“No, I can’t always tell what you’re thinking,” he said by way of an answer, and my heart sank. “Some things are easy, other things are well protected inside you. It takes a lot to get to those, and I’m certainly not going to bother.”
I wasn’t sure if that was reassuring or insulting. At least he had no idea that I had a furtive desire to jump his—
“Stop it!” he snapped.
Shit. Okay, I could try fighting back. I batted my eyelashes, giving him my most limpid, innocent look. “Stop what?”
He crossed the cavern so fast I wondered if he’d used magic, or whatever his abilities were called. “It will not happen, so you can stop thinking about it. I am never going to mate with you.”
“Mate with me?” I echoed, much amused. “Why don’t you just call a spade a spade? You’re never going to have sex with me. Which, incidentally, is fortunate, because what makes you think I want to have sex with you?” No one likes rejection, even from someone they despise.
“There’s a difference. Mating is a bond for life. Your life. Sex is simply fornication.”
“And you don’t approve of fornication.”
He looked at me then, a slow, scorching look. Maybe I was wrong on the rejection part. He loomed over me, dangerously close. “I could quite easily fuck you,” he said deliberately, the word strange in his faintly formal voice. “You are undeniably luscious. But I’m not going to. And you need to get it out of your mind as well. It’s not just the words that distract me. It’s the pictures.”
Oh, crap. He could see the visuals? “I can’t help it! It’s like telling someone not to move. As soon as someone tells me to be still, I end up having to wiggle. Anyway, you were the one who brought up the subject in the first place.”
He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. “I have things to do,” he said finally. “I don’t want to transport you.”
I looked around the cavernous room. “You’ll have to put up with it,” I said. “Otherwise there’s no way down and I’m stuck here.”
“You tempt me,” he said, and his stark, beautiful voice danced down my backbone. I really was much too susceptible to him. “But someone would come to find you.” He moved past me, heading toward the corridor that led to the outside world. As outside as Sheol might be. He paused, looking back at me.
“Are you coming?”
I would have loved to tell him no, but there was a chill to the place, and I didn’t want to wait there alone until someone came to rescue me. I was managing pretty damned well, given the situation, but I was his responsibility and I was not about to let him abandon me.
I raced after him, catching up as we reached the mouth of the cave and the misty daylight. “What next?” I said. “Do I climb on your back, or do you carry me in your arms, or—”
“You stop talking,” he said.
I almost tripped over the white rug that covered part of the white marble floor. We were back in his sterile apartment, and he was in the kitchen. My legs felt a little wobbly, and I sank down on the sofa and put my head between my legs to keep from passing out. Then I looked up. “You could give me some warning next time,” I said irritably.
“There won’t be a next time if I can help it.” He leaned against the counter, looking at a plate of doughnuts someone had left. “Aren’t you going to eat these? I suppose Sarah told you you can’t gain weight.”
I bristled slightly that he would even mention my weight in such an offhand manner, but hey, that was permission enough. I got to my feet and moved into the small kitchen.
And it was small. Too small to hold both of us, really, but he wasn’t shifting away and I wanted those magic doughnuts.
It was a novel experience, having a beautiful man tell me to eat fattening foods, the stuff of daydreams. “No, dear, at one hundred and eighty pounds, you’re too thin. You need to put on some weight.” Be still, my heart. Oh, he was hardly the first beautiful man I’d been around. I was shallow that way—I liked men who were pretty and just a little stupid, and I’d always preferred them on the beefy side. I had the unhappy suspicion that Raziel was a little too smart for my peace of mind. But I was beginning to see the appeal of lean, powerful elegance.
Most of my boyfriends had wanted me to go on a diet, get down to a size six or eight from the comfortable size twelve I’d worn since college. We’d go out to dinner, I would dutifully order a side salad with a spritz of lemon juice or vinegar, and then the moment I was home alone I’d plow through the Ben &
Jerry’s. Super Fudge Chunk had marked the end of many a dull date.
“So I’m still going to be hungry and eat, use the bathroom, sleep, bathe, and never gain weight. Sounds delightful. Do I get to have sex with anyone if you don’t want me?”
He stared at me, momentarily speechless. “No,” he said finally. “Absolutely not. It’s forbidden.”
“But you said you could happily—”
“I said you and I won’t have sex,” he interrupted before I could drop the F-bomb as he had.
“Why would you want to?” I said, managing to sound bored with the idea.
“I don’t want to,” he snapped. “You asked me if we would have sex.”
“You misunderstood. Deliberately,” I added, just to annoy him. In this strange, otherworldly place, annoying him was one of the only things that made me feel alive. “I do understand why you’d want to, but I really don’t think it’s a good idea. You being my mentor and all.”
