Raziel

by Kristina Douglas

  “What blood?” I asked, helping myself to the lasagna, too hungry to be squeamish. I didn’t really want to know, but I was trying to be polite.

  “The blood I give Sammael,” she said simply. “Garlic affects clotting time.”

  This sounded perfectly reasonable, if you didn’t consider what they were doing with the blood in the first place and how they were getting it. I forcibly swept it out of my mind. “Do you want some of this?” I gestured toward the overburdened plate. They seemed to bring me twice as much as I wanted. At this rate I’d get—no, I wouldn’t.

  “I’ll wait and eat with Sammael. He prefers it that way. Right now he and the other Fallen are looking at the defenses before the meeting, making certain there’s no way the Nephilim can break through. There have been rumors that they’re going to try.”

  “There are always rumors,” Sarah said softly, coming in from the kitchen. “It’s better not to pay any attention to them. The men can walk around and mutter things and feel important, but in the end the Nephilim will either break in or not, and I don’t think there’s any way we can affect that.”

  “And the Nephilim are the flesh-eaters?” I asked, suddenly taking a good look at my bright red pasta. I set my plate down again.

  Sarah nodded. “There are no words to describe them. A living nightmare. They’ve never been able to pierce the walls of Sheol, but that’s no guarantee they won’t.” She fell silent for a moment, as if she were looking at something in the distance, something unbearable. And then she rallied, serene as ever.

  “In the meantime all we can do is live our lives. They’ve been a threat since the beginning of time—worrying gets us nowhere.”

  The lasagna was no longer sitting very well on my stomach, but I knew that the ice cream would take care of my nausea. There was nothing in this world, or whatever world I was in, that ice cream couldn’t fix. I headed for the fridge, pausing to look out the windows at the men on the wide expanse of beach.

  “When would they be likely to attack?” I asked, staring at them. At him.

  “After dark. The Nephilim cannot go out in daylight—it burns their flesh. They sleep during the day; then the hunger rouses them and they go in search of whatever they can find. And apparently they have found Sheol.”

  “Found it?”

  “Sheol is guarded by the mists. They were lifted when you were brought in, and we’re afraid that was enough to alert the monsters.”

  “You mean, I’m to blame for letting the crazies in?” I turned away from the beach.

  “Of course not,” Sarah said in her soothing voice. “They’re not in, and they won’t get in. They can storm the gates and threaten, but they cannot come in unless someone invites them. And no one would invite their own death.”

  Suddenly the air felt cold, almost clammy, and there was a feeling of foreboding that I couldn’t shake. So much for a cheerful afterlife. “What about the Fallen? They can go out in the daylight. Do they have to be invited into a place before they can enter?”

  She shook her head. “That’s only for the unclean.”

  “And vampires aren’t unclean?”

  “We don’t use that term,” Carrie spoke up. “They’re blood-eaters.”

  “It has too many negative connotations,” Sarah explained. “The roles of the Fallen and the Nephilim have gotten mixed up over the years, and people have made them the stuff of nightmares. Only the Nephilim are the monsters.”

  “Who created them? Your just and loving God?”

  Sarah ignored my sarcasm. “God sent new angels after the Fallen, to destroy them. To make certain they weren’t tempted, he made it impossible for them to feel. They fell anyway, and were driven mad, and he cursed them as well, made them flesh-eaters and abominations. After that, he stopped trying.”

  “But they can’t get in, right? The Nephilim, I mean. And even if they did, they’d probably have a hard time getting to the top floor of this place, wouldn’t they?” I wasn’t usually such a wuss, but I had a horror of cannibalism. Jeffrey Dahmer made me physically ill. I always figured I’d been eaten in a previous lifetime, though the way things were going, maybe that was part of my future and not my past.

  “If they get in, everyone will die,” Sarah said. “There will be no place to hide, not even up here.” She must have seen my expression, for she quickly came up with a slight, dismissive laugh that was almost believable. Almost. “But you’re right, they’re not going to get in. The Fallen are worried because they’ve reached our borders, when they never have before. They still won’t be able to break through the final barrier.”

  She sounded very certain. And I didn’t believe it for a minute. I needed ice cream.

  It was Cherry Garcia and Super Fudge Chunk, which cheered me up, at least partially. I grabbed one container and a spoon and went over to sit crosslegged on the pristine sofa next to Carrie’s silent figure. I was half-tempted to spill some, just to add some color to the place. I gestured with the round container. “Either of you want any? There are more spoons. Sharing Ben & Jerry’s is a very bonding experience.”

  Sarah laughed. “We’re already bonded, Allie. The ice cream is unnecessary. You enjoy it.” She took the seat opposite me. “How are you and Raziel getting along?”

  “He hates me,” I said cheerfully. If I couldn’t have him, I could at least enjoy annoying him.

  “Oh, no!” Sarah said. “Raziel doesn’t hate anyone. At least—”

  “Trust me, he hates me. I’m not too fond of him either.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. “He thinks I’m a pain in the ass.”

  “Surely not,” Sarah said.

