Raziel

by Kristina Douglas

  “Possibly,” Azazel said slowly. “At the very least he would become sick, run a fever, possibly throw up. We can’t tell with Tamlel or Gadrael because their bodies were already compromised by the wounds they had received.”

  “Then we need a volunteer,” I said brightly. “It’s the only way we can be certain.”

  Raziel rose, pushing back his chair, but Azazel fixed him with a look. “You know it can’t be you. If she’s your bonded mate, you’d be able to drink from her and you know it. I assume you haven’t done so as yet.”

  “None of your damned business,” Raziel snapped.

  “It’s all of our business,” the leader replied. “Sammael, you may try.”

  Sammael was sitting near me, and I immediately held out my arm, more curious about Raziel’s reaction than anything else. I could feel the tension and rage washing over him, a mindless, animal response. He hadn’t resumed his seat; he was just standing there, vibrating with something I wasn’t sure I wanted to interpret.

  Sammael didn’t look any too happy about the idea, but he took hold of my arm as if it were an ear of corn, and his incisors elongated. I watched with fascination, wondering what set off that reaction. Was it blood flow, like an erection? Did old vampires have trouble getting it up, or down, or whatever?

  Sammael set his mouth against my wrist, and I felt the twin pinpricks, just a quick, sharp pain. And then nothing at all as he fed at my wrist.

  “Enough!” Raziel snapped, and Sammael pulled his mouth away quickly. “She has already lost too much blood from Tamlel’s carelessness.”

  Azazel was focusing on Sammael. “Well? Are you feeling ill?”

  Slowly Sammael shook his head. “She is the Source,” he said quietly.

  “Shit.” Raziel’s muttered expletive expressed it for all of them, me included.

  Dead silence. I considered whining, “But I don’t want to be the Source,” then thought better of it. I kept quiet, letting it sink in.

  After a moment Azazel spoke, and his low, angry voice was defeated. “Very well. As blood-eaters we know that blood doesn’t lie. You’ll have to discover who your mate truly is—”

  “She’s mine,” Raziel said fiercely, throwing himself back down into his chair. “No one else’s.”

  “Well, we’ll leave you time to discover whether that, indeed, is true. In the meantime, the woman will have to be instructed in the duties of the Source, the proper diet and training, and she—”

  “Hell, no,” I said. I’d had enough of this patriarchal crap.

  Once more the silence was deafening. “What did you say?” Azazel demanded dangerously.

  “I said hell, no. If you think I’m going to be Raziel’s sex slave and your personal blood bank, you have another thing coming. This is your problem—figure it out yourself.”

  My magnificent exit was marred slightly when the flowing sleeve of my tunic caught on the door handle, but I yanked it free as dramatically as I could and strode from the room.

  Once out of sight, I wanted to pump my fist in triumph. Assholes, all of them. I wasn’t about to let anyone push me around, particularly not Azazel and Raziel. They could find someone else to be their goddamn Source, preferably someone more like Sarah, with her serene smile and calm nature.

  At the thought of her I wanted to cry, but I dashed the tears away. I needed fresh air and the smell of the ocean to clear my head of all that testosterone. If any of them made the mistake of trying to follow me, I would simply head over to the fire and grab a burning branch or something. I could even build a ring of fire around me if I felt the need. It would serve them right and probably make them crazy with frustration. I found I could manage a sour grin.

  As I moved out into the sunlight I felt someone behind me, someone tall, and I knew who it was. I turned, ready to lash out at him.

  Raziel looked as furious as I felt, which only made things escalate. “What’s your problem?” I demanded hotly. “It’s not like they’re expecting you to be a cross between a whore and a bloodmobile. If you think I’m going to sit quietly by while men suck at my wrist, you’re dead wrong. If you’ll pardon the expression.”

  “I don’t think that.” His low voice was surprising.

  “You don’t?”

  “No one is touching you but me,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  SHE WAS LOOKING SHELL-SHOCKED, and I couldn’t blame her. She’d witnessed the kind of carnage unthinkable for someone of her world, she’d watched people she cared about die, she’d lost too much blood because of Tamlel’s carelessness, and to complete the disaster, the worst possible scenario had come to pass. She wasn’t just bound to me—she was bound to all of us.

  It wasn’t as if I hadn’t had plenty of warning. I had simply refused to recognize it. She was reading me, more and more. I had a will of iron, yet I hadn’t been able to keep away from her. I had known, deep in my heart, and I could deny it no longer. She was my bonded mate. I would watch her grow old and die, and just to twist the knife further, I would have to watch the others feed from her narrow, blue-veined wrist, and there wouldn’t be a thing I could do about it, even as my atavistic blood roared in response.

  And I had hurt her. When I’d returned from sealing the wall, I’d found her down by the edge of the water, sitting back on her knees, Tamlel’s head in her lap while he drank from her. She was pale and dizzy from blood loss, and rage had swept over me, a killing rage that had only just abated. I’d ripped her away from Tamlel, too blind with jealous fury to realize what I was doing.

