Kristina Douglas - The Fallen 1 - Raziel (14 page)

I would have loved to tel him no, but there was a chil to the place, and I didn’t want to wait there alone until someone came to rescue me. I was managing pretty damned wel , given the situation, but I was
his
responsibility and I was not about to let him abandon me.

I raced after him, catching up as we reached the mouth of the cave and the misty daylight. “What next?” I said. “Do I climb on your back, or do you carry me in your arms, or—”

“You stop talking,” he said.

I almost tripped over the white rug that covered part of the white marble floor. We were back in his sterile apartment, and he was in the kitchen. My legs felt a little wobbly, and I sank down on the sofa and put my head between my legs to keep from passing out. Then I looked up. “You could give me some warning next time,” I said irritably.

“There won’t be a next time if I can help it.” He leaned against the counter, looking at a plate of doughnuts someone had left. “Aren’t you going to eat these? I suppose Sarah told you you can’t gain weight.”

I bristled slightly that he would even mention my weight in such an offhand manner, but hey, that was permission enough. I got to my feet and moved into the smal kitchen.

And it
was
smal . Too smal to hold both of us, real y, but he wasn’t shifting away and I wanted those magic doughnuts.

It was a novel experience, having a beautiful man tel me to eat fattening foods, the stuff of daydreams. “
No, dear, at one hundred
and eighty pounds, you’re too thin. You need to put on some
weight
.” Be stil , my heart. Oh, he was hardly the first beautiful man I’d been around. I was shal ow that way—I liked men who were pretty and just a little stupid, and I’d always preferred them on the beefy side. I had the unhappy suspicion that Raziel was a little too smart for my peace of mind. But I was beginning to see the appeal of lean, powerful elegance.

Most of my boyfriends had wanted me to go on a diet, get down to a size six or eight from the comfortable size twelve I’d worn since col ege. We’d go out to dinner, I would dutiful y order a side salad with a spritz of lemon juice or vinegar, and then the moment I was home alone I’d plow through the Ben & Jerry’s. Super Fudge Chunk had marked the end of many a dul date.

“So I’m stil going to be hungry and eat, use the bathroom, sleep, bathe, and never gain weight. Sounds delightful. Do I get to have sex with anyone if
you
don’t want me?”

He stared at me, momentarily speechless. “No,” he said final y.

“Absolutely not. It’s forbidden.”

“But you said you could happily—”

“I said you and I won’t have sex,” he interrupted before I could drop the F-bomb as he had.

“Why would you want to?” I said, managing to sound bored with the idea.

“ I
don’t
want to,” he snapped. “
You
asked
me
if we would have sex.”

“You misunderstood. Deliberately,” I added, just to annoy him. In this strange, otherworldly place, annoying him was one of the only things that made me feel alive. “I do understand why you’d want to, but I real y don’t think it’s a good idea. You being my mentor and al .”

This was working even better than I’d expected. He was ready to explode with frustration. Not the right kind of frustration, unfortunately. Indeed, it was too bad that I was taunting him, but I couldn’t resist. He real y was freaking gorgeous. It was probably unwise—I needed him on my side. “No,” he said repressively.

I shrugged, taking another doughnut. “Do we get sick? Wil I start feeling bloated if I eat a fourth doughnut?”

“Yes,” he said.

I put the doughnut down. “Wel , at least you’l outlive me. Cheer up.

You can dance at my funeral.”

“I won’t know you when you die. Assuming we figure out what to do with you, we probably won’t see each other again.”

This wasn’t very comforting news, but I wasn’t giving up the battle.

“Once they decide, how long wil it take to get rid of me?”

He just looked at me, his expression saying it couldn’t be soon enough.

Oddly enough, I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave, even if they could give me back some semblance of a normal life with mental acuity intact. Yes, I enjoyed picking on him, and the white had to go. But despite my arguments, I . . . kind of liked it here. Liked the sound of the ocean beyond the open windows, the taste of salt on my lips. I’d always wanted to live by the sea. I was getting my wish a little earlier than expected, and it wasn’t technical y living, but it was close enough.

