”

I froze, the numb, mindless horror washing over me. “The Nephilim?”

He was almost at the door, but he stopped, wheeled around, and came back to me, catching my arms in a painful grip. “You can’t let them near you, Allie. No matter what. Hide if you think you’ve got a chance. This is a long way to climb, and their bloodlust will send them after the nearest targets. But if they reach this floor . . .” He took a deep breath. “Jump. You don’t want to see or hear what they’re capable of, you don’t want to risk getting caught by them. Promise me, Allie.” His fingers tightened. “Promise me you’ll jump.”

I had never backed off from a challenge, never taken the easy way out in my entire, too-short life. I looked up into Raziel’s face and could sense the horror he was seeing, the horror he was letting me catch only a glimpse of. A glimpse was enough. I nodded. “If I must,” I said.

To my astonishment, he kissed me again, a brief, fast kiss, almost a kiss good-bye. And he was gone.

There was no place to hide. The bed was too low to the floor, and when I burrowed into the closet, the screams from below still echoed, even when I covered my head with my arms and tried to drown them out. I struggled back into the bedroom. I didn’t know if the screams were getting louder or the Nephilim were getting closer. I’d promised him, and I might have a thousand and one characters flaws, but I never broke a promise. I pushed open the window and climbed onto the balcony. And then froze.

The sand was black in the moonlight, and it took me a moment to realize it was blood. There were bodies everywhere, or what was left of them.

Headless torsos, arms and legs that had been ripped free, gnawed on, and then discarded. And the stench that was carried upward on the night breeze was the stuff of nightmares. Blood, old blood, and decaying flesh. The stink of the monsters that crawled below, searching for fresh meat.

I climbed onto the ledge, peering over, and had my first shadowy sight of one of them. It was unnaturally tall, covered with some kind of matted filth, though whether it was hair or clothes or skins of some kind I couldn’t be sure. Its mouth was open in a roar, and I thought I could see two sets of teeth, broken and bloody. It had someone in its hands, a woman with long blond hair and black-streaked clothes.

She was still alive. The creature was clawing at her, ripping her open so that her guts spilled out onto the sand, but her arms were still moving, her feet were twitching, and I screamed at it to stop, but my voice was carried away by the crash of the surf, lost amidst the screams and howls.

For a moment I stood paralyzed. The woman was finally still, her eyes wide in death, and the creature turned, moving in an odd, disjointed shuffle, heading inside. I couldn’t even count the number of bodies on the beach—they were ripped in too many pieces. And I knew then I couldn’t join them on the beach, doing a graceful swan dive to my death. What if I didn’t die right away? What if I lay there while the Nephilim found me, tore me apart while I still lived?

And how could I hide in my room when I could do something? That poor woman down there—if someone had been able to distract the creature, she might have been able to crawl to safety. But there was no one alive on the beach.

I didn’t hesitate, didn’t allow myself to fear. By the time I reached the third-floor landing I’d decided I was crazy, but I didn’t let it slow me down. Destiny was a stupid word, a word for heroines, and I was no heroine. All I knew was that I could do something to help, and I had to try.

The bodies started on the second floor, women of the Fallen who’d tried to escape, but were clawed and hacked and gnawed on by the monsters who’d somehow invaded the vale of Sheol. The stench was overpowering. Way in the past, when I’d started writing, I’d done research on crime scenes, had heard about the smell of week-old bodies that clung to the skin and hair of the police and couldn’t ever be eradicated from their clothes. It was that kind of smell that washed over me now, one of decayed flesh and maggots and rotting bones. Of old meat and ancient blood and shit and death.

The first floor was a battleground. I could see five of the Nephilim, tall and ungainly, easily recognizable. I took in the scene quickly: Azazel was fighting fiercely, blood streaming from a head wound and mixing with his long black hair. Tamlel was down, probably dead, as was Sammael, and I realized with belated horror that it had been Carrie out on the sand, fighting to the end with the monster who was devouring her.

The noise, the smoke, the blood, were too much. I couldn’t see the other women, couldn’t find Raziel in the melee. The Nephilim who fought Azazel went down, and a moment later its head went flying, the rest of it collapsing into a useless pile of bones as Azazel turned to face the next attacker.

And then I saw Sarah behind him. She held a sword in her hand, and her face was calm, set, as Azazel defended her. There were others protecting her as well, Fallen whose names I didn’t know. I saw Raziel by the door then, cutting down the horde as they poured into the building, wielding a sword of biblical proportions. The noise was deafening: the screams of the dying, the clash of metal, the unearthly howls of the Nephilim as they set upon their prey.

A blade slashed, and I felt blood and bile spray me, hot and stinking of death. The Nephilim were everywhere, and I watched in horror as the madness surrounded me.

Something grabbed my ankle and I screamed, looking down to see one of the women lying on the stairs, grasping at me for help. Poor thing, she was well past help of any kind, but I sank down, pulling her ravaged body into my arms, trying to stanch the endless flow of blood. “You’ll be all right,” I murmured, rocking her, trying to hold her broken body together. She was going to die, but at least I could comfort her. “They’re going to stop them. Just hold on.”

To my amazement, the woman reached up and touched my face with one bloody hand, and she smiled at me, peace in her fading eyes. A moment later, she was dead. Blessedly so, given the horror of her wounds. I let the woman go, setting her down gently on the stairs, and looked up.

I could try to run. Back up the endless, blood-soaked flights of stairs, through the torn pieces of what had once been living flesh. Or I could face the bastards.

One of the Fallen lay across the bottom of the stairs, his torso ripped almost in half. One arm was gone, but the other still held a sword, fighting to the end.

I stepped down and took the sword in my shaking hand, then turned to look for Raziel.

One of the Nephilim must have spied me on the stairs. It turned away from the men defending Sarah, advancing on me with its hideous disjointed shuffle.

It was too late to run, even if I wanted to. The thing had seen me, caught my scent; and when one of the Fallen attacked it, the creature simply tossed him away, and the body flew across the room, landing on a table that collapsed beneath him.

I wanted to scream for Raziel, but I kept my mouth shut, gripping the sword tightly in my hand. If I was going to die, then I was going to die fighting, and I wouldn’t distract Raziel from his defense of the portal. Maybe death wouldn’t hurt, I thought, still backing up, the screams of the dying belying my vain hope. It hadn’t hurt the first time. It didn’t matter. I was supposed to be here, I’d been drawn down here, and if I was going to be torn apart, then so be it.

The Nephilim rose up over me, so close I could see the maggots living in its skin, and the smell of blood and death was enough to make me gag. If I was lucky, it would rip off my head—it would be quick, rather than having my stomach and intestines clawed out—and I wondered if I could get away, run far enough up the stairs to jump, as I’d promised Raziel. Maybe that was what I was supposed to do, land on a Nephilim or two and crush them.

The creature had a hideous open hole for a mouth, and the double sets of teeth were jagged, sharklike, made for tearing flesh, and I wasn’t going to scream, I wasn’t, even when it reached me. Its hands were deformed, more like pincers, razored and bloody, and I slashed at it, blindly, severing one of them. It didn’t react, coming closer, and its remaining claw made a horrible clacking sound. I clutched the sword, prepared to fight to the death.

And then the hideous head disappeared, simply vanished, and I stared in shock. The monster collapsed in a welter of bones in front of me, and Raziel stood behind it, a bloody sword in his hand, the sword he’d used to decapitate the creature.

I almost didn’t recognize him. He was covered with blood, his eyes dark and glazed, and I half-expected him to yell at me. But he simply turned around, keeping his station at the foot of the stairs, protecting me as Azazel protected Sarah.

Some of the Nephilim carried swords, knives, spears—primitive weapons. Others simply relied on their claws and teeth and superhuman strength.

They fell beneath the fierce onslaught of the Fallen, making no sound as they went. Their howls had been screams of hunger, and that had been assuaged by the torn bodies that littered the hall. They died in silence.

