Death's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels (26 page)

“Please leave me alone, Azrael,” Sophie told him. “Despite what you and your brothers and your guardian think, I have a choice now. And I’ve made it.”

“Oh, Sunshine,” Azrael said, his tone hardening, “you have never been more wrong.”

She stilled before him and straightened. She could hear the change in his voice and recognized it for the resolve that it was. He noted the thump of her heart and the catch of her breath as instinct shoved her into defensive mode.

But she wasn’t fast enough to avoid him. It took only a fraction of a second for Azrael to wrap his arm around her neck and shoulders and pull her back hard against his chest. When she raised her hands instinctively to grab his arm, Az slammed the binding bracelet onto her right wrist. It flashed brightly as it separated and then remolded around her.

Sophie struggled in his grasp, but he tightened his hold and, as he’d known she would, she calmed down for fear that he would choke her. He held her there for a moment. He couldn’t help it. She felt good pressed against him and he wanted to be closer.

As her fingernails curled ineffectually into his arm, he lowered his lips to her ear. “We need some alone time, Sophie,” he told her. He was about to go on when he noticed the chipped, crooked coffee table rattling where it rested beside them. He glanced at it in surprise as it suddenly shot up from the ground and then sailed straight toward them.

He could have used his own powers to stop it, but his first instinct was much faster, and he was ducking with Sophie, taking her down with him. The coffee table soared over them to slam into the opposite wall. Az rolled with Sophie and pulled her back up to a standing position with him just as the card table she’d been using for a dining table picked itself up and flew across the room toward them.

Az narrowed his gaze at it and it warped, turning to a mass of black feathers that floated slowly to the ground.

In his grasp, Sophie screamed in frustration. Thunder rocked the apartment complex. Azrael ignored it. His mind was spinning. How could she control these things while wearing the bracelet?

Suddenly, the couch behind him slammed hard into his back, surprising him enough that he loosened his grip on his archess. She took the opportunity to break free and then spun to face him. Azrael lowered his arms and watched with wide eyes as Sophie glared at him, gave him a wicked smile that both terrified him and turned him on, and then yanked the bracelet off her wrist in one bright flash.

Chapter Twenty-seven

K
evin knew something was wrong before he opened his eyes. There was a heaviness on his chest, as if an anvil had been left there during the course of the day. But he sat up free of physical weights and frowned into the darkness.

With a wave of his hand, he brought the overhead lights on, adjusting them to a dim setting. Ely, Mitchell, and Luke were belowground with him, each in his own wing of the man-made tunnels far beneath the surface along the West Coast that spanned what he’d jokingly begun to call their lair. He sent out a mental call to them now.

Within seconds, Mitchell’s dress shoes could be heard on the cold stone floor. He stepped into the light of the main room and Kevin caught a whiff of lighter fluid and smoke as Mitchell lit the end of the cigarette he had between his teeth.

The Adarian vampire’s gaze was on the ground as he took a pull off the cigarette and lowered it between two fingers. He blew out a cloud of smoke, then paused—and looked up at Kevin. “Something’s wrong.”

“I feel it too,” said Luke as he emerged from his own wing.

“It’s Adam and the others,” said Ely, who appeared a split second later.

Kevin knew he was right. As Ely said it, Kevin realized he’d known it even upon waking.

Adam and two other Adarians had not yet made the change to vampire. Kevin had his reasons for this. Though being a vampire made an Adarian much more powerful in most respects, it made him weaker in another. Kevin needed someone close to him who could move about during the day, and as a vampire this was impossible.

Once the Adarians had successfully taken Sophie from Azrael’s cave, they had regrouped on Alcatraz Island. Dawn was breaking, so Kevin and his three Chosen had taken off for safe haven underground. In the meantime, Adam and the others promised to take Sophie somewhere safe. Kevin didn’t want the archess resting with him and his Chosen; if Azrael was at all able to stay up during the day—which Kevin was fairly certain he couldn’t do—then the vampire king might use his scrying ability to track his archess down while Kevin and his men were unconscious and helpless. Sophie could inadvertently lead Azrael directly to them, and during the day the Adarians would be sitting ducks.

Instead, Kevin had to rely upon Adam’s inherent Adarian intelligence to get Miss Bryce far enough away from San Francisco to pose a problem to Azrael’s brothers and hope against hope that Az was as helpless during the daylight hours as Kevin was.

But now . . .

With a glance at the others that tied them together in purpose, Kevin turned to the nearest shadow big enough to hold his tall, strong form and stepped through it. A few minutes later, the four of them were exiting the dark realm and leaving behind the shadows to step into the Spanish fort on Alcatraz Island, a much older, more crude part of the establishment that was located beneath the prison.

