Rebel (17 page)

I hoped the sudden heat in my face wasn’t showing up in a blush. “You
are
an actual villain,” I said flatly. “Whether you had anything to do with Allie’s attack is another question, but I assume the answer will come out as we search through my lists.”

“Aha! I knew there was more than one list,” he said triumphantly. “Drink your cognac, love.”

Love? That was a ridiculous thing to call me. I wasn’t about to bring that up, however—it would give him license to say all sorts of distracting things.

I shouldn’t accept anything from him. If he actually had been the one to drug Allie, then I was opening myself up to all sorts of possibilities, from being roofied to being dead. He was watching me, a challenge in his silvery eyes, a faint smile on his mouth. If I refused, he would win.

Then again, if he’d put something in the brandy, he’d win as well.

He leaned forward, pushing his own glass toward me. “If you’re afraid it’s poisoned, you can drink mine instead.”

Put my mouth where his had been? Not likely. I gave him a cool smile. “I trust you,” I said, reaching for my own glass.

He was looking at me with stern disapproval. “Trusting me is a big mistake, and you know it. Fortunately, you’re lying.”

“I didn’t say I trust you in all matters,” I protested, taking a small sip of the brandy and feeling it burn nicely. “I just trust you not to have poisoned me. This time.”

He grinned then, and I wanted to moan. His smile was seductive, his grin irresistible—and I remembered that mouth on my breasts. A mouth I had never felt. “Really? What else do you trust me not to do?

I shook myself out of the strange lassitude the brandy and his eyes were lulling me into. I needed to sleep, I thought wearily, not match wits with a fallen angel. “Why don’t we talk about something a little more important?”

“Such as?”

“Like why I’m here. Like who is trying to hurt Allie.”

His eyes were slow and languorous as he sipped
at his own cognac. “Those are two different issues entirely.”

I stared at him, momentarily confused. “I beg your pardon?”

He leaned back, smiling lazily. “The middle of the night is no time to discuss possible perpetrators. We can presume Allie is safely in bed with her husband, and they are pleasantly sated from the sex you talked them into.”

How did he know that? How did he seem to know every damned thing? I didn’t deny it. “We can presume so. She’s safe for now.”

“So what made you decide to beard the lion in his den?”

The spider in his parlor, I thought. The snake in his . . . where did snakes live? Not in apple trees, despite mythology. “I couldn’t sleep. I heard you moving about and I knew you were awake as well. You’ve been hard enough to find the last few days, so I figured now was as good a time as any, before you disappeared again.”

Damn. I’d said too much. As always.

His eyes gleamed. “Miss me?”

“Hardly.”

“If I’d known you were looking for me, I would have presented myself immediately.”

“Ha!” I said before I could help myself. “You know everything.”

He laughed at that, and the sound danced across my skin like a silver caress. “I’m gratified to know your opinion of me is so high. Trust me, there are a great many things I don’t know. Like why you decided to come to me.”

Come to me
. The words echoed in my head, and I looked at him suspiciously. He was all limpid innocence, meeting my gaze without a trace of guile.

And then he made his first mistake. “Unless you think I have some sort of magic power to draw you to me.”

I stared at him, unmoving. He’d done it. He
had
called me, his serpentine, insidious voice luring me into his dangerous presence. His voice, each time those explicit dreams started.
Come to me.

I had no idea how he’d done it. The only thing that kept me from getting up and walking out was the knowledge that even if he’d instigated my erotic dreams, there was no way he could know what went on in my mind. In my bed. He couldn’t know that I’d welcomed my dream lover.

If I ran, he would win.

I leaned back in my chair, uncurling my legs and stretching them out in front of me, seemingly relaxed. “How did you do it?” I said in a conversational tone.

It was only a quick flash in his eyes, but he realized things had shifted. He was very observant, was
the snake in our Garden of Eden. “Do what, Miss Mary?” he countered.

I looked at him. He wouldn’t admit to it, and I was tired of fighting. “Why don’t you stop playing games? You know perfectly well what my name is.”

“I do. But you’re so much fun to tease.”

“Find other ways to enjoy yourself,” I said sternly.

