Uriel was accustomed to acting on instinct. It was part of being an archangel. However, this time, when he sensed the danger and felt the evil intent on the desert breeze, the power he automatically called for wasn’t there. It didn’t answer.
Uriel frowned and looked down at himself, and as he did, he caught the glint of metal around his wrist.
Beside him, Azrael shifted. “You did put it on yourself, so it’s up to you to take it off.” Azrael nodded toward the powerful gold wreath that bound Uriel’s powers within his body. “But you should wait until you feed to do it,” he said soberly. “Once you take it off, the influx of your power will assault you and make it exponentially more difficult for you to accept the change that is trying to take place in your body. It may overwhelm you. And it will probably hurt.” Azrael’s tone was low, his words somber, and his golden eyes began to glow slightly with the weight of his warning.
Uriel clenched his teeth and fingered the golden band around his wrist. “I can do this without my powers, I presume?” he said, nodding toward the trio of drugged-out miscreants down the street.
At this, Azrael smiled again and laughed darkly. “But of course. Like I said, it’s in your physiology. You’re a hunter now; this is just reflex.” He turned to focus his ever-intensifying golden gaze on the men who were unwittingly waiting to become prey themselves. “It just makes it more fun.”
“Very well.” Uriel left the bracelet alone and nodded at his brother. “After you.”
Azrael blurred into motion without warning and Uriel was momentarily left blinking at the suddenly empty spot where the archangel had been standing a millisecond before. And then something inside of him slid into place. The click as it connected was nearly audible; at once he simply knew what to do. As Azrael had said, it was a reflex.
Uriel’s vision changed. The scents in the air became visible trails that led in different directions. His hearing sharpened. He could make out the sound of beating hearts up ahead. Two belonged to the young girls. Then came the rapidly erratic beats of the abused hearts of the men ahead of them.
It took a precious few of those wild heartbeats for Uriel to catch up with Azrael at the mouth of the alley where the men stood.
A few more and Azrael had dragged two of the men backward into the waiting darkness. Uriel took care of the third. He wrapped his strong arm around the man’s neck and jerked him into the dank, smelly alleyway so quickly that both of their bodies blurred in the action. The man never knew what hit him.
Uriel’s fangs found purchase in the side of the man’s neck. He fought past the urge to pull away when salt met his tongue and the stench of alcohol and unhealthy bodies filled his nostrils.
Azrael’s influence was instantly in his head.
It is sustenance, Uriel. And you’ve saved more lives here than your own.
Uriel knew his brother was right. They were still archangels, after a fashion. In a way, it was still their job to deliver whatever kind of justice they were capable of.
But it tasted like crap and, frankly, Uriel was sick to death of being an archangel. For once in his long-suffering existence, he would have preferred to be on the taking side of things instead of on the giving. He drank because he had to. The blood would keep him alive. But as he swallowed, he closed his eyes and imagined something else. It wasn’t this man’s blood he wanted to taste.
At that moment, he would have given almost anything to be drinking from Eleanore instead. The scent of her blood had been a siren song to him. It still was. In fact, the memory of her temptation was so starkly clear, it was almost as if he could smell her there in Vegas.
Which was impossible, of course. He really had it bad for her. He needed Eleanore as he needed nothing else in the universe. She completed him; she was his other half. The missing part of his soul.
With that thought, Uriel withdrew his fangs and tossed the now-unconscious man to the ground at his feet. Azrael followed suit a second later. The third man, Azrael had simply knocked unconscious in order to get him out of the way. The three would-be rapists now lay unmoving on the alley asphalt, surrounded by cigarette stubs, empty plastic water bottles, and straws from mixed drinks that were sold up and down the strip.
They wouldn’t be harming anyone that night.
“Help me hide them,” Azrael instructed. Uriel helped him drag the bodies behind a nearby Dumpster, where the men would sleep out the remainder of the night.
It seemed almost pointless to ask, as he could not have cared less either way, but Uriel found himself asking anyway. “Will they be okay?”
“They’re not dead. In the morning, they’ll wake feeling less than fantastic.” Azrael smiled. “And I’ve added a dream or two to their memories.”
“Oh?” Uriel turned a questioning gaze on his brother. Azrael had long had the ability to influence mortal dreams. Along with a host of other abilities, the power had come after many years on Earth and was now considered by the archangels to be part and parcel to being a very old vampire. Uriel was suddenly very curious as to just what the Angel of Death had done to these three troublemakers.
Azrael grinned. “They won’t be wanting to rape anyone anytime soon,” he said, his gold eyes sparking with dark mischief. “Not now that they’ve experienced the nightmare version themselves.”
Uriel’s eyes widened, but he couldn’t keep the smile from his lips. Azrael clapped a hand on his back and turned away to lead them out of the stinking alley. As Uriel followed him out, he focused his attention on his own body and the changes it was continuing to make even now. The blood he’d taken was fueling his senses. His range of hearing had increased; he could make out a conversation that must have been taking place close to a mile away. And was that a shower running? A toilet flushing?
His sense of smell had increased as well. But it seemed like his unconscious desire for Eleanore was overriding it; he could swear he still scented her on the wind. Not just her blood, either. He could smell her lavender shampoo, her cinnamon breath. Even the gentle, clean scent of her skin.
Christ,
he thought. She was filling him up inside. He couldn’t get her out of his head and suddenly it felt as though his awareness of her might drive him mad.
But then Azrael was roughly shoving him back into the darkness of the alleyway shadows, one hand pressed solidly to his broad, thick chest.