The cold, hollow air was quiet but for the occasional echoing cry of a seagull and the howling of the wind over the land above. Kevin turned to Ely, gave him a nod, and the four of them made their way up several flights of stairs and into the cold night. The wind whipped through the trees and across the shrub-covered hills of the island, knocking birds askew in their flight and preventing them from finding suitable perches. Kevin glanced up to watch low-lying clouds sink lower, dip, and dive, driven by a nearly unholy wind. A faint dusting of frozen precipitation floated around them, eddying with the backdrafts that brushed Kevin’s black hair across his forehead.

Lightning flashed over the city of San Francisco in the distance. Kevin watched it decorate the night, ominous in its bright white intensity. Thunder rolled across the bay. He narrowed his gaze on the out-of-season storm and closed his eyes.

In the silence of his mind, he called out for Adam and the others. There was no reply. Instead, there was an emptiness where there had been a feeling of brotherhood and stability. Kevin opened his eyes with a sinking, dreadful realization.

His men were dead. After thousands of years, all that remained of the Adarian race were the few men with him now, out here on this rock in the early evening hour, gazing out across a lonely, cold sea.

Kevin turned to speak with Ely, to tell him what he knew in his heart, when he caught the faintest whiff of blood.

In weather like this, in cold this strong and wind this angry, any other kind of blood would have gone unnoticed. However, the blood Kevin scented now was Adarian blood. Strong. Powerful.

Without a word, Kevin blurred into motion, following the scent to its source. Along the way, he encountered two gates. He didn’t slow, simply turning to mist in order to pass them by. And then he was standing in the D Block of Alcatraz and his three Adarian Chosen were solidifying behind him.

Before him stood cell number nine, the first of the isolation chambers used to punish particularly nasty criminals. The inside was clean, devoid of object or decoration. However, the scent of disinfectant was stronger here than anywhere else in the penitentiary. And even so, it couldn’t hide what had once been spilled upon its floor.

Adam, Thane, and Raze were indeed dead. He could smell them all, scent the magic in their blood, and feel the remnants of their spirits here, where they had been snuffed out like candle flames in this god-awful tempest.

“The archangels?” Ely asked softly. His voice sounded tight, strained. They’d all lost so much—so many men. Of the twelve original Adarians, only four remained.

Kevin tried hard to consider this logically. He tried to think things through. Something about the scene didn’t look right. Something about the amount of blood he could tell had been spilled just didn’t seem like the archangels. If he’d been able to think past the dawning realization that he, Ely, Luke, and Mitchell were now alone in the world, he might have been able to put the puzzle together.

But his chest felt tight and his gums ached where his fangs had erupted in his mouth. His eyes glowed hotly in his face, sending everything into the sharp contrasts of a predator’s vision. There was so much pain inside him at that moment, he wanted to rip his own body apart to make it stop. He wanted to walk into the sun.

Beyond thought, his rage turned to his age-old enemies. He really, really wanted to kill four particular archangels. They’d taken everything from him.

Kevin wasn’t consciously directing his actions when he spun, dissolved into a blue mist the color of his glowing eyes, and rode the current of his anger through the prison once more. It was by chance and no premeditation that he wound up in the yard where inmates had once played games at all hours and in all weather in order to avoid the chilling loneliness of their cells.

Here Kevin re-formed—and stood in raging silence on the platform overlooking the walled courtyard. His lungs drew hard, deep breaths of air. His teeth were clenched so tightly he feared they would break.

But his mind paused for a moment in its inner tirade. Down below, where grass and concrete normally paved the long-deserted yard, he saw thousands upon thousands of black dandelions carpeting the ground.

* * *

Azrael watched as Sophie raised her hand, the gold bracelet pinched between her thumb and forefinger.

“What’s the matter, big boy?” she asked. “You weren’t expecting that?”

Az’s blood thrummed to delicious life at the challenge in Sophie’s eyes. It was a beautiful thing. It was her own inner fire, finally freed and loosed upon the world. He’d always known she had it inside herself. Her life and its misfortunes had taken that fire and beat it until it was a pile of smoldering embers—still there, still vital, but barely simmering in the careful dark of her soul.

But now it blazed. He knew that it wasn’t her doing, not completely. He could feel the influence of another all around her, coaxing out the flames, breathing oxygen on the conflagration until it was an inferno. But it was all Sophie who locked gazes with him now and held her very powerful ground.

He smiled. It was the vampire in him—awakened to the moment. He looked from her eyes to the bracelet, and the hand that held it. A dark star of a mark graced her palm; it was the mark that Juliette had spoken of, given to Sophie by the man in white.

“Very well,” he said, lowering his gaze and letting his power wash over her. “We’ll do this my way.” He let his fangs grow to their full length, and Sophie’s expression changed. Uncertainty flitted across her features.

