She heard a child scream. It was real and loud and full of terror and Juliette’s head snapped up at the horrendous sound. No. Memories assaulted her—memories of a stake and a pile of wood and a mob of possessed villagers. No!
Another wave of hard air rushed through her and across the field. This one knocked her flat on her stomach, sapping nearly all of what was left of her strength. But she managed to keep her head up and her eyes trained on the building long enough to see the orphanage struck once again with the magical force field, its flames once more smothered beneath the weight of its power.
It’s me, she thought weakly. I’m doing this.
She had wanted the fire to die—and now it was dying. She concentrated on what was left of the blaze’s red, licking fingers, willing them away with all her might. They retreated into the inner recesses of the children’s home, as if ashamed of their behavior. She glared at them and at the deadly, horrid smoke they produced, and imagined them withering. She denied the flames air. She sizzled them to death with her rain. She tore them to pieces, molecule by molecule. . . .
And then she lowered her head and closed her eyes. All around her, she heard the sounds of men shouting once more. She felt hands on her body, gently rolling her over. Voices were raised in shock and disbelief, others in praise and gratitude.
“It was her,” someone said softly. She recognized the voice as belonging to the vicar. “She was sent by God,” he whispered. His voice shook, but she heard it anyway. Someone touched her forehead, but she barely felt it. Her body was growing numb. Her heart felt strange in her chest. It hurt.
“Step away from her,” came a deep voice.
Juliette frowned and tried to open her eyes. They wouldn’t obey. She tried again and slowly, her eyelashes fluttered open. A tall blond man stood over her, a very real gun in his right hand.
“Who are you?” the vicar demanded, apparently unwilling to give her up so easily.
“I’m death, old man,” the Adarian replied, flashing him an evil smile before he raised the gun and pulled back the hammer with an ominous click.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“No,” Juliette whispered—begged. “Please.” It was the faintest request, made with a voice that was fading as quickly as her body seemed to be. “No more . . .”
The Adarian glanced down at her. “You really are an amazing woman, Anderson,” he told her. His green eyes flashed for a moment, revealing his paranormal nature. She stiffened where she lay there on the ground.
Then he turned his attention back to the vicar. “I said step away.”
This time, the old man shook his head. “I will not.”
The Adarian pulled his trigger and someone in the crowd screamed. But the gun was turned on the cluster of people then, threatening them into stillness. A few of them even stepped back.
The vicar stumbled and fell. Within a few short seconds, he was motionless on the cold, wet ground. A hundred yards away, the orphanage billowed with heavy black clouds of smoke.
The Adarian gracefully lowered himself to one knee beside Juliette. He placed his gun hand on his knee and his green eyes flashed again as he smiled what truly appeared to be a warm smile. “I knew you would save them.”
“You bastard,” Juliette whispered. She felt used up. The Adarian, on the other hand, possessed not a single sign that he had been struck with lightning only a few short days ago at Slains Castle. The Adarians were frighteningly powerful archangels.
“I know,” he replied easily. And with that, he reached down and grabbed hold of her arm. But as soon as his fingers wrapped around the material of her jacket, he hissed in pain and jerked back.
Juliette almost smiled. It’s the gold, she thought. Gabriel’s gold that he wove into my clothes.
The Adarian looked at his hand—and then lowered it and looked at her. His gaze trailed over her clothing and the gold threads woven within it. “I see,” he said simply.
And then he stood and shoved the gun into the back waistband of his jeans before digging into the inner pocket of his leather jacket. He extracted a pair of black leather gloves. His cruel lips curved into a small, secret smile as he pulled on the gloves. Juliette closed her eyes in hopeless disappointment.
Once more, he bent and this time he lifted her into his arms. She wanted to fight him, but putting out the fire had taken her strength in a way that her powers never had before.
The Adarian stood, taking her with him. He was as tall as Gabriel and she felt a mile from the ground as he turned with her and strode quickly across the field, away from the orphanage and townsfolk.
