Kristina Douglas - The Fallen 1 - Raziel (5 page)

Unless someone found him and cal ed for help, he would die, countless mil ennia after he’d first come into existence. The Fal en were not even given the comfort of death, but something far more terrifying.

Fal ing had made them close to human. The curses that accompanied that fal from grace might have final y caught up with Raziel. No hope of redemption, not even the dubious blessing of Uriel’s hel . Just an eternity of agonized nothingness.

Azazel shut his eyes, pain lancing through him. There had been so many losses, endless losses, so few of the original left. This might be one loss too many.

And then he lifted his head, and he could feel the light enter his body again. “I think I hear her,” he said softly.

CHAPTER
FIVE

I
T WAS ALMOST DAWN, AND THE MAN next to me was dying. His body felt as if it were on fire, and the coals had spread beneath his skin, emanating an unearthly red glow that lit the darkness after the fire had final y died out. He hadn’t made a sound in hours; even his moans had been silenced. Sometime in the night he’d released his hold on me, and the heat from his skin had become unbearable. I wondered why his clothes hadn’t burst into flames.

I’d done what I could to cool him down—I’d managed to strip the leather jacket from him and put it beneath his head as a makeshift pil ow, then unfastened his denim shirt and pul ed it free from his jeans, opening it to the cool night air, feeling oddly guilty about it.

The skin on his chest and stomach was smooth, with just a faint tracing of golden hair.
Human
, I’d thought, and laughed at myself for thinking anything else. I’d reached out a hand to touch him, unconsciously drawn, and yanked my hand back, burned.

His mouth was a grim line of pain. At least I was spared the disquieting view of those disturbing teeth. I must have been hal ucinating, and no wonder. I didn’t know where I was,
when
I was, or how I’d even got here, and the night had been fil ed with the terrifying sounds of predators. No wonder I was imagining things.

Even now my brain wasn’t working properly. One thing was clear

—I wouldn’t have come here on my own. So it was only logical to assume this man had brought me here; and being a city girl, I wouldn’t have come wil ingly. While I liked a pretty face as much as the next female, I was preternatural y wary.

So why was I so determined to protect this man? This man who didn’t seem to be quite human, teeth or not? The glow of fire beneath his skin was far from normal. Yet I knew that I had to keep him alive, I had to stay with him.

The first light of dawn was beginning to spread over the tal trees that guarded the clearing. Whatever foul things had lurked in the bushes were long gone, and there was nothing keeping me here. I could walk out of this forest—it couldn’t go on forever. The man was dying; there was nothing else I could do for him except see if I could find help. I should save myself, and if he survived, fine. It wasn’t my business.

But it was. I moved closer to him, as close as I could get to the ferocious heat that burned deep inside his bones. “It serves you right,” I whispered, wishing I dared put my hand on him, to push the tangled hair away from his face without getting scorched.

Except that he’d been hurt pul ing me back from whatever horror I’d somehow imagined behind what was most definitely solid rock. I couldn’t remember, but that much I knew. He’d been trying to save me, and for that I owed him something.

I edged closer to him, and the heat seared me. I felt tears form in my eyes, and blinked them away impatiently. Crying wouldn’t do any good. If I leaned over and let them fal on him, they would sizzle and evaporate like water on a skil et.

“Oh, hel ,” I muttered disgustedly, wiping them away. “You shouldn’t have to die, no matter what you did to me.” I moved closer, and my face felt sunburned. “God help me, don’t fucking die on me,”

I said desperately.

The sudden flash of light was blinding, thunder shaking the ground, and I was thrown back against the stone wal . Panic swept through me—what if it opened again; what if this time he couldn’t save me? I scrambled away from it, then turned to look for the dying man, and I knew I was hal ucinating again. His body was surrounded by a circle of tal figures, shrouded in mist, and there were wings everywhere. Maybe he’d died. They must be angels coming to take him . . . where?

