Blood of Dragons (18 page)

His eyes narrow to slits.  “There is something different about you, Raziel.  I have heard rumors but I did not believe them until now.”  His grin feels like someone stuck feathers all over the slime on my body that his laugh caused.  “You are…unsure.  Yes.  That is the word.” 

He begins walking around me.  I think I’m supposed to turn to follow him but I don’t.  I’m too tired.  My mind needs some rest.

“How is it that the one Archangel who has been blessed with infinite knowledge can be unsure?”  He stops when he’s in front of me again.  “Where is the cocky know it all that I’m used to seeing?”

I roll my eyes.  “If you are done being jealous because I know more than you, I am leaving.  If not, feel free to go on blabbering.  I am perfectly capable of tuning you out until you leave.”  I cross my arms over my chest and raise my brows in a ‘what are you going to choose’ kind of way.

He mimics my stance and blocks my path to where I can possibly lie down and rest my mind for a while.  “Well, well, well.  Your mask of perfection finally slips.”

I sigh from the bottom of my toes.  No, farther than that.  I think it came from at least five feet underground.  “What are we doing here?  Is this the part when you challenge me to a magical duel or something?  If so, can we get on with it because listening to you talk is like having millions of teeny tiny fleas trying to suck my blood out one microliter at a time.”

Shock washes over his face.  Which he quickly tries to hide behind creepy Angel bravado.  “I would never dream of such a thing.  Besides, you should already know the outcome if we did come to arms.  Why bother with the physicality of it all.”

“You are right.  At some point we do come to arms and I use you as a rag to wipe Shadow gunk off the walls of the Shadow realm.”  At least, I hope that’s how it would turn out.

He throws his head back and laughs.  “You always do weave an impressive tale, Raziel.”  He steps aside and gestures with his hand toward the other side of the garden.  “Please, do not let me keep you any longer.  I am not sure that my sense of humor is up to the challenge of your words today.”

I have no idea what that means.  And I don’t care.  I simply walk past him doing my best not to snarl at him as I go by.  Wow, this guy brings out some base instincts in me.   

Walking to the back of the garden I’m pleased to find a hammock in a quiet little corner.  Since I am exhausted and I don’t want to keep walking to find out if there are beds in a house or somewhere, I decide this will do just fine.  It takes me a minute to get my girth to balance out.  Fortunately, I only fall off the other side once.  I’m pretty sure no one saw me do it.  Once I’m as comfortable as I can be, I close my eyes.  My body isn’t tired but my mind is.  I don’t know if Raziel usually sleeps – I don’t know if any of the Angels sleep, but my mind drifts into dreamland immediately.

I’m outside in some sort of makeshift shelter like my dad would make when we’d go camping when I was young and he still had a body.  I smile when I see Kallen sound asleep next to me.  My heart yearns for him so badly.  I reach out and push a rebellious piece of hair from his forehead and then run my finger lightly down his cheek.  He smiles in his sleep. 

I move closer to him trying to capture some of his body heat.  Funny, I’ve never been cold in a dream before.  I bet there’s some Freudian significance in that but I’ll think about that when I wake up.  When my body is parallel to his, I lean forward and touch his lips gently with mine.

A low groan escapes his lips as he deepens the kiss.  His arm snakes around me, pulling me closer and I can tell just how glad he is to feel me next to him.  Suddenly, our bodies explode in passion and our hands are tearing at each other’s clothes until Kallen makes them disappear altogether.  His lips find mine again as he gently rolls me to my back and nudges my thighs apart with his knee.  I moan softly as he positions himself above me and I am in heaven with his first thrust that joins our bodies.

And then Kallen is jumping back towards the shelter wall, his eyes wide with panic.  Devastated doesn’t even come close to doing justice to how I feel at the moment.  I’m sure the shock on my face mimics his.

After a moment of scrutinizing me, Kallen runs his hand through his hair and whispers, “Xandra, please tell me that’s really you.”

I bite my trembling bottom lip as I try not to cry over his rejection and I nod my head.  The relief on his face is palpable.  “I thought I was dreaming.”  I still don’t trust my voice as he crawls back to my side.  He touches my face gently.  Not passionately.  He touches it as if he doesn’t believe what he’s seeing.  “I thought…”  He pauses for a moment and closes his eyes.  After a second, he opens them again and continues.  “When I woke up and realized it was not a dream, I was afraid that I had made improper advances on your body with…with Raziel still inside of it.”

My mind takes a minute to process that through my haze of rejection.  Once it does, I actually start to giggle as I think of the horrification Kallen must have just experienced.  Much worse than my feelings of rejection I’m sure.  I shake my head as I finally find my voice again.  “It’s only me in here.”  And this isn’t a dream.  I’m really here.  Where here is, I don’t care.  I only care about the fact that I’m back where I’m supposed to be – with Kallen.

