Death's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels (17 page)

And then Sophie moved again, this time turning her head and opening her eyes. She looked right at him, her golden gaze unfocused at first. Azrael froze, disbelieving what he was seeing. He had her under his control—how was she coming out of the sleep he had forced on her?

It wasn’t possible.

“Az?” she asked groggily, her brow furrowing in confusion as he no doubt came into focus.

Az shoved his fangs back into his gums and hurriedly closed his eyes, not wanting her to see what was most likely a red glow at the center of his pitch-black pupils.

“What . . .”

He felt her move under him and chanced opening his eyes. His vision had returned to normal. Sophie was looking around, taking in the massive bed, stone walls, and flickering torches.

“What happened? Where are we?” she asked. Then she was looking at him again, and the confusion in her face made his heart ache. “What happened to the boat?”

Azrael thought fast. “You fell asleep on the deck, so I let you sleep and brought you here.”

Sophie started to sit up and Azrael moved back out of the way, allowing her room.

“No,” she said, shaking her head and holding her hand to her temple. She frowned, blinked, and stared unseeing at the black comforter beneath her. “No, that’s not right,” she insisted. “I saw it destroyed.”

Shock buzz-sawed through Azrael.
Impossible
,
he thought. He’d asserted his influence on her mind the moment he’d heard the sound of the crash up on the bridge. How could she be aware of what had happened to the
Calliope
?

And worse—if she recalled that, did she recall everything else? Like . . . him taking to the skies with her, for instance?

“Someone was hurt,” she went on. And as she said it, she climbed farther up, coming to her knees beside him. She seemed panicked suddenly. “We have to help them. Did we help them? Did we heal them?” She looked at Azrael, her gold eyes catching his in their sunshine warmth. “Az, what happened? And . . . oh my God,” she whispered, her hand dropping to the mattress beside her. “You . . . can fly?” Her expression was one of awe. “Without your wings?”

Chapter Sixteen

T
he events of the last hour were a blur to Sophie, but she recalled them clearly enough to know that something bad had happened. She’d been standing on the deck of the
Calliope
—kissing Azrael. And then there’d been a noise. It was distant, but jarring. She remembered looking up in time to see something fall.

Then there’d been a blur and another horrible crashing sound, this one much louder than the first. She had looked down to see Azrael’s boat in ruins, its fragments sinking along with the thing that had destroyed it—a truck. At least, she thought it was a truck. This was where the blur became thicker, like a fog obscuring the picture of her past.

But through the mists, she was hyper-aware of one vital fact: People had been hurt and they needed to be healed.

Healed.

That was the thought that had gone through her head. She’d known they needed
healing
. Not necessarily a doctor or an ambulance or a hospital. Just healing. And the most confounding thing about it was that she’d known—she’d absolutely
known
—that she could provide this healing herself. With her own two hands.

She remembered wanting to dive into the water after whoever it was that was undoubtedly sinking to the bottom of the bay. But something was stopping her. It was solid and yet insubstantial. It was strong but intangible. She felt pulled along in some kind of tide she couldn’t fight. Her body wouldn’t listen. Her mind didn’t comprehend.

Her hands felt warm and her heart was hammering and she so desperately wanted to get to the injured parties, she would have traded her left pinky to be able to do so. But she couldn’t
find
the injured people. She couldn’t touch them. She could barely even see.

And then she was slip-sliding into blackness and as she did, she knew any hope she had of helping anyone was slip-sliding inexorably along with her.

Now clarity was returning and a cold numbness was setting in. She felt slightly sick, slightly edgy. She didn’t recognize her surroundings and what she was recalling made no sense.

Either she was going nuts or she had just seen a horrible accident and Azrael had wrapped her in his arms—and taken to the sky with her.

She’d felt the deck of the boat leave her shoes; the solidness of it beneath her was gone. The wind in her hair felt different, as if the air was cocooned around her, supporting her weight. She’d been flying. It was impossible, but it was as insistent a memory as was the rest of the night.

