Rebel (8 page)

Even sleeping late, I was still an earlier riser than many in Sheol. As I walked down to the sea, I could hear the sounds of people training under the archangel Michael’s stern tutelage, the noise drifting from the open doors of the huge room where they worked, but the beach was empty. I kicked off my sandals at the edge of the water and walked through the ripples of surf, feeling the sun beat down on me, drying my freshly washed hair into a mass of annoying curls around my face. I’d hoped cutting it short would give me some kind of gravitas, despite my height. Instead I had ended up looking like a waif, and there was no room for waifs in a world of oversize, too-beautiful fallen angels.

I gazed out at the dark blue water as I waded along the shore. It was another illusion that I couldn’t get rid of. The ocean was a healing world for the Fallen—its waters could mend even a mortal blow in an angel—but for their human counterparts it was simply water. There was no reason I should feel strengthened and healed when I went into the sea that lay at our doorstep, but I did, and Michael had taught us that perception was half the battle. If we
believed we would triumph, we would. If I believed the ocean strengthened and healed me, then emotionally, at least, it would.

It wouldn’t heal me physically. I’d already tried that surreptitiously, hoping the cool, cleansing water would wash away the scars. It hadn’t, but when I’d emerged that first time, I could feel their importance slipping away.

In fact, I hadn’t thought about the ugly scars marring my flesh for a long time, months, perhaps years. Not until Cain had arrived in a shower of flame.

I was annoyed with myself. I had things to do today, yet the erotic dream lingered. I could still
feel
it. Whether I wanted to fight or not, everyone was required to spend at least two hours a day in combat training, and nothing would exempt me. It was hard, exhausting work, but I liked how strong it made me feel, the pleasant sense of tiredness that suffused my body. I would train twice as hard today, I promised myself. Work my body so hard that I was too tired to pay attention to anyone, so hard that my sleep would be dreamless.

I turned, ready to head back—and saw him perched on the cliffs overhead, the very same bluff where Raziel flew when he needed to think. Raziel hadn’t been bred to run this unruly bunch of fallen ones. It had always been Azazel’s task, through untold millennia, to guide the Fallen in their ongoing
battle against Uriel and his viciously cruel decrees. There had been centuries of détente, and then the war would flare up again, as it had when Allie first came to Sheol.

But something had snapped inside Azazel when his beloved wife Sarah fell in the same battle that took Thomas, and he’d disappeared, leaving everything to Raziel. It wasn’t until he’d returned, bringing with him the embodiment of what had once been the most powerful female entity in the universe, that it became clear everything was about to change.

But it wasn’t Raziel up there, overseeing his people. It was Cain, the dark angel. Watching us.

I glanced up at him. What was he looking at, so far out to sea?

I could feel his gaze slide over me, and I jerked my eyes away and started walking. He was probably looking right through me, not realizing or caring who the lone woman on the beach was.

Allie was on temporary bed rest after some minor cramping had paralyzed her with fear. She shouldn’t have gotten up yesterday, but the curiosity had been too much for her to withstand.

I wasn’t the slightest bit worried about her. At least in this one matter, my vision was completely clear. Allie would deliver a strong, healthy baby, and she would be fine.

There wasn’t much I could do to calm Raziel’s
fears. It was his choice to believe in the best or the worst, and I couldn’t help him. I would work in my garden, visit with Allie, put in my time training. I would follow my usual peaceful routine and forget all about the dark angel who watched me.

Work in Sheol was optional—there was no need for me to tend the patch of earth filled with healing plants and flowers, but putting my hands in the rich, warm earth grounded me, calmed me, just as the ocean did. One of my mother’s friends had been obsessed with astrology, and I still remembered her words from when I was seven years old. She’d insisted on doing my chart, and after much prodding it turned out my mother actually remembered what time I’d been born. The beginning of the end of her freedom, she’d said, so she’d paid attention, but this time her apathy brought results. According to Latierra, I was Taurus with Cancer rising and too much Scorpio in my chart. Being told I was sensuous was an unsettling concept when I was seven, and in a high-rise tenement in a concrete jungle, I couldn’t understand what she meant by a connection to the earth. In the ugly Midwestern city, there was no ocean to call to me, and I’d ignored Latierra’s insistence that I was destined for great and wonderful things.

