Kristina Douglas - The Fallen 1 - Raziel (23 page)

She didn’t need to tel me. There was a crash outside, fol owed by a louder roar, and she jumped nervously. “If you don’t like vodka, why do you even have it?” she said, clearly trying to distract herself.

“I like vodka. I just think it might be better if I didn’t let alcohol impair my judgment in case something happens.”

If anything her face turned whiter. “You think they’re going to break through?”

I had to laugh. “No. Worse than that.”

“Worse than flesh-devouring cannibals?”

“Is there any other kind of cannibal?” I pointed out.

“What’s worse than the Nephilim?” she said irritably, some of her panic fading.

“Sleeping with you.”

Shit. And I meant to not even mention it. She stared at me for a long moment, then tried to push past me. “Enough is enough,” she snapped. “If you prefer the Nephilim to me, you can damned wel go climb over the fence and fuck them.”

I caught her, of course. My arm snaked around her waist and I spun her around, pushing her back against the wal , trapping her there with my body pressed against hers. “I didn’t say I preferred them,” I whispered in her ear, closing my eyes to inhale the addictive scent of her. “As far as I’m concerned, though, you’re worse trouble.”

I kissed the side of her neck, tasting her skin, breathing in the smel of her blood as it rushed through her veins. So easy just to make one smal piercing, just take a taste. I moved my mouth behind her ear, fighting it.

She was holding herself very stil . “W-w-why?” she stammered.

“I can kil the Nephilim,” I whispered. “I can fight them. But I have too hard a time fighting you.”

She turned her face up to mine, and her hands reached up to touch me. “Then don’t fight,” she said in a tone of such practicality that I wanted to laugh. “At least I won’t rip out your heart.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I said. And like a fool, I kissed her.

I
KNEW PERFECTLY WELL THAT I WAS an idiot to do this, but right then nothing could have stopped me. His body was pressed up tight against me, and the heat and strength of it calmed my panic—but brought out a whole new raft of fear. His mouth was hot, wet, carnal, as he kissed me, his slow deliberation at odds with the crazed rush of lust that had overwhelmed us last night. He slanted his mouth across mine, tasting, biting, giving me a chance to kiss him back, his tongue a shocking intruder that somehow felt right. In my somewhat limited experience, men didn’t real y like to kiss; they simply did it to get to the part they did like.

Raziel clearly enjoyed kissing—he was too good at it not to enjoy it. He was in no hurry to push me into bed, no hurry to do anything more than kiss me. He lifted his head, and his strange, beautiful eyes with their striated irises stared down at me for a long, breathless moment. “What are you doing?” I whispered.

“Kissing you. If you haven’t figured that out yet, I must not be doing a very good job of it. I must need practice.” And he kissed me again, a deep, hungry kiss that stole my breath and stole my heart.

“I mean
why
are you kissing me?” I said when he moved his mouth along my jawline and I felt it tingle al the way down to . . . I wasn’t sure where. “You just told me you’d rather face the Nephilim—”

“Shut up, Al ie,” he said pleasantly. “I’m trying to distract both of us.” He slid the dress straps down my shoulders, down my arms, exposing my breasts to the cool night air, and I heard his murmur of approval. “No bra,” he said. “Maybe I’m going to like your new clothes.”

He moved his mouth down the side of my neck, lingering for a moment at the base of my throat, to the place where he’d left his mark, and I reflexively rose toward him, wanting his mouth there, wanting . . .

But he moved on, and I stifled my cry of despair. And then forgot al about it as he leaned down and put his lips on my bared breast, sucking the nipple into his mouth. I caught his shoulders, digging my fingers into them as I arched up, offering myself to him. I could feel the sharpness of his teeth against me, and I knew a moment’s fear that he would draw blood from my breast, but his hand covered my other breast, soothing, stimulating, so that my nipple became a hardened button to match the one in his mouth, and I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, not there, not anywhere, he told me, and I felt his consciousness enter my mind, a deliberate invasion as intimate and arousing as his tongue and his cock.