“You set that fire,” she accused softly. It wasn’t a question.
He didn’t deny it.
Speaking was strange to her in that moment. It was like being in a dream and watching your dream self talk. She couldn’t feel her tongue move; she had no idea how it was working as well as it was. Her skin tingled strangely. She was cold . . . so cold.
“Are you going to kill me?” Her voice was too soft.
It took him a long while to respond. She forced her heavy eyes open and gazed up at him. He looked down into her eyes as if he was searching for something. “There’s no other way,” he told her.
So she had her answer. Juliette tried so hard to think. She was no match for him physically, especially as drained as she was. But did she possess any remaining power at all? Anything? A bolt of lightning? Enough telekinetic energy to lift a gravestone and send it careening into his head?
But it took strength for her to draw breath. And it was getting harder with each passing second.
I’m dying, she thought. It was a chilling realization. She wasn’t even sure where the thought had come from. But she knew it to be true.
Feeling more defeated than she ever had, Juliette dropped her head onto the Adarian’s shoulder. “What’s . . . name?” she asked with the last of her strength. She wanted to know who it was who was going to kill her.
“Daniel,” he told her. He was moving over the moors with her now, carrying her with dizzying, supernatural speed through the ash-laden mists to some unknown destination.
* * *
Gabriel used his magic to create a scarf that he pulled over his nose and mouth as he shot headlong into the building. His clansmen yelled at him to stop. What he was doing was insane. But the women remained silent; there were children inside. Sacrifice was necessary and they knew it.
The first thing he did was find a doorway inside to open a portal to the mansion to get his brothers’ help. But as he rushed through the portal’s opening and into the mansion’s main rooms, frustration gripped him. There was no one in sight, no one answered his call, and he could sense the mansion’s emptiness. They were obviously dealing with the task of retrieving Juliette’s and Eleanore’s parents’ belongings.
Gabriel bit back his anger and hurriedly opened a second portal to make his way back into the orphanage. But before he did, he used telekinesis to overturn every item in the living room and hoped that the mess, along with the lingering scent of fire he was sure would inhabit the mansion’s main rooms, would tip off his brothers or Max that he needed help.
Once he was back and trapped within the hellish haze of red and heat that the children’s home had become, Gabriel began using his ability to change the elements, hardening the building’s flames into pillars of ice. They would melt before the building fell, destroying any evidence of supernatural activity. It was a method he used repeatedly in New York while fighting fires there.
The heat was tremendous. No human could have walked these halls and survived. The building rippled and flowed like a standing river of red and orange. His lungs felt as though they’d captured a stray cinder and caught on fire. The skin of his face and hands threatened to blister. Hurriedly, he formed gloves over his hands and exchanged the scarf he wore for a mask. He would have to get rid of it before exiting the building to assuage suspicion, but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before.
As he moved fro
m room to room, he used his telekinetic power to shove blockages out of the way. He called out to Beth, lifting the mask to bellow her name into the smoke with fierce determination. He refused to allow the fear that sat curdling inside of him to blossom to life. It would only slow him down.
He was growing weaker. He had used so much of his power to create gold, to move objects, and to turn fire to ice. He could sense the strength within him waning and it was a terrifying feeling. He needed all his strength right now. All of it—and then some.
“Beth!” He roared into the already roaring cacophony around him, barely managing to make his archangel’s voice heard over the deathly din.
A small voice finally returned his call, but it was cut off by a fit of coughing. And then there was a scream, high-pitched and childlike. Gabriel raced toward it.
He made it with no time to spare. The little girl was on her stomach beneath a bed that had just burst into fire. Its blankets were awash with fire, its pillow smoldering with the rank smoke of burning feathers. Above them, the rafters groaned and screamed—and then the roof cracked open and the ceiling fell, giving way to the second story above.
