“Gregori,” Smith finished.
He was very tall, though that didn’t surprise Sophie any longer. In fact, if anyone stood out in her world of late, it was Smith because he was less than six feet tall. Gregori had a strong, slim build and broad shoulders that gave Sophie a strange flutter in her stomach. His hair was shoulder length, jet-black, and thick. At the moment, he seemed to be gazing out across the bay; she couldn’t see his face. But for some reason . . . she imagined he was quite handsome. Beautiful, in fact.
He wore a white suit, tailored to fit his strong, athletic figure. His hands were hidden in the pockets of his suit pants, his posture that of a man completely at ease—or lost in the depths of his own private thoughts. For the briefest of moments, Sophie was struck with an image of Al Capone gazing out across the waters that had held him captive.
The atmosphere of the timeless, infamous prison was getting to her.
Smith left the coat over her shoulders and moved around her to approach his employer. A short flight of stairs led up to the platform on which the man in white stood. Smith took these stairs with the slow and measured care of a man approaching one much more powerful than he.
The wind whipped across the small length of yard between them and Sophie couldn’t hear what Smith said to his boss. However, Gregori’s head tilted so slightly as he caught his employee’s words, and Sophie glimpsed the strong line of his jaw. It caused her heart to skip in her chest. And then the man pulled his hands from his pockets and turned to face her.
Oh no, Sophie thought as her heart again skipped and began racing. I was right.
Even from this distance, his nearly cruel beauty struck her with almost tangible force. She could see that his eyes were the color of thin blue ice. They seemed to almost glow in the somewhat swarthy frame of his sculpted face. She felt locked in their pull; something about his gaze was both mesmerizing and unsettling. There was something wrong with it . . . but she couldn’t tell what it was. She wanted to stare forever, for as long as it took to figure it out. He was a puzzle that entrapped her, and she’d seen him for only three seconds.
I can’t move, she thought. She felt stuck there, immobile, glued to the spot as she gazed up into his light, light, light blue eyes. They were nearly white. And at their centers . . .
A gentle wave of cologne wafted toward her, clean and masculine. “You look positively frozen, Sophie,” he said, his voice like deep black silk. She heard the words as if they’d been spoken intimately into her ear. She blinked and straightened. Somehow, Gregori had come across the yard and was now standing in front of her. She didn’t even remember seeing him move.
Frozen, she thought. Yes, she was frozen. Petrified.
And then she realized what it was about his eyes that both intrigued and troubled her so. His pupils were not round; the black, bottomless pools were the shape of stars . . . many-pointed stars, deep and dark and deadly. When he smiled then, it was with teeth as white and predatory as Azrael’s, his canines ever so slightly longer than they should have been.
“What are you?” Sophie found herself asking. She felt a tremor moving through her, quivering the marrow in her bones. Standing before Gregori on this isolated rock in the middle of a cold, deep sea was rocking her to her core. She was terrified and her body knew it.
“I am a messenger,” he told her. “A warrior, a guardian,” he went on as he slowly began to pace around her. She found herself turning in place to maintain eye contact. She would have done anything in that moment to continue staring into the stars in his eyes. “I am a judge, a rectifier.” His smile slipped just a little, and a dark shape moved beneath the frozen ice of his eyes. “I am death.”
He said it so softly, so intimately, Sophie was utterly and completely thrown. If she’d known what to say, she wouldn’t have been able to say it. Not here, not now, not trapped and breathless in the pull of Gregori’s presence.
“Sophie,” he said as he turned to face her fully and gently took her arms in his hands. His touch was strange. Even through the layers of her clothing and the protective warmth of Smith’s jacket, Gregori’s hands . . . hurt. The sensation of his gentle grip felt as though she were touching a fork to the coils of an electric stove. There was a slight buzz going through her body now and it wasn’t pleasant.
It was nothing like being touched by Azrael. But Gregori’s touch was nonetheless more powerful. That she knew with every fiber of her being.
