Who had survived? What were they going to do now?
I climbed back inside and went to the closet and then froze, looking at the colorful clothes. The dress I’d worn yesterday was nowhere to be seen. The dress that Raziel had almost managed to pull off me, the dress I’d used to try to stanch Sarah’s blood as it poured from her body.
Sarah was dead. There was no get-out-of-jail-free card, no way for Sarah to become immortal like her husband. If there were, Azazel wouldn’t be so grim, and Raziel would still be happily married to bride number forty-seven or whoever. And I’d be roasting in hell.
Today wasn’t a day for colors, it was a day of mourning. I considered Raziel’s black clothes, then went with a loose white skirt and a tunic, looking like a cult member once more. I ran a brush through my tangled hair and took one last look at my reflection in the mirror. I looked pale, as if I’d lost a lot of blood, and I wondered just how much Tamlel had taken from me. Had he even survived?
There wasn’t a thing I could do about how I looked—I was probably a lot healthier than most of the other survivors. Which damned well better include Raziel. No, I wasn’t even going to consider any alternative. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to reach into his mind.
I met with the mental equivalent of a door slamming shut, and I laughed with overwhelming relief, a relief I didn’t want to examine too closely. He was alive, and still bad-tempered.
There was blood on the stairs. Someone had made an effort to clean it up, but the smears were still visible, and I was glad I’d decided to put on the white sandals instead of going barefoot. The thought of walking on dried blood held a tinge of horror. I’d as soon force my feet into those damned stilettos that had brought a swift end to my promising life.
I didn’t know whether my exhaustion was physical or emotional. I had to stop at each landing to catch my breath, and it gave me plenty of time to observe the battle stains that marred most of the surfaces. Blood on the rugs, gouges in the walls.
The dratted dizziness lingered. Had giving my blood to Tamlel and the other Fallen done this to me? Raziel had told me the wrong blood was dangerous—the horror of last night was making my memory far from clear, but Tamlel couldn’t have taken that much blood, could he? There were no marks on my arm apart from the long scratch, and no reason why giving my blood should have helped them or hurt me. At least, not according to Raziel.
But I was feeling like I’d just donated blood and forgotten to take a cookie. Did they give blood transfusions here? Because I had the unpleasant suspicion that I could do with one.
The massive entry hall looked very different in the murky light of day. The bodies were gone. So was most of the furniture, which had been smashed during the battle. The smell of death lingered, the wretched stench of the Nephilim, the smell of decay. I shivered, peering out the open door, but the beach was still deserted. The blood on the sand had dried to a dark rust. It would take a heavy rain to wash it away.
I looked over at the funeral pyre. I had no desire to get closer—the smell upwind was bad enough. I looked closer at the fire, at the burning limbs and the spit of roasting fat, and I shuddered, feeling faintly nauseated. Was Sarah part of that mountain of flames? Were the others? Surely not.
I turned and walked back into the house. There was no one in the public rooms, and I had the sudden uneasy suspicion that the surviving Fallen might have left, abandoning this place and the few women who’d survived.
And then I thought of the Council room, where the Fallen gathered. Where Raziel had fed from Sarah’s wrist, forever changing the way I looked at things. They were there, I knew it.
The doors to the grand meeting room were shut. There were gouges in the heavy wood, and one handle had been smashed. I’d run away from here once in shock and horror. This time I was here to stay.
I pushed open the door and stepped inside, and a sudden rush of emotion hit me. I wasn’t going to cry, I told myself, no matter what. The men sitting at the table stared at me like I was an annoying interloper, but I had no intention of going anywhere. I kept my expression calm and smooth. Help me, Sarah, I said silently. Don’t let these bullies unnerve me.
Azazel sat at the head of the table, his face drawn with grief and fury. He stared at me with such hatred that I was momentarily shocked. He’d never liked me, that much had been obvious, but now he looked as if he’d like to kill me, and I couldn’t figure out why. I’d never done anything to him.
“Sit.”
It was Raziel’s voice, and the relief that washed over me almost made me dizzy. Just great: I’d fall at his feet in a maidenly faint. Schooling my expression, I turned to look at him. Like all the others, he looked like hell, like he’d been in a battle that he’d barely won. But he was alive and in one piece, though he appeared almost as angry as Azazel. Did they think I’d let the Nephilim in? What had I done to make them so angry with me?
Whether I liked it or not Raziel was my closest ally. I started toward him, but he stopped me with a word. “No,” he said. “Sit on the side. In Sarah’s seat.”
I froze. “I can’t.”
“Sarah is dead,” Azazel said in a savage voice. “Do as your mate tells you.”
“But he’s not—”
“Sit.” Raziel’s voice was low and deadly. I went and sat.
There were only a handful left. But Tamlel was sitting beside Azazel, trying to look encouraging, and the other man, the first one I’d given blood to, was sitting nearby. So near death, and they’d somehow managed to survive, which was astonishing.
There were no other women in the room. I missed Sarah’s comforting presence, missed her so badly that I wanted to cry. I sat and said nothing.
