Samael

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Valley of Shadow comprised a lead singer, lead guitarist, a bass guitarist, a keyboardist, and a drummer. What the fanciful public didn’t know was that they were actually right on the money in their suspicions. Angel was one of the few people in the world who knew that every member of the band was actually a vampire. The lead singer was none other than the king of the vampires, and the former angel of death – Azrael.

  Az hypnotized from the stage as a towering, well-built, enigmatic but charismatic as hell figure in black and a feature-hiding mask that provided one final barrier between him and all those questing, prying, and, these days, usually supernatural eyes.

  Valley’s agent was Max, the Guardian. Max had been on the planet as long as the rest of them and had learned a thing or two in that time. He was a highly intelligent man who knew how to play the representation game with the best of them. He also knew how to hire good help, so that when things got rough for him and the boys, his work, and hence his cover as an agent to the most popular band in the world, didn’t falter.

  They were more fragile than angels, vampires and dragons, yet mortals seemed to work harder. They never seemed to sleep. So, despite the recent excitement Max and the archangels had experienced over the archesses, troubles with Sam and the Adarians, and the dangerous, terrifying newcomer Gregori, Max’s people made sure the Valley of Shadow concert was planned out to the last detail. And the show went on.

  So here she was. Just like she’d had a feeling she would be.

  When Angel had learned of this concert, she’d ear-marked it in her mind as a good place to hide. She’d known the vampires would be here. She’d known the angels probably would be as well. Not to mention upwards of fifty thousand screaming fans. Here, atop the Colorado Plateau, the crowd could sprawl like nobody’s business, and a good portion of it would consist of supernatural blood, which would blur and disguise her own magical presence.

  Now, Angel looked up at the stars, tried to figure out which direction she was facing, and then looked down at the hills surrounding the desert valley. Once she knew which way to go, she set off through the crowd at a furious pace, making certain to change her appearance as often as possible along the way.

  Chapter Nine

  “How wonderful. We’re all here together.” The tall man in white scanned the thumping, churning crowd, then turned to the group who stood beside him, waiting and attentive. “Is our guest of honor ready yet?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I think now would be a good time to test his newfound loyalties.”

  One of the men turned to another and nodded. The second man left.

  Gregori turned back to the lights and madness and smiled. It was a wholly unnerving smile.

  *****

  She’d used telekinesis to carve the tunnel out months ago. Moving this much earth by hand in the amount of time she’d done it would have been impossible for a single person of her stature, but the mind was monumentally stronger than the body, and hers was especially so. The ability to move matter with mere thought was one of her various plentiful abilities.

  Telekinesis was the tip of a supernatural iceberg with her. But right now, she was sort of more grateful for that ability than any other. Transporting would be detected. She didn’t need to heal anyone. She didn’t need to change the weather, as most supernatural creatures were immune to weather changes, and anywhere Sam went, it was storming anyway. He could handle lightning.

  Starting a fire or frost and throwing fireballs or ice spears would be not only pointless and worthless, but dangerous. Breathing under water wasn’t going to be necessary in Death Valley. Entering someone’s dreams was something she rarely did – it was disturbing and confusing – and again, was non-applicable just now. Transmorphing objects into something else might come in handy in a bit, if she found herself in need of weapons, but it was very draining, and at the moment, what she really needed was a way out.

  Her telekinesis had afforded her one where nothing else could.

  So she thanked her lucky stars for it while she slipped behind a mess of parked cars that went well beyond the monument’s parking lot, shifted into invisibility to avoid detection by about thirty cops, and found the dust and dirt-covered trap door she’d created months ago. It was easy to extend the invisibility over the door too, drop down into the tunnel below, and secure the door above her once more.

  The sound of the concert was slightly muffled underground. There were approximately eight feet of earth between her and the revelry going on above. It was enough to take the sting out of the volume, but that was about it. Valley of Shadow played loud.