His eyes were black with desire now, and he pushed the fabric of the dress down to my hips, baring my torso, nuzzling beneath the swel of my breast; and then his hands were on my thighs, drawing the dress slowly upward, and I was feeling rushed, greedy, desperate for him, wanting him inside me, wanting him now, and I raised my hips, mindlessly searching.

He wants this
, I thought dazedly, reveling in the certainty of his need. He wanted me. He wanted nothing more than to bury himself in my body, to soak in the forgetfulness of lust and desire and completion, to lose himself, and to bring me with him on a journey of such transcending desire that the very thought frightened me, and I tried to pul away. I hadn’t had time for second thoughts during our frantic couplings. Now I could be calm, detached, dismissive as I needed to be, except that I needed him even more than I needed calm, and his hands were running up my bare legs now, his fingers inside the lace-trimmed edge of my panties, touching me, and I let out a muffled yelp of reaction, fol owed by a moan of pure pleasure as he began pul ing the panties down my legs.

And then he jumped away, so quickly I almost fel . The blackness was gone from his eyes and at the moment they were like granite, and I wondered what the hel had happened. And then I heard the screams.

Different from the distant howls and shrieks of the Nephilim, safely beyond the borders of Sheol. These were closer, the guttural howls echoing through the five floors of the building. These were here.

“Stay here,” he ordered tersely. “Find someplace to hide. If worse comes to worst, go out on the balcony and be prepared to jump.”

I stared in astonishment at the angel who’d just told me to commit suicide. “What . . . ?”

“They’re here.” His voice was flat, grim. “The wal s have fal en.”

I froze, the numb, mindless horror washing over me. “The Nephilim?”

He was almost at the door, but he stopped, wheeled around, and came back to me, catching my arms in a painful grip. “You can’t let them near you, Al ie. No matter what. Hide if you think you’ve got a chance. This is a long way to climb, and their bloodlust wil send them after the nearest targets. But if they reach this floor . . .” He took a deep breath. “Jump. You don’t want to see or hear what they’re capable of, you don’t want to risk getting caught by them.

Promise me, Al ie.” His fingers tightened. “Promise me you’l jump.”

I had never backed off from a chal enge, never taken the easy way out in my entire, too-short life. I looked up into Raziel’s face and could sense the horror he was seeing, the horror he was letting me catch only a glimpse of. A glimpse was enough. I nodded. “If I must,”

I said.

To my astonishment, he kissed me again, a brief, fast kiss, almost a kiss good-bye. And he was gone.

There was no place to hide. The bed was too low to the floor, and when I burrowed into the closet, the screams from below stil echoed, even when I covered my head with my arms and tried to drown them out. I struggled back into the bedroom. I didn’t know if the screams were getting louder or the Nephilim were getting closer.

I’d promised him, and I might have a thousand and one characters flaws, but I never broke a promise. I pushed open the window and climbed onto the balcony. And then froze.

The sand was black in the moonlight, and it took me a moment to realize it was blood. There were bodies everywhere, or what was left of them. Headless torsos, arms and legs that had been ripped free, gnawed on, and then discarded. And the stench that was carried upward on the night breeze was the stuff of nightmares. Blood, old blood, and decaying flesh. The stink of the monsters that crawled below, searching for fresh meat.

I climbed onto the ledge, peering over, and had my first shadowy sight of one of them. It was unnatural y tal , covered with some kind of matted filth, though whether it was hair or clothes or skins of some kind I couldn’t be sure. Its mouth was open in a roar, and I thought I could see two sets of teeth, broken and bloody. It had someone in its hands, a woman with long blond hair and black-streaked clothes.

She was stil alive. The creature was clawing at her, ripping her open so that her guts spil ed out onto the sand, but her arms were stil moving, her feet were twitching, and I screamed at it to stop, but my voice was carried away by the crash of the surf, lost amidst the screams and howls.

For a moment I stood paralyzed. The woman was final y stil , her eyes wide in death, and the creature turned, moving in an odd, disjointed shuffle, heading inside. I couldn’t even count the number of bodies on the beach—they were ripped in too many pieces. And I knew then I couldn’t join them on the beach, doing a graceful swan dive to my death. What if I didn’t die right away? What if I lay there while the Nephilim found me, tore me apart while I stil lived?