I liked the bed I’d slept in, I liked Sarah, and I most definitely liked to look at Raziel, even if he was frustrating, annoying, and al the other negative adjectives I could think of. And if he could read my mind, tough shit.

In fact, I was living my dream. I’d spent most of my adult life sifting through arcane literature and Bible criticism to come up with my far-fetched mysteries, and I was wel acquainted with the total y bizarre fantasies of Enoch, with his tales of the Nephilim and the Fal en.

Except it turned out Enoch wasn’t the acid freak I’d always thought he was. Al of this was real.

The kitchen was too smal for both of us, but for him to leave he’d have to brush past me, and I knew he real y didn’t want to touch me.

It was lovely to think that it was unshakable lust keeping him away, but I knew it was more likely annoyance—I’d done my best to make him want to strangle me.

“No,” he said, “I don’t want to strangle you. I just want you to go away.”

Grrrr
. “How long are you going to be reading my mind?” I demanded, thoroughly annoyed.

“As long as I need to.”

“Wel , that time is now over. Turn off the switch, or whatever it is you do. Stay the fuck out of my brain. Don’t read my mind, don’t cloud my thoughts, don’t wipe out my memory. Keep your distance.”

I didn’t bother trying to keep the snarl out of my voice. I’d had enough of this crap.

He was looking dangerously close to be being amused. His gloriously striated eyes glinted for a moment, but I seriously doubted that Raziel possessed even a tiny trace of a sense of humor in his cold, stil body. Sure enough, the expression vanished so quickly I was sure I’d imagined it.

“Or what?” he said.

Asshole
. He knew I didn’t have much to fight back with. Little did he know that I’d always been wickedly inventive. Maybe that was why I’d been sent to hel .

Hands sliding down my body, beautiful hands, his mouth
following, on my breast, sucking—

“Stop it!” he said with complete horror, pushing away from me as if burned by the sultry image in my brain.

I smiled sweetly. “I’ve got a hel of an imagination, Raziel,” I said, cal ing him by name for the first time. “Stay out of my head or prepare to be thoroughly embarrassed.”

Taking the plate of doughnuts, I sauntered back out into the living room.

S
HE WAS A WITCH. SHE SHOULD have been humble and weepy and afraid of me. Instead she was the complete opposite, and the quick vision of her sex fantasy was having the expected effect on my body.

Azazel was right—I’d been celibate too long.

I stayed in the kitchen, not moving. I’d thought I at least had my body under control. In truth, it was no wonder I was hard, with that brief fantasy she’d indulged in. I had no idea whether she real y found it appealing or whether it was just part of the game she was playing.

No, it was real. As I’d seen the thought, I’d felt her own fevered reaction, as intense as mine despite the brevity of the image. If that had simply been an intel ectual exercise, it wouldn’t have been so . .

. disturbing.

I had to get rid of her, and fast. I needed her out of my rooms, out of my world. There was no way in hel I was going to let them invoke the Grace of forgetting, but apart from that anything would be an improvement. Sarah was always looking for someone to mother—

Al ie Watson was the very thing. I could pass her over, then go out on my own and not have to think about her anymore. It might take a day or two to get her out of my system, but I could do it. I could turn myself off. As long as she wasn’t living in my apartment and taunting me.

I was getting closer to Lucifer’s burial ground. I could sit and listen and hear him deep in the earth, feel his cal vibrate through my body, and I was close, so close. I didn’t need to get distracted by a woman with a mouth that wouldn’t stop moving and erotic images invading my mind.

Why the hel had Sammael brought her up to the cave in the first place? He knew better than anybody that place should be off-limits, particularly to an interloper like Al ie Watson. It was the closest we’d come to Lucifer, the Light, and to have her bumbling around with her incessant questions was close to blasphemy.

