The Prince of Devils was even wearing a pearl-encrusted codpiece, of such magnificent proportions it would have put even King Henry VIII to the blush. Zamiel smothered an inappropriate urge to laugh.
“Come to gloat at my downfall?” Zamiel asked conversationally in old Sumerian. Silently he ordered his mortal heart to slow its mad gallop. “Because I certainly didn’t summon you. I’m mortal for good now, or so I’m told. And I’ve never been happier.”
“Thou art a most stubborn, disrespectful angel,” Lucifer said calmly, crossing his booted legs. “Too stubborn to summon Me, as I must now acknowledge. But it would be rank hypocrisy to criticize thee for that.”
Zamiel laughed shortly, but didn’t relax. The Prince of Devils had manifested for a reason. And Zamiel himself was now mortal, vulnerable to the Devil’s ploys in a way he’d never been before.
Keeping the movement casual, he reached for his discarded shirt and shrugged into it. He’d feel more secure in his clothes, rapier belted at his hip, even knowing any mortal blade was useless against the old serpent.
“If I am stubborn and disrespectful, you can thank yourself for that. You made me in your image.” He pulled on his breeches, doing his best to maintain a modicum of decency beneath his father’s interested gaze.
“Tell Me it was not a gift to be graced with My beauty on this plane and in thy wooing.” Lucifer smiled. “I’ll call thee a liar. But time is short, Zamiel. The Veil is rising, and this place is anathema to all angels, even the fallen. This night shall I lie to thee but once.”
Irritably Zamiel fought into his jerkin, less vulnerable with the hard leather to armor his mortal flesh.
“Why lie to me at all, Father? Or, if lie you must, why warn me when you do? I can do nothing now to advance your aims in Heaven. Those gates are closed to me.”
His father reclined to study the graying heavens, but not before Zamiel saw the flash of deep pleasure that darkened his gaze to crimson. “Thou didst take thy time in falling. I expected thee to bury thyself between a woman’s thighs—or a man’s—long since. But let us not quibble over the particulars. Thou hast done well.”
“You could have told me when I loved a woman, it meant I would fall,” Zamiel muttered. “But I suppose that was one of your lies. A lie of omission, eh, Father?”
Unoffended, Lucifer laughed.
“And your other lie—for you warned me to expect two—would have been when you told me Linnet was irrelevant.” Grimly he tugged on his high boots. “She’s been my salvation, Father. When this business with Morrigan is finished, I’ve every intention of marrying her—Linnet, I mean, not the witch—siring the requisite half-dozen offspring, being the good diligent toiling sort of master she inexplicably seems to want, and otherwise devoting my life to making her gloriously happy.”
If she’ll have me. On that count, admittedly, he was less than certain. He was far from the pious, plodding prig of a Catholic she claimed to seek. But no need sharing that niggling little worry with Lucifer.
His father’s lids dropped lazily, eyes narrowing to slits of gleaming scarlet. “What of the discord in Heaven?”
Zamiel suffered a stab of guilt, but knew better than to show it. “Angels do nothing in haste—unless they’re you. Or me. They’ll still be struggling with—whatever this is—when I get there. You know it’s true.”
His heart lightened. “Until then, I’m mortal. I belong with a mortal woman.”
The Prince of Devils shrugged. “Wallow in her charms until thou art thoroughly bored with the humdrum banality of mortal life—a condition which, I assure thee, will not be long in coming. When it does, thou shalt summon Me.”
“Thought I was too stubborn for that.” He couldn’t seem to resist provoking the old serpent, no better behaved now than when he’d been divine and untouchable.
The scent of scorched wood sharpened. “Thou art no longer Chief Ruler of the Fifth Heaven, but Prince of Hell. Thy throne at My side awaits thee.”
Stupendous. No doubt Linnet will be delighted beyond measure to receive a marriage proposal from the Prince of Hell. Glumly Zamiel buckled his sword belt around his hips.
Armed and armored, he felt several degrees closer to his usual invincible self, though he knew that for a dangerous illusion. Time to reject his father’s overtures, renounce Satan and all that, just as good Christian mortals were called to do.