Gabriel hurled a bolt of power over the cascading timbers, willing them from fire to ice and trying to shove them away from the bed at the same time. But only part of his power returned his call this time. He felt it leave his body as if someone had ripped the skin off his soul. It peeled away from him unwillingly, leaving him stumbling into the room.
He ignored the weakness, gritting his teeth and moving on. A portion of the fire turned to ice, but the rafters continued to fall, pouring down into the room like a waterfall of flame. The ice was melted on contact and evaporated into painful steam, scalding the air around him.
Gabriel grabbed the nearest length of timber and lifted it, using his inhuman strength to toss it aside. He called out to Beth again. This time, she didn’t answer. Gabriel’s heart fractured in his chest and dread drove him on, infusing his body with the will to lift the second beam and throw it aside. And the third. And the fourth.
Finally, he made it to the smoking, steaming bed and it, too, he tossed aside. Beth lay pressed to the floor in her pajamas, covered in ash and unconscious. Gabriel bent beside her and lifted her into his arms. Then he stood and turned back to the doorway. He would use it to open another portal and be done with this place.
But before he could, the doorway caved in, the door splintered and buckled, and the opening crashed to the floor in a heap of hellish red fire. The hall beyond became nothing but a wall of flames. The air’s heat tripled, searing his lungs even through the mask he wore. No, he thought. No! He turned back to the room. There was no wardrobe. There was no water closet or bathroom. There were no other doors. There was no way out that wouldn’t kill the child. Oh God . . .
And then Gabriel was stumbling back, clutching the child tightly to him and bracing his leg against a smoldering trunk as a wall of hardened air rushed over him, momentarily suffocating him. He gritted his teeth and shook his head, trying to clear it as the strange wave of power passed him over and continued through the room, leaving dying flames and embers in its wake.
What the hell? he thought as he blinked at the smothered fire. The flames were shrinking and black smoke was filling the air with rapid ferocity. Gabriel rushed through the smoke and jumped over the fallen doorframe and door, into the hall beyond. Most of it had been choked by the strange force field and was clear to move through but for the insidious smoke. The hall branched off into a T section, and to the right was the orphanage’s main room and the front door. He couldn’t see through the black clouds that billowed all around him; however, the field of air must have stopped beyond the hall, because Gabriel could hear the flames roaring just beyond it, blocking his escape through the exit.
There were no other doors in the hall. They had all come down in the blaze. Again, he was stuck and the smoke was making him dizzy.
For the second time in as many minutes, a hard wall of air rushed into and over him like a tidal wave. Gabriel stumbled, caught himself, and straightened in time to see what was left of the hellish inferno around him sputter and shrink until all that was left was angry cinders and ash and a sky filled with smoke.
Gabriel didn’t waste any precious time wondering what had happened. He took the bizarre opportunity and ran with it—literally. Clutching the little girl tightly to him, he willed away his mask and raced through the black hall toward the exit he knew was just beyond it. He couldn’t see where he was going; the smoke had all but blinded him. So he sent out pulses of his power in front of him to blow everything that might trip him up out of his way.
In sheer seconds, he made it to the front door and crashed through it and into the open air beyond. Rain was pouring. He was almost instantly drenched. Twenty yards from the face of the building, he fell to his knees and was surrounded at once by clansmen and -women. He laid Beth down on the ground in front of him and pressed his fingers to her neck, searching for a pulse.
As all archangels could, he was able to feel her soul, still there and intact within her body. But he didn’t know how bad the damage was. He wanted to know how much time she had.
Beth’s pulse was erratic and soft, but it was there. She would live if she just got enough air now. Gabriel closed his eyes and called out to Azrael with his mind. He wanted his brothers with him. He could feel evil in the air and knew it was an Adarian who had set the orphanage blazing.
The vampire archangel was most likely an entire continent away. They were separated by an ocean. There was no way he would hear Gabriel. But he tried anyway.
Somewhere nearby, he heard sirens. There would be an ambulance. He stood and looked around at the people who had surrounded him. “See that she gets oxygen,” he ordered. They nodded and crowded in around the child.
