I half expected him to change his mind at the last second but he didn’t. My scream cut off as we exploded out through the glass and plummeted toward the ground. The air whipped at my face, stealing my breath making it impossible to breathe deeply.
The ground rushed up to meet us and I stared down at Belial’s serene expression. His eyes were closed as though our approaching demise meant nothing at all.
Belial flipped us in midair, so that he was above me and I closed my eyes waiting for the impact of my body into the cement beneath us.
It didn’t come. Instead, there was a loud shushing noise and Belial jerked me tighter against his body. Opening my eyes, I stared up at the black leathery wings spread out behind him. The air rushed past us and I glanced down at the rapidly disappearing ground as we climbed into the air.
I was dead. We’d hit the ground and I was dead. It was the only explanation that made any sense.
“Don’t look down,” Belial murmured against my hair.
His words had the opposite effect on me and despite his warning I twisted around once more and stared down at the ground, or lack thereof.
Streamers ran in my vision as my panic and fear overwhelmed me, but with them they brought the blissful oblivion of darkness and I surrendered to it without so much as a whimper.
10
I awoke, aching all over and I couldn’t control the shivering that seemed to wrack my body. Strong arms cradled me and the fresh scent of winter and ice tantalised my senses. Without even opening my eyes, I knew it was Belial who held me.
His chest rose and fell and beneath my ear I could make out the sound of his heart as it beat steadily in his ribcage. Bare skin pressed against my face and when I opened my eyes I quickly realised that I was cradled against his naked torso.
Arms corded with muscle momentarily tightened their grip on me as I tried to push upright.
“Please, let me up,” I said, my voice hoarse.
Exhaustion ate at the corners of my vision and it took every ounce of energy I had to stay awake. I’d never been so tired in my life and the more I tried to move, the more I felt as though I’d been run over by a ten ton truck.
“You need to rest,” Belial said, his voice rumbling up from somewhere deep in his chest. “You’re body hasn’t recovered.”
“Let her up.” I recognised Azael’s voice instantly and my back stiffened.
Belial released me, his arms giving up their hold on my body and my skin mourned his loss. I wanted to wrap myself in his body, feel his skin against mine, and explore every inch of his flesh while he did the same to me.
Pushing up, I brushed my hands back through my hair, and stared at my all too familiar surroundings. We were back in the Aery. Belial was propped against the large leather headboard, his skin glistened in the light and I longed to reach out and brush my fingers against the fine line of hair that trailed down over his chest. My eyes followed the path my fingers itched to trace as the trail of hair disappeared beyond the jeans that sat low on his hips.
“You do have wings,” I said, my mind conjuring the image of the black leathery wings extending out behind Belial’s back.
“Yes.” One small word that set everything I knew to be true on its head.
“When you rescued me from the well they were silver and feathered and when you carried me from my apartment they were—” I cut off and met Belial’s gaze.
“You can say it,” he said, bitterness coating his words.
“Different. Why were they different?”
“You mean ugly.”
I shook my head. “No. I meant what I said. They were both beautiful but I don’t understand how they can change?”
“What you describe as seeing when I rescued you from the well is impossible,” Belial said. “I have not had wings like that since the day I—”
“Since the day you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Closing my eyes, I reached out and dug my fingers into the bed sheets needing something solid to slow the spinning that had started up. He hadn’t denied it as I’d expected and I suddenly wasn’t sure how I was supposed to deal with it all.
“You lied to me,” I said. Anger flooded my veins and I embraced the emotions, allowing the scalding righteousness of it all to push back against the fear and uncertainty that threatened to send me screaming back into unconsciousness.
“I had no choice,” Belial said, his voice pained. I glanced up at him and the sorrow and terror that filled his gaze shot through me, piercing me all the way to my soul. I wanted to comfort him, to reassure him that none of it mattered.
“There’s always a choice,” I said, keeping my voice icy.
“Not for us,” Azael interjected.
Twisting on the bed, I met his silvery gaze head on. “Why? What makes you so God-damned special that a lie isn’t really a lie?”
Azael started to laugh, the sound echoing in the room a bitter sound that hurt my ears and heart to listen to it. The laughter never reached his eyes and it ended as abruptly as it started.
“The truth is a complicated mess,” he said. “You were supposed to know. Your keeper should have told you everything, taught you of your destiny, your gifts…”
“My keeper, you’re kidding right? I have no keeper, this isn’t the dark ages, women have rights and…” Azael cut me off with a shake of his head.
“I’m sorry, it’s an archaic term and just further proof of all the things you do not yet know.”
“So fill me in then. What are you?” I turned toward Belial. “Are you some sort of experiment, or…?”
“I’m one of the fallen,” Belial said. The moment he said the word fallen something clicked inside my head, as though I’d heard the word before.
“Fallen…” I repeated it, sounding the word out, struggling to remember where I’d heard it before.
“Maqatuan,” Belial said, reaching out to trail his finger down over my throat.