  I’m not sure what I would have done to Tamlel if I hadn’t heard her quiet moan. I spun around in the blood-soaked sand to see her lying against a rock, and guilt and panic swept away the rage. The healers were too busy with the dying to help her—all I could do was bring her back to my rooms and tend to her as best I could, washing the blood and gore from her, letting my hands soothe and heal her. We all had healing power, some more than others, and it was always stronger with our mates. I should have known, when I’d held her hands and healed them, that she was mine.

  I had known. I had just refused to face it.

  I still didn’t want to. Uriel must have known she was my mate. Her sins were too slight to deserve either an escort or a sentence to the flames. Uriel had assumed I would follow orders and throw her over the precipice, denying the Fallen their next Source. So that when his traitor let the Nephilim in, there’d be no one for the survivors.

  I didn’t know how much she was reading from me. We were too new—her sense of me would deepen, and then the natural boundaries would develop.

  Whatever she could hear from me, she didn’t like it.

  She backed away when I tried to touch her, shaking her head. “You hate me,” she said flatly.

  I controlled my flare of irritation. Of course she thought so—my anger was so powerful it would swamp any other feeling. “No I don’t,” I said, trying to sound reasonable and failing.

  “I’m not doing this.” She was close to tears, which surprised me. Throughout the last few days, no matter what she’d had to deal with, I’d never seen her cry, something I was profoundly grateful for. I hated it when women cried.

  “Yes,” I said. “You are.” And before she could avoid me, I scooped her up under her arms from behind and soared upward, deliberately keeping her mind open, not shutting it down as I had the last time I flew with her.

  I heard her gasp over the sound of the wind as it rushed past us. I crossed my arms over her chest, holding her against me, and I could feel her heart racing. She was warm against me, despite the cool air, and after a moment I felt her stiffness relax so that she flowed against me, sweetly, like a reed in the water, and her skirts covered my legs as we climbed higher.

  I’d only meant to take her as far as our apartment on the top floor, but the moment I felt her joy I changed my mind. I soared over the huge old house, turning right to avoid the oily smoke of the funeral pyre, heading deeper into the virgin forests with th
eir dark trees, past sparkling water. I rose above the mist, where the sun was bright overhead, warming me, and I let that warmth flow to her, sending tendrils of heat throughout her before she could be chilled by the atmosphere. We went up, way up, over the peak of the mountain, and out of instinct I called for Lucifer’s faint voice. Uriel’s plans had worked well—

  the fierceness of the Nephilim attack had kept us all too busy to search for the one man who could save us. I called, but there was no faint whisper. For once all I could hear was Allie’s longing, singing to me, her body dancing with mine even as her mind still fought it.

  We banked, passing a startled flock of Canada geese, and I felt her laugh against me, felt the sheer joy that suffused her, just as it suffused me when I flew, and my arms tightened imperceptibly, holding her even closer, somehow wanting to absorb her into my bones.

  My wings spread out around us as I headed back toward the house. Allie was relaxed now, warm and soft and yielding against me, and I knew the unexpected flight had been a wise idea. Not that she wouldn’t be ready to fight me all over again, the moment we set down. But at least for now she had accepted my strength, accepted my touch. She would again.

  I landed on the narrow ledge lightly enough, planning to hold on to her until my wings had folded in, but standing still on the terrace felt too good, and instead I put my face against her neck, breathing in the sweet smell of her, until she panicked and jumped away, turning to stare up at me with an expression of shock.

  Which wasn’t surprising. My wings were particularly impressive—an iridescent cobalt blue veined with black, they were emblematic of one rule of the Fallen. The longer we’d lived, the more ornate were our wings. The newly fallen had pure-white wings. Lucifer, the First, had wings of pure black. I was somewhere in between.

  I let them fold back into place, hoping this would be enough to calm her, but she still stared at me. Her unexpected tears had dried, thank God, and she was ready for battle. I could still feel the lingering trace of her pleasure at our flight, and I stifled a grin. No one had ever enjoyed flying in my arms before, and it was almost as heady an experience for me.

  “All right,” she said. “What are we going to do about this mess?” She’d decided to be reasonable. I could sense it, sense her struggling for her usual pragmatism. No problem was ever so big that it couldn’t be solved, she was thinking. There had to be a way around this.

  “There isn’t,” I said. “We’re talking about forces beyond your comprehension. Things that can’t be reasoned with.”

  She didn’t snap at me for reading her. “In other words, we’re trapped.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t like it?”

  I could feel the too-familiar rage simmer inside me. I had never had to share my mate, ever, throughout the endless years of eternity. Only Azazel had wed the Source, and I could remember only too well the difficulties during times of transition. Difficulties I’d attributed to grief and the usual problems in a new relationship. Now I wondered.

