Death's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels

by Heather Killough-Walden

  The network of human servants who were loyal to the vampire nation spanned the globe like a massive spiderweb. These people were more carefully chosen than the vampires themselves. They had to be. It was because of them that many of the vampires who roamed the night now were alive to do so.

  Randall was the man in charge when it came to the humans. He, Monte, and Terry led the network of day walkers with perfect efficiency. Randall’s wisdom and patience made him the ideal head of the operation. Monte’s attention to detail made certain that nothing ever slipped through the cracks and that no human servant ever went rogue. Terry’s easy nature and people skills made communication with the humans painless and reassuring.

  It was fortuitous to a supernatural degree that Randall, Terry, and Monte currently resided in San Francisco, where the third archess now lived. Azrael had never been more convinced that something greater than him was at work of late. Everything was too interconnected for him to think otherwise.

  Out on the pier, Sophie pulled a chunk of leftover sourdough out of her messenger bag. It was still wrapped in the paper bag from the Boudin Bakery, and Azrael could smell it even from where he watched, on the garage roof across the street.

  He knew she was about to toss it to the birds. According to the day walkers on her guard, she was always giving away what she had. Whether to the homeless who dwelled on the streets of San Francisco or to the pigeons, Sophie was a sharing soul.

  “All right, boys,” she said softly. No other humans were around. She was alone where she stood on the damp planks of the boardwalk. “Here’s your supper, but I’m not supposed to be feeding you, so this is our little secret.”

  She tore off several small chunks and tossed them to the seagulls nearby. There was a brief white flutter, several more seagulls joined the first group, and they commenced to fighting over the pieces of bread.

  Sophie’s smile broadened as she fed the birds what remained of the day’s lunch.

  “Think she was talking to you?” Randall’s gravelly voice cut through the silence beside Az. Azrael shot him a dark look and Randall chuckled, ignoring him. The smug look on his face said everything.

  Azrael turned back to Sophie. She began to move away from the birds, allowing them their privacy. As she did, she shoved her hands into the pockets of her vintage military-style jacket and her look became distant. At once, he wondered what she was thinking, and without the slightest restraint, he entered her mind to find out.

  As usual, her thoughts were more difficult to infiltrate than those of a normal human mind. However, Az managed to breach her outer walls without allowing her to suspect that he was there, and as she made her way down the boardwalk toward Pier 41, he listened in on her inner musings.

  She was thinking about Alcatraz. She kept glancing at it across the water. Not much of the dark island was visible through the black and gray of the slightly misty night, but the lighthouse sliced through the dimness faithfully, marking its location. Sophie was wondering what it would feel like to go sailing through a dense fog out on the bay. She imagined herself on a boat, surrounded by the mists, somewhere between Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. Her inner thoughts listened, picking up the sound of nothing but the silence and the lapping of the waves upon the hull of her imaginary vessel. She felt at peace as she imagined this, and because a part of him was with her in that moment, he felt it as well.

  It was something he had never experienced before. Being inside someone’s mind while that person so clearly pictured something that was felt so deeply was a little like taking a really deep breath while underwater and getting nothing but clean air. Azrael watched his archess with a mixture of pride and burgeoning impatience. Over and over again, she took an existence that he thought he knew everything about and introduced it to something new.

  He was falling in love with her.

  At that thought, Azrael closed his eyes. But he remained comfortably sequestered within the warmth of Sophie’s mind as she let her reverie go in order to replace it with a new one. She now wondered what it would feel like to fly out over the bay like Superman and land on the island of Alcatraz when it was quiet and dark, as it was now. She was thinking that if she had wings, the way she sometimes did in her dreams, she could wait until it was so late that there was no one around. Then she would stand on one of the wooden beams surrounding the pier—and jump. And then . . . she was wondering what it would be like to have Az, the archangel, catch her while she was in the air, and kiss her.

