She deserved better than this.
Abraxos was a dead man.
Chapter Ten
Azrael had flown Sophie back to her apartment, surrounded by vampires on every side, and as soon as he’d reached the relative safety of her rented home, he’d gone to work transforming everything inside to solid gold. Whether gold was still caustic to the Adarians now that they were turning into vampires remained to be seen, but Az wasn’t taking any chances. Whatever she’d been paying for rent would now no longer amount to even the daily interest on what the apartment’s interior was worth. He would change it all back before Sophie moved; leaving it would cause quite a stir.
As he worked, he sensed the ebb of the Adarians’ presence. Apparently the general and his men had noted the vampires—and decided to fall back in the name of living to fight another day.
Azrael let them go. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to force himself to do. The monster, the predator, the Angel of Death within him wanted to track the Adarian general down and turn him inside out. He wanted to take off his head, chain his remains to a gold block in the desert twilight, and suffer the scarring effects of the sun just to watch what was left of the dangerous man turn to ash.
But he wasn’t about to leave Sophie alone. Not tonight. He’d used a little of his vampiric power to usher her into sleep. She wouldn’t wake until the sun rose, and by that time Azrael would be underground, hiding from daylight, and Sophie would be under the protective watch of a dozen human vampire servants.
The logical thing to do would be to come clean with his brothers about Sophie and demand that she remain at the mansion under their care. It was the safe thing to do and it was the sane thing to do, but it was also the wrong thing to do as far as Sophie was concerned. He would be able to keep her physically safe and make sure that no Adarian ever came near her, but he would lose her spirit and be forever shut out from her heart. It was a consequence Az wasn’t willing to incur.
Azrael sat on the edge of Sophie’s bed in her room, which was now devoid of decoration and held almost nothing but moving boxes, and stared down at the woman of his dreams.
He hadn’t fed tonight. Despite being the king among vampires, Azrael was bound by the same laws of vampirism as the youngest of his creations. The sun weakened, scarred, and killed. Fire was all-consuming. Decapitation brought a swift end to existence. And if he did not feed every night, he would become gravely ill. Most younger vampires would die from the rapid and painful onset of this hunger-like disease. Azrael simply became ravenous, maddened, and unpredictable after a night with no blood. This effect was slow to heal; it took a week or more of steady meals to recover from the sickness.
It was not something that Azrael wanted to experience while around his archess.
He had intended to find a meal after his date with Sophie. He hadn’t planned on the Adarian general and his men putting in such a brazen appearance. They’d been halfway across the country only a few nights ago. It was as if they were closing in . . . stalking.
Az needed to feed. But Abraxos was out there somewhere. They had pulled back significantly, but they hadn’t gone far. The Adarians had a vibration all their own and it was easy enough to detect their presence, even on a normal night. However, these nights were no longer normal—and Abraxos was no longer just an Adarian. The former angel had willingly infected himself with the very sickness that Azrael had fought tooth and nail when he’d first come to Earth. Abraxos had become a vampire, and the man’s signature was all the stronger because of it.
No other vampire on Earth had come about the curse the way Abraxos had. Every other vampire in existence shared a line of blood with Azrael. Abraxos was a rogue, a wild card . . . another king.
Az wasn’t sure what this would mean. But he was betting that it was going to make going up against the Adarian that much more interesting. It changed everything.
At first, the Adarians had hunted the archesses because each archess possessed the ability to heal—and Abraxos desperately wanted that ability for himself and for his men. Now that Abraxos was a vampire himself, he possessed the inherent ability to heal his own wounds. However, when fighting against other paranormal creatures, injuries could be sustained that did not heal at the same rate as those inflicted by humans.
Azrael had never tested any of the archesses to this end. The precious women were capable of healing the archangels; this had been determined time and again. Juliette and Eleanore had both done their fair share of paranormal healing when Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel had taken damage from the shard guns the Adarians wielded. The weapons’ blasts were unusual and cruel, capable of petrifying flesh on contact. Ellie and Jules had healed these petrified wounds, bringing their archangel mates back from the brink of painful death.
However, Azrael was unsure of what would happen should either of them attempt to heal him, a vampire. Not that he’d ever given them need to; he didn’t take damage as often as his brothers did. Almost never, in fact. And neither the archesses nor Michael were capable of replacing lost blood, which was essential to a vampire.
Come to think of it, Azrael wondered whether this had occurred to Abraxos. Or whether he even knew about this specific archess weakness.
Not that it would matter as far as Abraxos and Eleanore were concerned. Azrael had been in Abraxos’s head. The two vampires had fought hand to hand, mind to mind, on more than one occasion. Of late, the general’s thought processes were more disturbing than normal. Not only had he gone through an abrupt and decidedly dark physical transformation, but his true feelings toward Eleanore had become decidedly clear.
He was still after the archesses, Ellie in particular. But he could no longer pretend to be hunting them for their healing abilities alone. He felt too deeply for the first archess. He was obsessed with Ellie. But it was clear that to the general’s reasoning, if he could get his hands on Sophie, he would be that much closer to obtaining Eleanore.
