“There.” Max’s shoulders slumped, just a little, signaling that he was finally relaxing in his effort to cast the spell that would disentangle the knotted web of lies Samael had cleverly forced upon Uriel. He waved his hand over the contract.
The black ink on the document began to rise into the air above the altar, its inkiness unwrapping from the paragraphs on the page. It hovered above the stone slab and, as the archangels and their guardian looked on, every letter of every word revealed itself to be composed of not a single stroke of a pen, but of many. Each letter was composed of several other letters—several other words—so that hidden within the very language of the contract was another contract. And another. Promise upon promise, layered so deceptively they would never have been seen with an unaided eye.
“I suggest you read it carefully,” Uriel muttered.
Max blinked and turned to him, his eyes wide.
Uriel glanced at him. “That’s what he told me.” His green eyes glittered darkly. “Before I signed.”
“Yes, well . . .” Max turned back to the hovering phrases, and shook his head. “Samael is very good at what he does.”
“So what now?” Michael asked, his blue eyes on the tiny print that continued to unravel from the blood-signed document.
“Now I read it carefully.” Max smiled wryly. “It’ll take me some time.” He turned to Uriel. “In the meantime, you sleep. Samael won’t hurt Eleanore. We’ve proof more or less to that extent right here before us.” He waved dismissively at the unwrapping contract. “God only knows what the man is really after, but he appears to want her heart, not her body.”
“You mean not
only
her body,” Gabriel corrected.
Uriel’s eyes sparked dangerously and began to glow. A very low, ominously deep growl rumbled through the stone chamber and caused the flames on the sconces to flicker unsteadily.
Gabriel’s silvery gaze moved from his brother’s burning jade-green orbs to the fangs that were so pronounced in Uriel’s warning snarl. “Right,” he muttered softly. “Sorry.”
Max broke the tension then, as he was so accustomed to doing. He stepped back from the altar and turned to the shadows from where he knew Azrael looked silently on. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
Azrael could see himself through his guardian’s eyes. Gold eyes reflected in the darkness and there was a stillness in the shadows around him, predatory and dangerous. “Better,” he said softly.
“Good,” Max said, nodding.
I will have to force him to sleep,
Az told Max then, using his telepathic abilities. He was referring to Uriel.
He’s set on going after her right away.
At that, Uriel cocked his head to one side and offered Azrael a somewhat cruel smile. He may not have had the use of his vampire telepathy because of the bracelet he wore, but it was as if Uriel had read Az’s thoughts anyway.
Azrael stepped out of the shadows, studying his brother carefully.
Samael knew Uriel too well. There was more of Jonathan Brakes in him than anyone had thought.
CHAPTER TWELVE
E
leanore glared up at Samuel Lambent from where she sat on one of his plush couches in his office in the former Sears Tower. She had materialized in this room along with him and Jason after Sam had magically whisked them out of the cemetery. She was no longer cuffed. What was the point? She knew she wasn’t going anywhere.
“You’re Samael,” she hissed accusingly. She’d figured a few things out over the last few hours. “You’re the archangel that Uriel was talking about. You’re the one who caused the archesses to be dumped down here all those years ago.”
Samael smiled down at her, his stance calm, his hands in his pockets. “I won’t deny it.”
“You did something to Uriel, didn’t you?”
Samael turned and gave her a sidelong glance. “He did it to himself,” he said, matter-of-factly. Then he stepped away from the couch to move around the coffee table behind him, his attention on a window set into one wall. The sun’s morning rays were peeking through the shutters, warming the air. He stopped before the window, allowing the light to bathe him in its glory. “He signed the agreement. A deal is a deal.”
“You turned him into a vampire.”
At that, Samael smiled to himself, but said nothing.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, her teeth set on edge.
Samael turned again and looked at her long and hard. Eleanore wanted to be brave beneath such attention, but he was . . . well, he was too beautiful, his gaze unconquerable. In the end, she managed to pull her own eyes from his and look at the coffee table. It was all she could do to keep from being sucked into the crackling storms of his eyes.
“I was hoping you would consider making a deal of your own.”
That got her attention. Eleanore’s head snapped up, her eyes finding his once more. “With
you
?” she breathed. “You can’t be serious.”
“I generally find that I am rarely anything
but
serious,” he told her with a hint of a smile.
“Mr. Lambent—”
“Sam.”
Eleanore blinked. The alias thing was ridiculous with this bunch. She would never be sure exactly what to call any of them. She pressed on. “I would very much like to know what kind of game I’ve found myself in the middle of. I don’t know what kind of pact it is you have with Uriel and his brothers, and I don’t know where I fit into it all. But frankly, it’s pissing me off.”
Samael studied her closely. She could feel him taking everything in, from the top of her head to the tips of her boots. It unnerved her to no end, but she ruthlessly forced herself not to back down.
Be brave
.
He left the window and came to stand before her. To her credit, she didn’t shrink from him.
“You want the entire truth?” he asked her.
“Please,” she said, meaning it from the bottom of her heart. She was so tired.
“Very well.” He told everything then. He retold the story that she had already heard from Uriel and his brothers—how she and three others like her had been created, long, long ago, as soul mates for the four archangels.
He told her about the revolt and how she and the others had been “discarded” by the Old Man. “Anything to keep an uneasy peace in a place where such a thing was merely a mask for irresponsible power and hindered desires.”