  “Surely yes. And explain to me about the hive mind.”

  “The what?”

  “How does Raziel know what I’m thinking when I’m with him? How did you know I wanted lasagna and Ben & Jerry’s? Does anyone have any secrets, any privacy, in this place?” I knew I was sounding querulous but I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Secrets usually cause trouble,” Sarah murmured. “But there is privacy. While most of us can discern what other people are thinking if we listen carefully, it’s more polite not to. We can pick up on your basic needs, if you want food, or would like to go for a walk, or want company. The more important things will only be accessible to Raziel. And I’m afraid he doesn’t have to be in your company. He knows what goes on in your mind even when he’s elsewhere.”

  “Great,” I said. “No wonder he doesn’t like me. My thoughts have been less than charitable.” And less than pure. So he knew absolutely everything. If he wanted. He was also capable of turning off the one-way radio. I allowed myself a brief flash of how I’d looked in the racy underwear Jason had bought me in the hopes of rekindling our love affair. I’d really looked quite luscious, but it had been too little, too late.

  At least it might help to keep Raziel out of my mind.

  Carrie suddenly stiffened. “We need to go,” she said, rising in one fluid motion, more graceful than I’d ever managed.

  Sarah nodded, her serene expression replaced with a worried frown, and the dank, anxious feeling that had been slithering around inside me hit with full force.

  I was on my feet before I realized it. “Is it time for the meeting?”

  Sarah nodded. “Just stay put. If there’s a problem, Raziel will come for you.”

  “Fat chance,” I started to say, but they were already gone, abandoning me in the sterile apartment as darkness closed down around me.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I MANAGED TO STAY PUT FOR APPROXIMATELY fifteen minutes. Patience had never been one of my particular virtues. Considering that I spent the time pacing from the window in the kitchen to the living room and back, sitting down and jumping up again, I would have considered five minutes to be quite remarkable. Fifteen was a world record, as far as I was concerned.

  But if the Nephilim were coming, I was damned if I was going to stay in these rooms like a sitting duck, waiting to be someone’s dessert. I headed for the door
, steeling myself for the endless flights of stairs. At least it was downhill, and if I didn’t end up as stew meat I’d make Raziel fly me back up. The thought sent little prickles down my spine.

  The door was locked.

  The knob turned—it wasn’t a simple matter of picking a lock. Not that I’d ever picked a lock, but I’d watched enough caper movies that I figured I could probably handle it if I had a bobby pin. Did they even make bobby pins anymore? Probably not in Sheol.

  No, the door was sealed, as if there were no separation between the thick walls and the door at all.

  I wasted far too much time pounding on it, kicking it, cursing Raziel, since I knew he, not Sarah, was to blame for this particular heinousness. I didn’t waste any time calling for help—no one would pay any attention, even if they heard me. For a very brief moment I considered sitting back down on the sofa and coming up with the most scorchingly torrid sexual fantasy my imagination could create, and I had one hell of an imagination, especially with Raziel for inspiration. But that was a double-edged sword. The more I fantasized, the more vulnerable I felt. The longer I was around him, the more I was drawn to him. And that was far too dangerous.

  Maybe they were still arguing over what to do with me. Maybe if the Nephilim breached the walls, my future would be moot.

  I wasn’t about to give up without a fight. I looked over at the windows. Sammael had pushed out a section when he’d taken me up to the mountain—

  surely there must be some kind of emergency exit from the top floor of this place? I wasn’t sure just how vulnerable the Fallen were, but their wives were certainly mortal.

  I moved along the bank of glass, pushing gently, but nothing seemed to shift. I leaned out one window, peering into the darkening night, and shivered, even though the night was warm. In the distance I thought I could hear the muffled sounds of animals, strange growls and strangled screams. The Nephilim, still outside the gates of Sheol. But for how long?

  There was a narrow balcony directly below the windows, no more than a yard deep, with a low wall beyond it, the only barrier between the house and a free fall to the ground far below. The lower floors of the building were cantilevered out—surely there was a way to climb down if I was careful. I’d always been relatively sure-footed, at least before I’d taken a header in front of a city bus. I pushed the window open, swung one leg over the sill, and climbed out into the night air.

  The sounds in the darkness were louder, the animal howls and cries of the lost souls filling the night, and I almost changed my mind. But the ocean breeze came through, calming my nervousness, and I concentrated on that, trying to shut the other noise out of my mind. I moved down to one end of the narrow balcony, peering over the edge.

  It didn’t look promising. I could try sliding down the smooth expanse of what might be concrete and hope I landed on the balcony one flight down, but that would get me down only one floor, and there were multiple flights below that.

  I found the perfect spot and climbed onto the ledge atop the retaining wall, then sat, staring up into the inky sky, watching as the stars came out, breathing in the night air and the tang of the ocean as a slow, decisive calm began to fill me. Nothing would get to me. No creature was going to rip me into pieces. At least, not now. I was safe here. I had absolutely no idea how I knew it, but I did. This was where I belonged.