We were going to survive, I realized with sudden shock. I’d come downstairs prepared to die, certain I was going to, and now everything had shifted.

Only one Nephilim was left standing, a thick pole in his claws, out of reach of Azazel’s blazing sword, and I felt the pull of Sarah’s gaze from across the carnage.

I turned to look, and Sarah gave me a sweet, loving smile—almost a benediction—a second before the heavy pole pierced her chest, slamming her against the wooden door behind her and impaling her there.

I heard Azazel’s scream from a distance. I scrambled past Raziel as if he didn’t exist, climbing over corpses and twitching victims, pushing past Azazel himself to reach Sarah’s side.

Someone had wrenched the pole free, and Sarah slid to the floor, her eyes glazing as I caught her, lowering her carefully. That sweet smile still clung to her mouth, even though her blue eyes were filled with tears. “I’m . . . so glad . . . you’re here,” she managed to gasp. “You’ll help . . . Raziel.”

There was nothing around to use for a bandage, so I simply mashed together an armful of my full skirts and held it against Sarah’s ruined chest. “It’s going to be all right,” I said desperately, refusing to admit it wasn’t. “Hold on.”

I’d said the same thing to the girl on the stairs, the girl who’d died in my arms. Just as Sarah was going to.

“Try to help Azazel,” Sarah whispered, trying to gather her ebbing strength. “He’s going to be in trouble. Raziel can help him. You can help Raziel.

Promise.”

“I will,” I said helplessly. “But you’re not going to die.”

“Yes, I am,” she whispered. “I’ve known it for quite a while. You must . . . stop the one who betrayed us. You must . . .” Her voice faded, but her eyes sharpened, grew warm with love.

Someone picked me up and forcibly hauled me away from Sarah—Azazel, who handed me off to Raziel and sank down beside his wife. When I resisted, just for a moment, Raziel simply used force, putting an arm around my waist and carrying me out of the building, which was knee-deep in bodies and blood.

He dumped me on the beach, not even bothering to tell me to stay put. “I’m going to seal the wall,” he said. “Azazel and Sarah need to be alone to say good-bye.”

I sank down in the grass just above the sand and put my face in my arms. The tall, oddly shaped bodies of the Nephilim littered the beach, and the smell in the night air was thick and poisonous. I tried to muffle the stench, but all I could smell was Sarah’s blood that had soaked into my dress. Her life’s blood, draining away.

My own blood as well. I hadn’t even realized that I’d been hurt. There was a rip down my arm, a shallow slice from shoulder to wrist, made by a talon of that hideous creature. It had begun to throb, and I ought to find something to stanch the flow. I could use my skirt, already soaked with Sarah’s blood, but I didn’t touch it. There was already too much blood everywhere.

I looked around me, dazed, when I saw Tamlel lying at the edge of the water. He must have staggered down there and then collapsed.

I managed to pull myself to my feet, picking my way carefully through the carnage toward him. He was lying facedown in the surf, and his body had been scored by the claws of the Nephilim. I remembered how they’d taken Raziel into the ocean to heal him. Perhaps Tamlel had sought the same healing power.

“Help . . . me . . .” he gasped. I knelt beside him. “Do you need to go into the water?” He was already soaking wet, and still he was dying.

He managed to shake his head. “I need . . . my wife is dead. She was one of the first. I need Sarah.”

I froze. “Let me get some bandages. Is there a doctor here? Your wounds will heal.”

He shook his head again. “Lost too much blood. Need the Source. Find . . .”

I couldn’t tell him. There must be some other answer, some other way to help him, but he wasn’t listening. “I’ll go find her,” I said simply, rising. The water couldn’t hurt, and there must be someone back on the littered battlefield that had once been the grand hallway, someone who could help.

By then the moans of the dying had faded into background noise. I moved like an automaton, past tears, past grief, past horror. I’d made it to the open door when someone grabbed my skirt, pulling at me, and I stared down at another of the Fallen, one whose name I didn’t even know.

“Help me,” he choked.

“I’ll try to find someone,” I said patiently, looking back toward Tamlel where he lay in the surf.

“No.” His grip was strong on my dress. “Save me.”

My heart was breaking for him, for them all. “There’s nothing I can do,” I cried. “I can’t help you.”

Still he clung to me, and without thinking I sank to my knees beside him, feeling the tears start in my eyes, and I dashed them away angrily. Tears wouldn’t help. Tamlel was so close to death nothing would help him. This one was almost as bad, and all I could do was hold him, as I’d held the woman on the stairs, until he was gone.

He closed his eyes, all color draining from his face as he began to shudder, and I brushed his hair away from his bruised, bloody face. The blood from my arm, my own blood, smeared his lips, and I quickly tried to wipe it away; his eyes flew open, and he somehow managed to catch my wrist with sudden, unexpected strength, twisting it painfully as he tried to bring it to his mouth.

“It won’t help,” I started to say. It had to be the blood of his bonded mate or the Source, and Sarah was dead or dying. And then I stopped fighting. If he thought it would help, if it eased his passing, then I wouldn’t deny him. I let him bring my torn flesh to his mouth, felt his mouth clamp onto me; and I pulled him into my lap, holding him as he drank from me.

Slowly the shudders stopped, and he lay very still. The fierce sucking on my flesh stopped, his hold loosened, and my arm fell away, free. He was dead, I thought, brushing the hair away from his face again. He looked so young, so innocent, even though he had to be thousands of years old, and I wanted to lean forward and kiss his forehead as a last benediction.

So much for touching gestures. His eyes flew open, and they were no longer dull and listless. His breathing had become regular, and his color was back. Whether it was supposed to work or not, my blood had given him enough strength to hang on.

I eased him down carefully on the grass. “I’ll be right back. I need to see to someone.” Tamlel was no longer moving. The tide was receding, leaving him beached on the wet sand, and I knew it was too late. And I knew I had to try.

I ran back down to the shore, tripping over the carnage, falling to the sand beside him. He still breathed, but his eyes were closed, and I knew that he was very close to death.

I put my bloody arm against his lips, but he didn’t react, and I cursed my foolishness. It had been a fluke—there was no way my blood could save anyone. I didn’t belong here—the poor creature at the front entrance was simply in better shape than I’d thought, and my weak, wrong blood had been enough to stabilize him.

Tamlel’s skin was icy cold now as death began to move over him, and I knelt beside him, hopeless, crying, the useless blood dripping down my arm.

And then, at the last minute, I pried his mouth open and held my arm over it, letting the blood drip onto his tongue, twisting the cut to make it bleed more, oblivious to the pain.

His mouth fastened on my wrist, and I felt the sharp pierce of his teeth in my skin, opening my vein so that I bled more freely. The other man hadn’t bitten me, but Tamlel was holding me, sucking at me, his hands clutching my arm so tightly that it was numb.

I was growing dizzy, and I wondered if it was blood loss or the horror of the night. It didn’t matter—dizziness was preferable to the reality that surrounded me, to the death and horror that had turned an idyllic escape into a charnel house. I closed my eyes, growing weaker, when I heard a roar of such blind fury that I knew that all the Nephilim hadn’t been defeated, that I would be torn limb from limb. Something grabbed me, jerking me away from Tamlel, and I went flying through the night air, landing breathless on the bloody sand, prepared for the death I had managed to avoid.

I looked up, expecting to see the huge, unwieldy shape of a Nephilim. But it was no monster silhouetted against the moonlight. He was covered in blood, it matted his hair and covered his skin, but I knew those eyes, Raziel’s eyes, blazing in fury as he turned on Tamlel, his fangs bared in attack.

“No!” I screamed, certain he was about to tear his friend limb from limb. A moment later the rage drained from his body, and he turned to me, sinking to his knees beside me in the sand, pulling me into his arms. The smell of death and sweat and blood covered him, and I sank against him in weak relief.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I don’t know . . . did I hurt you?”

