She’d come to a stop at the back of the crypt, her eyes glued to one of the pair of names carved there. “This one,” she said. She spoke so quietly, he barely heard her. Gabriel moved to her side and looked down at the name. AGATHA MACDONALD, it read. BELOVED WIFE AND DAUGHTER.
“Wha’ of her, little one?” he asked, placing his hand gently at her back.
“She was my ancestor,” Juliette replied. Her tone was still rather flat, distant, and cold.
“Aye?” he asked. He tried to search his memory. Had he known Agatha MacDonald? She had lived such a long time ago. Her name sounded vaguely familiar, but far away. The dates on the stone marked her as having died very young. Most likely, she had lived here during one of his twenty- or thirty-year stints away from Scotland.
“Yes,” Juliette said. “And that’s not all,” she continued. Slowly, deftly, Juliette raised her hand and placed her fingers to the name carved into the weathered rock. Her fingertips traced the letters with reverence. “Agatha MacDonald . . . ,” she said, “was me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Juliette rested on Gabriel’s couch, staring into the fire that crackled merrily in his stone hearth. His cottage was nearly right on the shore; she could hear the waves crashing outside and the gulls crying in a muted frenzy.
Gabriel hadn’t wanted her to walk the short distance to his home after she had spent so much of her energy healing him—and calling lightning on the Adarian. So he’d taken her to the front door of the church and used it to open another quick portal directly into his cottage in Rodel. Once there, he had wasted no time in sitting her down, wrapping her in blankets, and making her a big mug of really strong and creamy tea. It was delicious.
And he hadn’t stopped there. Her clothes he had woven through with some of his magic gold. At first, she’d thought he was “bulletproofing” her against that strange weapon she’d seen the Adarian use. The shard gun. But he’d quickly informed her that gold was caustic to Adarians. The gold, therefore, served two purposes. It might diffuse a shard blast should she get hit—and it would keep an Adarian from laying hands on her for long.
Now, as the night waned into early-morning hours, Juliette thought of all she had learned since she’d woken up in Gabriel’s arms in the master chamber of Slains Castle. Her past had always haunted her in her dreams. She had never been able to make heads or tails of her fascination, both conscious and unconscious, with years gone by. History had always been so vivid to her—she saw it and felt it and heard it and smelled it as if she’d been there. And now she knew why.
It all changed with that final, telling dream. One night, hundreds of years ago, she had fallen off the cliffs of Cruden Bay and had been buried in a kirkyard beside the resting place of Alexander MacLeod. Her name had been Agatha. That life and death had marked her last—until this one.
Now they were all coming back to her, one after another. She was remembering everything. Every name, every face, every season and mode of dress, were playing itself out through her memory like a film. Only, this one she hadn’t simply watched. She’d taken part in it.
A part of her—a very small part—was surprised, perhaps a little shocked, as she was probably supposed to be. But most of her felt oddly complacent. She felt as though she’d slipped the final piece of a puzzle into its slot and suddenly, everything had become so clear. At last, the picture made some sense. The mystery was solved.
She had no idea why she had lived so many lives. She was a bit numb to the fact that reincarnation was even possible. But, again, it seemed natural that she had done so. And now that she recalled the billions upon billions of footsteps she had taken over the hills and crags and moors of Caledonia, she felt more a part of it than ever before. She was perhaps even more a part of it than one tall, dark, and handsome Gabriel Black.
Juliette glanced at the silver-eyed archangel as he moved through his house. He’d left her on the couch to warm up and rest while he went about securing the home with gold reinforcements and creating weapons, also made of gold. He seemed completely unfazed by her confession concerning her past lives. He was a bit surprised at first—but then his face had taken on a look of deep contemplation, and after a few seconds, he’d simply nodded.
“It makes a lo’ of sense,” he’d said. And that had been that.
Gabriel, Juliette thought. He was supposed to be the former Messenger Archangel. But hadn’t she read something else about him, too? Admittedly, religious studies wasn’t exactly her field of expertise, but it was virtually impossible to study the past without running across a religion or two here and there.
And something about the archangel Gabriel was scratching at her memory. He wasn’t just the Messenger Archangel. He was perhaps the most famous of the four favored, known not only to Judaism and Christianity but to Islam as well. And there were possibly others. He was mainly revered as the communicator between the heavenly realms and the human realms. However, he was also supposed to be associated with new births—and resurrection.
Resurrected birth, Juliette thought. Reincarnation.
And isn’t he also associated with the moon? she thought. Juliette glanced out the window over the sink. The moon hung heavy and full and stark white in the early-morning sky. Everything was coming together now. Gabriel was right. It made a lot of sense.
“So, let me get this straight,” she said suddenly, speaking before she even knew she was going to do so.
Gabriel stopped midway through the living room and stared down at her. “Wha’, luv?”
“Because you’re the archangel who deals with reincarnation, I’m the lucky archess who gets to live fifty lives—and die fifty times?” She was suddenly, shockingly angry. She thought of the way she’d fallen off that cliff and a thread of resentment unwound within her. She’d lived so many lives and in each one, she’d possessed either no powers or only one or two of her abilities. She’d never been capable of healing anyone—not until now. And, lacking that all-important ability, either she had existed as a mere human in a world where human existence was painful—or she’d been marked a witch, shunned by her village, and persecuted relentlessly. She’d been murdered. She’d been stabbed, hung, jailed, raped, and even burned at the stake.
