Warrior (Fallen)

by Kristina Douglas

  “No, no,” he said impatiently. “You’re reacting too quickly. Your form is good, relaxed, but you keep jumping in a moment too soon. Hold yourself like this. . . .” He put his hands on her shoulders, adjusting her position, then used his foot to nudge hers into a wider stance. And then froze, with his leg between hers, his hands clasping her shoulders.

  He released her abruptly, backing away, mentally shaking himself. What was wrong with him? “Practice waiting a moment longer rather than rushing. It gives you more control. Wait for your opponent to come to you.”

  “And what if he doesn’t?” she said quietly. “What if he keeps retreating?”

  With any other woman, he might think she was talking about something else entirely. But Victoria Bellona had no carnal interest in him, no carnal interest in anybody. Which was a relief, since he was suddenly having a difficult time controlling his wayward urges.

  “Then you find someone else willing to battle.” He turned his back on her and her far-too-perceptive green eyes.

  “Or go back to your rooms and let the warriors do their job,” Metatron said in his deep, disapproving voice. He was a sexist to the core and had very little use for women.

  The girl was looking pretty, weak, and helpless, and Michael knew a moment’s doubt. He was trying to keep his distance from her, but he was fairly certain she was neither weak nor helpless.

  She looked up at the giant warrior. “Metatron,” she said meditatively. “You guys are very strange. We’ve got a Ninja Turtle and a Transformer. What’s next, Wolverine and the Power Rangers?”

  Metatron looked at her with profound dislike. “She is too flippant,” he said. “This is a waste of my time.”

  “Let me try once more,” she begged in a deceptively sweet voice.

  Metatron nodded, the fool. He was an excellent soldier, but he had a tendency to underestimate his opponents. And Victoria Bellona was most definitely an opponent.

  A few seconds later the ground shuddered as Metatron went down in as neat a move as Michael could remember seeing. So she had some skills—her defeat of Pedersen hadn’t been a fluke. This was going to prove even more interesting.

  Dangerously so.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  ARROGANT ASSHOLE. I LOOKED down at the giant lying at my feet. He’d fallen hard, harder than a warrior ought to, but that came from thinking his opponent was nothing but a useless girl. He was blinking, dazed, and I waited for his eyes to clear before holding out a hand to him.

  A moment later he was up with a roar, knocking aside my hand and heading straight toward me with a murderous glare in his eyes. I had the wooden sword they used for training, and I timed it perfectly, smashing it across his throat at the precise moment it would do the most damage. Down he went again, on his stomach, and this time he stayed down.

  My husband was watching me out of those unreadable dark eyes, and I wondered if I’d betrayed too much. “Lucky hit,” I said with a shrug.

  “Indeed.” His voice was noncommittal. He turned to Metatron. “Get up. If you can’t handle being hit by a little girl, you’re useless to me.”

  “Little girl?” I echoed, drawing up to my full five feet nine in bare feet.

  Metatron didn’t look any too happy with his comment either. He rolled over and scrambled to his feet, glaring at both of us. “She’s better than she’d have you think.”

  I ground my teeth. “Not really. You weren’t paying attention.”

  “Try me again,” he growled.

  Not likely. He’d pummel the shit out of me, and this time I didn’t dare defend myself with any amount of skill. Fortunately Michael turned to me. “Go and work with Rachel. She can teach you some defensive moves in case you run into anyone more dangerous than Uriel’s most powerful angel. She has some skills you might find interesting, if she feels like divulging them.”

  “Cheating bitch,” Metatron muttered beneath his breath, and I wasn’t sure if he meant me or Rachel.

  “I heard that.” Rachel’s cool voice floated across the busy room with surprising clarity, and Metatron flushed. It was an interesting sight. The man was huge, more robot than human, and he was blushing. Though that brought up an interesting question.

  I turned to Michael. “Are you human?”