“What the—”
“Quiet,” Azrael hissed. “She can’t see you here. Not yet. Not like this.”
“Who?” Uriel whispered, too distracted by his thoughts of Eleanore to be as confused or irritated as he probably should have been.
At this, Azrael’s hand slipped from Uriel’s chest and he turned to face his brother, his stark amber gaze pulsing with warning light. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said softly, taking a step back so that Uriel had a clear view of the street beyond.
The slender profile of a woman with long black hair instantly caught his attention.
Azrael nodded at the dawning comprehension he must have seen in Uriel’s face. “It’s your archess.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I
t took a few seconds for Uriel to gather his wits about him and realize that his fantasy was actually reality. Eleanore was the last person he had expected to see in Las Vegas that night, but he was almost more surprised by the fact that he had known she was there all along.
“I thought she was with Samael,” he muttered under his breath. He was simply thinking out loud. Had she escaped? Had Samael let her go? What the hell was going on?
“Gabe found out that she was here, and Max told me to bring you when you woke up,” Az told him calmly. “I just thought we should have breakfast first.”
“What hotel is that?” Uriel asked, his voice stronger this time.
“The August.”
Uriel glanced around the hotel’s entrance at the plethora of overly handsome men mulling about it and moving in and out. “What’s with all the beef?” Uriel asked, feeling his irritation rise.
“The August is supposedly where performers prefer to stay while in town.”
That would explain it. These men were probably magicians, jousters, dance instructors—you name it. But it only managed to quell a little of his mounting anger.
“How the hell did Eleanore manage to choose
that
hotel, out of every hotel in Vegas?” he asked with irritation.
“She didn’t choose it. Samael did.”
As far as Uriel was concerned, that clinched it. “I’m getting her out of there,” Uriel said with finality. He wasn’t asking for permission in this, and as far as he was concerned, Azrael could either help him in his endeavor, or get the hell out of his way.
“Clean yourself up first,” Azrael said as he turned to face him. “You’re wearing someone else’s blood.”
Uriel looked down to find that he was right. He had disliked the flavor of the drug addict’s blood so much that he must have inadvertently pulled away, allowing some of the red liquid to coat his chest.
He took a deep breath and let it out in a heavy sigh. He could head back to the mansion and change there, but he didn’t want to waste the time. He could buy another shirt—but again, that took time. And the salesperson would undoubtedly question the blood.
On the other hand, he could simply transmorph the shirt and be done with it. Of course, that was a supernatural power and he would have to remove the bracelet if he wanted to use it. Which he wasn’t at all certain he wanted to do.
Being an archangel, in and of itself, was like walking around with a constant buzz. The power hummed through his veins on a near constant level, and somehow, he’d always managed to keep a lid on himself.
Add to that power the influx of the hunger and the high of vampirism, and it was too much. Azrael had managed to survive the combination. But he was the only being Uriel knew of to do so, and Az was most definitely special. Uriel didn’t feel ready to be put to the same grueling test.
“Do it quickly and then put it back on. You need to learn how to control all of your powers together anyway,” the archangel said out loud. Then, mentally, Azrael added,
But keep yourself collared around Eleanore, Uriel. You don’t want to frighten her.
Uriel nodded his assent, and very quickly he pulled the gold bracelet off his wrist. It came away with a white flash and Uriel’s eyes instantly went black from corner to corner. He could actually see it.
For a moment, he seemed to be floating outside of his body, looking down on the scene in the alleyway. He was watching himself, seeing himself through his archangel eyes, as he often did with mortals in order to judge what kinds of souls they possessed. He could see himself standing there with pitch-black demonlike eyes, his hair unnaturally darker and a touch longer, his skin paler, his fangs fully elongated, his long-sleeved thermal shirt covered in someone else’s blood.
He was a little terrifying to behold.
And then, as if caught in some gravitational pull, Uriel was sucked back into his body and instantly overcome by the tremendous power running through his veins. He felt it all there—ready to use, calling to him. Every ability he possessed was amplified. And with this amplification came the piggybacking desire to fuel it. With more blood.
Focus, Uriel. Control it. Change your fucking shirt, and put the goddamned wreath back on. Now.
Azrael’s voice found its way into Uriel’s head, commanding him from within. But Uriel had a hard time paying attention. He wanted to run, to jump, to fly, to throw a freight train into the starlit sky—things he normally could not or would not do. He wanted to use his telekinesis to hurl cars across the street, knock buildings into one another, break something just to hear it shatter. Or to hear it scream.
Uriel!
His head snapped in Azrael’s direction, his vision a strange, dark red.
Think of Eleanore.
Azrael forced the thought through him and Uriel could almost feel the words scrape the walls of his consciousness. It hurt. But it also helped. Uriel closed his eyes and reined himself in. It was like grabbing a whirlwind of pixie lights and forcing them to come closer—within reach. He managed it, but barely.
When he did, his vision changed and he could safely assume that his eyes no longer looked black from corner to corner. He wasted no time in reaching into that vortex of lit-up abilities to pull out the one power he needed to clean himself up.
Within a few seconds, the blood was gone, his clothes were new, and he was slamming the bracelet back down onto his wrist. When it solidified into a solid gold wreath once more, the craziness left his blood, his heartbeat ceased roaring in his eardrums, and he no longer felt like rending something limb from limb.
He took a deep, shaky breath and looked over at his brother.
“You did well.” Azrael nodded sagely. “She’s made it into her room,” he said, turning to peer at the hotel across the street once more. “Give her a few minutes. Then . . .” He glanced back at Uriel and smiled. “Good luck.”