Claimed by Angels & Demons: Book 1 (7 page)

The muttering from the corner of the room continued, rhythmic and pulsing, seeming to vibrate through me, like standing in the surf and being hit by wave after relentless wave. I wanted to get away, I wanted to wake up. I closed my eyes and desperately willed myself awake, pushing and scratching at the darkness that held me under, until finally I broke free.

I woke sitting up, screaming in terror, drenched in sweat. I looked around wildly for the red eyes, but there was nothing except my familiar room, lit by a faint bit of light from the window. There's nothing here, I told myself, it's just me, I'm okay, it was just a dream. I slowed my breathing down, from panting gasps to just hard breathing. What the hell had that been?

My door burst open and I just about screamed again, but it was just Kat. She stopped halfway to my bed, "are you okay?" The fright was evident in her voice.

I nodded my head and tried to catch my breath, "just a nightmare," I said, "was I screaming?"

"Screaming doesn't even begin to cover it, that was the most terrifying thing I've ever heard. I thought someone was murdering you in here."

"Sorry, it was just a dream. I think. It's fine though, go back to bed."

"Are you sure?"

"Yea I'm okay, really."

Kat gave me one last long look. "Okay, if you're sure," and then left again, closing the door behind her.

Was I really okay? I had no idea. I hadn't had a nightmare since I'd believed in the bogeyman. Normally I didn't even remember my dreams, but I didn't think I would ever forget whatever that had been. Was this some part of becoming a witch? Had I triggered something when I started using my powers? It had seemed like so much more than a nightmare, like a dream that had been invaded by an outside force. Something evil. It had all started out so well with Gabriel taking me in his arms, and then that thing, those eyes, had gain control somehow, and corrupted the whole thing. Was that just an elaborate nightmare, or something more?

I spent the last couple hours of darkness laying in bed, not able to get back to sleep and not really wanting to go back to sleep, obsessing on whatever had happened. It had all seemed so real, but in the light of morning the idea of some sort of entity invading and taking control of my dream seemed a little absurd. Angels and witches, sure, but weird, dream invading red eyes? It seemed so implausible, even for the crazy supernatural world that I was getting dragged in to.

By the time I was eating breakfast, I was sure the whole thing had just been a strange nightmare. I had been introduced to all this crazy supernatural stuff and my imagination had gotten the better of me. I had overreacted. I left before Kat or Tim got up, embarrassed that I had been screaming my lungs out in the middle of the night.

Chapter Five

I was driving to Spiritual Dispersion Services to beg Henrietta to at least talk to me for a few minutes when I sensed something happening beside me, in the car. I looked over just in time to see someone materializing in the passenger's seat. I screamed and completely lost focus, swerving in to the oncoming lane of traffic. Fortunately it was too early for there to be many other drivers out, and I didn't kill myself in a head-on collision. Once I had my car back in the proper lane I glanced over again and saw Gabriel, now fully formed. "What the hell is wrong with you, I'm driving here, I could have hit someone!"

"Yes," Gabriel said, "you humans seem to crash these vessels often."

His damned distant and controlled routine was so aggravating. I wanted some emotion, I wanted the Gabriel I had met at the Barlow's house. "I'm a great driver,
you're
the problem. What the hell do you want anyway?" I really hoped he hadn't already reached some sort of conclusion on whether I was too dangerous to live. I needed more time.

"Have you learned anything more, about your mother, or your father?"

I laughed "do you know how many years I spent looking for my Mom, or for any hint of who my Dad might be? No, believe it or not I didn't learn anything new in the last twelve hours." And I wouldn't have told him even if I had. I pulled the car over to the side of the road so I didn't risk an accident. Just remembering what looking into Gabriel's eyes had done to me the day before, well I had had trouble remaining standing, let alone driving. "But I do have some questions for you."

"I may or may not answer your questions human." He said human the way I said cockroach.

"For starters my name is Layla, not human. Layla. And anyway aren't I one of the Nephilim, which means I'm not a human?"

