Death's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels (24 page)

Eleanore was the first to turn away. Her hand was over her mouth and her eyes were closed. It hadn’t been long ago that these same three men had tried to rip her apart from Uriel. They’d tortured her husband and kept him confined in a prison no better than this. And yet to see them destroyed in such a manner was traumatic.

“What in bloody hell are we dealing with?” Gabriel asked, his brogue in full, emotional tilt.

“There’s a note,” Max said, his voice cutting through the silence. He moved past the brothers and lifted a small Post-it off a sewing pin that had been pressed into the dead Astaeroth’s chest.

The yellow square of paper was dotted and curled with blood, but still legible. In neat black print was the word: “Check.”

Max studied it for a moment and then lowered his arm to look carefully around the room. “Where do you suppose the others are?” he asked.

“Sleeping, if Az was right about the vampire thing,” Uriel said. He had his arms around Eleanore, whose face was buried in his chest. His green eyes flashed with dangerous emotion.

“And Sophie?” Michael asked. Someone had to do it.

“I’m guessing she’s back at her apartment,” said Max, who then handed the Post-it note to Michael without looking at him. He was too busy taking in their surroundings with the careful attentiveness of someone who needed to know who and what they were dealing with.

Michael looked down at the note. Something was written on the other side. It was an address. “Sophie’s address?” he asked, not knowing it himself.

“Yes,” said Max. “Whoever did this is not only capable of easily overpowering the Adarians; they also have the ability either to move through the shadows as a vampire would or they have a portal of their own.”

“Or they don’t
need
a portal,” said Eleanore in a muffled voice from behind Uriel’s T-shirt.

Max glanced at her. “Indeed,” he agreed.

“I know we’re all thinkin’ it, bu’ I’ll say it anyway. This was no’ Sam’s doin’.”

“No, it wasn’t,” said Max. “It doesn’t fit him.” He shook his head and sighed. “And he was the one who tipped Azrael off as to Sophie’s location. In fact, I’d wager a guess that Samael doesn’t know she’s no longer here.”

“She’ll be alone,” said Uriel, clearly speaking of the fact that Sophie was at her apartment now.

Michael had to agree with him. If the beings responsible for the Adarian killings had wanted to hurt Sophie, they would have done so here, on Alcatraz Island. There was no reason to draw the fight to the mainland. Sophie was most likely unaccompanied, and this was all some kind of elaborate game to someone much more powerful than they were.

“My thoughts exactly,” said Max. He looked at Juliette and his expression softened. “Juliette, I think it would be best if you go to her alone. I cannot even imagine what must be going through her head at the moment.”

Juliette nodded resolutely. “My thoughts exactly,” she echoed. “If I can’t convince her to come back to the mansion with me, I’ll let you know.”

“And we’ll bring her back ourselves,” said Michael. Whether Sophie could see the reasoning in it or not, she wasn’t safe anywhere else.

Chapter Twenty-five

S
ophie jumped when there was a knock on her door. She looked up toward the living room and a thousand thoughts chased each other through her head.

“Sophie?” came a gentle voice from the other side. It was Juliette!

Sophie’s chest swelled with warmth, but she remained where she was, frozen beside the bed. She glanced down at the suitcase and large leather messenger bag she’d been packing and blinked. The inside of her right hand throbbed. She opened it and gazed at her palm She’d healed the crescent marks her nails had made; it had been easy. But the dandelion dark star remained. She’d forgotten about it; it hadn’t hurt until now.

“Sophie are you home?” Juliette called again.

A frisson of irritation thrummed quickly and unexpectedly through Sophie. Her palm twinged with a quick, mild pain, and she blinked. “Yes,” she replied, her mind spinning furiously. “Yeah, give me a sec, Jules! Just getting out of the shower!”

That was stupid
, she berated herself.
Your hair’s not even wet.

Thunder rumbled over the apartment building. She wasn’t thinking clearly. She felt strange. With a frustrated sigh, she ran her hands quickly over her face, shoved her hair out of her eyes, and turned to the hallway that led to the living room. Her leather-soled boots sounded loud on the hardwood floor. A few seconds later, she was unbolting the door and opening it.

Juliette stood on the threshold, her face pale, her eyes enormous in her beautiful face. She was alone.

For several long moments, the two young women simply stared at each other. Sophie thought about telling Juliette everything—
everything
. A part of her was screaming inside, begging to be released so that she could tell Juliette about her foster father and the gun she’d used on him and about Azrael being a vampire and the fact that she was his archess and the bridge and the Adarians and Uro and the fire and finally about the stranger on Alcatraz Island. The man in white.

But the rest of Sophie was wrapped in silence, strapped down in indecision and a strange, uncomfortably building ire.

And so she said nothing.

“Sophie, are . . . are you okay?” Juliette asked, her expression one of baffled hurt and a little fear.

What am I doing?
Sophie asked herself, suddenly realizing that she hadn’t said anything and that there was far too much to say for her to be remaining silent.