She should have given in then. If she’d been mortal, she would have been utterly and completely mesmerized, lost to his command no matter what it was. But Sophie, in all her newfound power and under Gregori’s malevolent influence, stood her ground, though she dropped the bracelet from between numb fingers. Her other hand clenched and unclenched at her side and she licked her lips.

He could smell the adrenaline now. The cortisol. She was frightened. But there was another scent as well, faint and sweet and precious. Little Sophie Bryce, all fire and sunshine and defiance, was indeed afraid of him.

But she was also turned on.

The combination was like a siren song to his blood; there was almost no sweeter solution.

No being on Earth had ever withstood his power. The fact that his archess was able to stand up to him was both a curse and a blessing. He didn’t want to hurt her—but he loved that she was giving him no choice.

His fanged smile broadened as he raised his hand and crooked his finger in a come-hither gesture. “Make this easier on yourself, Sunshine,” he said, his tone taunting, his voice deep and beautiful. “Come to me now and I’ll only bite you once.”

Sophie’s eyes widened just a little. She straightened and he watched her fidget, no doubt considering retreat. But her heart continued to pound and her blood continued to race through her veins, and the fire that licked along her being was still there, still hot, and still magnificent. Another roll of deafening thunder shook the apartment complex, testament to the fact that her storm yet raged.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she lied. And then, as if to prove her lack of fear, she looked to her right, zeroed in on the nearest piece of furniture, and using telekinesis, lifted a cinder block from the makeshift shelves she’d created against the wall.

The heavy piece of rock moved with incredible speed, expertly aimed directly at his head.

Azrael waved his hand and the block was redirected. It sailed across the room to smash into one of the walls, taking an enormous chunk out of the paint, plaster, and wood before it dropped to the floor and cracked the wooden planks beneath it.

Not to be defeated, Sophie turned toward the window and her gold eyes flashed with bright power. Azrael whirled, transforming his body into mist just as a bolt of lightning shot through the window, illuminated the world in bright white, and knocked out all sound. Electricity buzzed through the particles of his being, threatening their makeup with the heat of a thousand suns. He managed to move around it as it cascaded through the apartment, fractured into a hundred different static points, and fizzled out.

The lightning strike took only a split second, but for a vampire, it played out in slow motion. Azrael re-formed, whole and untouched by the electrical attack. And then he rushed Sophie. Flying bricks were one thing—fire was another.

Sophie may have had the heavens at her command and impressive powers of telekinesis, but for the most part, she was still human; she possessed neither the strength nor the speed of an archangel, to say nothing of a vampire.

She never saw him coming. Azrael took her before she could blink, wrapping one arm around her waist and fisting the other hand in her hair. She cried out in surprise as he yanked her head back, exposing her throat. Her fingers curled into the leather jacket under his trench coat and she closed her eyes in what he knew was both fear and desire. At once, he was awash with the scent of her, the
feel
of her.

For two thousand years he had been waiting to sink his fangs into just one woman. He’d searched for her, hunted for her, nearly given up on finding her. Now she was here, in his arms, and immune to every part of him but one. He had no choice but to do what he was about to do—and right now, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“You were warned, Sunshine,” he told her, whispering the words in her ear as her quick breaths fanned his own cheek. He chuckled deep and dark. “So here’s the first of many.”

With that, he tightened his hold, raised his head, and drove his fangs deep into the side of her throat.

She made the sweetest, most helpless sound as his teeth found purchase in the taut flesh of her neck. He opened the vein beneath him, baring it to his hunger, and his body roared to delicious life. And then the first drops of her precious blood spilled across his tongue, and his vision went red.

Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined that she would taste like this. He swallowed and felt as though he were swallowing hope. Salvation. He took it into himself rapaciously, growling deep and low as precious healing fire spread throughout his body and soul, searing it clean and perfect. There was nothing wrong with the world in that moment. There was no danger, no death.

No Death.

Soft and sweet, she moaned against him, her body shuddering as her power left it and made room for his. He flooded her with it, overwhelming her with the bliss that came from submitting to the vampire king. He could feel her magic crackle around her, warm and sparkling and fading. As he drank, the darkness that had invaded that magic slipped away as well, ebbing in its strength until Sophie relaxed against him.

Her body was hot; it radiated heat and passion—and he was so hard, he was in pain.

Slowly, sensuously, Azrael released his hold on her hair and she lowered her head to breathe softly against his neck. With his free hand, he pulled her more tightly against him. He swallowed and she moaned and his grip tightened with a nearly crazed need.

I have to stop
,
he thought. She was filling him with life and it was something he had never felt and he didn’t want to give it up for anything. But if he didn’t slow down, if he didn’t ease off, he would drain her dry.