I was past speaking. I could only shake my head against his chest, trying to get closer to him.

Something folded around me, soft as feathers, dark as the night as everything went black.

CHAPTER TWENTY

IF IT HADN’T BEEN FOR THE FOUL stench, I might have slept forever. It was a gray day, somehow different from the gentle mist that usually enshrouded Sheol. I lay in bed, unmoving. The light that came in through the windows was murky, filtered, and the bed beneath my poor, aching, bruised body was much too comfortable to leave. I rolled over reluctantly. The last thing I could remember, I’d been flying through the air, dragged away from Tamlel by a furious monster, and in that brief flash I’d been convinced I was going to die. Until I looked up and saw Raziel.

I couldn’t remember much more. Someone had managed to drag my ass upstairs and cleaned me up. I hadn’t slept alone—somehow I knew that. I was stark naked, and the blood and filth had been washed from my body by some ghostly handmaiden. Raziel had tended to me, despite his own wounds.

Raziel had carried me upstairs and seen to me.

Had I dreamed it all? I looked at my arm, searching for tooth marks. The wound was still there, a long scratch from my biceps down to my wrist, but it had already closed up, healing, and there was no sign that two of the Fallen had fed on me.

Just as Sarah’s wrist had healed instantly when she’d fed Raziel. But I couldn’t think about Sarah.

I pushed back in the bed. I hadn’t meant for it to happen last night and I couldn’t believe it had done them any good. My blood had been nothing more than a pacifier. An empty breast for a starving infant, bringing momentary comfort but no sustenance. But at least it had eased them, and for that I could spare a few pints of blood. Until Raziel had appeared with a roar of rage, pulling me away from Tamlel, about to kill his old friend. Had the battle temporarily stripped his sanity from him? Why would he want to hurt Tamlel?

My scream had stopped him. And his arms around me, his mouth against my temple, had been safety, protection, love.

No, not that. He wasn’t going to love anyone ever again.

That horrible smell, mixed with oily smoke, was enough to make me throw up. I climbed out of bed slowly, my body aching, and grabbed the robe that hung on the back of the bathroom door. It was an ancient kimono, the heavy silk oddly reassuring as it draped over my naked body, and I walked barefoot into the living room, half afraid I’d find Raziel there, half afraid I wouldn’t.

He wasn’t there—the place was deserted. I headed over to the open windows and looked out, hoping to see a tall, familiar figure on the beach.

The bodies were gone, but the sand looked black with the spilled blood. I could see smoke off to the right, and without thinking I climbed out onto the balcony to get a better look, wincing as my knee cramped up. There was a huge bonfire, tended by three of the women. I couldn’t recognize any of them—

they looked as battered as I was feeling—but they kept a close watch on the flames, and it took me a moment to realize what was causing the horrific stench. It was a funeral pyre for rotting flesh. They were burning the bodies of the Nephilim.

The Fallen couldn’t do it. Fire was poison to them—a stray spark and they might die. It was up to the humans to deal with the fire. Up to us to clean up the mess. But Sarah was gone.

The bloodstained beach in front of the house was deserted. The mist was light, covering everything like a depressed fog, but there was no sign of life.

Who had survived? What were they going to do now?

I climbed back inside and went to the closet and then froze, looking at the colorful clothes. The dress I’d worn yesterday was nowhere to be seen. The dress that Raziel had almost managed to pull off me, the dress I’d used to try to stanch Sarah’s blood as it poured from her body.

Sarah was dead. There was no get-out-of-jail-free card, no way for Sarah to become immortal like her husband. If there were, Azazel wouldn’t be so grim, and Raziel would still be happily married to bride number forty-seven or whoever. And I’d be roasting in hell.

Today wasn’t a day for colors, it was a day of mourning. I considered Raziel’s black clothes, then went with a loose white skirt and a tunic, looking like a cult member once more. I ran a brush through my tangled hair and took one last look at my reflection in the mirror. I looked pale, as if I’d lost a lot of blood, and I wondered just how much Tamlel had taken from me. Had he even survived?

There wasn’t a thing I could do about how I looked—I was probably a lot healthier than most of the other survivors. Which damned well better include Raziel. No, I wasn’t even going to consider any alternative. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to reach into his mind.

I met with the mental equivalent of a door slamming shut, and I laughed with overwhelming relief, a relief I didn’t want to examine too closely. He was alive, and still bad-tempered.

There was blood on the stairs. Someone had made an effort to clean it up, but the smears were still visible, and I was glad I’d decided to put on the white sandals instead of going barefoot. The thought of walking on dried blood held a tinge of horror. I’d as soon force my feet into those damned stilettos that had brought a swift end to my promising life.

I didn’t know whether my exhaustion was physical or emotional. I had to stop at each landing to catch my breath, and it gave me plenty of time to observe the battle stains that marred most of the surfaces. Blood on the rugs, gouges in the walls.

The dratted dizziness lingered. Had giving my blood to Tamlel and the other Fallen done this to me? Raziel had told me the wrong blood was dangerous—the horror of last night was making my memory far from clear, but Tamlel couldn’t have taken that much blood, could he? There were no marks on my arm apart from the long scratch, and no reason why giving my blood should have helped them or hurt me. At least, not according to Raziel.

But I was feeling like I’d just donated blood and forgotten to take a cookie. Did they give blood transfusions here? Because I had the unpleasant suspicion that I could do with one.

The massive entry hall looked very different in the murky light of day. The bodies were gone. So was most of the furniture, which had been smashed during the battle. The smell of death lingered, the wretched stench of the Nephilim, the smell of decay. I shivered, peering out the open door, but the beach was still deserted. The blood on the sand had dried to a dark rust. It would take a heavy rain to wash it away.

I looked over at the funeral pyre. I had no desire to get closer—the smell upwind was bad enough. I looked closer at the fire, at the burning limbs and the spit of roasting fat, and I shuddered, feeling faintly nauseated. Was Sarah part of that mountain of flames? Were the others? Surely not.

I turned and walked back into the house. There was no one in the public rooms, and I had the sudden uneasy suspicion that the surviving Fallen might have left, abandoning this place and the few women who’d survived.

And then I thought of the Council room, where the Fallen gathered. Where Raziel had fed from Sarah’s wrist, forever changing the way I looked at things. They were there, I knew it.

The doors to the grand meeting room were shut. There were gouges in the heavy wood, and one handle had been smashed. I’d run away from here once in shock and horror. This time I was here to stay.

I pushed open the door and stepped inside, and a sudden rush of emotion hit me. I wasn’t going to cry, I told myself, no matter what. The men sitting at the table stared at me like I was an annoying interloper, but I had no intention of going anywhere. I kept my expression calm and smooth. Help me, Sarah, I said silently. Don’t let these bullies unnerve me.

Azazel sat at the head of the table, his face drawn with grief and fury. He stared at me with such hatred that I was momentarily shocked. He’d never liked me, that much had been obvious, but now he looked as if he’d like to kill me, and I couldn’t figure out why. I’d never done anything to him.

“Sit.”

It was Raziel’s voice, and the relief that washed over me almost made me dizzy. Just great: I’d fall at his feet in a maidenly faint. Schooling my expression, I turned to look at him. Like all the others, he looked like hell, like he’d been in a battle that he’d barely won. But he was alive and in one piece, though he appeared almost as angry as Azazel. Did they think I’d let the Nephilim in? What had I done to make them so angry with me?

Whether I liked it or not Raziel was my closest ally. I started toward him, but he stopped me with a word. “No,” he said. “Sit on the side. In Sarah’s seat.”

I froze. “I can’t.”

“Sarah is dead,” Azazel said in a savage voice. “Do as your mate tells you.”

“But he’s not—”

“Sit.” Raziel’s voice was low and deadly. I went and sat.