Not that I believed in blasphemy. That was part of why I was here, wasn’t it? Because I, like the others, refused to fol ow the rules, to kil without question, to wipe out generations and scourge the land. I had looked on a human woman and fal en in love, and for that I was forever cursed.

Surely there was something wrong with an ethos that equated love with death. It was so long ago I wasn’t sure I could remember what we’d been thinking, could barely remember her. But I couldn’t forget the emotion, the passion that had driven me, the certainty that choosing life, choosing human love, was the right thing to do. It had been worth it, worth everything, and I had never regretted it.

I could regret the vulnerability, the need that had driven me to such a desperate act, but it no longer mattered. I had done what I had done, and I wouldn’t wish it changed. But it would never happen again.

Uriel knew how to use vulnerabilities. He knew how to torture, even with the rules that kept him from wiping us out. I wasn’t going to let him use me again.

So perhaps there were times when I wished I could stil feel that innocent, powerful love. Hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of years, mil ennia, piling up, and I’d never been able to recapture that pure, essential passion that had made me destroy everything.

But I stil would have done it. Chosen to fal . We’d been taught that the humans were like cattle—you trained them, destroyed them if they disobeyed, never answered their questions, and, most of al , never looked upon them with lust.

We’d been sent to earth with our appointed tasks. Azazel had been sent to teach the people metalwork; his job had been to train and to pass on the magic. The first twenty each had jobs, and we’d done wel enough at first. But the longer we remained on earth, the more human we became. The hungers started, hunger for food, for life, for sex. And we started thinking that we could make this benighted world a better place. We could bring our wisdom and power, we could experience love and dedication. We would intermarry and our children would grow strong and there would be no more wars and God would smile.

God didn’t smile. There were no children—the curse was swift and vicious. We were damned for eternity. Because of love.

No wonder the woman wandering around my rooms annoyed me.

It wasn’t just her prattle—she was right, it was a pleasant voice. But after al these years I had no use for humankind, for women in particular. And this woman, of al women. A moment of unexpected sentimentality, and I’d complicated my existence and that of the Fal en. No woman was worth it.

Stil , it was my choice, my mistake, and my only option was to fix it, even if I wanted to pass her off. There had to be someplace we could send her where she wouldn’t cause trouble. And then we could deal with Uriel’s wrath.

I was the keeper of secrets, the lord of magic. Within me resided al the wisdom of the ages, and I had been sent to earth to give that knowledge to its hapless inhabitants. So how could I be so fucking stupid?

I glanced down, adjusted myself, and fol owed her into the living room. She was sprawled on one sofa, barefoot. My clothes fit her too damned wel —I was going to have to see about something loose that covered up al the curves but was colorful enough to keep her happy.

God, why did I have to start worrying about keeping a woman happy? Especial y a woman like Al ie Watson.

Her long, thick brown hair was much better than the short bleached cut she’d had when I found her. Her face was prettier without makeup. She shifted, turning to look at me without getting up.

I walked over to one end of the sofa. “Where do you want to live?”

She’d been looking both annoyed and slightly downcast, but at this she brightened. “I’ve got a choice where I go?”

I didn’t think so, but I was grasping at straws. The one thing I knew, it couldn’t be hel . It was nothing personal. I hadn’t come this far to let Uriel win. “Maybe,” I said, not exactly a lie. “I imagine it depends on your talents, where you can make yourself useful. What can you do?”

She appeared to consider this for a moment. “I can write. My style is slightly sarcastic, but I’m sharp and literate.”

“We have no use for writing.”

“So I’m in hel after al ,” she said glumly. “No books?”

“What would we read? We’ve lived mil ennia.” “What about your wives?” “I have no wives.”

“I don’t mean you specifical y, I mean al the women here. Sarah and the others. Don’t they want to read? Or do you guys give them such a fulfil ing life, trapped here in the mist, that they don’t need any kind of escape?”

“If they wanted to escape, they wouldn’t be here,” I said in the voice I used to shut down arguments.