I liked to think I’d had no visions back then, trapped in that dark, chaotic life, but that wasn’t
true. I had known I’d be rescued. I knew someone would come for me, and in fact, I’d known it would be an angel. When I was younger I thought that simply meant I would die, and I viewed that future with the calm acceptance of a morbidly romantic adolescent. I read everything I could find, escaping into the world of novels, and I pictured myself as Beth from
Little Women,
calm and sweet and doomed.

So when my angel had appeared, I’d gone willingly, not even questioning. I’d left my siblings behind, secure in the knowledge that the latest man in my mother’s life was clean and sober and responsible. He would look after them and love them as best he could, protect them from the worst of our mother’s choices. I could go live my life now, with my dark angel.

But he hadn’t been a dark angel. I’d been wrong about that part. Thomas had been angelically fair, sweet and open, generous and loving, and he’d gone a long way in the task of healing my heart and soul. I’d been like a tightly curled bud, hiding from the world, and I flowered under Thomas’s gentle coaxing. I’d given him everything I could, moving closer and closer to the kind of bond others took for granted and I longed for.

And then the Nephilim had attacked.

It had taken me so long to heal I’d barely had time to mourn him. I’d been delirious with pain and
drugs, and I’d accepted his loss with grief, despair, and guilt. I had never truly given him what he deserved. Not my complete trust. And not my blood.

Something had always kept me from that final connection, and he’d calmly made do with the Source until I was ready. I understood the curse, the reluctant need, but I wasn’t ready to offer my blood to my husband’s mouth. That night, after the Nephilim were driven from our world forever, I was planning to give him that final trust.

Instead he’d been torn apart, screaming, as I’d tried to get to him, and my own body had been slashed open, my blood spilling on the beach among all the others, and I had reached out my hand, willing to join him in death.

But I had lived. Eventually I had healed. The only signs of that horrible day were the lines across my body, the parallel scars from the claws of the Nephilim. And the guilt and emptiness in my heart.

The garden had gone a long way toward healing me. There had been no medicinal plants in Sheol, since there was little illness, but flowers abounded everywhere except in the courtyard beyond my room. The patch of land outside the annex had been ready and fertile, and it had embraced the trans-plantings and the seeds I had found with enthusiasm. I had grown flowers and plants with riotous abandon, letting the brilliant color wash over me,
purples and pinks, blues and yellows and every shade of red; and the feel of the rich loam on my hands, the scent and taste and delight of it all, were my rescue and my solace. Until Cain had invaded my serenity.

I was a fool to let him affect me so. Besides, he was still up on the bluff. He appeared to have forgotten about me, thank God. I could safely tend my garden.

The late-morning air was soft and cool, a breeze ruffling my hair and my loose clothes as I knelt in the dirt, carefully pinching back unruly offshoots. I would need to transplant some of the bloodred anemones, perhaps move some to one of the front gardens. I could put a small container garden on the tiny balcony outside of Allie and Raziel’s top-floor apartment—the anemones would provide a burst of color for Allie to enjoy during her bed rest.

Latierra had been right. I was a sensual being—I loved tastes and textures and smells; I loved everything about the earth and the sea and life in general. It was full of such wonderful things that one simply needed to notice to enjoy. An older friend of my mother’s used to say, “Stop and smell the roses.” I’d always wondered about that—there were certainly no roses where we’d lived.

But now I understood. And I had planted a gloriously fragrant rosebush just under my window, so
that the scent could drift into my sleep and cushion my dreams.

I sat back on my heels, looking at the barely restrained effusion of color, well satisfied, until I heard a voice behind me.

“This doesn’t look like you,” Cain said lazily. “It’s too wild. You’re hardly the type to let gardens sprawl all over the place, full of lush flowers and tangled greenery.”

I looked up, not moving, and resisted the urge to scowl. I didn’t know what to say. I could hardly defend the haphazard mass of scents and colors that I nurtured so carefully. I didn’t understand it myself. “Things grow very rapidly here,” I said in a noncommittal voice. “It’s hard to keep up with it.”