  Azrael straightened and opened his eyes, his lips parting. Beside him, Randall stood straighter as well, his instincts no doubt going on alert at the sudden change in his sire. Azrael’s senses focused. His heart beat a little faster. He couldn’t believe the images that were floating before Sophie’s mind at that very moment.

  In her head, Azrael took her to Alcatraz Island . . . where his band mates were waiting. And in her head, they were vampires.

  Az could feel his gaze begin to heat up. His blood hummed to life; his gums ached where his fangs threatened to lengthen. Sophie was imagining him seducing her, toying with her. In her daydream, she ran from him, willingly playing the prey to him and his men. Uro easily blocked her path. Then Azrael was behind her once more.

  Down below, Sophie suddenly stopped on the boardwalk, reached out to steady herself on the chain-link fence beside her, and closed her eyes as she imagined Azrael sinking his teeth into her neck.

  Azrael’s fangs exploded in his mouth, his vision went red, and he swore softly, turning away from the sight of his archess on the boardwalk. Beside him, Randall came forward, at once concerned. But before the other vampire could speak, Azrael held up his hand to indicate that he wanted silence. He shut his eyes tight against his impending transformation, ruthlessly willing his body back under control.

  Sophie. . . . He’d already known that she thought he looked like a vampire, but she also daydreamed of him being a vampire. Of him coming after her! His mind spun with the implications, the biggest of which was probably that Sophie not only didn’t mind his resemblance to the monster—she liked it. She spent time conceiving what she thought to be impossible scenarios involving him and his big, bad teeth . . . because they brought her pleasure.

  Again he swore, but this time internally.

  He’d planned to take this slowly. In fact, as far as Sophie knew, he’d stayed completely away from her for the last week. He’d given her space and time to get acquainted with the school and her new apartment and the big city. There had been no sign of the Adarians, making his apparent distance possible. He wasn’t sure what Abraxos was up to, but whatever it was, it didn’t seem to be taking place in San Francisco, at least for now.

  In the meantime, Az was never far from Sophie, and his men and their servants watched her twenty-four hours a day. But as far as she was concerned, she’d been on her own. He didn’t want to crowd her. He knew some of what she’d been through at the hands of men and he didn’t want to scare her off.

  But now her presence, only a split second away from him as the vampire flies, was calling to him like an amplified siren song. Knowing what she wanted—what she truly wanted, deep down inside—was killing him.

  Down below, Sophie laughed to herself, no doubt chastising herself for her wicked thoughts as she was so wont to do. Azrael’s gut clenched. He tasted blood in his mouth and realized he’d pierced his lower lip with his fangs. The taste surprised him. It had been forever since he’d done that.

  “No offense, Az, but you’re a mess.”

  Azrael spun to face Randall, who was watching him with an inherent wisdom glinting in his blue, blue eyes. The other vampire pulled a gold pocket watch out of his tan trench coat and flipped it open. It was vintage, having belonged to Randall’s father hundreds of years ago. It didn’t keep time as accurately as modern timepieces, and for a vampire, that was gutsy. But Randall was sentimental—and every soul deserved a vice.

  “According to what she’s done every other night this week, in rou
ghly seven minutes she’s going to leave that pier entirely and head for the cable cars at Ghirardelli,” Randall said in his rough but gentle voice. “If you ask me—”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Azrael cut in curtly.

  Randall continued as if he hadn’t been rudely interrupted. “It seems the perfect time for a few members of Valley of Shadow to hit the town and relax.” He nodded a little to himself and slipped the watch back into his pocket. His gaze traveled over the streets and buildings around them. “Middle of the week, middle of the night, not as many people around. It would be a believable coincidence should your paths happen to cross that of one Sophie Bryce.”

  A beat of silence passed between them. And then Azrael almost laughed. Randall was cutting to the heart of the matter and simultaneously offering up a solution. It was his way. It was part of the reason Azrael had brought him over all those years ago. McFarlan was a very, very smart man.