There were only a handful left. But Tamlel was sitting beside Azazel, trying to look encouraging, and the other man, the first one I’d given blood to, was sitting nearby. So near death, and they’d somehow managed to survive, which was astonishing.

There were no other women in the room. I missed Sarah’s comforting presence, missed her so badly that I wanted to cry. I sat and said nothing.

Azazel continued as if my arrival didn’t mean diddly, which I suppose was true. “Someone opened the gate,” he said. “We all know it. And until we find out who did, and why, we aren’t safe.”

“It wasn’t me,” I said promptly.

Azazel glared at me, and Raziel snarled, “No one thinks it was. Be quiet for now. Your turn will come.”

Hardly reassuring, I thought, sitting back in the hard chair that had held Sarah for so many years. Both Raziel and Azazel were furious with me, and it was only logical that they were pissed about the blood. I had a hundred excuses. My arm had been slashed by one of the Nephilim, and the men were down—what was the harm in trying to help? And it certainly hadn’t been my idea in the first place. The wounded man had simply latched onto my bleeding arm like a starving kitten. He’d been too out of it to realize what he was doing—it was no one’s fault.

Going back to Tamlel had been a different matter, but Tamlel was looking so calm that I was sure he’d speak up for me. After all, he was the one who’d latched on and used his teeth like some giant lamprey eel. He owed me support, considering the way Raziel was glowering at me.

“How do you think you’ll discover who let them in?” Sammael said in a flat voice, and I started. I’d thought he was one of the dead, but somehow he’d managed to survive. “It’s a waste of time. They probably ate whoever opened it, or else he or she was killed in the battle. I don’t know that you’ll ever be able to find out who did it. We should be putting our energy into rebuilding, not into useless quests for an irrelevant truth.”

“I know you are grieving the loss of your wife, Sammael,” Azazel said in a cold tone. “And the rebuilding process will start as soon as the boat is finished. In the meantime, the truth is never irrelevant. We will find who did this. Who was responsible for the deaths of seven of our brothers, and nineteen of our women. The Nephilim followed orders very well—they knew that to destroy our women would destroy us.”

“We are not destroyed,” Tamlel said quietly. “We mourn. But we are not destroyed.”

“Whoever let them in is still alive,” Azazel said. “I know it in my heart. We will find the traitor.”

“And then what?” Raziel said, refusing to look at me. “No matter how much you want to tear him limb from limb, we don’t kill. Not our own.”

Azazel set his jaw, not denying Raziel’s charge. “He will be banished. Forced to wander the earth. One who has committed such a crime will never find a bonded mate, and he will be allowed nowhere near the Source. So he will eventually weaken and die. There will be no revenge, no rejoicing. Simple justice.”

The Source? Sarah was dead. Someone must have been lined up to take her place, a kind of Source-in-waiting. That woman must have followed in my footsteps last night and saved the ones I’d tried to help.

But as much as I would have loved to believe that fairy-tale nonsense, I had the horrible feeling that that wasn’t the case at all. I had a really awful suspicion about what was coming, and I didn’t want to hear it.

Azazel turned his black, furious gaze on me, and I had the distinct impression he would have reached out his big strong hands and strangled me on the spot if he didn’t have an audience. He hadn’t liked me, not from the moment I’d arrived in this place, and that dislike had grown to monumental proportions.

“Why did you attempt to feed Tamlel?” he demanded. “You have little knowledge of our ways, of the laws that govern us. In your ham-handed attempt to help, you could have killed him.”

“He looks just fine to me,” I said.

No thanks to you, he probably wanted to say. “Answer my question.” His voice was icy.

I looked toward Raziel, but there was no help from that quarter. He looked almost as angry as Azazel. “I certainly didn’t plan to do anything,” I said apologetically. “I came downstairs to see if I could help—”

“Even though I ordered you to remain where you were.” Raziel’s voice was low and deadly.

Damn, was it some kind of crime to disobey one’s supposed lord and master? If so, I was in deep shit, and would continue to be as long as I had to put up with Raziel’s high-handed ways.

If he could ignore me, then I could just as easily ignore him. “I came downstairs,” I said again, my voice overriding Raziel’s, “to see if there was anything I could do. I saw Sarah—” My voice caught for a moment, and I deliberately kept my gaze from Azazel. “I saw Sarah wounded, and Raziel took me outside. When I went to get help because I saw Tamlel lying there, one of the wounded grabbed my skirt, begging me to help him. There was nothing I could do, but I knelt and held him, hoping to either comfort him until medical help arrived or at least be there with him as he died.” I glanced over at the young man, and he nodded.

“That was me,” he said. “I’d been trying to get to Sarah when one of the Nephilim came up behind me. I managed to kill it, but he’d slashed me pretty badly, and I couldn’t make it.”

“Gadrael,” Azazel recognized him. “And you are well?”

“Quite well, my lord.”

Azazel turned his cold, empty blue eyes back to me. “Go on. You were cradling Gadrael and you suddenly decided your blood could help him?”

“No. I was trying to comfort him. But I had a long scratch on my arm. As I held him, my arm brushed against his mouth and he instinctively began to suck at it. He was barely conscious and he had no idea who I was—he just recognized the smell of blood.”

“I see. But he didn’t pierce you, just drank from your wound. What happened next?”

This was the trickier part. I’d been entirely innocent the first time around. The second had been sheer hubris on my part, and I couldn’t blame them for being pissed. “Well, Gadrael was looking better. And I knew Tamlel was dying, and I didn’t think help would get to him in time, and I thought that maybe since the wrong blood seemed to help Gadrael, then maybe it would help Tamlel, at least long enough for help to come. So I went back to him and . . .

offered him my arm.”

“It never occurred to you that your blood might have helped Gadrael because you might be his bonded mate?” Azazel said.

The low growl was startling, and I looked back across the table at Raziel. He looked positively . . . feral. I’d heard that growl before. Last night, just before he’d grabbed me and flung me away from Tamlel.

“No,” I said, looking away.

“With Tamlel,” Azazel continued his inquisition. “Did he too lick at your blood, respond to the offer of blood from your wound?”

“No. He was unconscious. Much closer to death than Gadrael.” Another growl from Raziel.

“Explain.”

Shit, I thought. But really, what was so terrible about what I had done? It was a crisis situation and I had reacted instinctively, and they should be spending their time figuring out who let the Nephilim in instead of harassing me. I sighed, knowing Azazel wasn’t going to stop until he got his answers.

“When Tamlel didn’t react to my arm pressed against his lips, I . . . I opened his mouth, then twisted my wound to make it bleed more freely, so that drops of blood fell in his mouth. It was enough to bring him back, at least partially, and he held on to my arm and, er . . . drank.” I did my best to look ingenuous, but I doubted Azazel was fooled. Any more than Raziel was.

“And he used his teeth, did he not? Pierced your vein?”

“Yes.”

“And you let him continue, almost to the point of death, before Raziel found you and stopped him?”

I glanced at Raziel. I’d never seen him looking so angry. “I suppose so,” I said reluctantly. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I never thought Tamlel would actually bite me—after all, Gadrael hadn’t. And then I assumed he’d stop when he had enough.” I glanced at Tamlel, who was looking stoic. Was he in the same kind of trouble I was?

“So we have two possibilities here,” Azazel said in his cold, emotionless voice after a long moment. “The most likely is that Gadrael was less grievously wounded than you thought. Don’t interrupt,” he added as he saw me start to protest. “With him, the taste of blood, even the wrong blood, was enough to bring him back. You are here only as a partner for Raziel, you have no bonding to him, and while it is unusual, it seems likely that you are Tamlel’s mate and neither of you realized it.”

“No,” said Raziel in a low, savage voice.