  Angel waved her hand, and the tunnel in front of her lit up with a dim light sufficient for her to find her footing. She left the entry-way and began running, casting one last glance at the sound of the concert behind her before she was sprinting full-speed. She needed to put enough distance between herself and the crowd before she could once again transport. Maybe this time she would go to Mozambique. Or Iceland. She’d seen photographs of a monastery on the side of a cliff in Turkey. Maybe she’d go there.

  Something moved directly in front of her, shifting so fast, it blurred. She skidded to a stop, and her heart jumped up into her throat.

  “This is impressive,” the deep, beautiful voice complemented. “It must have taken you some time to hollow this out.”

  It wasn’t Samael’s voice. But it was powerful, nonetheless. And it was still a voice Angel didn’t want to hear just then.

  It also made absolutely no sense that she was hearing it down here in the tunnel.

  “Azrael?” she asked, somewhat disbelievingly.

  The vampire king stepped out of the shadows in front of her and cocked his handsome head to one side. He was dressed as he had been on stage, but for the mask, which was missing. “You know who I am,” he said softly, as if figuring something out in his head. “You have me at a disadvantage.”

  Before she could think to stop him or erect the stronger walls she should have had up around her mind, Azrael was plunging head-long into it, clearly intent on righting that disadvantage. He got quite a bit further than she would have preferred before she finally shoved him back out and slammed her mental barriers back into place. Still, she managed to keep most of her secrets protected. It wasn’t that she couldn’t keep Azrael out; in fact, she was probably one of the very few beings on the planet who could do that.

  It was that she had accidentally let him in.

  Az took a step back, and his eyes flashed. “You’re Samael’s archess.”

  “More or less,” she admitted, sighing. “Sort of. But it’s more complicated than that.”

  “By far, I’m guessing,” Az said. He was a smart man, putting two and two together and coming up with answers few others would be able to. Leave it to the vampire king. Leave it to the former Angel of Death. He’d seen it all.

  “How the hell are you down here when I can still hear you up on stage?” she asked, feeling time slip through her fingers and knowing she should be running just then. She was just very curious.

  “A simple illusion,” he said with a shrug.

  “Of course.” Again, leave it to a vampire. Illusion was one of their specialties.

  As to how he’d managed to come down into the tunnel, well that was most likely a shadow traveling feat. Vampires of a certain age could move from one shadow anywhere on the planet to another shadow anywhere else, just as the archangels could use doors to travel to and from their Mansion. Az was the eldest vampire – the first. Plus, he had a special bond with shadows. They were a part of him by this point. They were nearly one in the same.

  He’d probably felt someone moving through them and come to investigate.

  “Az, you have to let me go. Samael can’t find me. It’s more important than you can imagine.” Right after she’d said it, she knew it wasn’t true. The Angel of Death probably had a very broad imagination.

  His gaze narrowed on her thoughtfully, however. He was silent for a l
ong time, and Angel was beginning to get nervous. She did not want to get into a fight with a Lost Angel. Especially not this one.

  Finally, he said, “Sam isn’t alone up there.”

  Angel frowned. She blinked. But then she felt it. There was a kind of hiccup in the energy around her. It was like a flow of electricity through a faulty wire. There was a storm brewing up above sure enough. That would be Sam. But there was a storm brewing through the crowd, too. It was a darker kind of tide making its way inward, closer to the center of the valley where the concert was taking place.

  And closer to her hidden passageway’s trap door.

  “Gregori.” Saying his name left a terrible taste in her mouth. It was like speaking the language of oil or tar. She’d never actually met him face to face, but his reputation more than preceded him.

  Azrael nodded. “The Adarians are up there too.”

  He almost smiled when he said that last bit; Angel could see the hint of it at the corners of his mouth. Only Azrael could have a sense of humor about this disaster. Only someone who had seen as much death as he had. And Angel could just imagine what unspoken thought had brought that hint at a smile on: You’re the girl all the bad guys want.