  He was also right. Azrael had waited long enough. He’d been planning to send Valley of Shadow tickets to her new apartment and meet up with her at the concert, but this taking-it-slow thing was turning into a jaunt through Tartarus.

  He turned away from Randall and took the few steps necessary for him to be flush with the ledge of the garage’s roof. He gazed down at Sophie as the wind caught her lustrous hair and blew it around her perfect face. He caught the scent of her shampoo and swallowed hard.

  So . . . she liked vampires.

  The dark part of him—the slowly rumbling, glowing-eyed monster part of him—smiled cruelly and inhaled deeply, absorbing her scent until he knew that he no longer appeared even remotely human. His little archess fantasized about being taken by him, pierced by him. She imagined having an orgasm beneath his fanged ministrations. She wondered what it would feel like, even as she “knew” it wasn’t possible. Such things as vampires didn’t exist.

  Azrael understood that it was a fantasy and was meant only to be such. Humans often imagined things that were pleasant in a make-believe world. However, to believe that vampires didn’t exist was a shortsighted assumption on Sophie’s part. She, in particular, should have known better. She already believed in the supernatural; Juliette had introduced her thoroughly to their world.

  Sophie thought him an angel.

  “Little fool,” he whispered. There was more than one kind of angel.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sophie shook her head and pushed the images out of her mind. Her body was uncomfortably flushed now. It was a cool night, as it almost always was in San Francisco, but she was warm. All over.

  She sighed heavily and shoved a mass of golden locks out of her face with an impatient hand. She’d thought that moving to the coast and not having any contact with the rock star archangel would get Azrael out of her head, but it appeared that wasn’t the case. She had to admit to herself now that she had it bad for him. Which was just pathetic. She’d never imagined that she would become obsessed with someone, but that seemed to be the case.

  She was even taking liberties with her little obsession. She’d imagined Azrael doing so many different things to her in so many different ways, it was becoming crowded in her head. Now she’d turned him into a vampire and was including his band mates? She made a frustrated sound, stopped in her tracks, and pinched the bridge of her nose. She couldn’t help it! They were so hot! And she knew damn well that she wasn’t the only woman in the world to harbor such thoughts about certain men. It was natural—it was what imaginations were for!

  She dropped her hand and turned to peer out over the dark, bottomless bay once more. I’m just daydreaming, she told herself soothingly. Wasn’t a girl allowed to daydream?

  Alcatraz Island winked at her, flashing its signal and then going black once more. Sophie blinked. She pushed up the sleeve of her jacket and glanced at the oversized watch that dangled from her left wrist. The cable car would be leaving any minute now. She’d been caught up in her reveries and moving a little slower than she’d thought.

  Sophie turned and sprinted down the Embarcadero toward Ghirardelli Square. She’d been blessed with long legs that now came in handy, helping her to eat up the ground at a quick pace. She was also lucky that there was almost no one else on the piers at that hour, so no one got in her way to slow her down.

  She made it to the cable-car stop with several seconds to spare and slipped onto one of the outside benches. There were about half a dozen other riders at this time of night, as opposed to how it was in the middle of the day, when every available inch of the transportation device was occupied and ten people stood clinging to the poles on either side of the car.

  Sophie was about to pull the monthly public transportation pass she’d purchased out of her messenger bag when the cable-car operator boarded the car and saw her sitting on the end.

  “Well, hey, girl,” he said, smiling. “I don’t need to see your card again; it hasn’t changed, right?” He cocked his head to one side, teasing her.

  She smiled, shook her head, and closed the bag.

  “I was wondering if you were gonna catch this last run,” he told her as he looked around to make certain everyone who wanted to ride was on.

  “Am I that predictable?”

  “You are making kind of a habit of this,” he said, chuckling. He was a big guy; it took a lot of muscle to work the deadweight of the cable car. Sophie watched him pop the massive clutch-like brake out of its locked position, and the cable car started to roll forward. “But I’m glad to have you aboard,” he added once they’d cleared the exit. He winked at her, his middle-aged, dark-skinned face wrinkling merrily under the expression.