Ignoring Raziel, I glanced at Tamlel. He seemed sweet, charming, but I didn’t want to be his mate. I didn’t want to kiss him, fuck him, fight with him. . . . I glanced back at Raziel, who looked ready to explode. Raziel was a different matter. I couldn’t begin to know what I wanted, needed, from him, not now, when I was too weary to think clearly. I only knew that I needed him.

Damn it. And he’d probably read that revealing thought, smashing what few defenses I had left.

“Then there’s the other option, which seems unlikely.”

The silence in the room was so thick it was practically choking, and Azazel seemed in no mood to elaborate. I was beginning to get annoyed. I knew what was coming.

“Are you going to go on, or are we all going to sit here in uncomfortable silence?” I snapped.

“We’ve already discussed the possibility,” Azazel said forbiddingly. “We’re just considering it.”

Why in the world had lovely, sweet Sarah married such a hard-ass? I leaned forward. “But you forgot to include me in this discussion, which seems to concern me the most. I know your patriarchal bullshit style makes you forget that women have brains and opinions, but since this is about me, then you can just spit it out.”

“The only other alternative is that for some reason, by some cosmic joke or bizarre twist of fate, you are the new Source. Which doesn’t make sense.

The Source must be the bonded mate of one of the Fallen, and you haven’t had the bonding ceremony. Don’t think you’ve fooled me with your charade—I know perfectly well it was all an act. Besides, there has always been a long period of mourning before a new Source became apparent. Therefore it’s impossible for you to be the Source.”

“Impossible,” I agreed, my stomach churning. I’d known this was coming. I’d just hoped I was wrong. “But if I were? That doesn’t mean I have to be your bonded mate, does it?”

If anything, Azazel looked more revolted by the thought than I was. “Hardly. The Source can belong to anyone.”

“ ‘Belong’?” My voice was dangerous. Once again I was being discussed as if I were a commodity, and I was getting past the point of being the Good Girl.

“If you are the Source, then it’s always possible your connection to Raziel is deeper than either of you want or realize.”

All the humor had left Raziel’s face. It was nothing compared to how I felt. He might be the most gorgeous male who had ever put his hands on me, but he was arrogant, brooding, manipulative, and lying, and worst of all, while he might have wanted me, he certainly didn’t love me. And damn it, I wanted love. True love, gushing, romantic, oh-my-darling love. Something Raziel was never going to give again, and certainly not to me.

The only defense I had was to push him away first. “So how do we find out?” I said in a practical voice. They looked startled. Clearly they’d been so caught up in horror over the possibility that I might somehow have a role in their little boys’ club that they hadn’t even thought about that. “What would happen if someone drank from me and I wasn’t the Source? Would he die?”

“Possibly,” Azazel said slowly. “At the very least he would become sick, run a fever, possibly throw up. We can’t tell with Tamlel or Gadrael because their bodies were already compromised by the wounds they had received.”

“Then we need a volunteer,” I said brightly. “It’s the only way we can be certain.”

Raziel rose, pushing back his chair, but Azazel fixed him with a look. “You know it can’t be you. If she’s your bonded mate, you’d be able to drink from her and you know it. I assume you haven’t done so as yet.”

“None of your damned business,” Raziel snapped.

“It’s all of our business,” the leader replied. “Sammael, you may try.”

Sammael was sitting near me, and I immediately held out my arm, more curious about Raziel’s reaction than anything else. I could feel the tension and rage washing over him, a mindless, animal response. He hadn’t resumed his seat; he was just standing there, vibrating with something I wasn’t sure I wanted to interpret.

Sammael didn’t look any too happy about the idea, but he took hold of my arm as if it were an ear of corn, and his incisors elongated. I watched with fascination, wondering what set off that reaction. Was it blood flow, like an erection? Did old vampires have trouble getting it up, or down, or whatever?

Sammael set his mouth against my wrist, and I felt the twin pinpricks, just a quick, sharp pain. And then nothing at all as he fed at my wrist.

“Enough!” Raziel snapped, and Sammael pulled his mouth away quickly. “She has already lost too much blood from Tamlel’s carelessness.”

Azazel was focusing on Sammael. “Well? Are you feeling ill?”

Slowly Sammael shook his head. “She is the Source,” he said quietly.

“Shit.” Raziel’s muttered expletive expressed it for all of them, me included.

Dead silence. I considered whining, “But I don’t want to be the Source,” then thought better of it. I kept quiet, letting it sink in.

After a moment Azazel spoke, and his low, angry voice was defeated. “Very well. As blood-eaters we know that blood doesn’t lie. You’ll have to discover who your mate truly is—”

“She’s mine,” Raziel said fiercely, throwing himself back down into his chair. “No one else’s.”

“Well, we’ll leave you time to discover whether that, indeed, is true. In the meantime, the woman will have to be instructed in the duties of the Source, the proper diet and training, and she—”

“Hell, no,” I said. I’d had enough of this patriarchal crap.

Once more the silence was deafening. “What did you say?” Azazel demanded dangerously.

“I said hell, no. If you think I’m going to be Raziel’s sex slave and your personal blood bank, you have another thing coming. This is your problem—figure it out yourself.”

My magnificent exit was marred slightly when the flowing sleeve of my tunic caught on the door handle, but I yanked it free as dramatically as I could and strode from the room.

Once out of sight, I wanted to pump my fist in triumph. Assholes, all of them. I wasn’t about to let anyone push me around, particularly not Azazel and Raziel. They could find someone else to be their goddamn Source, preferably someone more like Sarah, with her serene smile and calm nature.

At the thought of her I wanted to cry, but I dashed the tears away. I needed fresh air and the smell of the ocean to clear my head of all that testosterone. If any of them made the mistake of trying to follow me, I would simply head over to the fire and grab a burning branch or something. I could even build a ring of fire around me if I felt the need. It would serve them right and probably make them crazy with frustration. I found I could manage a sour grin.

As I moved out into the sunlight I felt someone behind me, someone tall, and I knew who it was. I turned, ready to lash out at him.

Raziel looked as furious as I felt, which only made things escalate. “What’s your problem?” I demanded hotly. “It’s not like they’re expecting you to be a cross between a whore and a bloodmobile. If you think I’m going to sit quietly by while men suck at my wrist, you’re dead wrong. If you’ll pardon the expression.”

“I don’t think that.” His low voice was surprising.

“You don’t?”

“No one is touching you but me,” he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

SHE WAS LOOKING SHELL-SHOCKED, and I couldn’t blame her. She’d witnessed the kind of carnage unthinkable for someone of her world, she’d watched people she cared about die, she’d lost too much blood because of Tamlel’s carelessness, and to complete the disaster, the worst possible scenario had come to pass. She wasn’t just bound to me—she was bound to all of us.

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t had plenty of warning. I had simply refused to recognize it. She was reading me, more and more. I had a will of iron, yet I hadn’t been able to keep away from her. I had known, deep in my heart, and I could deny it no longer. She was my bonded mate. I would watch her grow old and die, and just to twist the knife further, I would have to watch the others feed from her narrow, blue-veined wrist, and there wouldn’t be a thing I could do about it, even as my atavistic blood roared in response.

And I had hurt her. When I’d returned from sealing the wall, I’d found her down by the edge of the water, sitting back on her knees, Tamlel’s head in her lap while he drank from her. She was pale and dizzy from blood loss, and rage had swept over me, a killing rage that had only just abated. I’d ripped her away from Tamlel, too blind with jealous fury to realize what I was doing.

I’m not sure what I would have done to Tamlel if I hadn’t heard her quiet moan. I spun around in the blood-soaked sand to see her lying against a rock, and guilt and panic swept away the rage. The healers were too busy with the dying to help her—all I could do was bring her back to my rooms and tend to her as best I could, washing the blood and gore from her, letting my hands soothe and heal her. We all had healing power, some more than others, and it was always stronger with our mates. I should have known, when I’d held her hands and healed them, that she was mine.

