She removed the covers and swung her feet over the side of the bed. Now that she was no longer horizontal, she could see the vastness of the room. It resembled Samuel Lambent’s rented home in its grandiose size and the fine quality of its decor. The fireplace was marble, the walls were hung in fine Renaissance art, and the marble floors were covered in thick plush rugs, all done in muted, tasteful tones.
Christopher was back beside the bed now, kneeling so that they were at eye level. “How do you feel?” he asked quietly.
Eleanore looked down at him and a dangerous thought flashed through her mind.
The one called Gabriel cleared his throat. “Uh, Uriel, I would no’—”
Eleanore didn’t notice that Gabriel had called him by another name. She wasn’t paying Michael or Gabriel any attention at all, in fact. Her hand was balled into a fist, her gaze quickly narrowing. At the moment, all of her focus was on one thing and one thing only.
With every ounce of rejuvenated energy she possessed, Eleanore brought her right arm back and drove it forward into Christopher’s jaw. His head snapped to the side and he toppled backward, away from the bed.
With renewed vigor and the delightfully jubilant impression that something in her world
finally
made sense, Eleanore stood up. She was not at all weak or unsteady.
“You wanted to know if I would forgive you?” she asked lightly, feeling an honest-to-God spring in her step as she bounced on the balls of her feet and gazed down at the handsome man who was gingerly rubbing his chin. “Well, of
course
I will,” she chimed, smiling sweetly at him.
Michael, who was obviously trying as hard not to laugh as Gabriel was, held up his hands in placation when Daniels glared up at the two of them. The blond man’s lips pressed together in a tight smile that held back his apparent amusement. He shrugged helplessly. “Gabe tried to warn you, man.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
T
here are several different ways that one can react when faced with news that is either highly improbable—or incredibly bad. You can scream and cry, or laugh at a really high pitch while you simultaneously hyperventilate. You can also refuse to believe it outright and, in extreme cases, shut down altogether.
Unless you’re a woman who has the ability to command lightning, move objects, and heal chicken pox.
“Prove it.” Eleanore sat back in the wooden chair at the table and crossed her legs. She folded her arms over her chest and waited patiently. Healing was one thing. She’d been able to do that since she was two.
But the things these men were claiming were farfetched on a good day. And it hadn’t exactly been a good day. They’d told her, quite bluntly, that they were archangels who had come down to Earth two thousand years ago in order to find their “archesses,” who, apparently, were their female angel soul mates. That, in and of itself, was quite a good story.
In addition, they claimed that they each had more or less the same powers except that Michael was able to heal wounds and Azrael was able to do a
lot
of things the others couldn’t. This seemed sort of a strange twist to their tale, but they wouldn’t elaborate and apparently “Azrael” wasn’t there to speak for himself.
They claimed supernatural strength, telekinesis, a vague control over the elements, the ability to forecast weather with absolute accuracy, and a talent for speaking, reading, and writing any language in the world. On top of that, they claimed they were able to use weapons in ways human warriors could only dream.
The men in front of her looked to one another, thrown off by her request.
“I’m waiting,” she said, shrugging and arching her brows.
“Okaaay . . .” The man whose name she’d always thought was Christopher Daniels, but who now claimed he was the archangel named Uriel, narrowed his gaze in consideration and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He shifted his booted feet and cocked his head to one side. “What exactly did you have in mind?” His starkly colored eyes sparkled in the firelight.
He’s still incredibly sexy,
she thought,
whatever the hell his name is
.
She remembered his kiss, began to blush, and quickly looked at the floor. “Well, I don’t know.” She shrugged again. “Can’t you sprout wings or something?” Gabriel laughed in that deep voice of his, and Eleanore shot him a sideways glance. “Well, can’t you?” she reiterated.
“No’ exactly.” Gabriel shook his head.
“We gave up those forms when we came down here,” Michael told her.
“How convenient,” Eleanore deadpanned.
The men looked at one another, seemingly helpless until Eleanore sighed heavily. “Look, it’s not hard. Just show me.”
“Christ,” Gabriel swore, shooting Uriel a dirty look. “If my archess wants you to dance the bloody jig, you’d better sodding well do it,” he told him flatly. Then he turned and, without warning, he reached his right arm out toward the fire in the hearth.
In answer, it leapt to sudden life and proceeded to shoot forward a good twenty feet from the fireplace, drawing an alarmed squeal from Eleanore. She leapt from the chair she was in, instinctively preparing to either run or exert some paranormal control over the fire should it start to spread, but she was saved the trouble when the fire suddenly froze into solid ice.
Eleanore stood stock-still and stared at the wondrous sculpture of nature. It crackled much like a fire would, and shimmered where it hovered a few feet above the marble floor, a column of frozen water that had grown out of its elemental opposite.
She had no opportunity to comment on the display of Gabriel’s power, however, as the task slipped from one brother to another within a split second and Uriel took up the reins. He raised his arms at his sides and every piece of furniture in the room, including the chair Eleanore had been seated in just a few seconds ago, rose steadily from the ground and then began spinning slowly above their heads.
Eleanore stared, open-mouthed, at the display. She could move objects, too, but she’d never tried so many objects, or anything heavier than a chair. Using her powers tended to drain her badly.
Uriel smiled, cocked his head to one side, and the furniture spun faster and faster until it became a blur of leather and textile. When it stopped, it had transformed. The love seat was now a fainting couch. The couch, a divan.
There were several beats of stunned silence. And then Uriel set the pieces back down on the marble floor.
Eleanore looked on with wide eyes as Gabriel and Uriel then turned to Michael. He shrugged and smiled at Eleanore. “You’ve already seen some of what I can do,” he told her in a friendly tone, reminding her that he had, in fact, healed her. “Do you believe us now?”