“Fallen,” I said again, shivering beneath his touch. I felt so cold but Belial’s touch was like fire on my icy skin. “Like an angel.”
“Yes,” Azael said, and his voice was suddenly so much closer. I turned as he crawled onto the bed next to me.
“Angels aren’t real,” I said, suddenly wishing that Azael would close the distance between us. He didn’t, he remained perched on the end of the bed, his body wound tight like a spring as though he was waiting for something.
“We are,” he said.
“If you’re angels then what am I?” I asked, not really believing the words leaving my mouth. But I already felt crazy; it wasn’t as though speaking the words aloud would make me feel any worse.
“Nephilim,” Belial said.
His declaration momentarily stunned me into silence. It definitely wasn’t something I was expecting.
“Nephilim.” I repeated the word as though I was some kind of parrot. Laughter bubbled up the back of my throat and before I could stop it, the sound spilled out over my lips and I doubled over on the bed. Tears blurred my vision, obscuring the scowl on Azael’s face as he watched me laugh.
“You’re serious aren’t you?” I asked, my laughter dying away.
Azael didn’t answer me but I could tell from the look on his face that he genuinely believed everything he was telling me.
“Why are you telling me now, and not before when I asked?”
“Because the Brotherhood agreed to it,” Azael said, keeping his gaze trained on the bed.
“And who are they?”
“They keep the peace between the supernaturals,” Belial said matter of factly.
“Don’t overwhelm her,” Azael warned, his eyes searching my face.
“Oh, we are way past being overwhelmed,” I said. “We passed overwhelmed when I watched you,” I gestured to Belial as I spoke, “sprout wings.”
He gave me a wry smile but he didn’t say anything else.
“So why am I only finding all of this out now? You said something about me hav
ing a keeper but I had a normal childhood, friends, school…” I sucked in a deep breath. “You know normal.” I swallowed down the bile that crept up the back of my throat as I remembered how my normal world had come to a fiery end. I studied Azael but he tore his gaze away from mine and stared down at the bed covers as though he couldn’t bring himself to answer my question.
Despite seeing Belial’s wings. Despite him throwing us out the top floor window of my apartment building and flying away with me in his arms, I wasn’t sure if I could honestly wrap my head around everything they were telling me. As far as I was concerned the supernatural had only ever existed in the movies or in the heads of fantasy writers. Angels, Nephilim, and everything that came with them didn’t really exist. Couldn’t really exist. Could it?
“The Brotherhood believes your keeper was murdered and you were presumed dead along with her.”
I stared at him, shock rooting me to the spot. “You’re telling me they lost track of me. That I’m special and yet nobody thought to find out if I was alive or dead?”
“We never believed it,” Azael said, raising his face to mine. “I felt your arrival in the city, I’ve been searching for you ever since.”
I swallowed hard, I’d moved to the city a year ago, there had to be a mistake.
“That was a year ago,” I said.
“I’ve been waiting, searching, hoping for much longer than that,” Azael said, moving closer to me.
“We all have,” Belial said and I could suddenly feel the heat from his body against my back.
“But why?” My voice dropped to a whisper.
“Because you are ours. The missing piece to our fallen selves.” Azael’s voice was hoarse.
“Our salvation,” Belial said, his breath hot against my ear.
I closed my eyes and allowed myself to fold back against his body. Nothing else had ever felt more right and my skin hummed with anticipation of their touch.
“If you will have us, we will pledge our lives to you, our bodies, everything we are will be yours,” Azael said, his hand sliding up over my cheek, tilting my head so that my eyes were forced to meet his silver gaze.
His eyes were doing that thing again, where the silver threads that seemed to fill his grey eyes bled out until his eyes were molten silver that glowed in the half-light of the room. And despite it all, despite my desire for the two men before me, something was missing.
Planting my hands firmly into the centre of Azael’s chest, I pushed him gently away, before I crawled to the edge of the bed. I needed to get away from them, put a little distance between us so I could think without my mind being overridden by my desire for their hands, their mouths, on my body.
“This is all just a lot to take in,” I said, sucking down breaths like someone who had been starved of oxygen.
Azael sighed, but I kept my gaze trained firmly on the floor in front of me. If I met his eyes now, I knew I would throw myself back into their arms. I wanted it, needed them and that frightened me. I’d never felt like this before and the feeling was more than a little overwhelming to me. Not to mention the niggling feeling I had that something was missing.
“So my family they were…”
“You were adopted, your keeper was murdered when you were a baby,” Azael said.
“And how come you know so much about all of this?” I asked, twisting around to face him but I didn’t quite meet his eyes. It was cowardly of me but I just couldn’t trust myself around him and I still didn’t know just how much I could trust the two men I’d almost lost myself to just moments before.
“He was one of the Brotherhood,” Belial answered and I watched Azael’s lips thin with displeasure. Clearly, whatever the Brotherhood was, he didn’t want me knowing he had been one of them.
“Do I get to meet this Brotherhood?”
Azael sucked in a breath between his teeth, causing the air to make a low hiss. “Some day, maybe,” he said.