  Michael had turned to leave, but he paused. “I’m not anything. Neither angel nor human, living nor dead, saved nor doomed. At least, when you die, you won’t be sentenced to eternal torment as the Fallen are. Though if you end up in a heaven with Uriel in charge, I’m not sure there will be much of a difference.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t have time to discuss philosophy with you. Rachel’s waiting for you.” He strode away. I watched him go—he gave the impression of incredible strength without bulkiness. No bulging muscles, just sleek, indomitable power. His skin was a perfect shade of sun-kissed gold, his dark eyes enigmatic as they swept over me, revealing nothing. He moved with an almost catlike grace, silent. He would be a mesmerizing, dangerous predator, and he should have frightened me. Instead I was fascinated. Drawn.

  I tore my eyes away and met Rachel’s gaze. I didn’t like what I saw. She looked far too knowing, and I didn’t want her jumping to any conclusions about me. I could feel the curious eyes of the Fallen on my back. I shouldn’t have lost my temper with Metatron. I was going to have to work hard to regain the image of marginal skills.

  I managed a casual, ambling kind of walk as I joined Rachel by a set of open doors. She was smiling, and I wasn’t sure I trusted it, but I smiled back, all innocence. “Can you imagine the luck?” I said lightly. “Knocking a mountain down on the first day here.”

  “Twice.” She cocked her head, surveying me. “Come. Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”

  “I thought we were supposed to train.”

  “We will. I have my own way of working, and Michael knows better than to intercede.”

  “You mean he doesn’t bully you like he does everyone else?”

  “He tries. He doesn’t get very far with me.” She took my arm, leading me out through the courtyard and toward the main building. “We don’t need any curious busybodies overhearing us.”

  I gave her a questioning look. “What are you going to talk about that we don’t want witnesses?”

  “Power. Gifts. How to fight back when you need to.”

  “As far as I can tell, I don’t have any powers. I think the goddess thing is simply a courtesy title.”

  “You simply haven’t discovered your powers yet. I’ve been where you are. I can help.”

  I looked at her doubtfully, then chose to misunderstand her. “You’re right. I can’t count on luck if I end up in this war Michael’s talking about. I need to know how to defend myself.”

  She gave me an impatient scowl. “You’re more than capable of defending yourself against anyone Uriel can send against us. I’m talking about defending yourself against Michael.”

  I started to protest, then shut it. I was just going to have to do a better job of convincing these people that I was incompetent. Rachel had picked up on the one thing that would snare me. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, I instinctively knew Michael was the greatest threat to me, and I was having a hard time consigning him to an unimportant section of my consciousness.

  “You like it here,” she said, not a question.

  I wanted to immediately deny it, but there was something about Rachel that made lying hard. I glanced around, following her at an easy pace through the spacious hallways of the compound. “It’s an improvement over the last place I lived. Considering that was a prison, it doesn’t take much to improve things.”

  She didn’t respond to that. “And you like Michael.”

  I hooted with laughter. “All right, I’ll admit that getting out of my first prison has its merits, but the Archangel Michael is a royal pain in the butt who doesn’t like me any better than I like him.”

  A small smile curled the corner of her mouth. “I won’t disa
gree with that,” she said, and I felt a hint of disappointment. “You’re married to him, mated to him. What are you going to do next?”

  I didn’t even hesitate. “Get away from here. I’m not really worried about him—I’m not his type. Someone, maybe you, has him convinced that the only way he’ll win his war against the Armies of God is to have me there as well for cannon fodder. Too bad—it’s not my fight.”

  “I’m not the one who told him. My visions are few and far between—Martha is the one who saw it. And they aren’t the Armies of God. God gave humans free will and then left the whole mess in Uriel’s charge, and there’s a human saying: ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ The Armies of Heaven are under his control, and they’re the ones we need to defeat.”

  “Good luck with that,” I muttered.