He tugged at the knuckle-sized silver pentagram that weighed his finger. But the ring clung, unaccountably stubborn, to his hand.
“Father, for Heaven’s sake,” he said crossly. “You might as well take this thing. I’m never going to use it. I’d like some chance of returning to Heaven when I die. Don’t take offense, but ruling Hell at your side isn’t part of the script.”
“Keep it.” Lucifer stretched his arms over his head and smiled contentedly at the heavens. “Wear it with pride, for thy sigil as Prince of Hell. Believe me when I say, My son, that someday thou shalt require it.”
“Unlikely.” Grimacing, Zamiel left off twisting at the thing. If Lucifer wanted it on his finger, he’d have to slice his hand off to get rid of it.
Overhead, the sky had reddened. A crimson stain spread across the heavens, heralding the sun’s return. Frowning, he climbed to his feet and turned to scan the meadow in all directions. For a woman tending physical necessities, Linnet had been gone overlong.
Suddenly, Lucifer inhaled deeply and coiled up from the ground. On hands and knees, he scented the air like a hunting hound. His tongue flicked out to taste the air—the forked serpent’s tongue he normally took care to hide behind his teeth.
When the Prince of Devils met Zamiel’s worried gaze, his eyes glowed like banked coals.
“The sweet perfume of fear,” he breathed, voice vibrating with barely suppressed hunger. “Can thou smell it, My son? The air is rank with it.”
Cold fingers of dread tiptoed down Zamiel’s nape, standing his hair on end. He didn’t often choose to dwell upon the fact that his Father—his only friend again, he supposed—was a monster whose unearthly beauty was merely a convenient disguise. Now he found himself uncomfortably aware of the danger.
And Linnet’s prolonged absence had become a matter of active worry.
“Where is she, Father?” he said tightly, tugging on his gauntlets.
The fallen angel tilted back his head, closed his eyes in ecstasy, and whispered, “In Hell.”
His heart seized, as though clenched in an iron fist. “Where—?”
The fabric of night shredded with Linnet’s distant scream.
Chapter Seventeen
Sprawled on the beach beneath Jasper’s crushing weight, ears ringing from his careless blow, Linnet writhed like a creature possessed.
All her life she’d cowered before this brute’s cruelty and despised herself for it—Linnet the mouse, the meek, the coward. This time, she fought him with every particle of strength she possessed, panic roaring in her ears like a rockslide. Her throat burned and the air rang with her screams.
“Shut up, ye little slut.” Her brother clamped a filthy paw over her mouth.
She sank her sharp teeth like a cornered animal, and knew an animal’s savage pleasure when the salty taste of blood burst on her tongue. He yelped and wrenched away.
Seizing her moment, Linnet levered herself onto hands and knees and scrambled across the sand. Hard hands gripped her ankles and sent her flying. Viciously she kicked back at him, using her heels, and felt the satisfying thud of impact. Bone crunched, and he howled.
“Bitch! I’ll kill ye for that!” Steel rasped as he drew his blade.
Jasper Norwood had never been a man given to idle threat.
Desperately she rolled away from him, and his long-knife bit deep into the sand beside her head. She caught a crazed glimpse of her brother looming over her, blood streaming from his broken nose and a jagged slice across his brow.
Wildly she flung a handful of sand into his eyes.
As he growled and knuckle
d his eyes, she scurried back, sliding on her bottom across the sand. But her foot caught in her torn skirt, bringing her down hard.
Jasper towered over her, heavy features twisted in a rictus of rage, the terrible knife weaving between them.
“Ye stupid little whore, I’ll slit yer gullet and stuff yer innards down yer throat. And then I’ll fuck ye—”
A lithe black shadow struck him like a panther, a river of night-dark hair streaming in his wake. The two forms went flying, limbs entangled, her brother’s foul obscenities filling the air.
His attacker was utterly silent, lethal with purpose, but Linnet needed no words to know her rescuer.
Zamiel.
A maelstrom of emotion churned through her. Overwhelming relief that he’d come to save her, mixed with sickening terror for his safety. She’d seen Jasper kill the day he caught a poacher, penniless and starving, stealing a deer from their lands. Jasper had butchered and dressed the poor wretch like a doe, and made his terrified sister watch. Afterward, she hadn’t spoken for a week.
