Michael stood in the open door of the car and pulled out his personal cell phone. He dialed a number, and wasn’t at all surprised when the line was picked up before the first ring was half through.
“Michael,” said the gravelly voice on the other end. It belonged to Randall McFarlan, the cop who was one of Az’s created vampires. “Azrael told me you’d be calling.”
“I need your advice on something, Randy. You think you could get Az to let you use the mansion to get to New York?”
“I could do that,” came the easy reply.
“Good. I need you to meet me somewhere. Here’s the address.”
Thirty minutes later, Michael parked his flashing vehicle beside a host of other police cars and got out. Randall was already there, and thanks to his vampire powers, none of the other cops or crime scene investigators on the premises were bugging him in any manner.
Randall made his way gracefully through the crowd and met Michael at the crime scene tape. “There’s a lot of blood inside,” he told Michael without the preamble of a greeting.
Michael grimaced inwardly. Of course Randall would know; he’d be able to smell it.
“You wanna fill me in?” Randall asked as they both turned toward the two-story row house that was seeing a steady stream of officials in and out of its front door. They ducked beneath the crime scene tape and approached the building side by side.
“It started in February,” Michael began. “On Valentine’s Day.” He filled Randall in as quickly as he could as he nodded to men he knew and flashed his badge at the appropriate people.
Over the last few months, a serial rapist had been leaving a trail of victims across New York City. On the upside, the victims were neither physically harmed nor murdered. On the downside, there were more than fifty of them at this point, and each woman was pregnant.
To make matters worse, the women all came to the police with the same unbelievable story. Their husbands or boyfriends had been out of town. A very handsome man had entered their bedroom at night uninvited. The women had been overcome with desire, and—several hours later, the strange man disappeared, leaving a confused and pregnant woman in his wake.
They claimed that as the hours of the night wore on, they became more aware of what had happened to them and felt increasingly violated. Some of them had managed to procure “morning-after” pills. Others had not. But it didn’t matter; the pills never worked.
Now these rape victims were expecting children that they knew did not belong to their spouses or partners, and they were faced with a very, very difficult choice: give birth to a rapist’s child or have an abortion. Several of them had been having marital problems since the attacks. Two were filing for divorce. Another was separated.
Whoever this man was, he was carving a path of misery across the city and its surrounding areas.
The mortals Michael worked with as a police officer all had their theories about the perpetrator. Maybe he was using some sort of gas on the women to cloud their perception and judgment. The man was sometimes described as having blue eyes, other times green or brown. But because he was uniformly referred to as exceptionally handsome, several cops figured he was probably a performer of some sort, perhaps a model or a stage magician, and was using wigs and contacts to change his appearance. Others went the athlete route; the rapist was apparently very built as well. So far, talent agencies and sports teams alike had been questioned.
Michael had a much different theory.
The physical description of the rapist, as well as the account of what actually transpired within the bedroom, all reminded Michael of something he had dealt with before. Long ago.
It had been many, many centuries since the Warrior Archangel had come across a Nightmare. They were notorious for using human women as their breeders. It was how the incubi of the world continued to populate the planet; human women were the means to their species’ survival. However, Nightmares were not necessarily evil creatures. As far as Michael’s dealings with them were concerned, he’d never known them to be overtly selfish or cruel.
When an incubus, or Nightmare, impregnated a woman, he usually chose a woman who wanted children anyway. He made certain she would be a loving, caring mother. And when he had finished leaving his seed deep within her womb, he never, ever allowed her to remember the Nightmare’s visit.
It was essential to the woman’s happiness that her memory of the night of her child’s conception be wiped. The Nightmare child was then magically given physical traits of the woman’s significant other in order to further protect her in the months and years to come.
The little boy—it was always a boy—would be born happy and healthy. Approximately twenty to twenty-five years later, he would come to know what he was. His Nightmare powers would kick in and along with these powers, he would gain a profound understanding of the incubus culture and expectations. And the cycle would continue.
Michael would have been willing to bet all the gold he could create in a day that the rapist now leaving pregnant women in his wake was a Nightmare. The problem with that, however, was twofold. First, the Nightmares had disappeared long ago with the majority of Earth’s other paranormal creatures, and no one had heard anything from them for more than a thousand years. If this was an incubus, then the creatures had come out of hiding. Why?
And second, Michael knew the Nightmare king on a personal level, and there was no way in hell that Hesperos would have allowed one of his subjects to behave the way the rapist had been behaving. Which meant that the culprit had gone rogue and was no longer interested in playing nice.
“So you want me to sniff out the crime scene and let you know whether Nightmares were involved.”
“Yes,” Michael said as he gestured for Randall to precede him up the stairs of the victim’s house to the second level. “But I also want you to tell me whether any of this blood you smell belongs to the missing girl.”
“It doesn’t,” Randall said without hesitation. “And you’re right about the Nightmares,” he added, glancing over his shoulder at Michael. “Good instincts. But you’re falling short, my friend.”