Whoever and whatever Gregori was, he was awe-inspiring. And incredibly dangerous.
I am death.
“I’m here to help you, Sophie Bryce,” he told her. “You now know that you’re an archess. You know because the powers-that-be deemed that you would find out now. Now,” he said with slightly more emphasis, “that you have grown and your painful childhood is over. Now,” he said again, “that your helplessness has come to fruition and set you upon your path.”
Sophie couldn’t help but think of the gun in her hand, the heavy weight of her foster father’s body over hers, the pain of the grave beneath her as its sharp-edged stones angled bruises into her back. She heard his labored breathing, his swear words that sliced across her mind, felt his fingers gripping the top of her jeans. Then she heard the bang that split the fog and cast her into a decade of forgetting and denial.
She’d been a child. Completely helpless. If she’d had the powers of an archess then, when she’d needed them most . . .
“But you didn’t have them, did you, Sophie?” Gregori asked. He raised his hand to curl his forefinger beneath her chin, tilting it up. Again, his touch was unnerving, setting off currents of electricity across her skin.
She stared up at him, feeling bewildered. He looked concerned and the emotion was completely at odds with the mesmerizing stars in his eyes. “You have never had what you needed, not until now—because some other being out there is pulling your strings. Someone else is planning your fate. That someone has deemed that the time is finally right for you to come into your abilities.” He smiled tenderly and cupped her face with his hands. Sophie felt as though she were watching the cobra sway gently from side to side. “So that you can become an archess and give your life to the man you were made for,” he finished.
Gregori brushed his thumb across her cheekbone in a loving gesture. Sophie’s teeth clenched, her jaw tightening. She felt the stirrings of something wholly uncomfortable swirling within her.
“Everything has been decided for you, young Sophie. Your entire life has been dictated. You have never had any choice, any control—any freedom.”
He released her suddenly, and Sophie blinked as he took a step back from her. The cold rushed in at once, cutting straight through the jacket Smith had given her. In her peripheral vision, she could see Smith watching the exchange in careful silence.
“Until now,” Gregori went on. “Now you have the means with which to do anything if you’re given the freedom to do it. For instance, you can do something about this. If you try.”
With that, he took a step to the side and turned. As he did, he revealed a young woman tied to a pole behind him. She hadn’t been there before. The space had been empty until now.
The girl must have been no older than eighteen; a slight smattering of acne marred her forehead, but otherwise her skin was young and smooth. Her long black hair had been fishtail-braided at one point, but bits of it had come out, and mascara smeared her cheeks. She was gagged, and ropes cut into the sweatshirt and jeans over her body where they bound her tightly to the metal column behind her. The old column stood alone in the yard and supported nothing now but the young female captive.
Sophie’s eyes widened.
And then Gregori was swiping his hand across the girl’s throat. Something metal in his grip glistened in the dawning sunlight just before the blade sliced clean through the girl’s neck, opening her artery to the world.
“Noooo!” Sophie’s cry of shock and alarm ripped from her lungs. For the most horrid moment, she was frozen in time and sp
ace, unable to move, as if held there in place by the greedy, envious hands of the long-since dead. But the moment passed and Sophie found herself rushing forward.
The girl’s eyes were golf-ball wide, her sweatshirt quickly turning red with the drenching of her blood. Sophie wrapped her hands around the teenager’s neck, her fingers fumbling for something to close. But it was like trying to grip the fins of a fish; her flesh was wet and open and Sophie’s hands slid along the surface, dipping ineffectually into the gap of death Gregori’s blade had carved.
“No! God, please, no!” Sophie cried. Somehow, the girl’s ropes had come undone and she now slid to the ground. Sophie followed her down, her arms trying to catch her limp body and seal her wound at the same time. It seemed the world had shrunk to only the victim and Sophie.
The girl’s eyes were rolling back in her head. “No, no, no, no, no.” Sophie had no idea what she was saying any longer.