Before her, their two bodies churned the sand, struggling for dominance. Panting, she clawed to her feet and stood frozen, knowing any intervention on her part could well get Zamiel killed.
And no force under Heaven would induce her to leave him.
While she stood mired in a paralysis of indecision, Zamiel twisted free and coiled to his feet, his torn cloak dangling from Jasper’s fist. Her brother snarled and flung the fabric aside as he lurched upright. Thrusting the knife in its sheath, he unslung the wicked axe strapped across his back.
Linnet swallowed a moan of sheer terror.
But Zamiel of Briah, impossible creature that he’d always been, merely laughed and unsheathed his rapier. Crouching light-footed on the treacherous sand, he circled his enemy, giving Linnet a glimpse of his lean features. She expected to see his eyes burning with an angel’s killing rage, the black flames dancing on his brow. But nothing about him at that moment seemed anything more than human.
“The missing brother, I presume?” he asked conversationally.
Jasper snarled.
“I do believe,” Zamiel said, “I’m going to take exceptional delight in relieving your foul-smelling carcass of its soul. I know someone in Hell who’s going to be very glad indeed to see you.”
A man of few words, her brother swung his axe in a vicious sideways swipe. The blow nearly disemboweled Zamiel as he leaped back, light on his feet as a sparrow. Deftly Zamiel parried the blow with his rapier and darted in. His sharp point pinked Jasper in the thigh.
Her brother bellowed and brought his axe around, faster than she’d thought possible, in a whirling one-handed stroke. It clanged against Zamiel’s rapier as he danced aside.
Grim and silent with purpose, Zamiel circled the lumbering colossus with his deadly axe and lunged to deliver short stabbing ripostes. Anything above the waist ricocheted harmlessly from Jasper’s steel-plated jerkin, the rapier not heavy enough to puncture armor. But his deadly thrusts at her brother’s legs were more effective. Rivulets of dark blood streaked his breeches and spattered the sand.
“I’ll crush ye like a gnat.” Jasper’s axe whirled in slow warning between them. “But I won’t kill ye right off. I’ll make ye watch while she moans for me.”
“That seems unlikely.” Zamiel darted in, trying the other man’s defense, and nearly lost his hand at the wrist to Jasper’s whistling parry.
Linnet voiced a small scream, quickly stifled.
Jasper’s ugly laugh grated. “Was it worth it—rutting between my sister’s legs?”
The fire of battle in Zamiel’s eyes flickered. For a heartbeat, his gaze shifted to Linnet.
“Worth more than you’ll ever know,” he said soberly.
Her brother might not have Zamiel’s speed or his deftness with words, but he possessed a low cunning. Seizing the moment when his enemy’s attention shifted, Jasper bulled forward, the beak of the axe thrust before him like a sword.
Almost too late, Zamiel fired into motion, springing back. The retreat trapped him against a fallen boulder beside the cliff. Overhead the pink glow of sunrise spilled across the sky.
Silhouetted against the light, an armored figure rose into view, a bow stretched taut in his grip.
“Zamiel!” she screamed. “Get down.”
As smoothly as if they’d rehearsed it, Zamiel dove and rolled across the sand. A heartbeat later, an arrow hissed through the air and sank into the sand.
Jasper swore at the archer. “Too soon, ye clarty imbecile!”
To Linnet’s utter horror, the archer drew another arrow. Zamiel rolled smoothly to his feet and darted for cover.
“Linnet,” he called. “Run!”
Galvanized into motion, she shook off the dreadful paralysis and spun toward the meadow path. A new figure emerged to block the way, broadsword gripped in his fist, and grinned at her through bearded jowls.
Despair spiraled through her. They’d been cut off from their only escape—unless they swam. In which case they would surely drown.
They’d underestimated Jasper. What he couldn’t win by his own strength, he’d accomplish through sheer numbers.
“We’re trapped!” she cried, fighting to keep the terror from her voice.
