Kristina Douglas - The Fallen 1 - Raziel (3 page)

Some argued when I brought them away. In general, lawyers were the biggest pain in my ass, also stockbrokers. They cursed me—but then, they weren’t heading where Al ie Watson was heading.

Lawyers and stockbrokers and politicians uniformly went to hel , and I never minded escorting them. I took them to the darkside, pushing them over the cliff without a moment’s regret.

It always shocked them, those who were banished. First they couldn’t believe they could actual y die, and when hel loomed up they were astonished, indignant.

“I don’t believe in hel ,” many of them had said, and I always tried to resist the impulse to tel them that hel believed in
them
.

Sometimes I even succeeded.

“You’re a goddamned angel,” one had said, never realizing quite how accurate he was. “Why are you sending me to hel ?”

I never bothered to give them the straight answer. That they deserved it, that their lives had been fil ed with despicable, unforgivable things. I didn’t care enough.

Goddamned angel, indeed. What else would a fal en angel be, a creature cursed by God and his administrator, the archangel Uriel?

As man had developed and free wil had come into play, the Supreme Being had al but disappeared, abandoning those in heaven and hel and everywhere in between, leaving Uriel to carry out his orders, enforce his powerful wil . Uriel, the last of the great archangels to resist temptation, pride, and lust, the only one not to tumble to earth.

The curse on my kind had been clear: eternal life accompanied by eternal damnation. “Ãnd ye shal have no peace nor forgíveness of sín: and ínasmuch as they delíght themselves ín theír chíldren, / The murder of theír beloved ones shal they see, and over the destructíon of theír chíldren shal they lament, and shal make supplícatíon unto eterníty, but mercy and peace shal ye not attaín.”

We were the outcasts, the eaters of blood. We were the Fal en, living our eternity by the rules laid out.

But there were the others, the flesh-eaters, who had come after us. The soldier angels who were sent to punish us instead fel as wel . They were unable to feel, and driven mad by it. The Nephilim, who tore living flesh and devoured it, were a horror unlike anything ever seen before on the earth, and the sounds of their screams in the darkness rained terror on those left behind, those of us in the half-life.

We had taken one half of the curse: to live forever while we watched our women die, and to become eaters of blood. While the Nephilim knew hunger of the darkest kind, a hunger for flesh that could only be fed with death and terror.

This had been our lot. Two of the oldest earthly taboos—eating human flesh and drinking human blood. Neither could survive without it, though we Fal en had learned to regulate our fierce needs, as wel as the other needs that drove us—that had driven us from grace in the beginning, before time had been counted.

In the end the Fal en had made peace with Uriel. In return for the task of col ecting souls, we were al owed at least a measure of autonomy. Uriel had been determined to wipe the Fal en from the face of this earth, but the Supreme Being had, for once, intervened, staying our execution. And while there were no reversals of the curses already in place, there would be no new ones levied against us. For what little joy that brought us.

As long as we continued our job, the status quo would remain.

The Nephilim would stil hunt us by night, rending, tearing, devouring.

The Fal en would live by day as wel , fed by sex and blood, with those needs kept under fierce control.

And Al ie Watson was just one more soul to be delivered to Uriel before I could return to our hidden place. Do the job and get back before too much time elapsed. The duties of a fal en angel were not onerous, and I had never failed. Never been tempted. There had even been a time when I rushed to get back to the woman I loved.

But there had been too many women. There would be no more. I had one reason and one reason alone to hurry back.

I couldn’t stand humans.

This particular creature was no different, though I couldn’t understand how she had the strength to resist my resolve, even the smal amount of resistance I felt beneath my grip. Her skin was soft, which was a distraction. I didn’t want to think about her skin, or the unmistakable fear in her rich brown eyes. I could have reassured her, but I’d never been tempted to intervene before, and I wasn’t about to make an exception for this woman. I wanted to, which bothered me. I wanted to do more than that. My hands shook with need.

I looked down into her panicked face and I wanted to comfort, and I wanted to feed, and I wanted to fuck. Al of the needs I kept locked away. She didn’t need anything from me. If she did, she’d have to make do without.

But the stronger her panic, the stronger my hunger, and I gave in to the safest of my urges. “Don’t be afraid,” I said, using the voice given to me to soothe frightened creatures. “It wil be fine.” And I pul ed her forward, spinning her out into the darkness and releasing her as I stepped back.

It was only at the last minute I saw the flames. I heard her scream, and I grabbed for her without thinking, dragging her back. I felt the deadly fire sear my flesh, and I knew then what had been waiting for me, out there in the darkness. Fire was death to my kind, and the flame had leapt to my flesh like a hungry lover. I pul ed the woman out of the dark and hungry maw that should have been what humans referred to as heaven, and I sealed my own trip to a hel that would have no end.

We tumbled backward, onto the ground with her soft body sprawled on top of mine, and I was instantly hard, my rebel ious flesh overruling everything I’d been trying to tel it for decades, overshadowing the pain as a pure, unspeakable lust flamed through me, only to be banished a moment later.

An inhuman howl of rage echoed up from the flames. A moment later the rocks slid closed with a hideous grinding noise, and there was nothing but silence.

I couldn’t move. The agony in my arm was unspeakable, wiping out my momentary reaction to the woman’s soft body sprawled across mine, and I could almost be glad. The flames were out, but I knew what fire did to my kind. A slow, agonizing death.

It was one of the few things that could kil us, that and the traditional ways of disposing of blood-eaters. Beheading could kil us as surely as it would kil a human.

So would the minor burn on my arm.

If I’d only stopped to think, I would have let her go. Who knew how she’d spent her short life, what crimes she’d committed, what misery she’d inflicted on others? It wasn’t my place to judge, merely to transport. Why hadn’t I remembered that and let her fal ?