I had known. I had just refused to face it.

I still didn’t want to. Uriel must have known she was my mate. Her sins were too slight to deserve either an escort or a sentence to the flames. Uriel had assumed I would follow orders and throw her over the precipice, denying the Fallen their next Source. So that when his traitor let the Nephilim in, there’d be no one for the survivors.

I didn’t know how much she was reading from me. We were too new—her sense of me would deepen, and then the natural boundaries would develop.

Whatever she could hear from me, she didn’t like it.

She backed away when I tried to touch her, shaking her head. “You hate me,” she said flatly.

I controlled my flare of irritation. Of course she thought so—my anger was so powerful it would swamp any other feeling. “No I don’t,” I said, trying to sound reasonable and failing.

“I’m not doing this.” She was close to tears, which surprised me. Throughout the last few days, no matter what she’d had to deal with, I’d never seen her cry, something I was profoundly grateful for. I hated it when women cried.

“Yes,” I said. “You are.” And before she could avoid me, I scooped her up under her arms from behind and soared upward, deliberately keeping her mind open, not shutting it down as I had the last time I flew with her.

I heard her gasp over the sound of the wind as it rushed past us. I crossed my arms over her chest, holding her against me, and I could feel her heart racing. She was warm against me, despite the cool air, and after a moment I felt her stiffness relax so that she flowed against me, sweetly, like a reed in the water, and her skirts covered my legs as we climbed higher.

I’d only meant to take her as far as our apartment on the top floor, but the moment I felt her joy I changed my mind. I soared over the huge old house, turning right to avoid the oily smoke of the funeral pyre, heading deeper into the virgin forests with their dark trees, past sparkling water. I rose above the mist, where the sun was bright overhead, warming me, and I let that warmth flow to her, sending tendrils of heat throughout her before she could be chilled by the atmosphere. We went up, way up, over the peak of the mountain, and out of instinct I called for Lucifer’s faint voice. Uriel’s plans had worked well—

the fierceness of the Nephilim attack had kept us all too busy to search for the one man who could save us. I called, but there was no faint whisper. For once all I could hear was Allie’s longing, singing to me, her body dancing with mine even as her mind still fought it.

We banked, passing a startled flock of Canada geese, and I felt her laugh against me, felt the sheer joy that suffused her, just as it suffused me when I flew, and my arms tightened imperceptibly, holding her even closer, somehow wanting to absorb her into my bones.

My wings spread out around us as I headed back toward the house. Allie was relaxed now, warm and soft and yielding against me, and I knew the unexpected flight had been a wise idea. Not that she wouldn’t be ready to fight me all over again, the moment we set down. But at least for now she had accepted my strength, accepted my touch. She would again.

I landed on the narrow ledge lightly enough, planning to hold on to her until my wings had folded in, but standing still on the terrace felt too good, and instead I put my face against her neck, breathing in the sweet smell of her, until she panicked and jumped away, turning to stare up at me with an expression of shock.

Which wasn’t surprising. My wings were particularly impressive—an iridescent cobalt blue veined with black, they were emblematic of one rule of the Fallen. The longer we’d lived, the more ornate were our wings. The newly fallen had pure-white wings. Lucifer, the First, had wings of pure black. I was somewhere in between.

I let them fold back into place, hoping this would be enough to calm her, but she still stared at me. Her unexpected tears had dried, thank God, and she was ready for battle. I could still feel the lingering trace of her pleasure at our flight, and I stifled a grin. No one had ever enjoyed flying in my arms before, and it was almost as heady an experience for me.

“All right,” she said. “What are we going to do about this mess?” She’d decided to be reasonable. I could sense it, sense her struggling for her usual pragmatism. No problem was ever so big that it couldn’t be solved, she was thinking. There had to be a way around this.

“There isn’t,” I said. “We’re talking about forces beyond your comprehension. Things that can’t be reasoned with.”

She didn’t snap at me for reading her. “In other words, we’re trapped.”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t like it?”

I could feel the too-familiar rage simmer inside me. I had never had to share my mate, ever, throughout the endless years of eternity. Only Azazel had wed the Source, and I could remember only too well the difficulties during times of transition. Difficulties I’d attributed to grief and the usual problems in a new relationship. Now I wondered.

“You don’t need to answer,” she said glumly. “I can feel it.” She was misreading me again, mistaking my anger at sharing her for a rebellion against her as my wife. I looked at her, and a stray memory surfaced.

“Where did you grow up?” I demanded, more intent on answers than on soothing her wounded pride. I could take care of that quite effectively when I got her into bed.

“I’m not going to bed with you.”

I laughed, which startled her. She expected that her ability to read me would be annoying, but by now it was just the opposite. It was proof that whether I liked it or not, she was mine, just as I was hers. “You grew up in Rhode Island, didn’t you?” I said, ignoring her protest.

“You already know everything about me, including the number of men I’ve slept with and whether I enjoyed it or not,” she said bitterly.

“I never paid attention to your childhood,” I said. I remembered her. She’d been seven years old, sitting alone outside a small house near Providence.

Her long brown hair had been in braids, her mouth set in a thin line, and I could see the tracks of her tears as they’d run down her dirty face. She was using a stick to dig in the dirt, ignoring an angry voice that came from the house. I’d stopped to look at her, and she’d seen me, and for a moment her eyes widened in wonder and her pout disappeared.

I knew why. Children saw us differently. They knew we were no threat to them, and when they looked they knew who we were, instinctively.

Allie Watson had looked at me and smiled, her misery momentarily vanishing.

I should have known then.

I saw her again when she was thirteen, and too old to see who I really was. I hadn’t expected to see her, and when I did I moved back into the shadows so she wouldn’t notice me. She was angry, rebellious, storming out of a store in front of a woman who was praying loudly and calling upon Jesus to spare her such a worthless, ungrateful daughter.

I’d wanted to grab the woman, slam her against the wall, and inform her that Jesus was far more likely to spare the daughter such a harridan of a mother; but I didn’t move, watching as they got into a car, the mother tearing off into traffic, her bitter mouth still working as Allie looked out the window, trying to shut her out.

That’s when she saw me again. Even in the shadows, her young eyes had picked me out, and for a moment her face softened as if in recognition, and she lifted a hand.

And then the car sped around a corner, and she was gone.

I should have known then. Instead, like a coward I’d blotted it out of my mind. I’d been shown her early on so that I could look out for her, keep her safe, but I’d been too determined not to fall into that trap again, and I’d turned my back on her.

I should have come for her when she was ready. My instincts would have told me—it might have been when she was eighteen or when she was twenty.

Instead I’d wasted all those years, when she could have been here, and safe.

“What the hell are you talking about?” she said. “Or thinking about—whatever. Why would I want to be here? I want to go back to my old life. I want to write books, and go out to lunch, and have lovers, and wear my own clothes. I—don’t—want—to—be—here,” she enunciated. “Is that clear enough for you?”

I moved past her, climbing back into the apartment, knowing she’d follow. I didn’t bother checking to see if the door was locked—no one, not even Azazel, would climb the stairs and interrupt us.

She came after me, of course. She watched, silent, as I found a bottle of wine and opened it, pouring us each a glass. I handed her one, and she took it, and for a moment I wondered if she was going to throw it in my face in the kind of dramatic gesture she was fond of.

“No,” she said, reading me, and went to sit on one of the sofas. “But I won’t say I’m not tempted.”

It had been so long since anyone had been able to read me that it was going to take some getting used to. She was already far too adept at it, considering how little sexual congress we’d actually indulged in. And I hadn’t fed from her.

I wouldn’t feed from her. Once I did, there’d be no going back, and there was just enough resistance left inside me to hold out that hope. At least for a little bit longer. Besides, she was still weak from Tamlel’s clumsiness, though I could sense her strength returning. That was one more sign that she was the Source. Her ability to bounce back from blood loss.