One of them picked him up effortlessly, impervious to the heat of his flesh. I was frozen, unable to move. Sure, he was dead and on his way to heaven, but I had no strong desire to accompany him. I wanted to live.

But I could feel eyes on me, and I wondered if I could run for it.

And I wondered if I real y wanted to.

“Bring her.” The words weren’t spoken out loud; they seemed to vibrate inside my head. I was prepared to fight, prepared to run before I let them put their hands on me, before I let it happen al over again . . . but there was nothing but a blinding white light, fol owed by dark silence, as a blackness deep and dark as death pul ed in about me.

“Shit,” I said weakly. And I was gone.

I WAS COLD. AND DAMP. I could hear a strange sound, a rushing noise almost like the ocean, but there was no ocean in the forest, was there? I real y didn’t want to move, even though I was lying somewhere hard and wet, the dampness seeping through my clothes and into my bones. In my Swiss cheese of a memory, it felt as if every time I opened my eyes things had gotten worse. This time I was going to stay put with my eyes tightly shut—it was a lot safer that way.

I licked my lips and tasted salt. There were voices in the distance, a low, muffled chant in a language older than time.

Keep your eyes closed, goddamn it
. This had al been one hel acious nightmare, and clearly it wasn’t time to wake up. Once I could feel my comfortable bed and my five-hundred-thread-count cotton sheets beneath me, then it would be safe to wake up. Right now consciousness was nothing but more trouble, and I had had enough.

But al my self-discipline had been reserved for my writing, and when it came to anything else, like denying my curiosity, I had the wil power of a rabbit. I decided to open my eyes just a slit to verify that, yes, I real y was lying in wet sand at the edge of a rocky beach.

And out in the waves the men stood waist-deep in the water, holding the body of my . . . my what? My kidnapper? My savior? It didn’t matter what the hel he was, he was mine.

He wasn’t dead. I knew this as I struggled to my feet, my whole body feeling as if it had been kicked around by monkeys. He wasn’t dead—yet they were letting him sink beneath the surface as they chanted some kind of garbled nonsense. They were letting him drown, burying him in the sea, and I was not going to let that happen, not after working so hard to keep him alive last night.

I’m not sure whether I said something, screamed “No!” as I raced toward them. Out into the icy water, shoving past them as they let his body go, diving for him before he could sink beneath the turbulent waves.

It was only when my hand touched him beneath the water, felt him turn and his hand catch mine, that I conveniently remembered that I had never learned to swim.

The words came out of nowhere, dancing in my head:
Full fathom five thy father lies:

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

The words were muzzy, dreamlike, but now I was the one sinking.

What an idiot I’d been, diving after him. I was going to die after al , and it was no one’s fault but mine. I should have known I’d hear Shakespeare when I died.

I would suffer a sea change, entwined with the demon lover beneath the cold salt sea, and I welcomed it, dazed, when his mouth closed over mine beneath the briny surface, his breath flowing into me, my body plastered against his as I felt life return. A moment later I found myself propel ed to the surface, stil trapped in the dead man’s arms. The dead man who had pul ed his mouth away, and was looking down at me from those strange, silvery-black eyes.

Then we were standing waist-deep in the ocean, the waves breaking against us, and he was holding on to me as he looked to the men who had brought him here, a dazed, questioning expression on his face.

Which was basical y how I was feeling. A sort of a sodden WTF, and the only thing familiar to hold on to was this man beside me.

“She cal ed for help,” one of the men said from the shore. “You told us to bring her.”

The man threw back his head and laughed, unexpected and unguarded, and relief washed through me. His teeth were white and even. I’d been imagining the fangs, of course. Vampires weren’t real. I couldn’t believe I even remembered that particular hal ucination.

He scooped me up in his arms, and I rested my face against his wet chest as he carried me out of the surf, not quite sure why. The footing must have been uneven, yet he carried me without a misstep, almost gliding over the rough sand. I’d never been carried in my life—despite my short stature I was built upon generous lines, and no one had ever been romantic enough to scoop me up and carry me to bed.