His eyes slid over my body, slowly, like a dark, erotic caress, and I could feel myself heat in reaction. Absurd! How could a look do that? I couldn’t feel it, couldn’t quantify it.

“Oh, I will,” he murmured.

S
HE WAS TOO EASY,
C
AIN THOUGHT,
shifting a little. He was hard, uncomfortably so, which astonished him. Bantering with a woman didn’t usually have this effect on him, not after all these years. But then, Martha was not an ordinary woman.

She was too damned smart. He could make her squirm, just by giving her his patented seductive once-over, but it was starting to backfire, making him as aroused as he wanted her to be. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but with Martha he needed to be in complete control, not at the mercy of his cock.

He’d always had the ability to see, occasionally, into another’s thoughts. It usually happened when there was something powerful that tied them together. He could read Azazel, the betrayer, fairly often. The others, occasionally.

Metatron didn’t seem to have a thought in his thick, handsome skull, thank God. It was always better when your confederates didn’t come up with unhappy surprises. Martha was full of secrets, full of surprises, and he was becoming disturbingly fascinated by her, so that those private, dreaming, shared fantasies were now the most important part of his day.

“You want to talk about who tried to hurt Allie?” she said, attempting to put things back on a polite, impersonal level—but that ship had sailed days ago.

“Anything you say, Miss Mary.” He put deliberate emphasis on her name, just as a little twist.

She made a face, and he wanted to laugh. Using her real name in such a deliberate tone would have bothered her too. Everything he did bothered her. He liked that. “Too bad you don’t have a last name,” he continued. “I can’t very well call you Mrs. Thomas. How about the Widow Thomas, if you prefer formality?”

“Bite me.” The moment that instinctive response was out of her mouth she froze, and the image was an assault on his senses. He didn’t know if it was her thought or his, but he could see it, feel it, taste it. Her skin, the soft swell of her breast, the inside of her thighs, the lush softness between her legs. Gentle nips, licks, tastes. And, oh God, her blood. Pulsing at the base of her neck, throbbing at the
juncture of her legs, rich, thick, sweet, pouring down his throat, filling his own veins, strength and life and love throbbing through him—

“Ahem.” She cleared her throat, and he was torn from the erotic fantasy. She was blushing. She blushed a lot—blood flooding to her cheeks—and she had no idea how much that fed his inexplicable lust for her. Blood and sex were inextricably combined in his soul, and she was both.

“Sorry.” He blinked, feigning absentmindedness. “I was thinking of something else.”

She gave him a disapproving glare. “Who do you think attacked Allie?”

“I have no idea. Tell me about your vision—maybe that might spark something.”

She knit her forehead, concentrating, and damned if that didn’t arouse him as well. “It was a flash, like most of them,” she said slowly. “Allie was lying on the floor, and a dark figure was bending over her. He kicked her in the stomach, and—”

“‘He’?” Cain interrupted.

“Not necessarily.” She shuddered, clearly horrified at the memory. “He . . . he seemed like a huge dark shadow filling the room. It was . . .” She stopped, shivering, wrapping her arms around her body. “It was hideous.”

He considered it. “It couldn’t be Uriel himself. Uriel can’t come to Sheol without his cadre of
angels. He could have sent someone, of course, and this was definitely his style—sneak attack with no warning, hurting helpless, pregnant women.” Memory flashed, a wound that would never heal. So long ago. No, he couldn’t go there. “Do you sense it was an outsider?”

She shook her head. “It was someone from Sheol. There are any number of us who can sense when an outsider is here, and there is no one who doesn’t belong. Or . . . only one.”

For a moment he didn’t realize she was talking about him. Then he grinned at her. “Well, I’m the logical culprit. Why don’t you think it’s me?”

Her eyes met his. “I’m not sure. Instinct.”

He nodded, not examining that particular thought. Did her instincts tell her he meant no harm to the status quo? If so, she was dead wrong. “Anyone you suspect?” he asked her. “Have you ruled out anyone else?”

“Azazel, Raziel, Tamlel, Michael, Metatron, and Melchior,” she said without hesitation. “None of them would have any reason.”

“Why not Metatron? He seems a good possibility.” A little too good, he thought. He and his minion were going to have a heart-to-heart talk later on.