  Sophie hid her blush by looking away and focusing her attention on the row houses and streets as they passed by. San Francisco was all hills and coastline; every intersection they reached went up sharply one way and down just as sharply the other. But despite the attention-grabbing inclines, one distinctive detail remained easily visible, appearing in shop windows and taped to the walls outside of apartment complexes.

  Valley of Shadow was coming to San Francisco. The band’s posters were enormous Gothic-inspired black-on-black works of art that featured the group in agonizingly tempting detail. Five pairs of piercing eyes stared out at the world with dark promise. Sophie could barely bring herself to look at them.

  The band would be playing this weekend—and the concert had been sold out for months. Sophie knew because she’d actually looked into acquiring tickets. She didn’t normally spend money on anything that could be considered “frivolous.” She purchased her clothes at second-hand and vintage stores; she loved the shops along Haight-Ashbury. She never went to a professional hairstylist, instead choosing to trim her own ends. She slept on a futon, and bought her table and chairs at Goodwill.

  But she loved music. She always had. Valley of Shadow was up there at the top of her list.

  For so many reasons.

  Sophie thought about her “date” with Azrael and the note he’d left on her bed before apparently leaving town. On the one hand, it hurt that she hadn’t seen him since then. She hated that she felt a little like a one-night stand, despite the fact that there had been no sex involved.

  On the other hand, she felt awkward enough as it was. Forget the third-wheel thing. Sophie felt more like a ninth wheel. There were four archangel brothers and each one had an archess. She might be Juliette’s best friend, but Jules really had made a new life for herself and it included being a part of a family that contained four very definite, fated-in-the-stars couples. She wasn’t a part of that.

  She and Jules had spoken over the phone a lot since the wedding, but even during those conversations, Sophie couldn’t shake the feeling of being an outcast. It would be strange when she visited Juliette. If she visited Juliette.

  Sophie closed her eyes just then and swallowed back the swell of sadness that rose in her throat. She didn’t like that thought. So she shoved it away and opened her eyes to stare out once more at the up-and-down streets and the bay that stretc
hed dark and misty beyond.

  As the car started up Hyde, a street that was decidedly non-horizontal, Sophie held on to the bar beside her to keep from sliding across the bench and smashing into the couple seated a few feet away. It was fun; it cleared her mind of her previously unpleasant thoughts. She loved the cable cars; they were a carnival ride, a nostalgic history lesson, and reliable transportation all rolled into one.

  As always, once they reached Washington, Sophie had the choice of getting off and walking the seven blocks to her apartment on Hemlock—or staying on and taking the cable cars out of her way so that she could catch another on California and get a little closer to Hemlock without walking through alleyways. It took longer to stay on the cars, but it was safer and she certainly didn’t mind the ride. She was never tired at this time of night. If she had her way, she would wake up at ten or eleven in the morning and not go to sleep until four a.m.

  In fact, she’d been presented with that choice of late. She would begin classes in the fall, but that meant that she had the whole summer in San Francisco. Her parents’ inheritance money, combined with what she’d saved from working over the last ten years, was enough that for once, if she chose to, she could go without working for a summer or two. She could kick back, sleep in, roam the streets of Frisco—er, San Francisco—without having to worry about getting to work on time.

  No alarm clocks. No curfews. Just life to live, time to live it, and a beautiful place to live it in. It was somewhat stunning to realize that she suddenly had this freedom. Where had it come from? Had it always been there, waiting for her to take it? Or had she earned it herself?

  Sophie smiled and shook her head. She felt scared—but all in all, pretty happy with life at that moment.

  She stayed on the cable car until they reached California, and then she waved to the operator and hopped off. It was a little after one a.m. and a few minutes before the second cable car would come along, but there were other people waiting at the junction as well, so despite the late hour, she never felt that she was in any danger.