“Oh my god Xandra,” he says as he cups my cheek in his hand.  “You have no idea how happy that makes me.”

With my best sultry voice, I say, “Show me.”

It does not take long before we’re once again making love to each other.  This time, when he’s deep inside of me, nothing could tear us apart.  My hips push into him, matching his rhythm stroke for stroke.  When we have risen as high as we can go, a wave of pleasure washes over both of us.  Kallen makes sure he milks every last spasm from my body until I am limp in his arms.

Burying his face in my hair, our bodies still joined, he says, “Please do not ever leave me again.  I cannot live without you.”

My hand strokes the hard muscles of his back and my legs wrap even tighter around him.  “I don’t ever
want
to leave you again.”  Rocking our bodies until I have him on his back, I proceed to show him how much I mean that.  Over and over and over again.  After several hours, I finally lay exhausted in his arms and fall fast asleep again.

Chapter 22 - Raziel

My body jolts as I find my mind once again where it should be.  With great surprise, I find myself in the serenity garden on the hammock I so love.  I am a little tangled in it but it is still comfortable.  Opening my eyes, I stare at the heavens trying to figure out how this happened.  And why.  Not that I am not pleased, it is simply frustrating that I do not know the mechanics behind it.

My wings begin to vibrate underneath me.  This gives me the first opportunity to notice that several of my feathers are bent in odd directions.  Not surprising since Xandra was not used to maneuvering a body so much larger than hers.  I touch one feather that is at a ninety degree angle and contemplate leaving it that way as a reminder that my love had been so close to me.

My thoughts are interrupted when my wings vibrate again.  This time a bit more urgently.  I clear my mind to determine the source of the distress call and am surprised that it is coming from a lower Angel.  An Angel of Death to be exact.  How odd.  I have always none Adriel to be strong and independent.  She performs her duties to perfection and has never had to call for help before.

Letting myself go to the source of the call, I find myself standing before Adriel.  And Belial.  He has Adriel backed against the door to the Shadow realm and the fear on her face drives a rivet of anger into my brain.

Belial turns around when he senses my presence.  “Raziel, how kind of you to join us.  I was just asking Adriel here what your sudden interest in her is.  Not to mention your strange behavior from earlier.”

“Why are you suddenly so interested in my behavior, Belial?”  And what has Xandra been doing and saying while I was away?  Whatever it was, it has gotten under Belial’s skin and that makes it hard not to grin.  Her feisty behavior rather than my more reserved self seems to have gotten underneath his layer of self-absorption.  She has done some good around here.

Belial feigns indifference.  “It is simply a curiosity, nothing more.”

“Simple curiosities do not usually involve harassing lower Angels.  Unless you are curious just how many souls you have personally assisted in becoming blackened.  If you wanted that answer, you could have simply come to me.”

The sneer on his face confirms his lies.  “Yes, you do have all the answers.  But you are usually not this forthcoming with them.”

“Would either of you mind terribly if I leave?” Adriel asks.

I smile at her.  “There is no need.  I believe Belial has something better to do with his time than keeping you from your work.”

With a look that could peel the scales off from ten Dragons, Baliel disappears.  My wings tell me that he has gone back to the garden of serenity.  He will not stay there long.  He never does.  He simply is trying to wait out however long he thinks it will take for me to lose interest in keeping track of his whereabouts.

Looking at Adriel once more, I find her looking at me with a furrowed brow.  “Xandra?” she asks softly.  She has always had the loveliest voice.  A match to her external beauty.

The smile is back on my face as I shake my head.  “No.  Our mutual friend seems to have found a way back to her own body.”  A sharp pang slices through my heart but I try not to let it show on my face.  Since she is one of the only friends Xandra has amongst the Angels, I am not surprised she knows what happened.  I assume that Xandra turned to her for help.

Adriel is not fooled.  “I am sorry that this is such a difficult time for you.” 

“Thank you.  I would also like to thank you for any assistance you offered Xandra while she was here.”

Adriel’s face turns several shades of pink.  “I really did not do much.”

I believe she is being too modest but I will let it drop.  “What was Belial doing here?”

Her eyes widen at the shock of my question.  By all rights, I should know why he was here.  “Um,” she stammers, “he wanted to know why you have been seen in my company several times recently.”  Her cheeks are practically magenta now. 

Odd that Belial has taken a sudden interest in the day to day activities of my life.  When I returned to my body, I expected my knowledge to return with it but it has not.  I am still as blind as ever.  Has the gift of omniscience been taken away from me?  “What did you tell him?”

Again, her face portrays how strange she believes my questions to be.  “I told him that…” she pauses and then takes a deep breath before continuing.  “I told him that you and I are friends.”  She does not quite meet my eyes when she says this.  “I am sorry for stretching the truth like that.”

My turn to look at her strangely.  “Why do you believe that to be a stretch of the truth?”