“Not now, of course,” she said, frowning. “Just the occasional thought sort of drifting through my brain. Are you doing that?”
“Letting you read my thoughts? No,” I said, controlling my instinctive shudder. I couldn’t let her know how she affected me. “This is a fluke—by tomorrow, it should have passed. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worried about it. I like it. It gives me something to fight back with,” she said.
Interesting. “Why do you need to fight me?” I asked her.
That stumped her for a moment, and I tried to touch her mind. A mistake. She wanted me, I could feel it quite clearly. It was almost a physical touch, even though she was trying hard to suppress it. That was what she needed to fight.
“I feel powerless here,” she said finally.
“You are powerless here.” I moved over to the bank of windows that faced the sea. They were open, the sheer white curtains fluttering inward on the strong wind. I could hear the soothing sound of the ocean as it beat against the sandy shore. It almost—almost—drowned out the screams from the world beyond. I glanced back at the woman sitting curled up, a stain of color against the pristine white of the sofa. I had an easier time resisting her when she was dressed in white. Why had I ordered those clothes for her? The colors assaulted my eyes, assaulted my senses. They drew me. “What else did Sarah want?”
“To welcome me into the fold of Sheol sex slaves.”
She was trying to annoy me, as usual, and succeeding, as usual. “No one is a sex slave around here.”
“The women don’t seem to have much else to do. Fuck and let you drink their blood. I’m assuming that only goes one way.”
I tried to keep my face blank. “Of course.”
“Then why don’t you take my blood?”
I turned away from her. She’d have a harder time reading the truth if she couldn’t see my face. “I took enough to make certain you were innocent. That was all I needed or wanted. The Fallen can feed only from a bonded mate or the Source, and you’re neither.”
“Then what am I? Besides a nuisance,” she added, immediately reading my mind.
It unnerved me, but I was determined not to show any reaction. “I don’t know.”
She rose, saying nothing, and the dress swirled around her bare ankles as she moved past me into the kitchen. Her skirts brushed against my legs like the caress of a warm breeze, and without thinking I reached for her.
But she had already moved past, and she didn’t even notice, thank God. She turned, as if aware she’d missed something, but by then I was leaning negligently against the counter, concentrating on the almost imperceptible pattern of the white Carrara marble.
She’d pulled out a glass bottle of milk when a louder scream split the night, and she dropped it. If I hadn’t been so attuned to her, I wouldn’t have been able to catch it in time and set it on the counter.
“What the hell was that?” she asked in a harsh voice.
“The Nephilim. They’re getting closer.”
She turned pale. “They can’t get in, can they?”
“Presumably not. There are all sorts of wards and guards placed on the borders. The only way they could get inside is if someone let them in, and whoever did that would die as well.”
“What if someone would rather die than spend eternity trapped here?” she demanded, rattled.
“You won’t be here an eternity. I’ll find some way to get you out.”
“God, I hope so. I don’t want to live to be one hundred and twenty without falling in love,” she said, and I winced. “But I wasn’t talking about me. What if someone else has a death wish?” She shivered, and I wanted to warm her, calm her. I stayed right where I was.
“There is no one else. The Fallen chose this life. Their mates have chosen the Fallen. No one’s going to sneak out to the walls and let the monsters in.” I could lie about my reaction to her. Lying about the danger we were in was beyond me. “The truth is, I don’t know,” I said. “They’re beating against the walls, frustrated because they can’t break in. There’s no way they can break through the walls that guard this place, no way that anyone can. It’s inviolate.”
She didn’t believe me. I didn’t need to pick up specific words to know that she was filled with distrust. If I knew how to reassure her, I would have. I didn’t even know how to reassure myself.
“I don’t think the milk’s going to do it,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I thought some warm milk was going to calm my nerves, but I don’t think it’ll work as long as that caterwauling is going on. I don’t suppose this place comes equipped with whiskey? No, I forgot—whiskey isn’t white.”
“There’s vodka,” I said.
“Of course there is.” She opened the refrigerator to put the milk back, then emerged with a chilled bottle of Stoli. “You really need to let a little color into your life, Raziel.”
I looked at her in the brightly hued dress I’d given her. Everything about her was vibrant, colorful, disrupting the calm emptiness of my world. She poured two glasses, neat, and pushed one toward me across the marble counter.
It wasn’t a good idea. Keeping my hands off her was requiring every ounce of concentration I had. Even half an ounce of alcohol might be enough to weaken my resolve.
Then again, getting her drunk would be an excellent idea. I found drunken women completely unappealing. And if she passed out, I wouldn’t be tempted to put my hands on either side of her head and draw her face up to mine, to kiss her. . . .
She’d already picked up her glass and drained it, giving a delicate little shudder. “I don’t really like vodka,” she said in a small voice. She looked pointedly at my untouched glass. “Clearly, neither do you.”
