Azrael
No one challenges my word.
He focused on that truth and whipped up a futile rage at her nerve. Who was she to question him? The Archangel Azrael, who answered to no one?
But his fury was hollow, without fire or direction, because it was nothing but a brittle lithosphere that hid a seething mantle of denial.
The stark, unvarnished fact was Sakarbaal had not sent Rowan to seduce him.
He’d misunderstood Nico when they’d confronted each other in the club and taken Nate’s careless comment as fact. But Rowan hadn’t been genetically engineered specifically to entrap him. Sakarbaal hadn’t enhanced her with any preternatural pheromone designed to enslave Azrael’s libido or blind his judgment.
The genetic modification the vampire had wrought was by selectively breeding only the beautiful and intelligent. That’s all Nico had said.
There were no intangible threads binding him to her side. He should have been able to dispose of her without a second thought in the Tudor inn that night. Should have eliminated her with detached compassion when he’d discovered her wretched state in the forest.
There was no ungodly reason why he should have flayed his pride by seeking Nico’s help.
So why the fuck had he?
An answer hovered on the far horizon, hazy, insubstantial. Terrifying.
“Azrael?” Her voice pierced his mind and she looked so damned innocent, freshly scrubbed from her shower, that he could scarcely comprehend she was the same woman he’d taken, in rank desperation, to the vampire.
“I don’t need to explain myself to you.” Deep in his gut a knot twisted, similar to the panic that had gripped him when he’d thought her about to die. But she was nowhere near death now. Yet his muscles tightened with a dread he couldn’t name.
She didn’t flinch at his autocratic tone or the blazing glare he arrowed her way. Instead she gave a faint frown, as though she saw through his façade to the turmoil beneath. Damn her. Why did she never behave the way any other mortal would?
Because she isn’t any other mortal. She wasn’t even fully mortal. She’s Rowan.
It seemed time slowed as she reached for him. He should move back, knock her arm aside enter her mind and render her unconscious.
With infinite tenderness she pressed the palm of her hand over his heart. She has no hold over me. There was no reason why he should want, more than anything, to cover her hand with his. To pull her close and lose himself once again in her wondrous, welcoming body.
“Yes.” Her voice was gentle like she soothed a child, not contradicted an archangel. “You do need to explain yourself to me.”
Awe collided with the denial and the maelstrom of emotions that broiled in his chest and sizzled through his veins.
“Do you, a dhampir, set yourself up as my judge?” But there was no rancor in the words. She was a dhampir. If she was not, then she wouldn’t be Rowan.
“I only want to understand.”
The last thing he wanted was to relive that night of savage butchery. But against his will the stench of rotting humanity flooded his senses and he recalled, as though it had been mere moments ago instead of almost a millennium, how he’d believed their destruction was a mercy. A release from their pitiful existence.
Yet he hadn’t felt that way when he’d discovered Rowan in the forest.
The vampires had fought back, until they realized he was no ordinary hunter. And then they had fled, leaving their ill-equipped offspring behind. But had all those dhampirs been sired by Sakarbaal? Had he slaughtered Rowan’s half-blood siblings?
His soul recoiled from the possibility, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. He answered to no one. But it was a hollow assertion. Because Rowan wasn’t no one, and gods damn him, he couldn’t lie to her. Even by omission.
“I could have left the dhampirs alive.” The admission seared his soul. He’d never before acknowledged there had been any other choice that night. “But I destroyed them. Without their master what would they have done? How would they have survived? Would they have swarmed into the surrounding villages? Caused more carnage and hysteria among the superstitious humans?”
She was silent as if she, too, was reliving that long-ago night. And then she spoke.
“So what you did, you did out of a sense of mercy?”
He heard the thread of hope in her voice. How easy it would be to simply say yes. She had given him an out. He could take it and she’d forgive him.
He, an archangel, craved the forgiveness of a dhampir. The universe truly was a fucked-up bitch.