  We’d reached Rachel’s rooms, and she pushed open the doors, drawing me in. It was a far cry from my spartan quarters. The living room was sparsely finished, but the ubiquitous white had vanished. One wall was a deep Chinese red, and there were jewel-toned pillows scattered on the black lacquer sofa. Beyond I could see a huge bed covered in silk.

  “This is better than the operating room I’m sleeping in.”

  “You should see where Michael sleeps.”

  I tensed. “How do you know I haven’t? And why do you know what it looks like?”

  Her laugh was low and surprisingly charming. “I know you haven’t because Michael is insisting this is a marriage of protocol and nothing else. And I’ve seen his room because I visited him with Azazel after he was wounded during a skirmish with the Nephilim.”

  “Nephilim? What’s that?”

  Rachel shuddered. “I don’t think you want to know. There aren’t any left on this continent, so they’re nothing to worry about.”

  “Who says I’m staying on this continent?”

  She looked at me, momentarily silenced. “They’re monsters,” she said finally. “Come on.” She took my arm and pulled me through the rooms, out into a private courtyard, gesturing toward a comfortable-looking chaise. “Have a seat and I’ll get us something to drink. Do you like Diet Coke?”

  “God, no.” I shuddered. “Is that all you people drink? Besides blood, that is.”

  She shook her head, presumably at my flippant remark. “Iced tea, then?”

  “You can bring me Diet Coke. I suppose I should get used to it,” I said in a resigned tone.

  A moment later she was back, a cold, sweating silver can in her hand. I took a tentative sip of the fuzzy stuff, and it tasted marginally better than it had last night. Rachel stretched out in the other chaise, her own can in her hand, and looked at me with those penetrating eyes. “Actually, I need to talk to you about something other than your latent powers.”

  “So Michael set me up,” I grumbled. “You’re not talking me into anything.”

  She shook her head. “He has nothing to do with this. In fact, he’d be furious if he found out.”

  “Well, I’m all in favor of anything that annoys him.” The thought made me cheerful. “So what do you want?”

  “We need Michael to have sex with you and drink your blood, and he’s refusing.”

  MICHAEL GAVE METATRON a long, assessing look. His new bride—God, he hated to think of her that way—looked soft and fragile and confused, yet she’d just managed to kick the butt of arguably Sheol’s strongest warrior. Metatron was huge—a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than she was—but she’d flattened him, twice, with deceptive ease.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded.

  Metatron glowered. In the few years he’d lived in Sheol, he had yet to integrate completely with the other Fallen, doubtless because he’d spent countless centuries fighting them. “She’s a witch. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

  He also had an annoying habit of quoting the ancient texts, whichever suited his purpose. Metatron knew the Old Testament and the Apocrypha backward and forward, and he had answers for everything, even when they were totally contradictory.

  “She’s not a witch, she’s the Roman goddess of war.”

  “I see no difference.”

  Michael bit back his annoyance. He’d never liked Metatron, but the giant was too useful a soldier to ignore. “Are you well enough to spar?”

  Metatron’s response was a derisive sniff, and almost before Michael realized it, he attacked.

  Almost. No one took Michael off guard, and he parried Metatron’s sudden lunge, but just barely, the huge weight of him knocking Michael sideways a bit before he recovered with a hard kick to the solar plexus. Metatron grunted but didn’t go down.

  Five minutes of brutal action, and neither of them had won. Metatron was winded—it was hard for a big man to move fast enough to counter Michael’s swift deadliness. But he made up for it with brute strength. Michael could feel the blood dripping down his face from a cut near his eye, and his entire body felt as if it had been put through a meat grinder. He was still standing, and so was Metatron, but even if the man wasn’t bleeding, he looked just about done in.

  Michael could have finished him quickly, but he was too smart for that. You challenged your men just enough, and then you let them be. He needed Metatron to believe himself invincible in battle. He needed all his men and women to believe that.

  Blood was splattering his white shirt. “I’ll go clean up,” he said.