“You forget—I used to live here. Gardens will behave exactly as you want them to. You must like all this chaos, despite your outward appearance, and I wonder why.”

I pushed my hair out of my face. “You can draw your own conclusions,” I said severely. Because he would, and my only defense was to ignore him. “Now, go away and leave me alone.”

His mouth curved in amusement, and of course he stayed put. “You’re quite a mess,” he said, looking me over. “Your pants are caked with mud, your hands are filthy, and you’ve got a streak of dirt right”—he reached out toward my cheekbone, then hesitated—“here.”
He didn’t connect, but I could feel him, feel the warmth of his skin, too close. The odd buzz of power between us.

I didn’t jerk back as I wanted to, and I was proud of myself. “Please don’t touch me,” I said in a controlled voice, and scrambled to my feet.

“Why not?”

“You’re like a three-year-old, you know?” I snapped, goaded. I never showed annoyance or discomfiture. I was calm, nurturing Martha, efficient in all things but my visions. But Cain managed to get under my skin like a rash. Last night’s absurd dream flashed through my mind, and I felt myself blush. “I’ve never heard so many questions in my life,” I continued, trying to sound more amenable and failing. “Sometimes there is no answer, it simply is.”

“And your not wanting to be touched ‘simply is’? Or is it that you’re afraid after what happened last night?”

I panicked. How did he know about my dream? And then I realized he was talking about that strange electric shock that had sparked between us, and I took a deep breath.

“Nothing happened last night,” I said. Two lies in four words.

He moved closer, and I would have given anything to be six inches taller. My eyes were level with his beautiful, enticing mouth, and I wanted to look at anything but that.

“Nothing happened?” he echoed. “You’re telling me you didn’t feel it?”

“Feel what?” I said stubbornly.

“Should I touch you again, just to see what happens?”

So close. If I just swayed slightly, I could brush against him. I could smell his clean, masculine scent above the perfume of the rich soil and the roses, and it called to me. The sea. And leather. And sex. Tempting me.

“I asked you not to touch me,” I heard my voice say, stiff, prudish, not at all like me.

For a moment he didn’t move, and then the slow grin appeared on his face. A second later he stepped back, releasing the odd hold he had over me. “Not now,” he said. “I’ll give you a little more time to wonder what will happen when I do.”

I fought down the sudden alarm. “What do you mean?”

“Now who’s asking too many questions? You know as well as I do what I mean. When I really touch you. When I get you into bed.”

He was trying to shock me again. The calm tone of those last words had belied the meaning, and he expected me to run away, to panic.

Not likely. Yesterday he’d thrown me into turmoil. Today he was simply one more annoyance, one more distraction that I could easily deal with. “Get over yourself.”
I managed a disinterested drawl. “I’m sure there are other people who would be much more fun to annoy. I’m not interested in playing whatever game you’ve got going.”

He tilted his head, surveying me like a judge at a horse show, teeth to withers. “Maybe you’re not.” His voice was low, and it felt almost physical, wrapping around my skin. “But I plan to change your mind. You can fight it all you want. You can run away, you can tattle to Raziel or whomever. But in the end you’re going to come to me. You’ll give me your body, you’ll let my mouth move over every inch of your skin, you’ll give me your sweet, hot blood, and you’ll weep with pleasure when I take it.”

I stared at him, mesmerized by his voice, until the meaning of his seductive words broke through, and then I backed away, furious. “Are you somehow so delusional that you think I’m your bonded mate? Because that’s insane. I’ve already been bonded, and even though Thomas is dead I will always be his wife. The laws are very clear. A woman cannot bond twice.”

“Laws are made to be broken,” he said, unmoved by my anger. “But no, you’re not my one true love, which I know relieves you.” He smiled at me, that charming, devilish smile that was making all the women weak in the knees. Not me.

I gave a derisive snort. “Then you can’t take
my blood. It would kill you.”
And good riddance,
I thought.

“And good riddance,” he said, and I jerked, shocked, then realized it was simply a logical conclusion. He couldn’t have heard me. Only mates heard each other, and he’d agreed he most certainly wasn’t my mate. “That’s presumably what most of Sheol would think. But what the Fallen believe, all their tight, careful little rules and rituals, isn’t necessarily the truth of the matter.”