I said nothing. She wanted me to put my arms around her. I knew it, and wished I didn’t. The noise of the Nephilim was growing louder, the howls and screams, the roars and grunts deeply disturbing. I knew the horror that lay beneath that sound. I thought I could smell them on the night air, the foul stench of old blood and rotting flesh, but it had to be my imagination. I tried to concentrate on them, but her thoughts pushed them away. She wanted my arms around her; she wanted to press her head against my chest. She wanted my mouth, she wanted my body, and she wasn’t going to tell me.
She didn’t need to tell me. There was a crash outside, followed by a louder roar, and she jumped nervously. “If you don’t like vodka, why do you even have it?” she said, clearly trying to distract herself.
“I like vodka. I just think it might be better if I didn’t let alcohol impair my judgment in case something happens.”
If anything her face turned whiter. “You think they’re going to break through?”
I had to laugh. “No. Worse than that.”
“Worse than flesh-devouring cannibals?”
“Is there any other kind of cannibal?” I pointed out.
“What’s worse than the Nephilim?” she said irritably, some of her panic fading.
“Sleeping with you.”
Shit. And I meant to not even mention it. She stared at me for a long moment, then tried to push past me. “Enough is enough,” she snapped. “If you prefer the Nephilim to me, you can damned well go climb over the fence and fuck them.”
I caught her, of course. My arm snaked around her waist and I spun her around, pushing her back against the wall, trapping her there with my body pressed against hers. “I didn’t say I preferred them,” I whispered in her ear, closing my eyes to inhale the addictive scent of her. “As far as I’m concerned, though, you’re worse trouble.” I kissed the side of her neck, tasting her skin, breathing in the smell of her blood as it rushed through her veins. So easy just to make one small piercing, just take a taste. I moved my mouth behind her ear, fighting it.
She was holding herself very still. “W-w-why?” she stammered.
“I can kill the Nephilim,” I whispered. “I can fight them. But I have too hard a time fighting you.
”
She turned her face up to mine, and her hands reached up to touch me. “Then don’t fight,” she said in a tone of such practicality that I wanted to laugh.
“At least I won’t rip out your heart.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I said. And like a fool, I kissed her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I KNEW PERFECTLY WELL THAT I WAS an idiot to do this, but right then nothing could have stopped me. His body was pressed up tight against me, and the heat and strength of it calmed my panic—but brought out a whole new raft of fear. His mouth was hot, wet, carnal, as he kissed me, his slow deliberation at odds with the crazed rush of lust that had overwhelmed us last night. He slanted his mouth across mine, tasting, biting, giving me a chance to kiss him back, his tongue a shocking intruder that somehow felt right. In my somewhat limited experience, men didn’t really like to kiss; they simply did it to get to the part they did like.
Raziel clearly enjoyed kissing—he was too good at it not to enjoy it. He was in no hurry to push me into bed, no hurry to do anything more than kiss me.
He lifted his head, and his strange, beautiful eyes with their striated irises stared down at me for a long, breathless moment. “What are you doing?” I whispered.
“Kissing you. If you haven’t figured that out yet, I must not be doing a very good job of it. I must need practice.” And he kissed me again, a deep, hungry kiss that stole my breath and stole my heart.
“I mean why are you kissing me?” I said when he moved his mouth along my jawline and I felt it tingle all the way down to . . . I wasn’t sure where. “You just told me you’d rather face the Nephilim—”
“Shut up, Allie,” he said pleasantly. “I’m trying to distract both of us.” He slid the dress straps down my shoulders, down my arms, exposing my breasts to the cool night air, and I heard his murmur of approval. “No bra,” he said. “Maybe I’m going to like your new clothes.”
He moved his mouth down the side of my neck, lingering for a moment at the base of my throat, to the place where he’d left his mark, and I reflexively rose toward him, wanting his mouth there, wanting . . .
But he moved on, and I stifled my cry of despair. And then forgot all about it as he leaned down and put his lips on my bared breast, sucking the nipple into his mouth. I caught his shoulders, digging my fingers into them as I arched up, offering myself to him. I could feel the sharpness of his teeth against me, and I knew a moment’s fear that he would draw blood from my breast, but his hand covered my other breast, soothing, stimulating, so that my nipple became a hardened button to match the one in his mouth, and I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, not there, not anywhere, he told me, and I felt his consciousness enter my mind, a deliberate invasion as intimate and arousing as his tongue and his cock.
His eyes were black with desire now, and he pushed the fabric of the dress down to my hips, baring my torso, nuzzling beneath the swell of my breast;
and then his hands were on my thighs, drawing the dress slowly upward, and I was feeling rushed, greedy, desperate for him, wanting him inside me, wanting him now, and I raised my hips, mindlessly searching.