Az told her she’d fallen asleep. If he was right, then she’d dreamed the things she’d seen and felt. But in her heart of hearts, deep down where she knew things really mattered—she knew that she hadn’t. The boat was destroyed. Something bad had happened, and someone was hurt. And she would bet everything she had, what little it was, that Az had taken her flying.

The archangel sitting beside her had fallen oddly silent, and he was gazing at her now with an enigmatic expression on his face. She had no idea what he might be thinking. “Az, what happened? Please tell me the truth. What’s going on? And . . .” She paused as she looked around at the bed she was sitting on and the torch-lit cave it furnished. “Where are we?”

It was a long, painful while before he said anything. She could see the light dance across his eyes, some of it a reflection of the flames on the torches along the walls, some of it his own internal fire. And then, finally, he sighed heavily.

He looked pained as he said, “Sophie, God knows I didn’t want to tell you like this. I just wanted to protect you.” He paused, looked away, and then stood. She watched as he moved around the bed toward the fireplace. A massive framed mirror rested above it, its edges seemingly gilded in gold.

A bazillion thoughts were racing through Sophie’s mind at that moment, but despite them she couldn’t help but admire the perfect proportions of Az’s tall body. His shoulders were so broad and his waist so narrow, he looked like an impossible dream draped in black. The sleeves of his shirt had been rolled up and she could see the veins in his sculpted forearms from his elbows to the watch on his left wrist.

Slowly, gracefully, Az leaned against the stone mantel of the fireplace. She could see his face in the mirror, as always almost painfully beautiful. And then he closed his eyes and bowed his head and his silken black hair cascaded over his face.

“Soph, clearly you’re coming into your powers now, and though I had hoped I would be able to ease you into this gently, it would appear I’m out of time.”

Powers?
Sophie thought, feeling her fingers and toes tingle. Her heart was hammering. It was as if her body and mind were preparing themselves for something all-encompassing.

Azrael lifted his head and opened his eyes. Sophie stifled a gasp. They were glowing.

“What’s even more clear is that there is a force out there setting things in motion, and I have no idea who or what it is—or why it seems to be centered on you,” he continued.

Sophie watched, wide-eyed and silent, as he turned from the mirror then and pinned her with the full weight of that glowing gaze.

“You are an archess, Sophie Bryce.” He moved away from the mantel and took a slow, striding step toward her and the bed. “You were created two thousand years ago by an entity neither I nor my brothers have heard from in all of that time. You were created. . .” Here he paused, stopped in his tracks, and something strange flickered across his eyes. “You were created for me. And then you were lost, sent to Earth with the other archesses, and I have been searching for you for twenty centuries.”

He took another step, but Sophie could no longer hear the sound of his boots against the stone. The roar of her blood through her ears was deafening. Her chest felt odd and her head felt too light and there were stars dancing in her tunneling vision.

“You didn’t know,” he told her, shaking his head once and coming flush with the bed. “You didn’t realize how precious you are for so many reasons. Most important, your abilities have remained hidden from you until . . .” He stopped, shook his head helplessly, and then shrugged. “Well, until tonight.” He closed his eyes and let out a shaky breath. “I have no idea why.”

When he opened them again, they seemed dimmer than before. They weren’t glowing as hotly. But then, his entire face seemed dimmer to Sophie. In fact, the strange cavernous room and its torches looked farther away. Darker.

I’m fainting
, she realized.
Breathe, Sophie. Breathe!

Whatever was happening, whatever the truth was, whatever dream she may or may not be stuck in, the last thing Sophie wanted to do in that moment was become unconscious in front of this man. He was an archangel. She knew that much to be true. But he was also the former Angel of Death. And that was proof enough to her that being an angel did not necessarily mean you were good.

Breathe.

With a concerted effort, Sophie shut her eyes tight and drew breath in through her nose. She held it for a second and expelled it through her mouth. And then she did it again. Her head began to feel weighted once more, and the roaring in her ears lessened. Her fingers, which had been numb seconds ago, were now hurting.