“Honestly, I would have thought so. He’s the second-best option, after you. But he was with Rachel when it happened. He was visiting and then
left when Rachel did. On top of that, he’s a got a crush on the Source. He wouldn’t hurt her.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said, startled. “Metatron doesn’t strike me as someone who’s much interested in sex.”

“It’s not about sex,” she said reprovingly.

“Honey, it’s always about sex,” he drawled.

She frowned at him. “Metatron’s got a crush on her as if she were a goddess and he were a lowly mortal.”

“He’s got it backward.”

Martha glared at him. “Allie
is
a goddess, if not literally. And Metatron’s not worthy. Fortunately, he agrees, but he’d defend her with his life.”

“He’s supposed to defend everyone here with his life.”

“I assume he would. He doesn’t seem to be interested in anything but duty. Except for the Source. With Allie, it’s because he cares. He’d never let anyone hurt her.”

And then he knew. He should have seen it right away, except that Metatron had sworn he wouldn’t kill anyone. But “anyone” might not apply to Allie’s baby. Maybe he considered a small scrap like that not yet human, thereby circumventing his promise. Damn him.

He wasn’t going to tell Martha. He still needed Metatron. And if the mystery was solved, she’d have
no reason for her midnight visits, and he was planning on there being more. Ones that took place in his bed.

This time she didn’t notice his abstraction. “Clearly the attack was against Allie’s baby, not Allie. Otherwise it would have been easy to give her enough of the drug to kill her.”

“Maybe he thought he
had
given her enough.”

“Then why would he or she bother to come back and kick her?” Martha said, pulling her legs up underneath her again. She was beginning to relax around him. Foolish of her, since she was in direct danger from him, but he liked the softening of her prickly exterior. “No, I’m sure the attack was against the baby, not Allie.”

“And you think this why? Why would anyone want to hurt an unborn child?” he countered.

“The child changes everything,” she said. “This was a world without even the possibility of children. And I know Allie won’t be the only one. The Fallen have existed for millennia, banished by the Supreme Power to eternal exile, with not even the hope of an afterlife or any chance at redemption. All that is about to change.”

“Is it?” he murmured, watching her. “Is that one of your imperfect visions?”

She shook her head. “It’s only common sense. Children are hope. They’re the future, proof that life goes on, that there’s an afterlife in them, at the very least, whether or not there’s some kind of heaven
available for the Fallen. Some people hate change, even if it benefits them.”

“So they do,” he murmured. “Personally, I’m very fond of it. So who do you know who hates change enough to endanger the Source to stop it?”

She was clearly racking her brain. “I should have brought my lists,” she said glumly.

Lists, plural. He kept his smile to himself. She was so organized, so precise, building a safe little wall around herself, stick by stick. She really thought she had a chance in hell of controlling her life.

Her hair looked like a halo of curls around her piquant face. Her eyes were huge and shadowed, and she looked exhausted. “How long have you had trouble sleeping?” he asked suddenly.

She looked at him, startled. Then she smiled wryly, and that smile was like a blow to his gut. “I should say ever since you arrived, but that would be a lie. I’ve never slept well.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “Probably because I didn’t sleep through the night when I was in the real world. It wasn’t a very safe situation, and I needed to be alert.”

“You’re going to tell me about it someday,” he said softly.

“Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “My past is buried and I don’t even think about it.”

“But you still don’t sleep at night.”

“I don’t
sleep during the day either.”

But she was sleepy now. He knew it, could feel her body shutting down out of sheer exhaustion. She had curled up in the chair, loose-limbed and sleepy, and he wanted her in his bed like that.

“Let me tell you my theory,” he said in a soothing voice. “I wouldn’t rule out everyone on your lists. Let me go over the members of Sheol who’ve been here since the beginning, then the ones who came later that I still remember, and then you can tell me about the newcomers. First we have Azazel. . . .” He talked on, his voice low, hypnotic, naming the Fallen, watching her eyelids droop. By the time he’d gotten to Gadrael, she was out.

He waited for her to settle into a deeper sleep. Then he rose and crossed the room, sliding his arms underneath her.