Not gonna happen, Az thought now as he gently brushed a lock of Sophie’s golden hair from her forehead. In sleep, she was the very image of an angel. Her long lashes brushed the tops of her slightly pink cheeks, her lips were flushed and full, her skin was unblemished and perfect. There was a glow about her that reminded Azrael of the sun he hadn’t seen in two thousand years.
My sunshine, he thought.
Sophie stirred and turned in her sleep. As she did, her sweater slipped over her shoulder, her hair slid to the mattress, and the side of her throat was exposed. Azrael’s focus suddenly zeroed in on the pulse gently beating in the blue vein that graced her neck. His senses were at once filled with the scents of her—the shampoo in her hair, the soap on her skin, the root beer on her tongue, and the blood in her body.
Azrael turned away from the bed as his fangs erupted in his mouth, lengthening to their full predatory length, wicked and sharp. He closed his eyes as blood roared through his ears like the rapids of a raging river.
Behind him, Sophie moaned in her sleep, moved by some gentle emotion that stirred her slumber. Azrael’s heart slammed painfully in his chest. An ache awoke within him, blossoming to life somewhere in his gut and spiraling out through his body like the symptoms of a fever. He gritted his teeth and curled his hands into fists, focusing on the quick, sharp pain his nails elicited as they sliced into the flesh of his palms.
He had a choice. Either he left Sophie with Uro, who was currently outside along with the others standing guard around the apartment complex, or he stayed where he was and fed from his archess here and now. A more tempting thought had never crossed the vampire king’s mind.
But that wasn’t how he wanted to do this. It wasn’t what he wanted to show her. A vampire’s bite could be given in anger and deliver exceptional cruelty. It could hurt in a way that little else in life could. But it also had the power to become the most sensual, sexually satisfying act a human being ever experienced. Azrael possessed the ability to take Sophie soaring through bliss and never let her down again. The first
time he sank himself into her, he wanted it to be complete, heart and soul, body and mind.
Not like this.
Azrael made an anguished, desperate sound, and almost at once, Uro was inside his mind.
Are you well, my lord? came his query. Even in thought, the Egyptian prince was regal and composed.
Watch over her, Uro, Az returned, trying with all his might to keep his mental tone under control. Anguish was pouring itself into his bloodstream now, and his vision was shifting into the red. Azrael remembered the pain he’d felt all those years ago when he’d first taken on the form he now possessed. It had seemed to last forever, an extended period of sheer hell that nearly broke everything he was. Once it subsided enough that he was able to regain some semblance of his sanity, he honestly thought he would never suffer such torture again.
But that horrid hunger was returning after all. Only now it was focused solely on the supple, sultry form of his innocent archess.
There was a slight stirring in the air, a breeze that picked up from nowhere, and then Uro was standing in the doorway to Sophie’s bedroom, his pitch-black gaze taking in every detail of Azrael’s sudden transformation.
“Go,” he said simply, nodding to emphasize his understanding of what was happening to his king. “Sophie will be safe with me so long as I draw breath.”
Azrael didn’t waste time replying. With no effort at all, he allowed his form to mist and then sent it into the shadows. In this form, pain did not assault him as badly; he was transitory and incorporeal and unburdened by the nerve endings that plagued his physical body. However, he didn’t like to remain incorporeal for long and certainly not when he needed to be alert. Just as his physical body was scattered and insubstantial, so were the senses that came with that body. He couldn’t protect Sophie in this form, but with Uro watching over her, he was willing to slip into it now.
A boon that came with being one of the oldest vampires on the planet was the power to move through the shadows. That he knew of this ability was the gift of only one other kind of creature—a black dragon. But black dragons had been rare when they’d roamed Earth; now that they’d been in hiding for thousands of years, Azrael wondered whether they even existed any longer.
The ability to traverse the shadow realm was incredibly useful. Just as the archangels were able to use their mansion to pass from a doorway in one location to a doorway in any other location in the world, Azrael was capable of entering the deepest, darkest recesses of shade in one stretch of night—and exiting through the same somewhere else. He did so now, leaving the confines of Sophie’s room and apartment building to transport to an alley in downtown Pittsburgh.
It took him only seconds to home in on a tainted soul. Another few seconds and Azrael was sinking his fangs into his victim’s neck and drinking deep.
* * *
As the vampire flies, it takes very little time to get from point A to point B. Kevin did not have the benefit of the archangel mansion to transport around the globe, but he possessed an Adarian soul. He was a very old being—and a very powerful one.
This ancient magic lent its essence to his vampirism, fueling his unnatural speed so that he moved not only as a vampire would, but even faster. It took him only a few hours to make it from Pennsylvania to the West Coast. A 747 had nothing on him.
Kevin landed on the black rock outcropping that clung to the side of the cliffs overlooking the Pacific and looked down. White water crashed a hundred feet below. It echoed his own inner voice and mirrored his emotions. He was filled with turmoil.
Checking up on the new archess in Pittsburgh hadn’t been strictly necessary. He and his men had been able to divine Sophie Bryce’s plans well enough; she would be in San Francisco by the end of the week, and they could very well have just waited for her there.