“I . . .” She fumbled for the right words, but her palm ached now and the thunder outside was drawing closer and her mind felt stuffed with cotton. “I don’t know.”

With that, Juliette was moving forward and pushing Sophie back into the apartment at the same time. Jules shut the door behind her and led Sophie to the couch. Sophie didn’t argue.

They both sat down and Juliette turned to face her, all seriousness now. “What happened on Alcatraz?” she asked.

On Alcatraz
, Sophie thought. She stared into her best friend’s eyes and it seemed that a bit of the murkiness in her head cleared up a little. She saw the teenage girl . . . and the man in white slitting her throat. And suddenly, without warning, she felt a shuddering sob shake her slim frame to her core.

Thirty minutes later, Sophie was blowing her nose for the twentieth time and Juliette was handing her a freshly brewed cup of chamomile tea. Juliette had brought a stash of the tea in her purse; obviously she’d known what kind of state Sophie would be in. Juliette was good at that kind of thing.

Over the course of the last half hour, Sophie had told Juliette everything that she’d wanted to tell her upon seeing her on the threshold of her apartment. She told her about her foster father and her life afterward, about Azrael and the accident on the bridge, and about Gregori and what had happened on the Rock. And then Juliette had told her about the three murdered Adarians found in the jail cell in the prison, which brought the subject back to Gregori.

“He has stars for pupils,” Sophie found herself saying. She’d already told Juliette about how Gregori had nearly killed the innocent teenage girl. She’d described the occurrence in vivid detail; she couldn’t help it. Everything about the incident was painfully clear in her mind’s eye.

“Jules, you just can’t imagine what he was like. He was simply overwhelming.” She felt out of breath just thinking about the man in white. The way he’d crossed space and time in the blink of an eye, the way he’d gotten into her head, to say nothing of the way he looked—and what he’d done to that girl. She shook her head and shivered violently before closing her eyes and running a shaky hand through her long blond hair.

Juliette watched her in silence for a moment and then her already troubled expression became decidedly more so. “We have to tell Max about him,” she said. Then she took a deep, bewildered breath and shook her head, briefly closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose. “Now we have a name and a face to put behind the Adarians’ murders. It’s not much, but it’s something.” She sighed, dropping her hand. “Who the hell is he, and what does he want?”

Sophie watched her friend, taking in the small changes that had come over Juliette in the last few weeks. Jules was a small woman, but her stature seemed to have grown. She radiated a kind of power and confidence that Sophie was fairly sure she herself would never have. Juliette had found where she belonged in the world. She’d learned who she was meant to be and had moved into that role with flawless ease. She’d found happiness. . . . that much was clear. And now something threatened that happiness.

Sophie couldn’t help but wonder how much of it was her fault. If she hadn’t been born an archess, if she hadn’t somehow found her way to Juliette’s side, if she hadn’t been as messed up as she was, as much of a magnet for trouble as she was—none of this would be happening.

Her hand tingled, the pain that had been ever present in her palm over the last half hour spreading and lessening, becoming more of a warmth that inched up her wrist.

Or maybe it
would
. If Sophie hadn’t been born, then Juliette would still be an archess and the Adarians would still be out there and the man in white might still be playing whatever game he was playing, but playing it with Juliette instead. Or Eleanore. Or some other woman who had been born the archess instead of Sophie.

And Azrael would be chasing after someone else.

Sophie felt a rush of heat go through her at the thought of the tall, dark archangel. She was powerless against the image of him, dressed in black, surrounded by an aura of power and calm and unimaginable strength. She caught a whiff of his scent, like night—sandalwood and leather and soap, and her mouth watered. She saw his long, thick jet-black hair and felt his vivid eyes bore into her. The chiseled perfection of his features threw her for a moment, as she imagined him staring at her from behind her own lids . . . and speaking her name.

“Soph?”

Sophie jumped a little and opened her eyes, realizing that she’d shut them in the first place. “Yes?” she asked, blushing as if Juliette had been privy to the scene in her head.

“Where were you planning on going?”

Sophie turned to look at her friend and noticed that Juliette was staring at something down the hall.
Damn
, she thought as she glanced back and caught the edge of her suitcase on the bed. It sat open, its contents partly folded.

The truth was, she’d had no idea where she was going to go. She only felt that she needed to get away—from Frisco, from the bay, from . . . Azrael.

She was positively obsessed with him. Her most recent thoughts proved as much. She had hated being obsessed when she’d thought it was her own doing, her own weak will that left her drooling over the lead singer of Valley of Shadow like some lovesick teenager. But now that she knew she was an archess and that she was
destined
to feel this way about the man, it was worse. It was worse because she realized that she had never had any control over the fact that she would one day end up lusting after the Masked One. She’d never had any say in whom she was going to fall in love with. She’d never been given any freedom.

And that pissed her off.

Thunder rumbled overhead again, closer still. A storm was coming.

Juliette glanced up at the sound, her brow furrowed. Sophie ignored her. She was too wrapped up in the feeling of helplessness that she had where Azrael was concerned.