Sophie opened her eyes to find that Az hadn’t moved. He still stood at the edge of the bed, and he still watched her. His eyes still glowed.

Soph looked down to see her hands curled into tight fists in the satin comforter of the bed—so tight that her fingernails nearly sliced through the fabric. That was why they were hurting her.

Her head was beginning to ache as well.

“Sophie,” said Az. His voice was soft, his tone gentle. He was calling her attention to him, nothing more.

Sophie looked up from the bed to peer into his eyes. “I believe you,” she said. Her voice sounded so very far away. “Why do I believe you?” She spoke without forethought. Her words seemed to come from somewhere deep inside. She had no control over them. And as she said them aloud, she was baffled by them because she realized they were true.

She believed him. She believed that she was an archess. She believed that she was
Azrael’s
archess. She even believed that he was sorry.

Very slowly, as if Sophie were some frightened animal and he was afraid he would scare her off, Azrael sat down on the edge of the bed. “Sophie, I am so sorry.”

“Why did you lie to me?” As she spoke, she realized that she didn’t think she was crazy for believing him. Maybe that was the first sign of real insanity. Or maybe it was because she was an archess.

“You’ve known all along? Since you met me? But all this time . . . you let me believe I was human—
mortal
.” She swallowed hard as a spike of anger pierced her chest and found its way to her words. “You led me on.
Christ . . .
” Suddenly she felt bewildered by what had happened over the last few weeks. “At the wedding? The hockey game? Oh my God,” she said, her voice rising. “All that time, you knew what I was and I was
killing
myself with guilt, thinking I was messing with some precious archess’s archangel! That I was dabbling in something that I was
unworthy
of!”

She rose from the bed, all fury and fire now. She could feel it burning in her chest, sparking in her own gold eyes.

Thunder rumbled outside; the air felt thick with the moisture of an oncoming storm.

“Sophie, no,” Azrael said firmly, coming to his feet as well. “That wasn’t my intention at all. I was trying to protect you. You’ve suffered so much in your life.” He shook his head, his look beseeching. “You’ve endured so many atrocities at the hands of men. How could I add to that with news that you were
made
for a specific man?”

“So you were going to use me, get close to me, draw me into your world without telling me why I was there, and have your cake and eat it too?” she demanded.

“No, Sophie—”

“I
hated
myself for falling for you, Azrael! I felt like a groupie, a trespasser! Do you have any idea how much I’ve beat myself up over the fact that I’ve been obsessing over you?” She was yelling now, unable to hold back her anger or keep it from the sharp, frantic edges of her voice.

“
Yes
, Sophie, I do,” he said as he came around the bed and took a step toward her. Sophie took a step back, knowing that it was pointless but feeling as though she needed the space between them.

Az stopped in his tracks once more and his jaw tensed. She could see a muscle twitch as he said, “I
do
know, Sophie,” he went on, clearly determined to keep this exchange remotely civil. “In fact, I
hated
that you blamed yourself the way you did. I couldn’t stand your guilt; it tainted every wonderful moment I was with you.”

Sophie opened her mouth to offer another heated retort, but it just sat there waiting on her tongue as something struck a strange, uncomfortable chord inside her.

“What did you just say?” she asked, still at the mercy of words that had no filter.

Azrael went still. Something dark flashed across his eyes. Thunder echoed along the cavern walls once more, this time closer and louder than before. Azrael straightened, his expression hardening into some unreadable, unbreachable mask of stark, handsome coldness.

“Did you just tell me that you know about my past? My foster fathers?” Her tone lowered into icy accusation. “Did you just tell me that you hated my guilt?”

Azrael didn’t respond.

“Azrael,” Sophie ventured, her teeth gritted in a fury so strong she didn’t recognize it, “can you read my mind?”

Chapter Seventeen

I
t was a good question. Sophie Bryce was a very intelligent young woman. And Azrael was a complete idiot. He couldn’t believe he’d let slip what he’d just revealed. He never made mistakes. He never took a misstep. Everything he did was thought out and careful.