Of course, that wasn’t what this man was doing. Come to think of it, what the hel
was
he doing? I looked up at a huge stone building set on the edge of the sea, and I squirmed, trying to get down. He ignored me. That, at least, felt familiar.

He didn’t put me down, and I found I knew him wel enough not to expect that he would. He’d kissed me. Sort of. He’d put his cold, wet mouth on mine and breathed life into me, when he was the one who’d been on the verge of death.

“You wanna put me down?” I demanded in a reasonable voice.

Not that I expected him to be reasonable, but it was worth a try. He said nothing, and I struggled, but his grip never tightened. It didn’t need to; it was loose but unbreakable. “Who the fuck are you?” I demanded irritably. “What are you?”

He didn’t answer, of course. The other men came up to us, and I had the oddest sense that they were surrounded by some kind of haze or aura. It must be a reaction to the salt water. No matter how hard I tried to focus, things stayed as hazy as my memory.

“We can get rid of her now, Raziel, before it’s too late,” one with a cold, deep voice said. “She has no more need of you, nor you of her.”

The language sounded oddly old-fashioned, and I tried to turn my head to see who was speaking; but Raziel, the man who was holding me, simply pushed my face against his chest. “What about the Grace? Surely that would work.”

There was a moment’s silence, one that didn’t seem to bode wel for my future. With my foggy brain, he was the only thing familiar, and I panicked, reaching up and tugging at his open shirt. “Don’t let them take me.” I sounded pathetic, but there was nothing I could do about it. I’d swal owed some salt water before Raziel grabbed me, and my voice was raw.

He glanced down at me, and I knew that look. It was as if he knew everything about me, had read my diaries, peeked into my fantasies. It was unnerving. But then he nodded.

“I wil keep her, Azazel,” he said. “At least for now.”

Better than nothing, I thought, not precisely flattered. I was tempted to argue, just for the sake of it and because he’d sounded so damned grudging, but I had no idea where I might go, and I didn’t trust those other men who’d tried to drown my companion.

At least for the moment, as long as he held me, nothing could harm me. I could deal with the rest of it when it happened.

For now, I was safe.

CHAPTER
SIX

H
AD I LOST MY MIND? “I WILL keep her.” Ridiculous. I had no use for a human.

It was early evening. I’d spent most of the day in the pool, letting the seawater wash my battered body, healing the pain that stil spiked through me.

Azazel was looking at me. “What are we going to do with the woman? Now is not the time to bring someone new into Sheol, particularly someone with no set purpose. Uriel moves closer, and the Nephilim are at our very doorstep. We can’t waste time with inconsequentials.”

“Where is she?” I said, stal ing for time, my voice cool as I stretched out on the black leather sofa. The searing agony was gone, but my body ached as if I had run a marathon and then been trampled by a herd of goats.

“Sarah has her. She and the other women wil take care of her, calm her fears.”

“Wil they tel her the truth?” I wasn’t sure that was a good idea.

The woman was smart, fearless, and just the kind of woman to fight the status quo. The kind of woman who would drive me to insanity and beyond with her ways.

“She probably knows already. At least part of it. What she remembers, that is,” Azazel said in the icy voice that terrified most of our brethren and managed to rol off my back. We’d been through too much together for him to intimidate me.

“We can always make her forget,” I said. “She has been with me so long the Grace would have to be very strong. She’d be confused for weeks. But it would work. She’s already forgotten what happened when I first took her.”

“But where wil she go, old friend? She died yesterday. Her body has already been cremated.”

“Shit,” I said, thoroughly annoyed. “I thought she was Jewish.”

Other books

The Four of Us by Margaret Pemberton
My Mother's Secret by J. L. Witterick
Unexpected Love by Shelby Clark
Heat Wave by Eileen Spinelli
Sociopath? by Vicki Williams
The Paladins by Ward, James M., Wise, David
Desnudando a Google by Alejandro Suarez Sánchez-Ocaña