  “So go back through the shadows and warn your brothers about the men in the crowd, Az. Leave me alone,” she warned. Well, it was more of a strongly worded suggestion. Everything was with Azrael. “Let me do what I have to do.”

  She couldn’t deal with all of the Adarians at once. She may have been more powerful than the archangels and their archesses, and maybe, on a good night, she could have handled most of them on her own, alone, and survived. But it was a big maybe, and facing off with the entire group was pushing the envelope, especially now that they’d been so drastically and horrifically altered.

  She had little knowledge about Gregori. She knew only what he had thus far revealed: that he was one of the first bands of angels the Old Man had cast out of the angel realm and sent to Earth, and that he was bitter about it. Other than that and the fact that he’d once been in love with a mortal woman, there was little anyone knew. He was outside of their domain, out of their league. And he was in charge of the Adarians right now. What they were capable of was probably anything he wanted them to do. They couldn’t even die if he didn’t want them to.

  Frankly, she had no idea how to face them all. And even if she did know how, she couldn’t do it right now – not with Samael on her tail. Right now, she just needed to get as far away as possible, as quickly as possible.

  So, though they didn’t know it, and barely even knew her, the archangels and their amazing mates were her only hope. She was depending on them to work together to confront and deal with the Adarians that were loose in the crowd before they began ripping Valley of Shadow fans to shreds to get at their beating hearts.

  She shivered at the thought, and her chest twinged with a sharp ache, as if someone was ripping out her own heart.

  In front of her, Azrael watched her in more of his enigmatic silence.

  And then, quite suddenly, that flash she’d seen earlier in his eyes was back, but it was brighter. It was redder. His entire countenance changed in a split second.

  Angel felt a wave of promised death touch against her defensive walls… just before Az took a single step backward into the darkness behind him.

  And disappeared.

  Chapter Ten

  He didn’t want to do it. He’d made a mistake like this once before, long, long ago, and it had doomed him. Samael had been understanding enough to take him in… and he’d… he’d been loyal to….

  Jason closed his eyes, squeezing them tightly for a moment as his memories flitted and faded, fighting his attempt at recall. Everything became blurry all of a sudden, and he felt fuzzy and numb. And for some reason, terrified. There was something in his head, like a buzzing bee. He ached everywhere, as if he’d been run over by a truck. He felt queasy, and his fingers tingled uncomfortably. Something banged at the door of his recollection, trying to get his attention, trying to warn him, but he couldn’t answer the door. He couldn’t even find the door.

  It no longer matters.

  It doesn’t…

  Forget. And open your eyes.

  He opened his eyes and lifted his head to meet the gaze of the man who was his new master, and who now forever would be. Irises like black dandelions stared back at him.

  The man in white felt like an alabaster tower before him, omnipotent and terrible. “It’s time for you to do your job,” he told Jason. “Don’t disappoint me.”

  Jason nodded, relaxing because the banging had stopped, and turned to make his way through the wild, roaring crowd.

  *****

  She knew the moment he’d slipped away from the stage. She was linked to him now, and could easily sense something like that. An illusion took his place, singing with his voice, and peering at the crowd through his mesmerizing eyes, but she knew it wasn’t really him. Everyone else would be fooled. Not her.

  Her gaze narrowed on the screens. She carefully started making her way back down from the backstage ladder she’d been sitting atop for the concert. She always sat up there when he played, whether it was during practice or a concert, like tonight. She enjoyed the way the drum beats shook the ladder. If she closed her eyes and tilted her head back, Az’s voice made her feel like she was flying. She only had to make sure her wings didn’t actually come out while she was drifting on his lyrics, or someone might see them.

  “Sam is in the crowd,” said someone behind her. She lowered herself from the last step and turned around. Max was there, and Eleanore, Juliette, Gabriel, and Uriel were behind him. Rhiannon and Michael had been at the concert’s opening to cheer their brother on, but they’d left earlier because this was Saturday night, and crime never stopped in New York City. Michael was a cop, and Rhiannon was… well, a bad-ass. Both had their obligations.