You can heal her, Sophie. You can fix this. If you try.
And then Sophie’s hands were moving from the girl’s throat to her red-soaked chest. There was no thought, no premeditation. Her head was filled with the roaring of her own blood through her ears; the universe had receded. She simply saw the wound, felt the impending death, and knew she didn’t want it to happen.
Fix it.
Whether or not the thought was her own she would never know. She closed her eyes when her hands began to heat up. The warmth spread from her palms to her fingertips and intensified, instantly drying the soaked material beneath her touch. It moved up her wrists and into her arms, chasing away the chill of the Rock’s whipping winds like a friendly flame.
As it spread across her chest, Sophie let her head fall back. She felt weak and a little dizzy . . . but she also felt warm and tingly and the terrible, gripping fear that had possessed her moments before was now gone. There was no sound or outward indication that the task had been completed, but Sophie knew it was all right when she slowly removed her hands, lowered her head, and opened her eyes.
The girl was still gagged. But her eyes were not quite as wide, and her breathing had gone from desperate, ragged breaths through cloth to a more even, relaxed rhythm. Sophie looked from her face to her neck. The clean-sliced gash that had been there seconds earlier was gone; the girl’s throat was whole, the skin healed.
“Imagine what you could have accomplished on that bridge,” said Gregori. His voice poured over her from behind, deep and melodic. Sophie closed her eyes, picturing the accident, the semi truck dipping through the sky, the Calliope shattered. “Or what you might have done when any one of your foster fathers got out of hand.”
Sophie’s eyes shot open, her stomach gripped with the instant memories and the loathing that came with them. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. She didn’t understand what she was doing there on that rock in the early-morning hours. She didn’t understand why Azrael, the Masked One, the former Angel of Death, was in her life. She didn’t understand why she was an archess, why she had these powers, or why they had arrived only now . . . when it was too late for so very much.
A part of her didn’t understand the world and couldn’t comprehend what it had become with all of its supernatural beings and magic and fated romances. That part of her mourned the loss of her best friend to an archangel and the loss of her own freedom to the same destiny.
There was another part of her that seemed to sit back, take a deep breath, and rest easy under the knowledge. It was as if she had been waiting all her life for this secret to be told, for this reality to finally make its appearance. That part of her was okay. But it was far too small for her liking.
“Of course you don’t understand,” said Gregori. “Why would you? It isn’t important to the powers that be that you understand why this has been done to you. The one who created you doesn’t care if you’re confused, or that you suffered.”
Sophie turned and looked up at Gregori. His dark stars beckoned, his ice-blue eyes mesmerizing. He shook his head, just once, and knelt gracefully beside her. Sophie experienced the briefest fear that he would dirty his beautiful white suit. But then his cologne was wafting over her and his body was inches from her own, and all she could do was gaze up at him, her lips parted, her entire being in awe.
He’d almost killed this innocent young girl, and yet she couldn’t hate him. She feared him and respected him. But the anger sat in the back of her mind and refused to stand.
“This is what I have come to give you, Sophie. I’ve come to give you the choice that your maker took from you two thousand years ago.” He smiled a charming, friendly smile, as if they were about to share an inside joke, and it took Sophie’s breath away. And then he raised his hand and Sophie saw that between his fingers he held a single flower.
It was a dandelion. It was the lowliest of blooms, a weed, a bane to gardeners and groundskeepers across the globe. But it was perfect, every petal smooth and long and rounded.
It was also black.
Chapter Twenty-four
“You have to rest. We’ll go after her.”
Azrael’s skin hurt. His head hurt, his heart hurt, his very blood hurt. The sun had come up and he wasn’t belowground, sleeping. Each passing millisecond drained him more completely, more painfully than any mortal could have imagined.
“Just tell us where she is.” Michael’s sapphire eyes glittered with knowledge. He was well aware of where Azrael had been. He knew whom Az had gone to for help.