  Raziel would see to it. If nothing else, I could trust him. Nothing would happen to me. He was down there arguing my case, and he had Sarah for backup. I knew he would keep me safe.

  I leaned back, lying down on the ledge to stare at the sky overhead. I wasn’t used to counting on someone else to look after me—I treasured being selfsufficient, needing nothing and no one. My crazy-ass mother had brought me up practically isolated from a normal environment, awash in her extremist religion that was a combination of fundamentalist Christianity and survivalism, seasoned with an odd touch of anti-Semitism. Odd, because my mother had been born Hildegarde Steinberg, of devoutly Orthodox Jewish parents. I never knew who my father was, though she’d insisted they’d been married. I always figured she’d bitten his head off after mating.

  It was little wonder I had always considered myself an atheist. I had firmly consigned gods, angels, and demons to the ranks of mythology.

  Wrong. I could imagine who was having the last laugh now. Trust me to have found an afterlife ruled by vampires instead of cherubic babies with bare bottoms and tiny harps. I suppose it was better than no afterlife at all, but the Elysian fields would have been preferable.

  The animal howls were fading—the walls of Sheol must have held, at least for now. Raziel was on his way back—I seemed to know that as well. Was his annoying mind-fuck a two-way street? Or was it some kind of cosmic GPS? He was coming back to me, and I felt my skin heat beneath the clothing.

  His clothing. I should take it off.

  I did nothing, lying there on the ledge. I kicked off one loose shoe, letting it drop onto the balcony, then the other. It slipped and went over the edge, and I could hear it, bouncing, hitting against things as it fell, it fell—

  I automatically sat up, trying to reach for it even though it was too late, and at the last minute I sat back before I went over as well. I lay back on the ledge, trembling slightly.

  I closed my eyes, concentrating on the sound of the surf. For a moment I could feel his hands on me, on my breasts, and my body lifted instinctively, then sank back, wiping the image from my mind. Where had that come from?

  Two-edged sword, I reminded myself. Was it possible it had come from him? No, it couldn’t be. And I was much better off thinking about Super Fudge Chunk.

  Wasn’t there a song about love being better than ice cream, better than chocolate? Did that go for sex as well? And, damn, why was I suddenly plagued with the one-track mind of a horny adolescent boy?

  So, I wouldn’t think about ice cream. And I most definitely wouldn’t think about sex. Even though I could almost feel his hands on me, feel my nipples harden in the warm night air, feel him—

  Shit, I thought, jerking in protest.

  And immediately fell over the edge.

  I KNEW THE MOMENT I walked into the council chamber that things were going to take a very ugly turn. Azazel stood at the head of the table, wearing an expression that said there was no negotiating, and the others, most of them, looked equally grim. Only Sarah and Tamlel looked concerned, and that wasn’t enough to keep the rest from disposing of the unfortunate female in the most logical way possible.

  I didn’t want to call her by name. For some reason, if I called her by name it would make the damnable tenuous bond between us even stronger. Allegra.

  Allie. A thorn in my side, a pain in my ass. But I wasn’t going to let them get to her.

  “We will discuss things in order of importance,” Azazel said. “Starting with the Nephilim. They are at our gate. For thousands of years we’ve kept Sheol hidden from them, and suddenly they have found us. They are gathering there—I do not know their number, but all it would take would be a moment of inattention, a slip, and they would overrun us.”

  “We can fight,” Michael said. “I don’t know why you assume they would have the upper hand. I say let them in, and we’ll get rid of them once and for all.”

  “Assuming we managed to prevail.” Azazel’s voice was stern. “And assuming our numbers are not too greatly diminished, we still have the problem of other Nephilim. They roam throughout the world in search of the Fallen, and if these know of us, then others will follow. It will be battle after battle, death and carnage.”

  “So?” Michael said.

  “Not all of us are warriors, Michael.”

  “We need to be. We are at war, with Uriel and his legion, with the Nephilim who roam and devour at his behest. This won’t be over until the Nephilim are wiped from the face of this earth.”

  “And then what do we do? Uriel will send someone else, sooner or later, and I sense it might be sooner.” He turned his cold gaze on me. “What do
you know of the girl?”

  I tensed. “I was sent to take her. I was about to pass her over to the next life when I saw the flames and pulled her back. I don’t know why—instinct. She had done nothing to merit eternal damnation.”

  “And that’s your place to judge?” Azazel said.

  I’d known Azazel too long to react. “No. But we shouldn’t follow blindly when our instincts say it’s wrong. That is why we fell in the first place—because we questioned. We failed to follow orders but followed our hearts instead. It’s bad enough when we have to face Uriel’s merciless wrath. If we judge each other, then we are doomed. She didn’t deserve eternal damnation. She’d done nothing.”

  “She fornicated outside of marriage. She mocked the covenants. That would be enough for Uriel to condemn her.”

  “But not enough for us.” Sarah’s voice broke through, calm and assured. As the Source she had a voice on the Council, one she seldom used. Tonight was different. “Do we aspire to Uriel’s level of perfection? Have we ever considered mindless punishment a reasoned response?”