But Kevin wasn’t feeling like himself lately. He was agitated and restless. He’d gone to Pittsburgh alone, not bothering to endanger his men on the wings of a whim. Especially one as meaningless and dangerous as the one he’d exercised tonight.
This behavior was not normal for him. Kevin was known to be a careful man. Granted, his transformation into a vampire had come with many unexpected “side effects” that were more than a little difficult to get used to. The hunger alone could be maddening, and drove him and his three Chosen to feed more than once a night. He wondered if it would get easier to manage with time.
It seemed to be that way for “Lord Azrael.” Kevin had done some studying up on the enigmatic vampire archangel who was also the former Angel of Death. According to rumor running through the paranormal grapevine, Azrael’s initial transformation had been an incredibly difficult one.
Kevin and his transformed men weren’t really suffering that badly, and as far as he knew, other turned vampires didn’t suffer that horribly either. It was something about Azrael in particular that had forced the archangel to endure the torture he’d been subjected to. Kevin had his theories. He supposed you couldn’t do what Azrael had done for as many years as he’d done it and not retain some sort of negative energy. He was guessing that negative energy helped mold him into what he’d become—and made the agonizing bed of nails he’d been forced to lay on.
Still, Azrael appeared to have risen above that initially painful transformation and had his undead life under control now. In fact, Kevin would be hard-pressed to come up with a man who had more control over himself and his surroundings.
Kevin ran a frustrated hand through his thick black hair and gritted his teeth against a new, gnawing hunger that was once more growing within him. He would need to feed again soon. Before the sun came up.
At the moment, the very thought of the sun made Kevin break out in a cold sweat. It was perhaps his solitary regret in making this vampiric change. He’d had no real warning that something so integral, something so natural as to be necessarily taken for granted, would be missed so badly when it vanished from his life for good. Ely, Luke, and Mitchell had known what they were getting into; they’d had Kevin’s warnings to mull over before deciding to follow his example. But Mitchell had never been much of a fan of the sun to begin with; he’d always been a creature of the night in his habits. Luke was able to find beauty in all things, day or night. And Ely was interested only in becoming more powerful. In the end, Kevin seemed to be the only one who missed the sun at all.
However, that said, there was a chance—slight but there—that his deadly sensitivity to the sun could be reversed, at least for a little while. One of his men, Asteraoth, or Adam, as he was called now, possessed the ability to both create and control fire. Kevin had been mixing and ingesting the blood of his fellow Adarians in order to absorb different powers and combinations of powers for weeks now. The new abilities he inherited were temporary, but strong and effective. If Kevin could successfully concentrate and ingest Adam’s power through his blood, he would gain the ability to withstand the damage that fire caused to his flesh for some small but essential amount of time.
And what was the sun but a giant ball of fire?
Kevin didn’t know enough yet about vampirism to guarantee that this endeavor would prove fruitful. But it was certainly worth a try.
In the meantime, Kevin had learned a lesson tonight. In Pittsburgh, Azrael and his vampires reacted to Kevin’s presence with such incredible speed and efficiency to protect young Miss Bryce, it was mind-boggling. Azrael was not an opponent to take lightly.
When Sophie did finally make her move to the City by the Bay, she wouldn’t come alone. Kevin knew that Azrael would be shadowing her, along with probably half of the vampires he had ever spawned. Kevin’s only hope was to strike fast, without warning. His best bet for this was to do so during the day. And for this reason, he hoped against hope that his little experiment worked.
Chapter Eleven
Michael pushed away from his desk and ran a hand through his thick blond hair. He was tired. Archangels weren’t supposed to get tired. He was working too hard, had too much on his mind. And the ca
ll that had just come in had a strange feel to it, just as the serial rapist case did.
It was a missing teenage girl, possibly a kidnapping—probably a murder. The crime scene was covered in blood, or at least that was how the girl’s parents had described it to the 911 operator.
Forensics would meet him at the site. “Pool, I’m heading out. Get me the file on Alexandra Thames, would you?” He turned to a sergeant who happened to be walking behind Michael’s desk.
The sergeant nodded. “Right away, sir,” he replied and turned on his heel to head back the way he’d come. Michael watched him go and then glanced toward the windows of the precinct. Darkness and a New York City night waited beyond.
Alexandra Thames was the last woman to have been victimized by New York’s newest and most enigmatic serial rapist. It was just a gut feeling, but Michael had an instinctive inkling that this missing-person case was related somehow. That was why he wanted her file. Maybe he’d overlooked something. . . .
His gaze dropped from the windows as Sergeant Pool returned, handing him the file. “Thanks,” he said. He moved around his desk and headed for the front door of the precinct, picking up his car keys with one hand while he flipped the folder open with the other. So far, none of the victims seemed to be linked to one another in any way but one—they were all women, all good people, and now they were all pregnant.
But that inkling of a feeling niggled at the back of Michael’s mind. Was this possibly the end of the serial rapist’s trail? Was this missing teenage girl the straw that broke the camel’s back? Was she a twist in the plot of this strange story?
Michael made his way out of the precinct building and to his issued car, tossing the file in the passenger seat. Thanks to Max and his ability to control human minds, Michael had never had to work with a partner, and no one questioned it.
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