“I think that’s enough, boys,” a voice suddenly said from the archway that led to the foyer and the exit to the mansion beyond.
Eleanore recognized the man who had spoken as Max Gillihan, who she knew was the agent to Christopher Daniels.
Uriel,
Eleanore corrected herself.
Eleanore’s gaze narrowed on Gillihan as he pulled his glasses from his face and tucked them into his front suit pocket. He made his way to a large overstuffed leather chair and sank into it, crossing his legs at the knees.
“Miss Granger isn’t buying it.”
“Buying it?” Eleanore asked, instantly bristling from the man’s tone.
“Oh, you believe well enough that these men have powers—much like you do, Miss Granger. But that isn’t why we’re here, is it?” It wasn’t a question. Eleanore knew what he meant. He meant that she accepted their abilities because she, too, had those abilities and it was therefore hard for her to ignore that such things were possible.
It was the claim that they were angels—
archangels
, no less—that she wasn’t buying.
“Miss Granger, I know why this is hard for you to accept.”
Eleanore pinned the agent with a hard blue gaze. “Oh?” she asked, getting somewhat irritated now. “And what part do you play in all of this, Mr. Gillihan?” He was an agent for a movie star. What did he have to do with this, exactly?
“Max isn’t just my agent,” Uriel told her, as if he could read her thoughts. “He’s our guardian and has been for thousands of years.”
“Yes,” Gillihan continued, his tone gentle, his voice quiet. Then, as if to brush the subject under the rug, he went back to what he was saying. “And the reason this is hard for you to accept is because if you believe that Uriel and his brothers are angels, then it means that you must make the next logical leap and accept that you, too, are an angel. An archess, to be precise.”
“Now, listen.” Eleanore gritted her teeth and pointed at the man. “Let’s just get one thing straight right here and now, shall we?” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I’m no angel,” she told him flatly. “You have
no
idea what kinds of things I have done in my life. You have no idea what kind of person I am. This is preposterous.” She shook her head again and threw her hands up in the air.
Then she closed her eyes, weighing her words. “I can see that you’re all very special. Hurray for you that you can do the things you can do. But I don’t like being lied to. My life is complicated enough, and frankly,” she said, her tone lowering meaningfully, “I don’t believe in angels.”
“I don’t blame you,” Max said matter-of-factly. “The world you live in bears too many battle scars. There is too much unexplained pain and loss and even I will admit as much.”
Eleanore frowned, her gaze narrowing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Max said. “I just understand where you’re coming from. But that doesn’t change the fact that Uriel, Michael, Gabriel, and Azrael are archangels—and so are you.”
Eleanore’s hands curled into fists, her teeth grinding in irritation. “I’m
not
the kind of person that . . .” She fished around for the right term, growing more frustrated by the second, until finally, she gave up and simply pointed up. “That
He
chooses to make into an angel. Believe me. I’m just a human. And not a very good one at that.”
“Not one of us is going to believe that for a second, Ellie,” Uriel said from behind her. She hadn’t realized he’d moved to stand so close beside her. She spun around to face him, her blue-black hair flying around her as her dark gaze met his. He was smiling a very slight smile. Like his brothers, he wore tight clothing over well-developed muscles, which she could see moving gracefully beneath his long-sleeved thermal tee.
How fucking distracting.
“What the hell would you know?” she asked him, trying to keep her tone calm and her attention off his body.
“I know that you risked your own life to save two strangers this morning,” he told her. “You’d have to be a very tricky bad guy with a good imagination and a really complicated plan for you to have fit that scenario into your design.”
“Anyone with my ability would have done the same,” she said, shaking her head wearily.
“Bullshit.” Uriel’s gaze narrowed. “If there’s anything I know about humans, it’s that most of them are assholes. I’ve spent enough time punishing the worst of them to be well aware of that.”
Eleanore frowned, confused. “Punishing them?” she asked, finding that her voice had dropped in volume.
There was a brief but heavy silence, pregnant with untold secrets. And then Michael cleared his throat from where he was leaning against the mantle of the fireplace. “Uriel used to be the Angel of Vengeance.”
Eleanore blinked. She felt strange and disconnected. As if she’d been catapulted none too gently into some bizarre dream. “The Angel of Vengeance?” she asked. She’d never paid much attention to Christian mythology, so she was thrown by what she was hearing. She heard herself speaking but wasn’t sure whether she could be held responsible for her words at this point. “As in flaming sword, justice, smiting the sinners—stuff like that?” Her voice was nearly a whisper now.
Uriel said nothing. His eyes were glowing again.
Glowing,
Eleanore realized, as if lights had been switched on behind them—unnatural and beautiful and oh, so wrong.
The archangel nodded at last, admitting the truth. And, in that instant, Eleanore knew that it was all true.
All
of it. “You . . .” She felt dizzy. She closed her eyes and ran her hand over her face, trying to cool it off. The world had become a confusing, chaotic, senseless, feverish carnival ride and Eleanore wanted off. “You mean to tell me that you punish people—you strike them down or whatever it is you do . . . but you never . . .
help
them?”
No one answered her. She looked up at Uriel and then at Michael. And then at Gabriel and at Max. She met their eyes, one at a time, as she said, “Women are raped over and over again in Sudan, you know.” Her tone had dropped; her voice had become quieter. “Children—they’re just little girls.” She remembered reading the articles and the images their words had called up. “They’re raped and beaten and tortured and then shot to death or sliced to pieces with a machete. Some are cooked and eaten.” She swallowed hard, forcing down sudden bile. “And the men who do this go unpunished. . . .”