He even told her about his deal and the contract with Uriel. The only thing he
didn’t
tell her was why he had demanded the deal in the first place. That, apparently, was his business and his alone.
“You used me,” she told him. “To trick Uriel into serving you.”
“I may have,” he admitted easily. “I am not always proud of the things I do, Eleanore. But I do them anyway.” He walked once more to the window and peered out over Chicago. “It’s who I am.”
“And what kind of deal is it that you want from me?”
Samael blinked, looked down, and then, after a moment of consideration, he turned away from the window and moved to a large oak desk that rested in front of a set of massive bookcases loaded with books. He picked up a piece of paper from the desk and then reached for a fountain pen that stood upright in a marble holder in one corner.
“I want the same thing I have always wanted,” he told her as he brought the paper and pen around the desk and set them down on the coffee table before her. “I want to win.”
What the hell does that mean?
Eleanore thought. She gazed down at the paper. It looked to be a fairly old and yellowed parchment piece, but was completely blank. The pen was equally strange to her. It looked to be made of something like quartz crystal, clear and glittery and beautiful.
Not quartz,
she realized.
It’s one solid diamond.
With wide eyes, she glanced up at Samael, who was taking a seat on the couch opposite from her. He watched her steadily, not saying anything.
“It has no ink,” she said. The pen was see-through, and focusing on its lack of ink took her mind off its general purpose.
“It doesn’t use ink,” he told her, his tone low, his voice a wicked, evil caress.
“I still don’t know what you want from me,” she choked out.
“I want your word that if Christopher Daniels—Uriel,” he clarified, his eyes glinting with silver, “does anything to hurt you in the next seven days, you will come to me.”
Eleanore blinked. “What would Uriel do to hurt me?” Images of the archangel with glowing red eyes and prominent fangs floated before her mind’s eye.
“It can’t be easy going through the changes his body is making,” Samael said. “There’s so much to take into consideration.” He leaned back against the couch and shrugged. “Whereas daylight was once nothing more than illumination for him, now it will be deadly. Then there’s the feeding,” he said and his gaze cut to her. His voice had dropped subtly, meaningfully. “He will need to do it nightly—and he will need to learn how to prevent himself from killing those he feeds from. It can be very tempting to take things further than strictly necessary.”
Eleanore digested this and found that the more she imagined Uriel sinking his fangs into someone’s throat, the dryer her mouth got.
There was a brief flash of light in front of her and Eleanore gasped and looked down to find a tall glass of ice water sweating on the coffee table before her.
“It isn’t poisoned, so please drink,” Samael said.
Eleanore realized that this meant he had been reading her mind, and that he was most likely still doing so. But she also realized it would be pointless to ask him to stop.
She took the glass and drank. It felt wonderful going down, cold and thirst-quenching, and it seemed to fortify her enough that she could ask her next question. She set the glass back down, now half-empty, and said, “You think that Uriel is going to kill me?”
“No.” Samael smiled a wry smile. “No, Eleanore. If I did, there would be little use in my asking you to come to me should he harm you. However, I wouldn’t put it past him to take more than you’re willing to give.”
Eleanore felt herself flushing once more as Samael’s gaze burned into her from where he leaned so casually against the back of the couch. She looked down at the coffee table and self-consciously hugged herself.
“Agree to this one thing, and when the week has ended, I will release Uriel from his curse.”
This drew her attention to him once again. “And if I don’t agree?”
“Then he will remain trapped in his new form for the rest of eternity. Who knows? Perhaps he will get used to it one day.”
Eleanore ran a hand through her hair and then over her eyes. There was no easy way out of this for any of them. There was too much to contend with. Contracts, deals, vampirism curses . . . She and Uriel still had each other to contend with, on top of it all. That was enough on its own. Could she grow to love him, as she was meant to as an archess?
I certainly already lust after him,
she thought wryly.
It was the very basis of her existence that was bothering her the most. Learning that she was an archess was one thing; it explained so many questions she’d had all her life about why she was different. And finding out Uriel was supposed to be her soul mate wasn’t so bad either; she had to admit, she felt attracted to him body and soul from the moment she’d met him in the flesh.
But learning that she had actually been created for the sole purpose of being his mate was something else again. Where was her free will in all of this?
It had been taken the first time Uriel had set eyes on her. Or perhaps it had been taken the first time her powers had shown themselves to the world and she’d instantly gone into hiding. Or maybe it had been taken the moment of her creation, and she had never had it to begin with.
She was not free. She never had been. And she resented it.
“I can give you freedom,” Samael said then.
Eleanore looked up at him, eyes wide. “What?”
Samael took a quick, thoughtful breath and stood. He paced to his desk, turned, and leaned back against it, his arms crossed over his chest. “Eleanore, you must know in your heart that I can give you anything you desire.”
Oh no,
she thought.
Be strong, Ellie, be strong.
But his smile was tender and his gaze made her feel weak. “You need but trust me.” Then, without warning, he disappeared.
Eleanore stared in surprise at the spot where he had been only moments before. And then she became instantly wary. Slowly, she stood from the couch, her dark blue eyes scanning the four corners of the large, opulently furnished study. She slowly searched the shadows, her breath quickening once more, but found no sign of him.
He was simply gone.
She turned back around to face the coffee table only to find it had disappeared and Samael was standing a mere few inches away, watching her with that careful, calculating gaze.