"You witches, as you call yourselves, are pale shadows of the original sons and daughters of the Nephilim. You are not worthy of the name. Though I will grant that you are an exception," Gabriel glanced over and I swear there was just the hint of a smile, "Layla." There it was again, the hint of a personality beneath the cool and reserved outer shell. And there was something incredibly sexy about hearing my name come from his lips.

"Yesterday you seemed convinced that I was someone named Seffora. Who was she?" I was trying to get some information but trying to get a reaction too. I wanted to know if he had only looked at me the way he did because of my resemblance to Seffora, or if because there was something else there, something between him and me. Because I had known since that first moment that our eyes met in the Barlow's house that I wanted him, but I wasn't going to just throw myself at him and make an idiot of myself if he didn't feel the same way. There hadn't been any hint that he had any feelings for me yesterday at the Spiritual Dispersion Services warehouse, but I guess I was just a glutton for rejection.

Gabriel let out a long, slow sigh, "yes, I do apologize for how I... lost control of myself. I was struck by your resemblance to a woman that I knew long ago, a woman that meant a great deal to me. But she is dead. And you are not her."

Of course I wasn't her. I felt like an idiot, imagining all these feelings that he might have for me when in reality there was nothing between us but a case of mistaken identity. I needed to grow up, stop gazing at Gabriel like some love-sick teen and remember that my life was on the line here. "Well maybe I'm related to Seffora, like a descendant?" I ventured. "Could that have something to do with my special powers?"

"That is not possible," Gabriel said, "Seffora had no children. Her line ended with her."

I got lost in his face again. His eyes, the waves of his hair, the strong line of his shoulder as he stared forward through the windshield, lost in his memories. I wanted so badly for him to look at me again like he had that first time. I blinked and tried to snap out of it. What was wrong with me? He was good looking, there was no doubt of that, but this was something else entirely, like a physical pull. Maybe angels were just super attractive, like vampires always were in the movies, or they had crazy pheromones, or something. Whatever it was I needed to snap out of it and learn more about Seffora. "You loved her," I said, not so much asking as stating.

"She was the first human that I loved. And the last." He looked at me and then glanced away again. "This is immaterial, we should be speaking of you, not me."

"I know," I said, "it's just when you said I looked like someone you had known, I thought there could be a connection there, that it might be able to add some context. Background. Something."

"I thought a great deal about the possibility of some familial connection between you and her while you slept. In truth it would explain a great deal, but it's not possible. As I said she died childless, and was the last of her name. It must be only a coincidence."

"Hmm," I said, barely listening, lost again gazing at Gabriel, practically licking my lips.

"What is it?" he said.

"Huh?"

"You keep staring at me, is there something the matter?"

"I just... I want to try something." I unclipped my seatbelt, my mind blurry in a carnal haze, and leaned over to him, reaching for his face, pulling him in towards me, reaching for his lips with mine, the whole thing like a dream where I was watching myself from outside my own body, powerless to stop myself. Not that I really wanted this to stop.

And Gabriel began to lean in, to kiss me back, but stopped at the last second, a hand on my shoulder, forcing me back. "No," he said.

"I"m sorry," I said, more rattled than I was letting on, "I don't know what came over me, I just..."

"You may find yourself attracted to my corporeal form," he said, his voice cold and soft and barely controlled, "but don't presume to act on your attractions human. Fraternization between humans and angels is strictly forbidden. If we were discovered we would both be condemned to an eternity in hell."

"Oh are we going to pretend like you weren't leaning in to kiss me too?" I said, ignoring all his biblical consequences nonsense. "I think I'd like to ask
you
to not act on any of
your
attractions. I don't want anything to do with someone who thinks so damned much of themselves."

His voice was cool but I could see the fury in his black eyes, "most of your kind show deference and respect when engaging with my kind. I realize you are barely out of adolescence but you would do well to keep that in mind."