“You can’t go back to your old life, Allie,” I said wearily. “How many times do I have to explain this to you? You died. It happens to people all the time.

You don’t get a happy-ever-after with a prince, riding into the sunset. You don’t get a house with a white picket fence and two-point-three children. You won’t have any children, ever. You died too young for all those things.”

I heard her quick intake of breath, a sound of pain that she tried to hide from me. I would have thought she wouldn’t care about being a mother. I was wrong. About this, about so many things.

“So instead I get to be the meal plan for a bunch of vampires? Whoopee. Do I get weekly transfusions?”

I felt the now-familiar flare of anger at the thought, but I tamped it down. “You won’t need them. The Source provides blood for those who are unbonded, but the amount is minimal, the occasion is surrounded by ritual, and you won’t be called upon to serve more than once a month.” The moment I said it, I knew it was a bad choice of words.

“Serve?” she said. “Like a waitress with a hearty meal?”

She was doing her best to anger me, and she was succeeding. “No. Like someone with a higher calling.”

“Feeding blood to vampires is a higher calling?”

“Giving life to the Fallen is a higher calling. And the term is blood-eaters.”

“I don’t care what the term is, you’re vampires.”

I ground my teeth. She really did have an extraordinary ability to get under my skin, when I’d managed to be impervious to everything and everyone for so long. She was bringing me back to life, and reanimating the dead was always painful.

“Fine,” I said. “We’re vampires. Get over it.”

“What did you do in the past when the Source died? Did one of you have to quick find a willing sacrifice?”

Beneath her hostility I could sense a real concern, and I decided to answer her. “Azazel has been the only one married to the Source. The Source has never died suddenly—it was always natural causes and there was plenty of warning. The healers . . .” I wasn’t sure how I was going to phrase this, but Allie filched the image out of my mind.

“They take blood from her at regular intervals and store it,” she supplied. “How charming. So how long does Azazel get to mourn? How long before Sarah is replaced by some nubile young thing?”

“He has always had enough time to grieve. With Sarah it will be a problem. I don’t know how long it will take him to recover from her loss.”

“He’s had enough practice,” she said, her voice brutal. “So why me? And don’t give me that crap about being bonded mates—you and I both know that’s impossible. We don’t even like each other.”

I resisted the impulse to smile. She was putting so much effort into keeping me at a distance. She didn’t want me anywhere near her. She didn’t want me pushing her down among the pure white sheets, moving down her sweet, gorgeous body, tasting her, my hands on her thighs, my mouth—

“Don’t do that!” she said, shaken. She was searching for some way to stop me, some kind of insult. “After two nights ago, I thought you didn’t believe in foreplay.”

“Was I too fast for you?” I said, unruffled. “It seemed to me you were right there along with me. Are you telling me you didn’t like it?”

“Of course not!” she snapped. “I’m just saying that women like to be wooed, slowly and respectfully.”

I laughed. “So those orgasms were faked? You’re able to control your body that well? I must admit I’m impressed. And clearly my information was incorrect—it said you only climaxed by yourself. Which, by the way, is considered a sin by some scholars, but which we embrace enthusiastically.”

She was blushing, and I couldn’t resist her. “Come to bed with me,” I said, rising and holding out my hand.

She just looked at me, mutinous. “So you can feed on my wrist? You may as well do it here.”

“No.” Again I felt that little growl that seemed to come from nowhere. The growl I knew she sensed, and which frightened her. I struggled to control it. “I won’t take your blood. If I did, it would be from an artery, not a vein.”

“Ew,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “What if you screw up your anatomy lessons?”

“I can hear the difference,” I said. “But it’s not going to happen.”

“Why won’t you take my blood? If I’m your supposed mate, what’s stopping you? Everyone else will be having a go at me.”

“It’s not a good idea.”

She looked at me, long and hard, and the conclusions she was jumping to were a mishmash in her brain. “Fine,” she said, rising. “You can sleep on the couch.” And she started for the bedroom.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I WASN’T GOING TO SLAM THE DOOR, I was going to close it quietly and forcefully, indicating dignified displeasure, but he was already there, his hand yanking it open. “I’m not sleeping on the couch.”

“All right,” I said. “I will.” I started past him, but he caught me, spinning me around and pulling me against him, his strong arms imprisoning me.

I didn’t like being controlled. At least, not really. There was a tiny little shiver of erotic reaction as my body was clamped against his, and for a brief moment I took that pleasure, even though I knew I shouldn’t. I looked up at him, so close, so damnably, deliciously close.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said, and bent his head and kissed me.

So, okay, I liked kissing him. I know I should have stayed still, and I tried, I really did. But he cupped my chin, his long fingers gently stroking my face, and his mouth was soft, damp, and really, how could I resist? Because the brutal truth was, I felt more for him than I’d felt for anyone in my entire life. He was mine, even if I was afraid he still wanted to wiggle out of it. He was mine.

I softened against him, and he released my wrists, knowing I wasn’t going to hit him. I slid my arms around his waist, pulling him closer, and rose on my toes so that I could reach him better, so that I could press my breasts against his hard chest, so I could sink into the heat of him.

He picked me up effortlessly. Yes, I knew he was supernaturally strong, but I still loved it, loved feeling delicate and weightless when I’d always felt clumsy. He thought I was luscious. I knew that, even as my doubts tried to discount it. He thought my soft, rounded body was irresistibly erotic. And I felt my blood heat, flowing through me like a river of pleasure; I wanted his touch, wanted his mouth on me, wanted everything.

He carried me into the bedroom. The light was muted through the bank of windows, and the awful stench was gone. Instead it smelled like cinnamon and spice, like Raziel’s warm flesh and something underneath it, something hot and rich. He set me down on the bed, and this time I didn’t try to jump up again, didn’t try to argue or to fight, with his hands on me, unfastening the white tunic and pulling it over my head. He kissed my mouth, he kissed the swell of my breasts above the lacy bra, he let his tongue dance across my lace-covered nipple before fastening his mouth on it. I let out a quiet moan of delight.

I’d never known my breasts were so sensitive. When other men had touched them it seemed simply part of the process, but when Raziel put his mouth on me—

He lifted his head, and his eyes were dark and glittery. “Stop thinking about other men,” he said, his voice close to a growl. I wondered if I was supposed to be afraid of him.

“No,” he said. “I won’t hurt you. I would never hurt you.”

I caught the strain of guilt and regret. He’d thrown me away from Tamlel, and I’d been knocked unconscious. I said nothing. His deep sorrow over what had been an accident was enough to assure me that I was safe. Whatever rage lived inside him, and I could feel it simmering, it would never be turned on me. He pushed me back on the bed and I went, letting my eyes drift closed as he pulled the loose white pants off. He took the underwear as well, a little sooner than I was comfortable with, and flicked off the bra with a practiced hand. Well, of course he was practiced—he’d had thousands of years—

“They’ve only had bras for the last hundred years,” he murmured against my skin, and his voice was thick with longing.

“Stop reading my mind,” I protested, though my languorous voice was far from harsh.

“It’s half the fun,” he said, and I felt his mouth on my stomach, moving downward. I knew where he was going, and I knew I shouldn’t mind. He thought he’d be doing something nice for me, when in actuality it had always left me unmoved. I sort of hated having him go to all that effort when I didn’t particularly like it, but I didn’t want to discourage him—

“You’ll like it,” he said, his long hands on my thighs, parting them, and he put his mouth on me, his tongue, and while I was telling myself to humor him the first shiver of reaction hit me by surprise.

I squeaked, and I could sense his amusement, but he didn’t stop what he was doing, thank God, and I reached down and threaded my fingers through his hair, caressing him as he let his tongue flick across my clitoris. I let out a low, mewling noise, arching my hips, and his hands were there as well, long fingers sliding inside me, a gently thrusting promise of things to come, as his tongue worked its wicked magic. And then he used his teeth, gently, and I exploded.