“Why not now? They know more about me than I know about myself,” I said. “It seems only fair that I get to meet them face to face.”
“You will meet them,” he said. “Once you have completed your training. But I warn you now; they will expect things from you that you cannot give them. Yet…”
“And if I can’t ever give it to them?”
“They will kill you,” Belial said, quietly.
“Great,” I said, pushing up from the bed. I crossed the room to the expanse of windows that showed the city spread out below us.
“Anything else you think I should know about?” I asked. “You know, anyone else that wants me dead?”
“Lilith,” Belial said, and I heard the bed shift as he moved from it. I watched his reflection in the glass as he moved over to the bar on the opposite side of the room.
“Who’s that?”
“Lux.”
“Your sister? The one who dumped me in the well…” I cut off, remembering the icy cold that had permeated my bones when she had thrown me into the water. “Let me guess, she’s an angel too?”
“No,” Azael said. “She’s a little different to us.”
“Then what is she?”
“We’re known as Fallen, we can no longer be called angels,” he said, his voice low. “Lilith never fell because she was never an angel to begin with. She was the first wife of Adam, but the Adam we knew was a little different to the one that appears in the Bible.”
“I thought Eve was Adam’s wife.”
Azael smiled. “It’s complicated but Lilith left the Garden of Eden after she refused to serve her husband. Some consider her to be a demon.”
“Demon is one name for her,” Belial said.
I turned to face him slowly, his words sinking in and while he seemed to be speaking English, he may as well have been talking another language for all the sense his words made.
“Demons” I said, suddenly feeling a little unsteady on my feet.
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” Azael said.
“What happened to the other Nephilim?”
“She killed them, or rather Samael killed them because of her jealousy and fear,” Belial said, from his position at the bar. He had a glass of something amber coloured and without getting a sniff of it, I guessed it was a scotch. Noticing the way it glistened with ruby highlights as he sloshed it around his tumbler, I changed my mind and decided it was some kind of brandy. At least working in the bar had made me good for one aspect of the new life I’d found myself thrust into. Not that being able to recognise expensive spirits would be much help beyond an ability to make a mean cocktail for them.
“Why?” It felt like a stupid question, one I should be able to guess the answer to but I was more than done with guessing the truth. I wanted concrete answers, if I was who they said I was then I at least deserved that much.
“There can be only one Queen,” Azael said. “The most powerful have always battled for the top position. And Lilith is powerful, made all the more so by her connection with the angel Samael.”
“Well if that’s true, then why are you here with me? Why aren’t you with her?”
Belial wrinkled his nose in disgust and shook his head before he tipped the glass up on his head and swallowed down the amber liquid.
“What my brother is so eloquently trying to convey is that Lilith’s tastes have long since deviated with what we and others of the Brotherhood wanted.”
“She’s a tyrant, unchallenged for six millennia,” Belial said, his voice laced with barely concealed hatred.
“And why do I feel as though you expect me to do something about that?”
Azael caught my gaze then, his silver eyes filled with desire and a longing that sent shivers of delight sparking through my body.
“We are not hers, we are yours if you will take us?”
“You see, that’s where you start to lose me,” I said, and the two men exchanged confused glances. “All this taking, and owning, is not really my thing. I don’t want to own anyone and I don’t wish t
o be owned by anyone either…”
“If you don’t she will kill you,” Belial said, pushing away from the bar and crossing the floor toward me.
“Wait, you said something about completing my training?”
Azael smiled and it lit up his face. “I was wondering when you’d pick up on that. The brotherhood have agreed you should attend the academy until you are proficient in your abilities and know what duties are expected of you.”
I didn’t like the way he used the word duties. It made my skin crawl and sounded utterly unpleasant.
“And if I say no?”
“Haven’t we been down this path before?” Azael sighed. “This time there is no choice. You must learn or you will die.”
“I order you to let me go.”
Azael shook his head. “That I cannot agree too.
“Cannot or will not?”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “Both work.”
“But before when I made it an order you had to obey me…”
“Things change, Harper. While we would be yours if you would have us. We are not yet bound to you and so I take my orders from a higher authority.”
I glanced in Belial’s direction he shrugged and gave me a lopsided smile.
“He’s right. Until things change there’s nothing we can do and if your orders directly contravene the ones we have from the Brotherhood then we have to fall into line with them.”
“So I’m really going back to school?”
Belial nodded.
“We all are,” Azael said with a heavy sigh.
“Great. Just bloody great.”
11
A short while later, showered and changed, I stood in near the elevator and chewed my lip. Why was I so nervous? It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been to school before, so what was so different about this time?
Glancing across the room, I caught sight of two very large and imposing reasons for my nerves. Coming to grips with everything that had happened over the last forty-eight hours wasn’t easy. The fact that I was still standing at all was a miracle but I had a feeling that if shit got any weirder I might wind up curled into a little ball.
Fallen Angel: An Urban Fantasy Reverse Harem Bully Romance (Dark Hearts Academy Book 1) Page 7