She resented him. She lusted after him and dreamed of him and fantasized about him . . . and a part of her felt as though it hated him. She needed to get away from the power he had over her. And the only way she knew to do that was to run.

The heat in her wrist spread up her arm, tingling pleasantly. She ignored that too, despite the fact that she could see Juliette staring at her hand. She was caught up in her emotions now—damn everything else to hell.

Running was what Sophie had done when she was fourteen. She killed her foster father, and when it was done, she awakened on that cemetery hill to find herself alone. She didn’t remember how she’d gotten there. There was a smoking gun still hot in her hand. She had no idea where it had come from or what she’d used it for, but a horrible feeling crept along her skin and brought her to a decision: whatever she’d done, she wasn’t going to hang around long enough to find out.

She took off then, shoving the gun into her jeans and heading into the woods that surrounded the graveyard. She buried the gun, not knowing what else to do with it. And then, when she was finished, she went back to her foster mother’s home.

Sophie realized now that when she’d gone home, she’d expected to find only her foster mother. No father. It was like it had always been that way. And the truly bizarre thing was that her foster mother felt that way as well. Neither of them mentioned Sophie’s torn jeans or the grass and mud in her hair. It wasn’t like her foster mother would have noticed these things anyway, but in the light of the reality Sophie was now faced with, there was no denying that her foster mother’s actions that day had been beyond bizarre. It was as if Sophie’s trauma-induced amnesia had been infectious. Neither of them mentioned anyone named Alan Harvey. No one did. Not the neighbors, not the unemployment office or the utility companies, not the orphanage—no one. As far as the world was concerned, Alan Harvey had never existed.

Life went on and, for a change, there were no horrible men in it. At sixteen, Sophie’s foster mother moved to Pennsylvania and Sophie enrolled in high school there. On the side, she landed a job in Pittsburgh as a maid to make extra money. Two years later, she met Juliette.

And now here she was, in a life that seemed utterly foreign to her. She felt like she should consider herself the luckiest woman in the world. She had magical powers, she was an angel, she had an awesome best friend and a love interest who was quite literally the most famously charismatic man on the planet.

She also felt completely confused and positively furious. What the fuck had happened that day? What was going on with her life? Who the hell was in charge here?

Her existence was a circus, replete with a smoke-and-mirrors magic act, and she was both clueless and powerless as to how it played out.

How dare the world do this to her? How dare it leave her to fend for herself as a child and then, when it mattered least, pop her with powers she’d always needed? Just when she was about to be strapped to someone who would
still
be more powerful than she was?

And that was why she had been planning to run.

When she turned back around, it was to find Juliette staring fixedly at her. The hazel-eyed archess glanced down at Sophie’s hand. Sophie followed her gaze to the dandelion star on her palm. Reflexively, she curled her fingers and tucked her hand under her leg.

Lightning crashed just outside the windows. It was time for Juliette to go.

* * *

Sophie had every reason to be angry. Juliette had always known that her best friend’s life had been hard—very hard. But now that she knew the whole story, she was baffled by how well adjusted Soph had always been. That Sophie could even function like a normal human being after having killed the man who nearly raped her at fourteen was beyond Juliette. She’d always had immense respect for Sophie Bryce, for her strength, her will, and her refusal to let life get her down. Now that respect was amplified to a heartrending degree and Juliette could not blame Sophie for her fury and resentment at all.

But . . . something was wrong. There was more to this. Not only did the fact that no one remembered Sophie’s foster father’s existence spell “supernatural” in Juliette’s book, but there was an aura around Sophie now that was distinctly un-Sophie-like. Granted, the girl was no doubt beyond stressed out. But this was different.

The man Sophie described—the man in white—well and truly frightened Juliette, and she had never even met him. What he’d done to the Adarians would have been enough. But when Sophie told her what he’d also done to the innocent teenager, coupled with her description of the white, perfectly tailored suit, and the nearly white color of his ice-blue eyes, Juliette had felt an unpleasant sensation unfold within her. It felt a little like the beginning of a panic attack. There was a buzzing sensation, a tightening in her chest, and her heart felt heavy, as if it was turning to lead.

She didn’t like Gregori. Hell, she didn’t even like thinking his name.

She would rather refer to him as the man in white.

To make matters worse, it was becoming increasingly clear to Juliette that the man in white had done something to Sophie. The mark on the inside of Sophie’s hand had never been there before. Unless Soph had gone out and tattooed a dark star on her palm at some point after the wedding at Slains Castle, the mark was new—and it wasn’t Sophie’s doing. In fact, it looked an awful lot like the stars-for-pupils that Sophie had said Gregori possessed.

It was unnerving. And so was the way Sophie was behaving.

Anger would have been one thing. Juliette could have understood that—empathized with it—and forgiven it easily. But Sophie was distracted and becoming more so by the second. Sophie Bryce had never been the airhead type. She’d never been anything but quick-witted, full of energy, and sharp as a tack.