Michael frowned as they reached the landing and turned down the hall toward the girl’s bedroom. Here the scene became more somber and the flash of an investigator’s bulb lit up the dim atmosphere. “How so?” he muttered, well aware that he needed to keep his voice down now that they were in close company and the din of the others had hushed.
Eyes watched them as they moved down the hall, and Michael’s gut clenched. They were warning him, those eyes. It was a cop’s way of saying, “Get ready. Try to keep your lunch down.”
“There are Nightmares involved, to be sure,” Randy drawled in his deep voice. They came to the girl’s bedroom door and peered in. “But Nightmares aren’t the only supernatural creatures with their hands in the pot.”
The room beyond was awash in red. The walls had been painted in streams of blood. The carpet was sticky with it. The curtains clung to the window, the red liquid acting as a magnet for the fabric.
“What the fuck . . .” Michael’s whisper drifted off. The blood didn’t affect him. His fellow police officers wouldn’t know it, of course, but as the Warrior Archangel, Michael was more than used to the consequences of battle. Blood was par for the course. What bothered him was the idea of a young mortal girl being caught in the midst of it.
“No human did this,” he said next.
“Nope,” agreed Randall.
“But no Nightmare did it, either,” Michael said. Nightmares were not violent like this. Not even the serial rapist had been violent with his victims. This kind of bloodshed simply wasn’t in their makeup.
“Nope,” said Randall again.
Michael turned toward him. “Then what the hell did?”
Randall took a deep breath and let it out in a heavy sigh. “Well, I’ve got good news and bad news for you,” he said. “Which do you want first?”
“Randy, just give it to me straight.”
Michael could agree to that. If this was Nightmare blood, then the incubi had probably transported away once they were injured enough to scare them into flight.
“What’s the bad news?”
“That’s the interesting bit,” said the vampire. “When was the last time you came across a dragon?”
Michael’s heart hammered a little more solidly against the inside of his rib cage. “A dragon?” It had been centuries. Longer, even.
“Been a while, huh?”
Michael nodded.
“Well, I guess it’s about time, then. I’m fairly sure that the dragons I smell here were the ones doing the fighting,” Randall said as he gestured to the blood on the walls and floor. “But there’s another scent here as well; something that I don’t even recognize. And whatever they are, they took the girl with them.”
Michael’s head was spinning. Nightmares were one thing. Dragons were quite another. And from what Randall was telling him, it didn’t end there.
The supernaturals of the world were coming out of hiding.
The Adarians were out there scheming to do God only knew what. Samael was sitting in his tower in Chicago plotting something that was sure to be painful, at the very least. Nightmares and dragons were out in the open and fighting with one another, and now they’d waved their existence in humanity’s face by kidnapping a mortal. And somewhere in the world, two archesses remained to be found.
There was so much going on all at once, it made Michael dizzy. He glanced at the blood on the floor, the rumpled sheets, and the night beyond the windows. That night held a lot more danger than it used to.
Michael thought of his brothers, most important Azrael. He hadn’t spoken with the vampire archangel since he’d walked in on Az during Gabe’s wedding almost two weeks ago. Azrael was in San Francisco at the moment, preparing for a concert he would be giving over the next few days.
But Michael couldn’t get the image of the archangel bent over the sink out of his head. The mirror had been cracked, and the air in the room had been thick with the feel of Azrael’s power. There was so much more to Az than there seemed to be to the others, not only because of what he was now, but because of what he had once been. Michael knew that even after all this time, there was a lot about Az he and his other brothers did not understand.
Michael’s instincts in battle were legendary. Those instincts didn’t go away when he wasn’t fighting, and right now his intuition was telling him that as far as Azrael was concerned, something was wrong.
He wasn’t as worried about the others. Gabriel and Juliette were busy building a new home in Cruden Bay right beside the remains of Slains Castle, which they now had the rights to protect with utmost care. Uriel and Eleanore were with them. The brothers had agreed it would be a good idea to remain relatively close to one another at least until they figured out what was brewing out there.
The crime scene around Michael right now told him quite a lot was brewing out there. More than any of them had imagined.
Michael frowned as he considered this. Randall hadn’t said anything about the Adarians taking part in this mess, but Abraxos and his posse were a threat nonetheless. So far, the four brothers and the two archesses they’d managed to find had played on the defensive. They’d simply existed—and then when the Adarians struck, they’d fought back.
Michael didn’t like that. It wasn’t a good strategy. As far as he was concerned, the adage about the best defense being a good offense was true. If it were up to him, they would go after the Adarians instead of waiting around for the insane general and his men to strike.
But it wasn’t up to him. Michael’s hands curled tightly at his sides as tension rode its way through his tall, strong body. He realized what he was doing when Randall leaned over and nudged him.
“Not a good idea to go all Champion of the Winged Warriors in here, my friend,” he whispered, pointing at his own eyes. Michael blinked. He realized that his eyes felt hot in his face and that they were most likely beginning to glow.