This was working even better than I’d expected. He was ready to explode with frustration. Not the right kind of frustration, unfortunately. Indeed, it was too bad that I was taunting him, but I couldn’t resist. He really was freaking gorgeous. It was probably unwise—I needed him on my side. “No,” he said repressively.
I shrugged, taking another doughnut. “Do we get sick? Will I start feeling bloated if I eat a fourth doughnut?”
“Yes,” he said.
I put the doughnut down. “Well, at least you’ll outlive me. Cheer up. You can dance at my funeral.”
“I won’t know you when you die. Assuming we figure out what to do with you, we probably won’t see each other again.”
This wasn’t very comforting news, but I wasn’t giving up the battle. “Once they decide, how long will it take to get rid of me?”
He just looked at me, his expression saying it couldn’t be soon enough.
Oddly enough, I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave, even if they could give me back some semblance of a normal life with mental acuity intact. Yes, I enjoyed picking on him, and the white had to go. But despite my arguments, I . . . kind of liked it here. Liked the sound of the ocean beyond the open windows, the taste of salt on my lips. I’d always wanted to live by the sea. I was getting my wish a little earlier than expected, and it wasn’t technically living, but it was close enough.
I liked the bed I’d slept in, I liked Sarah, and I most definitely liked to look at Raziel, even if he was frustrating, annoying, and all the other negative adjectives I could think of. And if he could read my mind, tough shit.
In fact, I was living my dream. I’d spent most of my adult life sifting through arcane literature and Bible criticism to come up with my far-fetched mysteries, and I was well acquainted with the totally bizarre fantasies of Enoch, with his tales of the Nephilim and the Fallen.
Except it turned out Enoch wasn’t the acid freak I’d always thought he was. All of this was real.
The kitchen was too small for both of us, but for him to leave he’d have to brush past me, and I knew he really didn’t want to touch me. It was lovely to think that it was unshakable lust keeping him away, but I knew it was more likely annoyance—I’d done my best to make him want to strangle me.
“No,” he said, “I don’t want to strangle you. I just want you to go away.”
Grrrr. “How long are you going to be reading my mind?” I demanded, thoroughly annoyed.
“As long as I need to.”
“Well, that time is now o
ver. Turn off the switch, or whatever it is you do. Stay the fuck out of my brain. Don’t read my mind, don’t cloud my thoughts, don’t wipe out my memory. Keep your distance.” I didn’t bother trying to keep the snarl out of my voice. I’d had enough of this crap.
He was looking dangerously close to be being amused. His gloriously striated eyes glinted for a moment, but I seriously doubted that Raziel possessed even a tiny trace of a sense of humor in his cold, still body. Sure enough, the expression vanished so quickly I was sure I’d imagined it.
“Or what?” he said.
Asshole. He knew I didn’t have much to fight back with. Little did he know that I’d always been wickedly inventive. Maybe that was why I’d been sent to hell.H ands sliding down my body, beautiful hands, his mouth following, on my breast, sucking—
“Stop it!” he said with complete horror, pushing away from me as if burned by the sultry image in my brain.
I smiled sweetly. “I’ve got a hell of an imagination, Raziel,” I said, calling him by name for the first time. “Stay out of my head or prepare to be thoroughly embarrassed.”
Taking the plate of doughnuts, I sauntered back out into the living room.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SHE WAS A WITCH. SHE SHOULD have been humble and weepy and afraid of me. Instead she was the complete opposite, and the quick vision of her sex fantasy was having the expected effect on my body. Azazel was right—I’d been celibate too long.
I stayed in the kitchen, not moving. I’d thought I at least had my body under control. In truth, it was no wonder I was hard, with that brief fantasy she’d indulged in. I had no idea whether she really found it appealing or whether it was just part of the game she was playing.
No, it was real. As I’d seen the thought, I’d felt her own fevered reaction, as intense as mine despite the brevity of the image. If that had simply been an intellectual exercise, it wouldn’t have been so . . . disturbing.
I had to get rid of her, and fast. I needed her out of my rooms, out of my world. There was no way in hell I was going to let them invoke the Grace of forgetting, but apart from that anything would be an improvement. Sarah was always looking for someone to mother—Allie Watson was the very thing. I could pass her over, then go out on my own and not have to think about her anymore. It might take a day or two to get her out of my system, but I could do it. I could turn myself off. As long as she wasn’t living in my apartment and taunting me.
I was getting closer to Lucifer’s burial ground. I could sit and listen and hear him deep in the earth, feel his call vibrate through my body, and I was close, so close. I didn’t need to get distracted by a woman with a mouth that wouldn’t stop moving and erotic images invading my mind.
Why the hell had Sammael brought her up to the cave in the first place? He knew better than anybody that place should be off-limits, particularly to an interloper like Allie Watson. It was the closest we’d come to Lucifer, the Light, and to have her bumbling around with her incessant questions was close to blasphemy.