  “You don’t need to answer,” she said glumly. “I can feel it.” She was misreading me again, mistaking my anger at sharing her for a rebellion against her as my wife. I looked at her, and a stray memory surfaced.

  “Where did you grow up?” I demanded, more intent on answers than on soothing her wounded pride. I could take care of that quite effectively when I got her into bed.

  “I’m not going to bed with you.”

  I laughed, which startled her. She expected that her ability to read me would be annoying, but by now it was just the opposite. It was proof that whether I liked it or not, she was mine, just as I was hers. “You grew up in Rhode Island, didn’t you?” I said, ignoring her protest.

  “You already know everything about me, including the number of men I’ve slept with and whether I enjoyed it or not,” she said bitterly.

  “I never paid attention to your childhood,” I said. I remembered her. She’d been seven years old, sitting alone outside a small house near Providence.

  Her long brown hair had been in braids, her mouth set in a thin line, and I could see the tracks of her tears as they’d run down her dirty face. She was using a stick to dig in the dirt, ignoring an angry voice that came from the house. I’d stopped to look at her, and she’d seen me, and for a moment her eyes widened in wonder and her pout disappeared.

  I knew why. Children saw us differently. They knew we were no threat to them, and when they looked they knew who we were, instinctively.

  Allie Watson had looked at me and smiled, her misery momentarily vanishing.

  I should have known then.

  I saw her again when she was thirteen, and too old to see who I really was. I hadn’t expected to see her, and when I did I moved back into the shadows so she wouldn’t notice me. She was angry, rebellious, storming out of a store in front of a woman who was praying loudly and calling upon Jesus to spare her such a worthless, ungrateful daughter.

  I’d wanted to grab the woman, slam her against the wall, and inform her that Jesus was far more likely to spare the daughter such a harridan of a mother; but I didn’t move, watching as they got into a car, the mother tearing off into traffic, her bitter mouth still working as Allie looked out the window, trying to shut her out.

  That’s when she saw me again. Even in the shadows, her young eyes had picked me out, and for a moment her face softened as if in recognition, and she lifted a hand.

  And then the car sped around a corner, and she was gone.

  I should have known then. Instead, like a coward I’d blotted it out of my mind. I’d been shown her early on so that I could look out for her, keep her safe, but I’d been too determined not to fall into that trap again, and I’d turned my back on her.

  I should have come for her when she was ready. My instincts would have told me—it might have been when she was eighteen or when she was twenty.

  Instead I’d wasted all those years, when she could have been here, and safe.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” she said. “Or thinking about—whatever. Why would I want to be here? I want to go back to my old life. I want to write books, and go out to lunch, and have lovers, and wear my own clothes. I—don’t—want—to—be—here,” she enunciated. “Is that clear enough for you?”

  I moved past her, climbing back into the apartment, knowing she’d follow. I didn’t bother checking to see if the door was locked—no one, not even Azazel, would climb the stairs and interrupt us.

  She came after me, of course. She watched, silent, as I found a bottle of wine and opened it, pouring us each a glass. I handed her one, and she took it, and for a moment I wondered if she was going to throw it in my face in the kind of dramatic gesture she was fond of.

  “No,” she said, reading me, and went to sit on one of the sofas. “But I won’t say I’m not tempted.”

  It had been so long since anyone had been able to read me that it was going to take some getting used to. She was already far too adept at it, considering how little sexual congress we’d actually indulged in. And I hadn’t fed from her.

  I wouldn’t feed from her. Once I did, there’d be no going back, and there was just enough resistance left inside me to hold out that hope. At least for a little bit longer. Besides, she was still weak from Tamlel’s clumsiness, though I could sense her strength returning. That was one more sign that she was the Source. Her ability to bounce back from blood loss.

  “You can’t go back to your old life, Allie,” I said wearily. “How many times do I have to explain this to you? You died. It happens to people all the time.

  You don’t get a happy-ever-after with a prince, riding into the sunset. You don’t get a house with a white picket fence and two-point-three children. You won’t have any children, ever. You died too young for all those things.”

  I heard her quick intake of breath, a sound of pain that she tried to hide from me. I would have thought she wouldn’t care about being a mother. I was wrong. About this, about so ma
ny things.

  “So instead I get to be the meal plan for a bunch of vampires? Whoopee. Do I get weekly transfusions?”

  I felt the now-familiar flare of anger at the thought, but I tamped it down. “You won’t need them. The Source provides blood for those who are unbonded, but the amount is minimal, the occasion is surrounded by ritual, and you won’t be called upon to serve more than once a month.” The moment I said it, I knew it was a bad choice of words.

  “Serve?” she said. “Like a waitress with a hearty meal?”

  She was doing her best to anger me, and she was succeeding. “No. Like someone with a higher calling.”