Her beautiful green eyes stared at him, unblinking. If he told her his actions had been driven by nothing but compassion, she’d believe him without question.
She would be his and willingly remain with him for the rest of her life. If he admitted the truth, the hope in her eyes would die and she’d demand her freedom.
And he had no intention of ever letting her go.
He’d already crushed his pride into the mud to save her life. How could he risk sharing the truth, when he knew it would forever tear them apart?
But in the end, there was no choice.
“No.” The word tore from his throat, a bitter denial and with it went every hope that Rowan would ever again look at him the way she did now. “I knew what they might do if left to fend for themselves, but that wasn’t the only reason why I cut them down that night.”
She didn’t move but tension vibrated through her and he imagined her fingers, pressed against his chest, closing around his heart and squeezing without mercy.
“Then why?” It was a whisper and there was no censure in her voice. No underlying contempt or disgust. How low had he sunk that he could find cold comfort in such self-delusion?
“Because they should never have been conceived.” His voice was harsh, and he waited for her to recoil but she remained immobile. “They were loathed and feared by humans and despised by vampires.” He remembered her earlier accusation and the words ate into his heart. “Most of all they offended my sensibilities.”
This time the silence slashed through him like the blade of his katana. The katana he had used to slay those long-ago dhampirs.
“Yes,” she whispered. As if he had just confirmed something she had known, something she’d been unsure as to whether he would admit. What the fuck am I thinking? She could know no such thing. Yet she didn’t retreat and before he could stop himself he wrapped his wings around her, imprisoning her.
Still she didn’t move.
“Dhampirs have always been on the outside,” she said. Did she think she was telling him something he didn’t know? Had she not yet processed the fact he had slain her kind in cold blood because of what they were? “I always believed we could never truly fit in with vampires or humans.” She hesitated, before taking a deep breath. “I was wrong. Meg risked everything to try and find me and I’ve discovered that some vampires do love their half-blood offspring.”
A chill crawled over his arms. Gods, surely she wasn’t deluding herself that Sakarbaal cared about her? How could she imagine that, when the evil bastard had sent her on what would have been in any other circumstances, a suicide mission?
“Sakarbaal is incapable of love.”
Rowan frowned. But she didn’t pull her hand from his chest, and her fingers branded his flesh with the condemnation she still hadn’t flung in his face.
“I’m talking about Nico,” she said, and he stared at her, incomprehension thudding through his brain. Why the fuck were they talking of Nico? “When I accepted his offer of blood, he showed me his memories from that time. He had a child with a human—a human he cared for. He wanted their child.” Awe threaded through her words, as if she had never imagined such a thing could be possible. She wasn’t the only one.
Nico had sired a dhampir? That he had wanted?
His ironclad perception of the hierarchy of creation cracked. Not all dhampirs were conceived in hate.
Dread gripped him. He’d been right about one t
hing. The loathing emanating from the vampire had been more than the antipathy of two different species’ inherent distrust of each other.
It had been personal.
“He hates me because I killed his—” The words locked in his throat. Dhampir? Offspring? “Child that night.” But if Nico had loved his child why had he allowed it to become feral? Was that the fate of every dhampir since the beginning of time? Was Rowan’s mysterious amber acid the only magic elixir that could change the destiny of her race?
“He does hate you,” she said, regret weaving through the words although he couldn’t imagine why. “But not as much as he hates Sakarbaal. He told Nico his human and dhampir had died in childbirth. It was only years later, when Nico returned to Romania on the night you faced Sakarbaal, that he discovered the truth. You let Sakarbaal escape, and it destroyed Nico’s revenge.” She shuddered, and instinctively he took her hand. She didn’t push him aside. “He saw firsthand how his beloved lord would use anyone in any way to further his plans, no matter what the cost.”
No wonder the two ancients had parted ways almost a millennium ago. Deep inside, unwelcome empathy for Nico unfurled.
What a fucking mess.