Oh, he was a very bad man. He wouldn’t let me savor the first rush of climax; instead he had to draw it out, to keep touching me, licking me, biting me, so that wave after wave swept over me and my body went rigid, every nerve ending spiking, and I think I must have cried out, begging him to let me alone, begging him not to stop, begging him . . .

I collapsed against the bed, breathless, trying to control the sobs that were in my throat. He wiped his mouth on the sheet and moved up beside me, still fully dressed, and I wanted to put my hands on him, strip the clothing away, but for the moment I couldn’t move.

He laughed, a soft, enticing sound. “That’s all right. I know how to undress myself.” He stripped off the black T-shirt, then reached for his jeans.

He was so fucking beautiful. But then, angels were supposed to be, weren’t they? Long, graceful limbs, beautiful pale skin stretched over taut muscles.

He was already erect, and I wanted to touch him, wanted my mouth on him where I’d never put my mouth on anyone.

The last stray shudders were finally ebbing away, but I still felt weak, exhausted, strangely on the edge of tears when I never cried. “Take your time,” he said, stretching out beside me, letting his hand trace the plumpness of my breast. “We’re not in any hurry.”

“Maybe you’re not,” I managed to mutter. “You’re eternal. I’m not.”

It was the wrong thing to say. The playful expression on his face vanished, and darkness closed down. He started to pull away, but I shook off the last of my malaise and grabbed his arm, drawing him back. “Look, it’s just me. There’s no need to go all broody about it. It’s not like I’m the great love of your life.”

I could feel his anger again, but this time it didn’t frighten me. He caught me, rolling me underneath him. “You idiot,” he said. “Don’t you understand anything about this?”

“That you go through women every century or so? Sure, I get it. And you said Azazel and Sarah were an anomaly, so I assume once I hit my forties or fifties you’ll be turning your attentions elsewhere, and—”

“You don’t know anything,” he said brutally. “We’re bound together, you and I. It’s not casual, it’s not until you grow old. It’s not ‘just you.’ It is you. Why do you think I’ve fought it so hard? From now on, you’re the most important thing in my life, whether I want it that way or not.”

It still sounded to me like he didn’t really want me, that some cosmic jester was playing a game with him, tying him to me when he would rather have been with someone else.

“No,” he said, reading me again. “You’re missing the point. I didn’t want to care about anyone this way, ever again. The loss is too hard. If I think about losing you, it makes me crazy with grief and pain. I can’t lose you.”

“Just because someone put a whammy on you—” I began, prepared to argue my point.

“No one put a ‘whammy’ on me, whatever the hell that is. We were destined, and I was a fool to try to fight it. If I hadn’t been so determined to stay alone, I would have saved us both a lot of trouble. Look into my eyes, Allie. Look deeply. You know me.”

He was making me nervous, and I skittered away from the memories I was afraid to face.

“You know me,” he said again, and I looked deep into his black, striated eyes, and remembered.

Sitting alone in the yard, listening to my mother scream at me from the living room, hugging myself, and he was there, and I didn’t feel alone. And later, when my mother dragged me from the drugstore where I’d been looking at makeup, I saw him again. And remembered him, even when he wasn’t there, and somehow I managed to withstand the rage and the lectures, knowing he was there. And my throat burned.

“I should have come for you sooner, Allie,” he said gently. “If I hadn’t been fighting it so hard, I would have been there. As it was, I didn’t even recognize you.”

I wasn’t going to cry. “But you still want to escape,” I said. “You still want to break this . . . connection.”

He hesitated, and that hesitation was enough to tell me I was right. “It’s not that simple,” he said finally. “You’ve been through a lot. I don’t think you’re ready.”

“Don’t tell me what I’m ready for,” I said. “I know what I feel. And all I want to feel is you.” And I moved up and put my hand on his chest, pushing him back on the bed.

He was warm, almost hot, and his skin was smooth and taut. I leaned over and kissed him, just the briefest brush of my lips against his mouth, and when he would have deepened it I moved away, letting my mouth trail down the side of his neck, kissing him where he’d tasted me, where he would have bitten me if he’d really wanted me forever.

But he wasn’t going to sense that. I kept my mind filled with images of him and me, images and words and all the reactions of the senses, taste, touch, smell as well as sight and sound. I could hear his heart pounding, the blood pouring through his body, and there was something unbearably erotic about it.

I moved my mouth down, down, not quite sure how to go about it. I’d seen porn at Jason’s insistence, so I knew the mechanics, but I didn’t want to follow that energetic example. Instead I wanted to explore him, carefully, using my tongue, tracing the blue veins, the thick, hard weight of him, closing my mouth around the head and sucking it gently, until I heard his moan of such blind surrender that waves of sexual delight danced through me, and I wanted more of him, wanted to pull and suck on him, wanted all of him in my mouth, and his groan sent shivers of pleasure through me.

He pulled me away, breathless, hauling me up to look at him. “Not that way,” he said. “Not this time.” And he pulled me under him, his mouth closing over mine.

I was shaking again by the time he moved his mouth. Could I come just from kissing him? Could I come from simply putting my mouth on him? Climaxes were there, just out of reach, almost ready, and my hands were trembling. It was too much. Panic was suddenly beating around me, and I tried to scramble away from him.

“I can’t,” I said in sudden fear. “I really can’t.” And I tried to get off the bed.

He caught me at the edge, pulling me back underneath him so that I was facedown on the bed, my mouth against the linen sheets that smelled of lavender and spice and something even more elemental. “Yes you can,” he said with simple truth, and he slid his arm under my stomach, pulling me up to my hands and knees.

I knew what he was going to do, and I was past the point of having expectations. I wanted whatever he wanted, and if he was going to take me this way I would revel in it. I could feel him against my sex, hot and solid and still wet from my mouth, and even at that angle he slid in smoothly, filling me, and I let out a strangled cry at the thick invasion that twisted at my heart. The different angle made it feel new, strange, incredibly powerful, and almost more than I could bear.

He took one of my hands and pulled it behind me, placing it on his cock, and I realized to my dismay that even though I felt completely filled, there was a goodly amount still waiting. I let my fingers wrap around him, and I wanted more. I wanted all of it. All of him. Everything.

“Allie,” he breathed, a sound of regret and longing. “I don’t think I can stop if you need me to.”

“I don’t need you to,” I said, trying to push back at him, trying to get more of him. “I won’t break, you know. I just need you.”

He groaned, and pushed in, deeper, harder, and he felt huge, almost more than I could handle. Almost.

“More,” I whispered, and he thrust.

I let out a little cry, a mixture of pain and surprise, as he somehow managed to sheath himself all the way inside me, and I could feel him against my womb, and I wanted his child in there, wanted it so desperately.

But I could never have it. No children, no family, no cottage with a white picket fence.

But I could have him, all of him, and I let out a soft grunt of satisfaction as I took him. He was mine, I reminded myself. Even if he was looking for an escape clause, I had taken him, everything, inside me. He was mine.

He pounded into me, a heavy dark rhythm that was like drumbeats from the heart of Africa. The drums of the gods. And I couldn’t stop the shudders rushing through me, mini-climaxes that were building, and his hand went between my legs, his fingers touching me, and I screamed, putting my head down, my face into the sheets as I gave in to the wildness and power, the animal need washing through me. I gave myself to him with complete trust, no longer thinking, no longer doubting. He would keep me safe, he would stop when I had more than I could handle, he would know.

Again. And again. And again, he thrust into me, and each hard push made me shatter, over and over, until I couldn’t think, couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, I was nothing but a seething mass of sensation.

He pulled out and I raised my head and cried out from the loss of him, but he simply turned me underneath him, pushing inside me again, deep, so deep. “I want to look at you when I come,” he said, his voice a low growl, holding very still inside me.