  Metatron nodded, trying to pretend he wasn’t out of breath, and Michael turned away. The giant had been as strong as ever—there was no reasonable way a smaller opponent like Victoria Bellona could have bested him. He’d felt no use of supernatural power, and he was always aware when that came into play, as it had with Rachel. Maybe Tory was right, maybe it was simply a fluke, but he was gathering more and more proof that his wife was stronger than she pretended to be.

  He shut the door of the training room behind him, knowing his people wouldn’t dare slack off, and headed down the hall toward his rooms. Rachel would make sure that Tory wasn’t hurt. Some warriors were good at hiding an injury until they were out of sight; some injuries didn’t appear until later, and those could be fatal. He couldn’t afford to lose Tory any sooner than was predestined. She was necessary if they were to have any chance of triumphing over Uriel.

  No, he’d better check on her first, then clean up. Like it or not, she was his responsibility, and if there was any question about her safety, he needed answers.

  His head still rang a bit from the force of Metatron’s blows. If he could feel it, then he shuddered to think what Tory was feeling. He quickened his pace.

  She wasn’t in her rooms. There could be a reasonable explanation for that, but fear suddenly shot through him. She might be in the infirmary, lapsing into a coma. She might have collapsed—

  He stopped, made himself breathe deeply. She was with Rachel. He trusted Rachel more than anyone, even Allie. She would take excellent care of Tory.

  But he wasn’t going anywhere until he was sure.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  I SET MY CAN OF DIET COKE DOWN ON the flagstone terrace and started to rise.

  “Just hear me out,” Rachel said. “We’re in a battle not just for our existence but for the future of mankind.”

  I didn’t bother to hide my skepticism. “Why would you care about mankind? Apparently I don’t qualify and you haven’t lived among them for years.” Not that I believed that for one moment. I had yet to see proof, and until then I was determined to see myself as simply a healthy young woman.

  “This world was created for mankind. Angels and gods exist because of human belief. Even if we survived, our lives would be worthless without humans.”

  “So who’s the great threat to mankind? Satan? Lucifer?” I tossed the names off casually. I had done my reading. Lucifer was supposedly a fallen angel, just like these others.

  If I’d hoped to offend Rachel, I’d failed. She smiled wryly. “The polar opposite.”

  “God? You’re telling me God’
s going to destroy the world?”

  “I thought Michael explained this to you. For all intents and purposes, there is no God. He gave humans free will and then turned everything over to the archangel Uriel.”

  “I take it that was a mistake?”

  “Big mistake. Where do you think the Old Testament came from, with all the smiting and the pillars of salt? Uriel has always thought mankind was a mistake, and he’s been trying to control them ever since. Now he simply wants to get rid of them completely.”

  “And God is going to let him?”

  “He’s not involved anymore. The only beings who can stop Uriel and the Armies of Heaven are the Fallen. It’s that simple. And you’re key to that victory.”

  “How?” I demanded. “Why?”

  Rachel shook her head. “Martha’s visions aren’t that precise, but so far they’ve usually been correct. She’s the one who saw that you were needed in order for us to prevail. Without you, the world is doomed.”

  “Great. So once I save the world, do I get to be God?” I said cheerfully. “Oh, no, I forgot, I already am a god. So tell me, exactly what makes you think I’m a goddess? Apparently I’m not immortal—the contessa and Pedersen were planning to kill me. And I don’t seem to have any superpowers, apart from a certain facility with martial arts. So why can’t I hurl thunderbolts and walk on water and live forever?”

  “Because no one believes in you anymore,” Rachel said flatly. “We need the faith of the people to ensure our immortality, and people have forgotten you ever existed. If it weren’t for mankind’s unfortunate affection for war, you probably wouldn’t exist at all. All the other pagan gods have disappeared entirely.”

  I couldn’t hide a grin. The idea of being a pagan goddess was so absurd, it held an odd sort of appeal. “Okay, I’ll buy that. Where are my superpowers?”