Rowan’s scent weaved a seductive trail through his senses. The skin of her hand was silky-soft beneath his fingers. He dragged in a deep breath to clear his head and instead her irresistible fragrance invaded and conquered.
She wove no spell, yet he was bewitched. There was nothing he could do to escape, but he wouldn’t name the reason why.
Not now. Not ever. Maybe then, the acidic fear eating him alive would simply… die.
“What were Sakarbaal’s plans?” Why wasn’t she glaring at him with contempt or worse? Didn’t she understand what he’d told her? The reason why he’d slaughtered those dhampirs in the past?
“Nico didn’t show me.”
He’d discuss it with the vampire tomorrow, when he returned—with Nate’s assistance—to find out what the Echelon had discovered about the amber acid.
But that was tomorrow. He still had to get through tonight. With Rowan.
Chapter 31
Rowan
Azrael’s heartbeat beneath Rowan’s palm was a strangely comforting tattoo, and his wings surrounded her in a mystical shimmer. But despite how his fingers entwined with hers, and the way he looked at her as if he never wanted this moment to end, she had the certain conviction he’d shut himself off from her.
A part of her—a tiny part—wanted to shove him away. Wanted to condemn him for the part he’d played in the massacre so many centuries ago. But it was a faint, insubstantial desire. Because he had told her the truth.
He needn’t have. She would have believed him if he’d told her he’d killed the dhampirs purely as an act of mercy, no matter how the whispering voices in her head mocked her.
The creatures she’d seen from both Sakarbaal and Nico’s memories were nothing like the dhampirs she knew. God, she might have slaughtered them herself to end their suffering, even if the act tore her heart to shreds.
For one heart-stopping moment, raw vulnerability had glowed in Azrael’s eyes. And she’d known. It didn’t matter what he told her. Nothing could change the way she felt about him.
But he hadn’t lied to her. For that alone she might have loved him.
If she didn’t already.
“I’ll find out,” he said, and it took her a second to remember they’d been talking about Sakarbaal’s plans. His fingers slid along the back of her hand, a light, barely there touch. A touch that branded her his for all time. “I believe he’s captured another phoenix. Whatever he’s planning, I’ll stop him, Rowan.”
She cupped his jaw. His five o’clock shadow grazed her palm and for the first time she saw just how exhausted he looked. As though he hadn’t slept in days. And he hadn’t, because he’d been hunting her.
Before he saved her life.
A strange pain compressed her heart. Did Azrael, Archangel of Death, even realize how much his actions gave away?
“We’ll stop him.” Her emphasis was slight but firm. All her life she had lived in the shadow of the vampire lord, the oldest of the Ancients. It had been an unspoken fact that if not for him, she would’ve died in the gutter. All her life she’d harbored a deep hatred of the unknown father whose tainted blood she shared. It turned her stomach to know the truth of her conception but now she did she owed it to her mother—to Lily—to all Sakarbaal’s victims—to exact vengeance.
She had no doubts the order to murder Steven had come direct from the vampire lord. Had he carried out the assassination himself? The blood-soaked memory flashed through her mind, and a shudder slithered along her spine. Steven would be avenged.
Azrael’s fingers gripped hers. “I’m sorry.” The words tore from him, tortured slivers of his soul. “For all of it, Rowan.”
He’d never know how much his regret meant to her. But although he’d played his part, he wasn’t to blame for everything that had happened. Maybe it was time to share her own guilt.
“This is Sakarbaal’s doing.” Her voice was hoarse, and her throat ached with unshed tears. “All of it rests on his shoulders.” She hitched in a ragged breath. Azrael deserved to know the whole truth. “Dhampirs were forbidden to become involved with humans. But it didn’t stop me. I thought we were invincible.”
His gaze sharpened. “You fell in love?”
“I was sixteen. Steven was a student, working part time at a café I used to go to. He made me feel like a human.”
Azrael’s jaw tensed. “Sakarbaal killed him.”