He closed his eyes. With a deep breath, he forced his shoulders to relax.
In the realm he’d come from two thousand years ago, he’d possessed an army of angels to lead into battle. Now if he wanted to charge headlong into a fight, he would have to drag his brothers into danger along with him, to say nothing of their soul mates. So he held back. He had no right to put their lives on the line simply because he felt impatient, especially now that they had so much more to live for.
“So what do I do now, Randy?” he asked, talking to the ex-cop–turned-vampire as he would a close friend. He needed to find the human girl who had been taken. But where did he start?
“That’s a good question,” said Randall. “But on the upside, I have a feeling you won’t have to answer it.”
Michael opened his eyes, no longer burning in his face, and fixed them on Randall.
“You’re not going to have to track down whoever did this,” Randall continued.
Michael realized he was right. Something in his gut was telling him that whoever was responsible for this incident wouldn’t need to be found.
Because he would find Michael first.
Chapter Twelve
The night was calm, the fog hadn’t yet rolled in, and because it was Tuesday, the normally thriving tourist attraction that was Pier 39 was quickly winding down.
The street performers, beggars, and tourists were all packing it in and heading home or to their hotels. Though the fog remained nestled just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge, the air was already thick with the scent of it; it muffled the clanging of mast and rigging. The tide was rising. The seagulls were quieting down, making room for one another on crow’s nests and the wooden beams of the pier.
Out on Alcatraz Island, the lighthouse winked its eternal message, its light temporarily piercing the graying darkness in unhurried rhythm. Somewhere in the distance, a cargo ship sounded its horn. The sea lions, from where they vied for space on the wooden rafts that had been left for them long ago, replied.
Alone on the lookout point beside one of the many pay telescopes that lined the north side of the pier stood a woman with beautiful hair. It curled more than usual in the damp air, a waist-long mass of thick waves and spirals that shimmered like gold beneath the pier lights. She leaned casually against the wooden railing before her and peered out into the bay. Her mind had been spinning until now; he could hear it grow steadily calmer as she took a deep breath, pulling in the salt air. She closed her eyes as she let it go.
Azrael noticed the drops of moisture on her long, full lashes as they rested on the tops of her cheeks. He’d been watching her since sundown—he and his band mates, who were stationed, unseen, at intervals across the wharf and the piers.
When she opened her eyes again, she did so with a smile. That smile was like a sunbeam and brought to mind an image of the fiery orb that he hadn’t seen in two thousand years.
Azrael’s body flexed beneath its dark garb, his hunger spiking once again. He’d had to feed more than normal lately. Sophie Bryce had awakened the monster within him, and that monster was voracious.
“You okay?” came a gravelly voice beside him. Azrael tore his gaze from the object of his desire and glanced at his old friend. Not much escaped Randall McFarlan. Not much escaped a vampire in any case, but Randall’s skills of perception were especially fine-tuned.
Az could have lied. But it would have done no good, and in all honesty he wanted to tell someone how he was feeling. He wanted to get it off his chest. So he didn’t say anything at all, knowing that his silence would be more telling for Randall than a lengthy confession.
Randall nodded once in understanding and his stark vampire gaze returned to the profile of the young woman standing alone
on the boardwalk. “A funny thing about young Miss Bryce,” Randall said. “She doesn’t seem to be opposed to the night.” He smiled slowly, glancing back at Az before he continued. “In fact, I would say she seems quite fond of it.”
Azrael turned his attention back to Sophie. She straightened from where she had been leaning against the wood railing and sighed. Then she tucked a curly lock of hair behind one ear and began digging into the large leather messenger bag she had slung across her body.
It had been a few weeks since he’d seen her last. Their brief “date” had ended so quickly and on such a sour note for him—he’d never been more furious with the Adarians. As Sophie slept that night, Azrael entered her dreams and manipulated her memory of their date so that she would assume Az had simply brought her home after dinner and said good night.
The next day, Sophie awoke to a single bloodred rose on her pillow and a handwritten note: Sweetest Sophie, it read. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know you a little better tonight. I hope you will allow me to do it again very soon. Always, Azrael.
According to her watchers, Sophie had smiled winsomely, inhaled the rose’s heady scent, and then set herself to the task of packing up her meager belongings and preparing for her flight to San Francisco. The apartment she was leaving behind was furnished, and almost nothing of what she’d been using for comfort actually belonged to her. The rest—the blankets, the clothes, the shoes, and the books—she’d managed to fit into two large suitcases and a carry-on for the one-way trip.
As Sophie left her key with the building manager and caught her flight, the human vampire servants entrusted with her safety continued their task of watching over the future vampire queen. Randall had called in the big guns for Sophie. She was being watched twenty-four/seven.
A part of Az felt decidedly strange about all of this. He felt uneasy, jealous even. But the bigger part of him was well aware that it was necessary. She was too precious and far too vulnerable during the day. And he’d been careful. He had made certain to scour the minds of the men who guarded her, searching for any signs of unwanted emotion or duplicity. They were clean.
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