He’d been that way forever. His brothers sometimes second-guessed themselves. They overreacted, knee-jerked, and paid for their carelessness time and again. But Azrael stood apart from them and always had. It was a double-edged sword because it made his word golden and his trustworthiness absolute. It also made him lonely.

No being could ever truly feel close to someone who did not possess the means to empathize with them. Not even brothers.

But Sophie Bryce was throwing him for a loop. She was bringing out in him a messy side. An unpredictable, rash, sloppy side. She was making him act human.

And now he’d opened a can of worms he had seriously hoped to keep shut up tight. In fact, it was a subject so detrimental to their relationship that he’d inadvertently shoved it into the farthest reaches of his mind and steadfastly ignored it. He had no clue as to when he’d been planning to bring it up. To come clean. Maybe a part of him half hoped he would
never
have to be honest about this particular thing.

Because though he knew a part of her loved to fantasize and dream about the big bad vampire, when it came down to it and the cards were on the table, a man with real live fangs possessed the potential to be absolutely terrifying. Especially when he could read her mind.

“I asked you a question,” Sophie ground out. She was speaking through her teeth and her body was trembling. No doubt she was on information overload. He wasn’t even certain she was fully digesting what he’d told her so far. To say nothing of what he was
about
to tell her.

“I was,” he admitted finally. He realized, as he said it, that his own heart was pounding furiously. He was terrified—
terrified
—of what she would do or say. He’d never been afraid like this in his life. “I’m not now.”

“You
were
,” she repeated, her gaze narrowing into beautiful but cruel slits of gold. “But you’re not now.” She paused and cocked her head to one side. “I didn’t realize reading minds was an archangel ability,” she said, her tone like ice. They stood just two feet apart, and yet the space felt charged with bad possibilities. He wanted to reach across it and grab her. The space felt like his enemy; it gave her room to be angry.

“It’s not,” he said, knowing it was his eulogy.

Outside, lightning struck on the beach above their massive cavern. The walls of the cave shuddered under the attack and somewhere tiny pebbles cascaded to the stone floor.

It struck Azrael that this was not a normal storm. It had come on suddenly—and its fury reflected that of the archess before him.

Her powers were coming to fruition. A moment ago, she had asked him whether they’d healed the people in the accident on the bay. She’d used the term “heal,” not “rescue.”

She
was causing the storm. Just as they had for Juliette and Eleanore, Sophie’s emotions were leaking into the atmosphere around her, bringing on the fury of nature’s gale. She was becoming what she was born to be. It would explain a lot—such as why his influence over her had slipped earlier. If he’d been in control, she shouldn’t have been able to remember the accident or the quick flight afterward. But she did.

Sophie the archess was turning out to be a hell of a lot more powerful than Sophie the Berkeley student.

“What do you mean, ‘It’s not’?” she demanded.

“It’s not an archangel power, Sophie. My brothers do not possess the power of telepathy. Only I do.”

And what makes you so special?
her eyes asked. He could almost read the question on her face; he didn’t have to delve into her mind to hear it.

But she surprised him by remaining silent. And instead of asking that question, or one like it, Sophie straightened and took another tentative step back. Her expression changed, just a little. Now accompanying the rage on her beautiful features was the beginning of something resembling fear. Recognition.

Her gaze flicked from his eyes to his mouth, where his fangs remained hidden and, at the moment, much shorter than they were capable of becoming.

Comprehension dawned on her face so fast, so suddenly, it sent a cold, hard chill down Azrael’s spine. This was it. It was time to pay the piper.

Her lips parted and he heard her heart beat once very hard against her rib cage. “You’re a vampire,” she whispered, the realization obviously having taken much of the breath from her lungs.

Thunder shook the cave, a mighty boom that for a split second caused Azrael to wonder whether the cave was actually stable enough to withstand the attack. But his gaze never left Sophie’s and she stared at him so steadily, it was clear she had no idea what she was doing with the weather.