Jasper was stalking Zamiel, whose defense was greatly hindered by the need to keep the scattered boulders between himself and the archer. Whenever he appeared, arrows hissed around him. Thus hampered, Zamiel was forced to rely upon strength for his defense, which placed him at a distinct disadvantage.
Desperate, Linnet scanned their surroundings for any option. The surf crashed on the shore, too wild to risk, even if she’d known how to swim. The cliff was far too steep to scale. Past the outcropping where Zamiel fought for his life, the dark mouth of the cave yawned—the way they’d come to Tintagel, their only hope of shelter from the deadly rain of arrows.
Linnet snatched up a handful of her torn skirts and a fist-sized rock. Jasper’s broad back loomed before her, boots mired in hissing surf as he fought to drive Zamiel into the open.
Her heart hammered against her lungs. She forced her trembling legs into motion and sprinted across the beach, sand flying in her wake.
A rocky outcropping towered before her, the open sand before the cave just beyond. Jasper was struggling, his back still turned, to battle his way past whatever fierce defense Zamiel mounted behind the rock. Linnet cocked her arm, took aim, and hurled the chunk of rock at her brother’s head.
Though she lacked the strength for a killing blow, the rock struck him squarely. Jasper bellowed and staggered. She sped past without slowing and screamed for Zamiel.
“To the cave!”
Until now, the archer had either been ordered not to harm her, or failed to view her as a threat. She realized her status had altered when an arrow hissed past her. She ducked her head and ran faster, the skin between her shoulders tight and itching, expecting any instant to feel a cruel shaft bite into her exposed back.
Behind her, rapid footsteps crunched across the sand. Without looking, she knew they were Zamiel’s, for her brother had never in his life been so fleet. A second arrow sliced past her ear, so close she could feel wind brush her cheek as it passed.
Then the cave gaped before her. She darted inside, feet sinking deep into wet sand. At high tide, the place had been underwater, and the stones were still wet and gleaming with sea wrack. As her frantic gaze strained to penetrate the darkness, the rising sun slid through the entrance to paint a swath of ruddy light across the sandy floor.
Vaguely this confused her. Surely the mouth of the cave faced west, away from the rising sun. Unless the Veil had shifted while they slept, and they were once more in the Faerie realm...
As she hesitated, willing her eyes to adjust before plunging blindly into darkness, Zamiel burst into the cave, disheveled and caked with sand, but whole. With a cry of profound relief, she hurled herself into his arms.
For a heartbeat, his arm closed around
her waist, dragging her hard against him for one of his hot dark kisses.
Linnet squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in his neck, tasting salt on his skin, smelling the comforting aroma of tobacco—a rare, exotic luxury from a distant land, like the man himself.
This is love, she marveled, every sense singing at the miracle of his presence.
He’d said he was leaving. But what if she asked him to stay?
“Linnet,” he said hoarsely. Rough voices shouted from the beach outside. “I think I got the bastard—pricked the blood vessel in his thigh. He’s bleeding out like a butchered pig. But I can’t...can’t tell if he’s dying. I’m not an angel any longer, you understand me?”
“Ye’ll always be my guardian angel,” she said tremulously, “just as ye are right now.”
He shook his head in frustration, slim brows knotting with urgency. But there was no time for whatever he meant to tell her. Outside, heavy footfalls crunched on the sand. Whatever had happened to Jasper, his ruffians were still out there. Who knew what her brother had promised them?
Zamiel seemed to have the same thought, for he dragged her out of the revealing spill of light—barely in time. An arrow sliced through the opening and clattered against the rock.
“Right,” he said grimly, stationing himself behind a boulder that overlooked the entrance. “I may be mortal, but I can still use a sword. I can hold this passage until Doomsday, if we felt like waiting that long. Can you search about a little, love? See if there’s another way out?”
Her soul thrilled at the casual endearment, though she told herself sternly not to be foolish. He’d always been glib as a poet. He could speak of love and make it mean nothing.
As she stepped away from his beguiling warmth, he passed her his dagger. “Stay away from the light.”
You’re my light, now and forever, she wanted to tell him. But now was not the time, with Jasper’s ruffians in a rare swivet outside.
Laura Navarre - [The Magick Trilogy 02] Page 28