Azazel continued as if my arrival didn’t mean diddly, which I suppose was true. “Someone opened the gate,” he said. “We all know it. And until we find out who did, and why, we aren’t safe.”
“It wasn’t me,” I said promptly.
Azazel glared at me, and Raziel snarled, “No one thinks it was. Be quiet for now. Your turn will come.”
Hardly reassuring, I thought, sitting back in the hard chair that had held Sarah for so many years. Both Raziel and Azazel were furious with me, and it was only logical that they were pissed about the blood. I had a hundred excuses. My arm had been slashed by one of the Nephilim, and the men were down—what was the harm in trying to help? And it certainly hadn’t been my idea in the first place. The wounded man had simply latched onto my bleeding arm like a starving kitten. He’d been too out of it to realize what he was doing—it was no one’s fault.
Going back to Tamlel had been a different matter, but Tamlel was looking so calm that I was sure he’d speak up for me. After all, he was the one who’d latched on and used his teeth like some giant lamprey eel. He owed me support, considering the way Raziel was glowering at me.
“How do you think you’ll discover who let them in?” Sammael said in a flat voice, and I started. I’d thought he was one of the dead, but somehow he’d managed to survive. “It’s a waste of time. They probably ate whoever opened it, or else he or she was killed in the battle. I don’t know that you’ll ever be able to find out who did it. We should be putting our energy into rebuilding, not into useless quests for an irrelevant truth.”
“I know you are grieving the loss of your wife, Sammael,” Azazel said in a cold tone. “And the rebuilding process will start as soon as the boat is finished. In the meantime, the truth is never irrelevant. We will find who did this. Who was responsible for the deaths of seven of our brothers, and nineteen of our women. The Nephilim followed orders very well—they knew that to destroy our women would destroy us.”
“We are not destroyed,” Tamlel said quietly. “We mourn. But we are not destroyed.”
“Whoever let them in is still alive,” Azazel said. “I know it in my heart. We will find the traitor.”
“And then what?” Raziel said, refusing to look at me. “No matter how much you want to tear him limb from limb, we don’t ki
ll. Not our own.”
Azazel set his jaw, not denying Raziel’s charge. “He will be banished. Forced to wander the earth. One who has committed such a crime will never find a bonded mate, and he will be allowed nowhere near the Source. So he will eventually weaken and die. There will be no revenge, no rejoicing. Simple justice.”
The Source? Sarah was dead. Someone must have been lined up to take her place, a kind of Source-in-waiting. That woman must have followed in my footsteps last night and saved the ones I’d tried to help.
But as much as I would have loved to believe that fairy-tale nonsense, I had the horrible feeling that that wasn’t the case at all. I had a really awful suspicion about what was coming, and I didn’t want to hear it.
Azazel turned his black, furious gaze on me, and I had the distinct impression he would have reached out his big strong hands and strangled me on the spot if he didn’t have an audience. He hadn’t liked me, not from the moment I’d arrived in this place, and that dislike had grown to monumental proportions.
“Why did you attempt to feed Tamlel?” he demanded. “You have little knowledge of our ways, of the laws that govern us. In your ham-handed attempt to help, you could have killed him.”
“He looks just fine to me,” I said.
No thanks to you, he probably wanted to say. “Answer my question.” His voice was icy.
I looked toward Raziel, but there was no help from that quarter. He looked almost as angry as Azazel. “I certainly didn’t plan to do anything,” I said apologetically. “I came downstairs to see if I could help—”
“Even though I ordered you to remain where you were.” Raziel’s voice was low and deadly.
Damn, was it some kind of crime to disobey one’s supposed lord and master? If so, I was in deep shit, and would continue to be as long as I had to put up with Raziel’s high-handed ways.
If he could ignore me, then I could just as easily ignore him. “I came downstairs,” I said again, my voice overriding Raziel’s, “to see if there was anything I could do. I saw Sarah—” My voice caught for a moment, and I deliberately kept my gaze from Azazel. “I saw Sarah wounded, and Raziel took me outside. When I went to get help because I saw Tamlel lying there, one of the wounded grabbed my skirt, begging me to help him. There was nothing I could do, but I knelt and held him, hoping to either comfort him until medical help arrived or at least be there with him as he died.” I glanced over at the young man, and he nodded.
“That was me,” he said. “I’d been trying to get to Sarah when one of the Nephilim came up behind me. I managed to kill it, but he’d slashed me pretty badly, and I couldn’t make it.”
“Gadrael,” Azazel recognized him. “And you are well?”
“Quite well, my lord.”
Azazel turned his cold, empty blue eyes back to me. “Go on. You were cradling Gadrael and you suddenly decided your blood could help him?”
“No. I was trying to comfort him. But I had a long scratch on my arm. As I held him, my arm brushed against his mouth and he instinctively began to suck at it. He was barely conscious and he had no idea who I was—he just recognized the smell of blood.”
“I see. But he didn’t pierce you, just drank from your wound. What happened next?”