He wants this, I thought dazedly, reveling in the certainty of his need. He wanted me. He wanted nothing more than to bury himself in my body, to soak in the forgetfulness of lust and desire and completion, to lose himself, and to bring me with him on a journey of such transcending desire that the very thought frightened me, and I tried to pull away. I hadn’t had time for second thoughts during our frantic couplings. Now I could be calm, detached, dismissive as I needed to be, except that I needed him even more than I needed calm, and his hands were running up my bare legs now, his fingers inside the lacetrimmed edge of my panties, touching me, and I let out a muffled yelp of reaction, followed by a moan of pure pleasure as he began pulling the panties down my legs.
And then he jumped away, so quickly I almost fell. The blackness was gone from his eyes and at the moment they were like granite, and I wondered what the hell had happened. And then I heard the screams.
Different from the distant howls and shrieks of the Nephilim, safely beyond the borders of Sheol. These were closer, the guttural howls echoing through the five floors of the building. These were here.
“Stay here,” he ordered tersely. “Find someplace to hide. If worse comes to worst, go out on the balcony and be prepared to jump.”
I stared in astonishment at the angel who’d just told me to commit suicide. “What . . . ?”
“They’re here.” His voice was flat, grim. “The walls have fallen.”
I froze, the numb, mindless horror washing over me. “The Nephilim?”
He was almost at the door, but he stopped, wheeled around, and came back to me, catching my arms in a painful grip. “You can’t let them near you, Allie. No matter what. Hide if you think you’ve got a chance. This is a long way to climb, and their bloodlust will send them after the nearest targets. But if they reach this floor . . .” He took a deep breath. “Jump. You don’t want to see or hear what they’re capable of, you don’t want to risk getting caught by them. Promise me, Allie.” His fingers tightened. “Promise me you’ll jump.”
I had never backed off from a challenge, never taken the easy way out in my entire, too-short life. I looked up into Raziel’s face and could sense the horror he was seeing, the horror he was letting me catch only a glimpse of. A glimpse was enough. I nodded. “If I must,” I said.
To my astonishment, he kissed me again, a brief, fast kiss, almost a kiss good-bye. And he was gone.
There was no place to hide. The bed was too low to the floor, and when I burrowed into the closet, the screams from below still echoed, even when I covered my head with my arms and tried to drown them out. I struggled back into the bedroom. I didn’t know if the screams were getting louder or the Nephilim were getting closer. I’d promised him, and I might have a thousand and one characters flaws, but I never broke a promise. I pushed open the window and climbed onto the balcony. And then froze.
The sand was black in the moonlight, and it took me a moment to realize it was blood. There were bodies everywhere, or what was left of them.
Headless torsos, arms and legs that had been ripped free, gnawed on, and then discarded. And the stench that was carried upward on the night breeze was the stuff of nightmares. Blood, old blood, and decaying flesh. The stink of the monsters that crawled below, searching for fresh meat.
I climbed onto the ledge, peering over, and had my first shadowy sight of one of them. It was unnaturally tall, covered with some kind of matted filth, though whether it was hair or clothes or skins of some kind I couldn’t be sure. Its mouth was open in a roar, and I thought I could see two sets of teeth, broken and bloody. It had someone in its hands, a woman with long blond hair and black-streaked clothes.
She was still alive. The creature was clawing at her, ripping her open so that her guts spilled out onto the sand, but her arms were still moving, her feet were twitching, and I screamed at it to stop, but my voice was carried away by the crash of the surf, lost amidst the screams and howls.
For a moment I stood paralyzed. The woman was finally still, her eyes wide in death, and the creature turned, moving in an odd, disjointed shuffle, heading inside. I couldn’t even count the number of bodies on the beach—they were ripped in too many pieces. And I knew then I couldn’t join them on the beach, doing a graceful swan dive to my death. What if I didn’t die right away? What if I lay there while the Nephilim found me, tore me apart while I still lived?
And how could I hide in my room when I could do something? That poor woman down there—if someone had been able to distract the creature, she might have been able to crawl to safety. But there was no one alive on the beach.
I didn’t hesitate, didn’t allow myself to fear. By the time I reached the third-floor landing I’d decided I was crazy, but I didn’t let it slow me down. Destiny was a stupid word, a word for heroines, and I was no heroine. All I knew was that I could do something to help, and
I had to try.
The bodies started on the second floor, women of the Fallen who’d tried to escape, but were clawed and hacked and gnawed on by the monsters who’d somehow invaded the vale of Sheol. The stench was overpowering. Way in the past, when I’d started writing, I’d done research on crime scenes, had heard about the smell of week-old bodies that clung to the skin and hair of the police and couldn’t ever be eradicated from their clothes. It was that kind of smell that washed over me now, one of decayed flesh and maggots and rotting bones. Of old meat and ancient blood and shit and death.
The first floor was a battleground. I could see five of the Nephilim, tall and ungainly, easily recognizable. I took in the scene quickly: Azazel was fighting fiercely, blood streaming from a head wound and mixing with his long black hair. Tamlel was down, probably dead, as was Sammael, and I realized with belated horror that it had been Carrie out on the sand, fighting to the end with the monster who was devouring her.
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