And how could I hide in my room when I could do something? That poor woman down there—if someone had been able to distract the creature, she might have been able to crawl to safety. But there was no one alive on the beach.

I didn’t hesitate, didn’t al ow myself to fear. By the time I reached the third-floor landing I’d decided I was crazy, but I didn’t let it slow me down.
Destiny
was a stupid word, a word for heroines, and I was no heroine. Al I knew was that I could do something to help, and I had to try.

The bodies started on the second floor, women of the Fal en who’d tried to escape, but were clawed and hacked and gnawed on by the monsters who’d somehow invaded the vale of Sheol. The stench was overpowering. Way in the past, when I’d started writing, I’d done research on crime scenes, had heard about the smel of week-old bodies that clung to the skin and hair of the police and couldn’t ever be eradicated from their clothes. It was that kind of smel that washed over me now, one of decayed flesh and maggots and rotting bones. Of old meat and ancient blood and shit and death.

The first floor was a battleground. I could see five of the Nephilim, tal and ungainly, easily recognizable. I took in the scene quickly: Azazel was fighting fiercely, blood streaming from a head wound and mixing with his long black hair. Tamlel was down, probably dead, as was Sammael, and I realized with belated horror that it had been Carrie out on the sand, fighting to the end with the monster who was devouring her.

The noise, the smoke, the blood, were too much. I couldn’t see the other women, couldn’t find Raziel in the melee. The Nephilim who fought Azazel went down, and a moment later its head went flying, the rest of it col apsing into a useless pile of bones as Azazel turned to face the next attacker.

And then I saw Sarah behind him. She held a sword in her hand, and her face was calm, set, as Azazel defended her. There were others protecting her as wel , Fal en whose names I didn’t know. I saw Raziel by the door then, cutting down the horde as they poured into the building, wielding a sword of biblical proportions. The noise was deafening: the screams of the dying, the clash of metal, the unearthly howls of the Nephilim as they set upon their prey. A blade slashed, and I felt blood and bile spray me, hot and stinking of death. The Nephilim were everywhere, and I watched in horror as the madness surrounded me.

Something grabbed my ankle and I screamed, looking down to see one of the women lying on the stairs, grasping at me for help.

Poor thing, she was wel past help of any kind, but I sank down, pul ing her ravaged body into my arms, trying to stanch the endless flow of blood. “You’l be al right,” I murmured, rocking her, trying to hold her broken body together. She was going to die, but at least I could comfort her. “They’re going to stop them. Just hold on.”

To my amazement, the woman reached up and touched my face with one bloody hand, and she smiled at me, peace in her fading eyes. A moment later, she was dead. Blessedly so, given the horror of her wounds. I let the woman go, setting her down gently on the stairs, and looked up.

I could try to run. Back up the endless, blood-soaked flights of stairs, through the torn pieces of what had once been living flesh. Or I could face the bastards.

One of the Fal en lay across the bottom of the stairs, his torso ripped almost in half. One arm was gone, but the other stil held a sword, fighting to the end.

I stepped down and took the sword in my shaking hand, then turned to look for Raziel.

One of the Nephilim must have spied me on the stairs. It turned away from the men defending Sarah, advancing on me with its hideous disjointed shuffle.

It was too late to run, even if I wanted to. The thing had seen me, caught my scent; and when one of the Fal en attacked it, the creature simply tossed him away, and the body flew across the room, landing on a table that col apsed beneath him.

I wanted to scream for Raziel, but I kept my mouth shut, gripping the sword tightly in my hand. If I was going to die, then I was going to die fighting, and I wouldn’t distract Raziel from his defense of the portal. Maybe death wouldn’t hurt, I thought, stil backing up, the screams of the dying belying my vain hope. It hadn’t hurt the first time. It didn’t matter. I was supposed to be here, I’d been drawn down here, and if I was going to be torn apart, then so be it.