The Warrior Archangel still looked very tired; the bridge and Uro had taken their toll on him. But he’d had an hour or two to rest and eat and drink and Max had no doubt seen to it that he’d had the very best of all three. His quick police-officer mind may have been able to guess where Azrael had been during that time, but Michael had no idea what it was that Sam had asked of him.
Now Michael stood at the exit of the foyer, his arms at his sides, his gaze one that would brook no nonsense. He was in archangel mode, giving Azrael an order. And he wasn’t alone.
Uriel and Gabriel stood at either side of him and back several paces. Uriel’s eyes cut hard emeralds across the space between them. Gabriel’s flashed cold metal. None of them were in the mood to barter.
“We know he told you where she is, Az,” Gabriel said, his brogue deep now that he’d been back in Scotland for a while and he was feeling emotional.” An’ we also know you’re plannin’ to go after her yerself. An’ we’re tellin’ you it won’t happen.”
Azrael’s brain was beginning to boil. Gabriel was right. In his fury, he’d been planning on going to Alcatraz himself to face off against the Adarians. He would have taken the shadows, hoping for a path that would lead him past the sun, the water, and deep into the cold metal corridors of the infamous jail. But even as he’d planned it, he’d known it would either kill him or come very close.
Even without exposure to direct sunlight, any vampire awake during the day suffered the consequences, including him. It was not their territory, not their world. They were unwelcome blots of darkness on the sunburns and freckles and sunglasses glare that existed between dawn and dusk.
“Alcatraz,” he said softly. Traces of pain edged his perfect voice, tilting it ever so slightly. “Take the archesses. Take everything you have. The Adarians are not playing alone.”
Michael moved then, grabbing Azrael under the arm just as Az realized he was swaying. Gabriel took his other side and Uriel turned to face Max, who was watching his charge through calculating brown eyes.
“Azrael, you have to stay awake for another five to fill us in. Can you manage that?” Max asked. His tone was angry but calm, like that of a parent who was more than a little disappointed in his child.
Az nodded, not bothering to waste his breath.
“Get him below,” Max ordered.
Michael and Gabriel moved fast, ushering him through the house and down the corridor that led to his chambers under the strange, magical foundation of the mansion. Once they were sequestered three stories down and th
e only light touching any of them was shed by the torches that spontaneously sprang to life along the walls, Michael and Gabriel helped Az to the altar upon which he slept. There they released him.
Az pulled himself up on top of it and wasted no time lying down. He even closed his eyes. And then he said, “Abraxos somehow turned at least three other Adarians into vampires,” he said, beginning to fill them in on everything he knew. “And they’ve developed new powers.”
* * *
Sophie looked at the dandelion, fascinated by its intricate black petals that shimmered like a raven’s wings. Without thinking, she raised her hand, her finger poised to take the flower from him. She had to stop herself before she actually did so.
What was he offering?
“What is it?” she asked.
“A gift,” he said. “A reminder.” He smiled. “A way out.” He raised his other hand, took her fingers in his, and placed the flower in them. Again, the odd buzzing sensation passed through her skin and up her arms, both intriguing—and almost hurting—her.
As soon as she held the flower, he released her hand. She looked down at the black dandelion and felt as though she was holding something truly precious. Something unique. “It’s beautiful.”
“Freedom always is.” Gregori stood then, and Sophie watched him come gracefully to his full height. The imposing cut of his figure and the coldness in his eyes reminded her.
She turned to look down at the teenage girl whose life he had nearly taken, the one she had just saved.
The girl was gone.
“She was a lesson, Sophie,” Gregori told her quietly. Sternly.
Sophie turned back to face him and came to her feet, her fingers still clutching the black flower.
“Some lessons are harder than others.” With that, he took a step back and Sophie felt the world tilt beneath her. She moved, trying to catch herself. There was a blurred flash, a warping of the air around her, and she stumbled to the ground, pulling the bedspread off her bed as she fell.
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