  “I know,” she said softly. She’d gathered as much by Az’s cryptic phrasing during one of the songs. It wasn’t how the lyrics were supposed to go; she would know, she’d heard him play enough times. But even if he hadn’t warned them, the way the weather was changing was enough.

  A storm was moving in fast and furious. To a mortal, this would seem like unfortunate coincidence; it was about to rain on their parade. But to an archess, it was a sure sign of trouble. The ability to control the weather was inherent for an archess. Sophie could feel the thunder rolling closer, and as soon as she’d begun to sense the pressure drop and the air turn moist, she’d attempted to use her abilities to “clear the skies” for Az’s concert.

  She’d failed. She had little doubt the other girls had also tried and failed.

  That could only mean one thing. Storms were as linked to Samael as sugar was to candy. Lightning flashed in the man’s eyes. His countenance was like a thunderhead. He was a living, breathing tempest. And he was there, sure as the rain was about to fall.

  “We’ll never find him in this mess,” Juliette said, as she stepped forward and peeked around the massive, black curtain that was the backdrop to the pyrotechnics and video screen behind Valley of Shadow. The crowd beyond was massive, undulating, and riotous, like the tide on a stormy sea. It was impossible to even tell men from women, the faces were so plentiful and blurred. It would be more than impossible to find an individual person, especially considering the individual didn’t want to be found.

  “We’ll have to split up,” Max sighed.

  Sophie turned to regard him. He looked pained making the suggestion. It was obvious he didn’t actually want them splitting up. But someone needed to confront Sam. He was putting the crowd in danger with this oncoming gale. The lightning was bad enough, but this amount of rain, the Four Corners area wasn’t used to absorbing. The ground was too solid, too dense. Sophie could imagine all sorts of things that could go wrong – flooding, trampling, mosh pits gone awry.

  “Keep in contact with each other. Give a shout-out at the slightest sign of trouble.” He sighed,
his gaze still fixed on the crowded area beyond the stage. “I grew up here, you know. On the reservation just over that hill.”

  The lot of them stared at him. Then Gabriel rolled his eyes. This was no new thing with Max. He said as much about every place he visited. It was just the way he was.

  “Come on, then,” Gabe instructed in his deep brogue. He stole a kiss from Juliette, who smiled, and then he winked, and ducked away into the crowd.

  The others followed suit, leaving in separate directions until Sophie was left straggling a little behind. Her own mate was AWOL at the moment. Had he gone out to deal with Samael alone? To spare them all the trouble and danger?

  Az…

  She closed her eyes and waited for the answering words that were sure to follow. They always did. He would say her name in her head, and his inner voice would wrap around her like steel coils swathed in warm velvet, and she would feel utterly and completely exposed before him – and she loved it.

  She waited. And waited.

  Then she opened her eyes. There was no response. Only silence answered her mental call. She swallowed hard and tried again. Azrael.

  When Az’s warm, soothing voice failed to respond the second time, Sophie truly began to worry. She hurried down the back steps of the backstage area and out into the camp where the band and the crew had put up tents and parked RV’s and buses. She looked left and right, trying to catch sight of Eleanore or Juliette or even Max. But they’d already made their ways into the crowd.

  This had never happened before. They were connected, she and Az, just as all four of the archesses were connected with their archangels. But for Sophie, it honestly felt as if it went deeper. Az wasn’t only an angel. He was a vampire. A very old one. And, well, he had ways of getting inside a person. When he got inside Sophie, their bond grew closer than she would have thought possible.

  But at the moment….

  Sophie ran a hand through her thick blonde hair and bit her lip. The bouncers in front of her glanced over their shoulders at her as she approached the hemline of the crowd they were holding back from the stage. They nodded at her, stepping aside so she could make her way in. As she nudged past them, she looked over her own shoulder at the stage, where Valley of Shadow continued to wow the masses with intense chords, fireworks only the Swallowtail Foundation could create, and, of course, lots and lots of vampire magic.