He watched as she swayed just a bit, literally overwhelmed with the emotions raging inside her. Her eyes reflected a pain that tore at his gut. It was a sensation utterly new to him; he had never hurt this way for someone else’s sake.

The vampire in him wanted to enter her mind in that moment; it wanted to push through her unnaturally strong defenses and wipe the knowledge of what he was from her thoughts to make this easier for her. He could imagine what was going through her head—the fantasies she’d had about him, the way she had been attracted to him and he’d
known
it—the fact that all this time, he’d been inches away from her, a veritable monster capable of draining her dry—and she’d
trusted
him.

It was what any woman in her position would think. And a part of him really wanted to verify her fears by acting every bit like the vampire he was and asserting his control over her body and mind.

But he didn’t. He wouldn’t.

Not with her.

“Yes,” he said. “I am.”

* * *

Something banged on the door of Sophie’s memory. It rapped, tapped, and waited, a big bad wolf waiting to huff and puff. Thunder rumbled and her head felt light again. But her eyes were glued to Azrael’s. It was all she could see, all she could concentrate on; it monopolized her every breath, her every firing neuron.

Azrael, the vampire.

It made so much sense. The almost-fangs, the perfect grace, the voice that mesmerized millions.
Billions
.

In the Dr. Seuss illustration of what life had become over the course of the last hour, it made
perfect
sense. He had been at the hockey game—what a coincidence. It was as though he’d known she loved hockey. Because he
had
known. Because he’d been reading her mind.

She’d only ever seen him at night.

He’d parted the fog because he’d known she wanted to see the Golden Gate Bridge.

Thunder rolled somewhere overhead; it was close. There was electricity in the air. It ran along her skin like liquid static. She frowned—and in her mind’s eye, she saw the gun that had discharged to cause the thunder. It was shaking; the hand that held it trembled furiously. The blued metal was slick with sweat. It smelled like fear and brimstone.

Sophie’s vision receded, as if the image before her were strapped to a tide and the tide was ebbing away.

“Yes,” said Azrael, but his voice was distant. “I am.”

I know,
she thought numbly. She already knew he was a vampire. In the fevered shifting of her mind, it was no longer even a question. Everything she’d once thought make-believe was real. Time was moving differently inside her now. In one place, she was confronting Azrael, coming to grips with his secret, accepting it and moving on. In another, she was living a waking memory. It was unfolding before her and holding her captive as sense and reason fled and her world fractured.

Her knee hurt and she remembered skinning it. In her mind, she looked down to see it bleeding, the jeans torn open and caked with mud and wet grass. Her hip hurt, her back felt bruised. She tasted metal in her mouth.

“Sophie?”

She heard his deep voice; its vampire-angel resonance had somehow made it through the wall of her reverie and into this other world. But Azrael was no longer standing before her. There was no fireplace or wall with torches or big black bed with its black sheets that were so very “vampire” she was surprised she hadn’t figured it out sooner.

In their place was a cemetery shrouded in mists. It rolled into the distance, a green and gray rise and fall of headstones, tended grass, and fog. She felt the pain of a grave marker digging into her back.

Her foster father took the waistband of her jeans in his hand and threatened to yank them painfully off of her. She screamed, a voiceless, soundless cry that had been swallowed up by the mists more than a decade ago.

She fought, she lashed out, and she felt herself frozen inside, petrified in the quicksand of this horrific memory. Her hand shook; she’d found something to save her. Her eyes saw red.

She yanked the gun from under his waistband. It hurt; he was pressing her into the ground. She thought she aimed—she tried so hard beneath his horrible, sweaty weight.

Lightning crashed; she felt the trigger give beneath her finger. It jerked violently and her foster father went limp above her. Madness swept over Sophie, a harsh, tangy hysteria that clung to the top of her mouth like a cold spoon. Sophie barely registered what she was doing as she shoved her foster father’s deadweight off of her own small body and stood. Lightning crashed again, white light blotted out the world, and Sophie saw no more.