But even as I felt the pain leaching away any semblance of common sense, I couldn’t help but remember I’d brought any number of innocent souls to this very place, seemingly good people, cast them forth, assured them that they were going to the place of peace they’d earned. Instead it had been hel , the same hel to which I’d taken the lawyers and stockbrokers. This was no temporary glitch. I knew Uriel too wel . Hel and its fiery pit were Uriel’s constructions, and I knew, instinctively, that we’d been offered no alternative when we’d delivered our charges. I had been dooming the innocent ones to eternal damnation, unknowing.

The sin of pride, Uriel would have said placidly, with great sorrow.

The cosmic hypocrite would shake his head over me and my many failings. To question the word of the Supreme Being and the emissary he’d chosen to enforce it was an act of paramount sacrilege.

In other words, do what you’re told and don’t ask questions. Our failure to do that was why we had fal en in the first place. And I had done more than question—I had just contravened the word. I was in deep shit.

Night was fal ing around us. The woman rol ed off me, scrambling away as if I were Uriel himself. I tried to find my voice, to say something to reassure her, but the pain was too fierce. The best I could do was grit my teeth to keep from screaming in agony.

She was halfway across the clearing, huddled on the ground, watching me in dawning disbelief and horror. Too late I realized my lips were drawn back in a silent scream, and she could see my elongated fangs.

“What in God’s name are you?” Her voice was little more than a choked gasp of horror.

I ignored her question—I had more important things to deal with. I had to gather my self-control or I was doomed. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to save myself at this point, and I couldn’t save her either, not that I particularly cared. She had gotten me into this mess in the first place.

She was going to have to help get me out of it, whether she wanted to or not. I shuddered, forcing the agony back down my throat. In a few minutes I wouldn’t be able to do even that much; a few minutes longer and I would be unconscious. By morning I would probably be dead.

Did I care? I wasn’t sure it mattered one way or the other. But I didn’t want to leave her behind, where the Nephilim could get her. I’d rather finish her myself before they tore her body into pieces while she screamed for help that would never come.

I sucked in a deep bite of air, steeling myself. “Need . . . to make a . . . fire,” I managed, feeling the dizziness pressing against my brain, feeling the darkness closing in. I could hear the monsters out in the night forest, the low, guttural growling of the Nephilim. They would rip her apart in front of me, and I would be paralyzed, unable to do anything but listen to her screams as they ate her alive.

Things were beginning to fade, and the nothingness cal ed to me, a siren song so tempting that I wanted to let go, to drift into that lovely place, the warm, sweet place where the pain stopped. I managed to look over at her—she was curled in on herself, unmoving. Probably whimpering, I thought dizzily. Useless human, who probably belonged in hel anyway.

And then she lifted her head, staring at me, and I could read her thoughts easily. She was going to make a run for it, and I couldn’t blame her. She wouldn’t last five minutes out there in the darkness, but with luck I’d be unconscious by the time they began ripping her flesh from her bones. I didn’t want to hear the sounds of her screams as she died.

One more try, and then I’d let go. I tried to rise, to pul the last ounce of strength from my poisoned body, struggling to warn her.

“Do not . . .” I said. “You need a fire . . . to scare them away.”

She rose, first to her knees, then to her bare feet, and I sank back.

There was nothing else I could do. She was frightened, and she would run—

“And how am I supposed to start a fire?” she said, her voice caustic. “I don’t have any matches and I’m not exactly the camping type.”

I could just manage to choke out the words. “Leaves,” I gasped.

“Twigs. Branches.”

To my glazed surprise, she began gathering the fuel from nearby, and within a few minutes she had a neat little pile, with branches and logs on the side. The last of the twilight was slowly fading, and I could hear them beyond the clearing, the odd, shuffling noise they made, the terrible reek of decaying flesh and old blood.

She was looking at me, expectant, impatient. “Fire?” she prompted.

“My . . . arm,” I barely choked out. The last ounce of energy faded, and blessed darkness rushed in. And my last thought was now it was up to her. I had done everything I could.

And the night closed down around us.

H
E’D PASSED OUT. I STARED down at him, torn. I should leave him, I thought. I didn’t owe him anything, and if I had any sense at al I’d get the hel out of there and leave him to fend for himself.

But I could hear those noises out in the darkness, and they made my blood run cold. They sounded like some kind of wild animal, and in truth I’d never been Outdoors Girl. My idea of roughing it was going without makeup. If those creatures out there liked to eat meat, then they had dinner stretched out on the ground, waiting for them. It even smel ed as if he were already slightly charbroiled. I didn’t owe him anything. So what if he’d pul ed me back from the jaws of hel . . .

or whatever it was? He was the one who’d pushed me there in the first place. Besides, he’d only gotten slightly singed, and he was acting like it was third-degree burns over most of his body. He was a drama queen, and after my mother and my last boyfriend, I’d had enough of those to last me a lifetime.

Hel , who was I kidding? Whether he deserved it or not, I wasn’t going to leave him as food for wolves or whatever they were. I couldn’t do that to a fel ow human being—if that was what he was.

Though I stil didn’t have the faintest idea how I was going to start the damned fire.

I edged closer, looking down at him. He was unconscious, and in the stil ness the unearthly beauty of his face was almost as disturbing as the unmistakable evidence of fangs his grimace of pain had exposed. Was he a vampire? An angel? A fiend from hel or a creature of God?

“Shit,” I muttered, kneeling beside him to get a closer look at the burn on his arm. The skin was smooth, glowing slightly, but there were no blisters, no burned flesh. He was nothing more than a big baby. I reached out to shake him, then yanked my arm back with another “Shit,” as I realized that beneath the smooth skin fire burned.

That was impossible. It looked as if coals were glowing deep under the skin, and the eerie glow was putting out impressive amounts of heat.