“Because I wanted a normal life. Because he was with me.”
“No.” Azrael’s harsh denial cut through the guilt twisting through her. “Sakarbaal murdered Steven to consolidate his power over you. You’re not responsible for his actions.”
“I know that, but—”
“You just told me this was Sakarbaal’s doing. That it all rests on his shoulders. It doesn’t absolve me from my actions, Rowan, but you didn’t do anything wrong. All you did was love. Don’t let that vampire tarnish those memories.”
For seven years she’d lived with the knowledge that Steven would still be alive if not for her. But although she’d never get over the grief of his untimely death, Azrael was right.
She wasn’t the one who had Steven’s blood on her hands.
But she would still avenge his murder.
Azrael’s breathtaking wings drifted across her bare arms. “You need to rest.”
Each glorious, individual feather caressed her skin as he slowly folded his wings, shattering the iridescent cocoon that had shut out the rest of the world. His fingers trailed the length of her arm and somehow she knew that once he stepped back from her, he would never again return.
“No, I don’t.” Just hours ago, she’d been hovering on the brink of death. But with the potent cocktail of amber acid and Nico’s powerful blood sizzling through her veins the last thing she wanted to do right now was sleep.
Unless it was with Azrael.
“Rowan.” There was a hint of warning in his voice. But she heard the desperation beneath. His iron-clad control was in danger of collapsing if he didn’t put distance between them.
He still wanted her. He cared for her. But how deeply did he resent those facts? Was that the reason he pulled back? Or was it because he genuinely thought that she needed to rest?
She had no more secrets from him. He knew the worst and he hadn’t struck her down. What did she have to lose if she probed a little deeper, forced him to face the consequences of what he’d done?
“You could have left me to die in the forest.” She cupped his jaw, her thumb gently caressing the rough texture of his skin. He didn’t respond, not verbally, but his jaw clenched beneath her palm and the golden flecks in his eyes glittered. She gazed, transfixed by the phenomenon, until she realized his hand had fallen from her arm and he was no longer touching her. “Why did you save my life?”
The tips of
his wings brushed against her arms, a soft, sensuous caress yet unimaginable power vibrated through each shimmering feather. It reinforced the knowledge that when it came to Azrael, her preternatural powers meant nothing.
“Sakarbaal used you for his own ends.” There was a harsh undertow to his words. “Whether you were in league with him or not, you didn’t deserve that fate. Besides, I prefer to mete out my own brand of justice on my enemies.”
“I’m not your enemy.” She trailed the tips of her fingers over his breathtaking wings. They were magnificent, incredible, and she’d wanted to touch them from the moment he’d first displayed them to her.
His feathers rippled in a sensual response, causing tremors to lick over her fingers and along her arm. She knew she should tear her gaze from the shimmering iridescence, that she owed him the courtesy of holding his gaze, but it was no good.
His wings mesmerized. And she was helpless beneath their mystical thrall.
“No.” There was a hollow note to the word, as if the knowledge she wasn’t his enemy was somehow worse than if she had been. The despair in his voice was enough to break her besotted enchantment and she looked at him. He was staring down at her and for one heart stopping second, she saw the promise of eternity in his eyes.
It vanished instantly. But it was enough. Whatever internal battle he fought couldn’t disguise one thing.
She meant more to him than he was willing to face.
There were so many things they needed to talk about. But they could talk forever, and he would never tell her what she really wanted to hear. And although nothing could change the way she felt about him she couldn’t find the nerve to tell him.
But she could show him.
Slowly she began to unbutton his shirt. His eyes darkened and one hand covered hers. “Don’t.”
She offered him a small smile. “You don’t mean that.”
His fingers curled around her wrist. But instead of wrenching her from him he merely held her in a loose embrace, and his thumb skimmed her pulse in a provocative caress.
Nemesis: Paranormal Angel Romance (Realm of Flame and Shadow Book 2) Page 21