* * *

“Sophie?”

There was something wrong. The lightning above them was constant now, parading down upon the outside of the cave with incredible fury. Pebbles rolled off the walls to the stone floor like miniature waterfalls and the ground shook as if from the effects of an earthquake.

Sophie’s eyes were no longer seeing him. They were looking at him, she was still standing, but her gaze had shifted somehow—as if she were looking
through
him. The color had drained from her face, and her teeth were no longer clenched. Her lips parted, her jaw went slightly slack, and her fists unclenched at her sides.

Azrael frowned, taking the final step that closed the distance between them. She didn’t step back; it was his first alarm bell. “Sophie?” he said as he curled his finger beneath her chin and tilted her face so that she looked up at him.

She swayed again, and he steadied her with a hand on her arm. Her gaze became unfocused and Azrael realized she was no longer in the room with him. And then the unmistakable darkness of terror flickered in her beautiful eyes and she made the tiniest, most telling sound. A whimper.

Azrael swore internally and rushed her with his dark, penetrating magic, delving into the complexity of her mind with fast and furious intent. The effort was immediately draining. She’d grown stronger in spades. The labyrinth of her memory had complicated itself exponentially.

She was trapped somewhere within it, and wherever that place was, it was horrible. It was the deepest and darkest of her memories, the place that had been shut off not only from him but from her conscious mind as well—blocked out and hidden from her for the sake of sanity. He could feel the inky blackness of it clinging to his being as he traversed her neural pathways and dove into the well of her subconscious.

In the real world, Azrael scooped Sophie into his arms and sat down on the bed to cradle her against him. His eyes glowed furiously, his body radiating magic. The fire in the hearth and the torches along the wall reflected this magic in the way their flames climbed and danced, leaping to enormous, unnatural life. Outside, the lightning played, an electrical storm the likes of which no one had ever seen.

In the realm of Sophie’s mind, Azrael stood amid headstones, and a mist curled around his legs, hiding his boots from view.

No
,
he thought.
Not here. Not again.

A premonition thrummed through him. The souls of the dead recognized him, a sovereign who had occupied the throne long ago. At one time, their ancestors had looked into his eyes and crossed out of this world and into another. They’d left as children, as mothers, as sons, and they’d gone unwillingly. Almost always, there was a strand of a being that was unwilling at death. Almost always. And that strand remained behind—and remembered.

Azrael never entered cemeteries, for that very reason. Chances were, he would be able to move through them undetected while spirits rested. But sometimes, something tipped them off and his identity was made clear.

Samael had known about Azrael’s weakness months ago; he’d used it against the former Angel of Death when Sam and Uriel were fighting over Eleanore. In a cemetery, Samael had called the spirits forth and revealed to them Azrael’s presence. The battle had taken a turn for the worse.

The dead were more powerful in the realm between here and there, between the past and nonexistence. It was as if they knew that the end was coming, that time would blot them out for good, and they were desperate. If they awoke now and saw him for what he was, the results could be devastating.

Az was already weak. Sophie’s mind had taken too much energy for him to traverse. She seemed to fight him, even unconsciously.

And now his fears were coming to fruition. He felt a multitude of presences tug at him. The wills of the dead were weighing on him, their angry little fists yanking on the cloak of his spirit, trying to pull him under.

Azrael’s fangs lengthened in his mouth and he felt the heat of his glowing gaze as he stood in the shrouded graveyard and turned a full circle. Sophie was here somewhere; he could feel her presence like a spot of warmth in all this cold. He just had to find her. And soon.

A scream pierced his reverie, somewhat muffled by the clinging fog. Az zeroed in on the direction it came from and blurred into motion.

Despite his speed, his progress through the cemetery was hard. Fingers of yesterday clung to him, trying their damnedest to slow him down. Memories were a strange thing to move through; they were as real as the everyday world, sometimes more so. But attached to them were emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, regret. Those emotions painted the world in light and sound and dictated how easy it was for Azrael to traverse them.