Gabriel moved out of the crowd and searched the area. There was a group of people standing about a hundred yards away, at the edge of a large clearing. Others were running back and forth from the building he had just escaped from, trying to put out what little remained of the smoldering blaze.
Gabriel frowned. The air felt strange. There was a static to it that went beyond the heat he felt from the ash and smoke. This was different. His silver eyes flashed and widened and he looked up toward the smoking building one last time. In that horrible moment, he knew what had happened.
Juliette.
She hadn’t listened to him. She’d left the cottage and come after him. And she had somehow put out the fire.
His head snapped back around to the group of people standing by the field. With inhuman speed, he raced across the lot and pushed through the crowd to find himself staring down at the vicar of the nearby church. He was dead. Gabriel could sense it immediately.
“He shot him,” someone in the group said. “He shot him and took the angel. The angel that put out the fire and saved the child.”
Gabriel looked up at the person who had just spoken and then down at a small towheaded boy who peeked through the crowd at Gabriel. Tristan’s clothes hung limply on his body, singed and scorched beyond recognition. But his skin was unmarred, his complexion was healthy, and his hair was full and blond.
The angel that saved the child . . .
“No . . .” Rage rushed through Gabriel, a powerful, insidious drug that boiled his blood and literally turned his vision red. Something inside of him snapped, cracked wide open, and lightning crashed to the ground a quarter of a mile away. He threw his head back and looked up at the heavens. The clouds roiled and churned, throwing lightning to the earth once more, closer this time.
Juliette!
His precious archess had saved them all. And an Adarian had taken her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Daniel placed the archess in the passenger seat of the first car they would take and began buckling her in. She was nearly unconscious, but somehow she managed to open her eyes and stare up at him. She was incredibly stubborn, but that inner strength wouldn’t be enou
gh to save her at this point, and he needed her alive.
Daniel met her gaze, pulled a vial out of the pocket of his jacket, and placed it to her lips. “Drink this.”
She shook her head—once—and turned her head away.
“It’s not poison,” he told her calmly, curling his finger beneath her chin so that she faced him once more. “And it’s not a drug. It’s glucose. You’re fading on me. Now, drink or I’ll inject it into you.”
Juliette hesitated, then parted her lips and allowed the liquid to pour over her tongue. He could imagine it tasted saccharine sweet and slimy and even a bit salty. She swallowed, flinching a little as it made its way down her throat.
“Keep going,” he ordered. She kept swallowing until the vial was empty. “Good girl.” He’d given her enough to keep her awake and alive, but not enough to reinstate any real power on her part. He tossed the empty vial onto the floorboards of the car, slammed her door shut, and got in on his side.
Beside him, Juliette closed her eyes again and let her head drop back on the car seat.
It took only a few short minutes for them to get where he wanted to take them. Daniel easily steered around oncoming cars and suicidal sheep that made their way down from the moors and sauntered uncaringly into the road. Eventually he pulled over into a passing space and he parked the car. The second car he had stolen was there waiting for him in the shadows beneath a few lone trees. He got out and opened Juliette’s door, leaning slightly against the frame. “Can you walk?” he asked. He was testing the waters; he wanted to know exactly how strong she was and what he might have to prepare himself for. He was hoping she wouldn’t be able to stand.
She tried to stand on her own anyway, and he had to admit that he was impressed. Anderson was not a weak woman. She used her hands on the doorframe to pull herself out of the car. Daniel stepped back as she did so, pretending to give her room. But her legs almost immediately gave out and Daniel instantly lifted her into his arms. She gritted her teeth and glared up at him from the cage of his arms. Daniel couldn’t help but grin back at her. He was pleased that she didn’t have a lot of strength to spare. And he certainly didn’t mind any excuse to hold her to him this way. He felt like he was getting away with something just by touching her. He was certain that Gabriel would see it that way.
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