Not that I believed in blasphemy. That was part of why I was here, wasn’t it? Because I, like the others, refused to follow the rules, to kill without question, to wipe out generations and scourge the land. I had looked on a human woman and fallen in love, and for that I was forever cursed.
Surely there was something wrong with an ethos that equated love with death. It was so long ago I wasn’t sure I could remember what we’d been thinking, could barely remember her. But I couldn’t forget the emotion, the passion that had driven me, the certainty that choosing life, choosing human love, was the right thing to do. It had been worth it, worth everything, and I had never regretted it.
I could regret the vulnerability, the need that had driven me to such a desperate act, but it no longer mattered. I had done what I had done, and I wouldn’t wish it changed. But it would never happen again.
Uriel knew how to use vulnerabilities. He knew how to torture, even with the rules that kept him from wiping us out. I wasn’t going to let him use me again.
So perhaps there were times when I wished I could still feel that innocent, powerful love. Hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of years, millennia, piling up, and I’d never been able to recapture that pure, essential passion that had made me destroy everything.
But I still would have done it. Chosen to fall. We’d been taught that the humans were like cattle—you trained them, destroyed them if they disobeyed, never answered their questions, and, most of all, never looked upon them with lust.
We’d been sent to earth with our appointed tasks. Azazel had been sent to teach the people metalwork; his job had been to train and to pass on the magic. The first twenty each had jobs, and we’d done well enough at first. But the longer we remained on earth, the more human we became. The hungers started, hunger for food, for life, for sex. And we started thinking that we could make this benighted world a better place. We could bring our wisdom and power, we could experience love and dedication. We would intermarry and our children would grow strong and there would be no more wars and God would smile.
God didn’t smile. There were no children—the curse was swift and vicious. We were damned for eternity. Because of love.
No wonder the woman wandering around my rooms annoyed me. It wasn’t just her prattle—she was right, it was a pleasant voice. But after all these years I had no use for humankind, for women in particular. And this woman, of all women. A moment of unexpected sentimentality, and I’d complicated my existence and that of the Fallen. No woman was worth it.
Still, it was my choice, my mistake, and my only option was to fix it, even if I wanted to pass her off. There had to be someplace we could send her where she wouldn’t cause trouble. And then we could deal with Uriel’s wrath.
I was the keeper of secrets, the lord of magic. Within me resided all the wisdom of the ages, and I had been sent to earth to give that knowledge to its hapless inhabitants. So how could I be so fucking stupid?
I glanced down, adjusted myself, and followed her into the living room. She was sprawled on one sofa, barefoot. My clothes fit her too damned well—I was going to have to see about something loose that covered up all the curves but was colorful enough to keep her happy.
God, why did I have to start worrying about keeping a woman happy? Especially a woman like Allie Watson.
Her long, thick brown hair was much better than the short bleached cut she’d had when I found her. Her face was prettier without makeup. She shifted, turning to look at me without getting up.
I walked over to one end of the sofa. “Where do you want to live?”
She’d been looking both annoyed and slightly downcast, but at this she brightened. “I’ve got a choice where I go?”
I didn’t think so, but I was grasping at straws. The one thing I knew, it couldn’t be hell. It was nothing personal. I hadn’t come this far to let Uriel win.
“Maybe,” I said, not exactly a lie. “I imagine it depends on your talents, where you can make yourself useful. What can you do?”
She appeared to consider this for a moment. “I can write. My style is slightly sarcastic, but I’m sharp and literate.”
“We have no use for writing.”
“So I’m in hell after all,” she said glumly. “No books?”
“What would we read? We’ve lived millennia.” “What about your wives?” “I have no wives.”
“I don’t mean you specifically, I mean all the women here. Sarah and the others. Don’t they want to read? Or do you guys give them such a fulfilling life, trapped here in the mist, that they don’t need any kind of escape?”
“If they wanted to escape, they wouldn’t be here,” I said in the voice I used to shut down arguments.
I should have known it wouldn’t do any good. She didn’t seem to realize that was what my voice signified. “I’m not talking about physical escape,” she argued. “Just those times when you want to curl up in bed and read about crazy make-believe worlds. About pirates and aliens a
nd vampires . . .” Her voice trailed off beneath my steady gaze.
“What else can you do?”
She sighed. “Not much. I’m useless at Excel. I type fast, but I gather you don’t have computers here.” For a moment she looked horrified as she understood everything that meant. “No Internet,” she said in a voice of doom. “How am I going to live?”
“You’re not alive.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” she said grimly. “So clearly you don’t need Excel. Let’s see—I’m a demon at trivia, particularly when it comes to old movies.
I’m actually quite a wonderful cook. I kill plants, so I’d be no good in a garden. Maybe you could find me some commune-type thing? Without the Kool-Aid.”
I remembered Jonestown far too well. “You don’t need the Kool-Aid, you’re already dead,” I said.
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