"Oh so sorry your lordship," I said, mocking him, remembering what Henrietta had called Gabriel the other day, "I'd curtsy too if I wasn't already sitting down."

He was really angry now and I was beginning to think my big mouth had gotten me in trouble one more time when he reached for me. My first thought was that that was it, I had talked myself in to a premature death with one too many sarcastic jibes. But instead he grasped my neck and pulled me in, his lips soft but forceful and full of passion on mine, and after the shock of it wore off I opened my mouth and kissed him back, but it was only a moment before he let go of my head and fell back in his seat, staring out the front windshield.

It had been an amazing kiss, an electric and raw kiss, and I immediately wanted more. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing kissing me like that?" I said, more than a little flustered.

"You tried to kiss me first human," he said, his eyes drilling in to mine.

"Quit it with that human bullshit," I said, "I have a name. Use it."

"You are infuriating," he said, his voice deep and ragged and full of fury. "I have been attempting to ignore my feelings for you but you make it impossible. And then you tempt me by just throwing yourself at me like that," and then before I could yell at him some more for insinuating that I had thrown myself at him he leaned across the center console and pulled my face onto his again, forcing his lips on to mine. I couldn't make up my mind between kissing him back and being angry with him for kissing me in the first place. It was like there were two forces battling inside of me for control, making me into a ragged ball of raw feelings and emotions. I felt like a character in a soap opera. But his lips were bliss, and I surrendered to his kiss, wrapping my own hands around the back of his neck. He skin felt silky smooth, and cool to the touch.

But just as I was beginning to really enjoy myself Gabriel let me go and fell back into the passenger's seat yet again, his breathing ragged, his cold, composed outer shell completely shattered. "What have I done?" he said, like kissing me was some terrible crime.

"Oh what, is God going to zap us with lightning bolts now just because we kissed?"

"You should not make light of forces you don't understand human."

"Layla!" I said, sitting up and turning to look at him, instantly furious, "my name is Layla, and if you refer to me as human one more time I'll be the one zapping your ass with a lightning bolt."

"You should know,
Layla
," he said, "that when I lost Seffora I did not think that I would ever love another living thing as much as I loved her. But you..." He didn't finish the sentence, just shook his head and huffed.

"Wait, what are you saying" I said, a little nervous, "that you love me or something? Because I don't know how things work up in heaven, but down here on earth we don't just go around telling people we barely know that we love them. Even if they are really, really good kissers."

"You exasperate me in the same way that she did, that is for certain. And that face," he gave me the most tortured look and sighed, "how is it that you have her face?"

How was I supposed to know the answer to that? "Maybe your memory of her is faded, and it only seems like I look like her because I remind you of her." I was really, really hoping that he was going to say yes, that's exactly what it is, why didn't I think of that before?

"I will never forget her face," Gabriel said. "I remembered it in excruciating detail the day after she died, just as I remember it now, and in a hundred thousand years, when I have forgotten everything else from this era, her face will still be etched in my mind."

I sat there in silence for a long moment, trying and failing to contemplate that kind of love. "But I'm not her," I said, making sure he still understood that.

"Angels were never meant to love another being, at least not in the romantic sense of the word love. But Seffora was special, she made me feel love." Gabriel looked over at me, "I know that you are not her, but nevertheless there is something special about you, just as there was something special about Seffora."

"That's...," I didn't have the words to express what I was thinking, what I was feeling. The truth that I could only just barely admit to myself was that I felt it too. Love, like an almost physical sensation, like a need. Like fate was entwining us together. But I just couldn't bring myself to say it out loud.

"But if you think that you can manipulate my feelings for you to spare your life, you will be sadly mistaken," Gabriel said. "I loved Seffora, but she was too powerful to be allowed to live and I had no choice but to kill her. And if I find that you are too powerful to exist on the earthly plane I won't hesitate to kill you as well. It is of paramount importance that the humans are never more powerful than the hosts of heaven on this plane. I was tasked by God with ensuring that balance of power, and I
will
keep it."