This was the trickier part. I’d been entirely innocent the first time around. The second had been sheer hubris on my part, and I couldn’t blame them for being pissed. “Well, Gadrael was looking better. And I knew Tamlel was dying, and I didn’t think help would get to him in time, and I thought that maybe since the wrong blood seemed to help Gadrael, then maybe it would help Tamlel, at least long enough for help to come. So I went back to him and . . .
offered him my arm.”
“It never occurred to you that your blood might have helped Gadrael because you might be his bonded mate?” Azazel said.
The low growl was startling, and I looked back across the table at Raziel. He looked positively . . . feral. I’d heard that growl before. Last night, just before he’d grabbed me and flung me away from Tamlel.
“No,” I said, looking away.
“With Tamlel,” Azazel continued his inquisition. “Did he too lick at your blood, respond to the offer of blood from your wound?”
“No. He was unconscious. Much closer to death than Gadrael.” Another growl from Raziel.
“Explain.”
Shit, I thought. But really, what was so terrible about what I had done? It was a crisis situation and I had reacted instinctively, and they should be spending their time figuring out who let the Nephilim in instead of harassing me. I sighed, knowing Azazel wasn’t going to stop until he got his answers.
“When Tamlel didn’t react to my arm pressed against his lips, I . . . I opened his mouth, then twisted my wound to make it bleed more freely, so that drops of blood fell in his mouth. It was enough to bring him back, at least partially, and he held on to my arm and, er . . . drank.” I did my best to look ingenuous, but I doubted Azazel was fooled. Any more than Raziel was.
“And he used his teeth, did he not? Pierced your vein?”
“Yes.”
“And you let him continue, almost to the point of death, before Raziel found you and stopped him?”
I glanced at Raziel. I’d never seen him looking so angry. “I suppose so,” I said reluctantly. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I never thought Tamlel would actually bite me—after all, Gadrael hadn’t. And then I assumed he’d stop when he had enough.” I glanced at Tamlel, who was looking stoic. Was he in the same kind of trouble I was?
“So we have two possibilities here,” Azazel said in his cold, emotionless voice after a long moment. “The most likely is that Gadrael was less grievously wounded than you thought. Don’t interrupt,” he added as he saw me start to protest. “With him, the taste of blood, even the wrong blood, was enough to bring him back. You are here only as a partner for Raziel, you have no bonding to him, and while it is unusual, it seems likely that you are Tamlel’s mate and neither of you realized it.”
“No,” said Raziel in a low, savage voice.
Ignoring Raziel, I glanced at Tamlel. He seemed sweet, charming, but I didn’t want to be his mate. I didn’t want to kiss him, fuck him, fight with him. . . . I glanced back at Raziel, who looked ready to explode. Raziel was a different matter. I couldn’t begin to know what I wanted, needed, from him, not now, when I was too weary to think clearly. I only knew that I needed him.
Damn it. And he’d probably read that revealing thought, smashing what few defenses I had left.
“Then there’s the other option, which seems unlikely.”
The silence in the room was so thick it was practically choking, and Azazel seemed in no mood to elaborate. I was beginning to get annoyed. I knew what was coming.
“Are you going to go on, or are we all going to sit here in uncomfortable silence?” I snapped.
“We’ve already discussed the possibility,” Azazel said forbiddingly. “We’re just considering it.”
Why in the world had lovely, sweet Sarah married such a hard-ass? I leaned forward. “But you forgot to include me in this discussion, which seems to concern me the most. I know your patriarchal bullshit style makes you forget that women have brains and opinions, but since this is about me, then you can just spit it out.”
“The only other alternative is that for some reason, by some cosmic joke or bizarre twist of fate, you are the new Source. Which doesn’t make sense.
The Source must be the bonded mate of one of the Fallen, and you haven’t had the bonding ceremony. Don’t think you’ve fooled me with your charade—I know perfectly well it was all an act. Besides, there has always been a long period of mourning before a new Source became apparent. Therefore it’s impossible for you to be the Source.”
“Impossible,” I agreed, my stomach churning. I’d known this was coming. I’d just hoped I was wrong. “But if I were? That doesn’t mean I have to be your bonded mate, does it?”
If anything, Azazel looked more revolted
by the thought than I was. “Hardly. The Source can belong to anyone.”
“ ‘Belong’?” My voice was dangerous. Once again I was being discussed as if I were a commodity, and I was getting past the point of being the Good Girl.
“If you are the Source, then it’s always possible your connection to Raziel is deeper than either of you want or realize.”
All the humor had left Raziel’s face. It was nothing compared to how I felt. He might be the most gorgeous male who had ever put his hands on me, but he was arrogant, brooding, manipulative, and lying, and worst of all, while he might have wanted me, he certainly didn’t love me. And damn it, I wanted love. True love, gushing, romantic, oh-my-darling love. Something Raziel was never going to give again, and certainly not to me.
The only defense I had was to push him away first. “So how do we find out?” I said in a practical voice. They looked startled. Clearly they’d been so caught up in horror over the possibility that I might somehow have a role in their little boys’ club that they hadn’t even thought about that. “What would happen if someone drank from me and I wasn’t the Source? Would he die?”
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