She could remember it all now. Every terrifying, bloodcurdling moment. And the warmth from Gabriel’s hearth did nearly nothing to chase away the chill that stole over her.
Gabriel gazed steadily down at her, his eyes stark in his handsome face, his expression unreadable. After a very long moment of silence, he ran a hand through his hair and closed his eyes. “You figured that out, did you?” he asked softly.
“It was all your fault, wasn’t it?” Juliette asked. She didn’t raise her voice. In fact, she couldn’t—her breath was stolen by the realizations washing over her.
“Och, lass, you have to know it was no’ my doing. I never would have put you through any of that.” He opened his eyes and they were glowing. His expression was terribly beseeching. He knelt before her on the rug in front of the couch and took her hands in his. She didn’t pull away. What was the point?
“Jesus, Gabriel, do you know what I’ve been through?” she asked, her voice cracking with the weight of her pasts. She could almost smell the smoke that had thankfully smothered her before she’d finally succumbed to the flames when she’d been tied to a stake so many years ago. She recalled the shhhk sensation of a knife being embedded in her chest, its long tip nicking her spinal cord as it sliced through her. She knew what it felt like to be strangled. She’d drowned once. And the diseases . . . They were so bad, she couldn’t bear the reflection.
“Yes,” he told her.
Juliette opened her eyes, realizing that she had closed them against her memories.
“Yes, I do,” he repeated softly. There was no doubt in his voice, no indecision in his tone. He looked her deep in the eyes and held her gaze steady. “I’m so sorry, lass,” he said slowly, steadily. “Humans fear nothing so much as wha’ they do no’ understan
d. And I can imagine that they did no’ understand you verra well at all.”
She should have been insane. Remembering your own death should make you nuts somehow. Did it get any crazier than that? And to recall such evil deaths—such revoltingly vile tortures and endings—surely deserved at least a hint of madness. But instead of a dawning, yawning insanity, she sensed only . . . knowledge. Maybe this was what wisdom was? Could she be so vain as to call it that? Did simply dying make you more aware of what the preceding life was all about?
“Gabriel,” she said. “Uriel was the Angel of Vengeance. Did Eleanore suffer because of him?”
“I though’ aboot that,” he replied softly. “When you told me about your past lives, I wondered if that might be why Eleanore was chased all her life. The Adarians hunted her relentlessly for her power.” He stopped and looked down at the floor, lost in thought. “They hounded her with a vengeance, you might say.”
“Christ,” Juliette muttered. It was something beyond unfair that a soul should have to suffer the consequences of another being’s existence. “He wasn’t even the worst, Gabriel. My God,” she whispered as she realized something awful. “What the hell does that mean for Azrael’s archess? He was the Angel of Death, for crying out loud!”
Gabriel looked back up at her and Juliette cringed at the expression on his face. It was clear that this thought, too, had occurred to him. And that he feared the worst. “I don’t know, luv,” he said. “I don’t know.”
Juliette did not voice what she was thinking then. She didn’t need to. She knew that he was thinking it as well. Whatever Azrael’s archess either had already been forced to endure—or would be forced to endure—death was most surely a part of it. Perhaps not her own, but death nonetheless.
“Juliette,” Gabriel said suddenly, pulling away a little so that he could dig the fingers of his hand into the front pocket of his jeans. Juliette watched him pull out a thin gold band—a bracelet entwined with intricate, scrolling writing. It was incredibly beautiful.
She stared down at it and then looked back up at him.
“This isn’t the first piece of jewelry I had wanted to give you,” he admitted with a sorry shrug. And then he sighed and held it out for her to take. Juliette frowned, unsure of what to do.
“What is it?”
“It’s one of four wreaths given to my brothers an’ I two thousand years ago. It’s a weapon, more or less. Don’ put it on,” he told her. “Just put it in your pocket. It has the power to trap a person’s supernatural abilities within their body. I want you to carry it with you. . . .” He paused, took her hand in his, turned it over, and laid the bracelet in her open palm. “Just in case.”
Juliette watched as he closed her fingers over it. “Okay,” she said, resigning herself to the fact that fate was going to throw one paranormal thing at her after another. “I suppose every little bit might help.”
He nodded, pleased that she seemed to understand. “Once you put it on, luv, only you can take it off. Understand?”
She nodded.
“Good. Now, lass, you need food. An’ I’ve made some stew.”
A few minutes later, Gabriel had served them both a steaming bowl of soup and coupled it with warm, fresh bread. He set the dishes and bowls down in front of her on the coffee table and joined her on the couch, pulling her up against him, where she instantly felt warm and safe.
They ate in companionable silence, both of their gazes lost in the flames of the hearth. Juliette couldn’t be certain what was going through Gabriel’s head as they sat there, but her own mind was spinning with the events of the last week. She’d called lightning on an archangel in the refurbished master’s chamber of Slains Castle less than two hours ago. There were so many impossibilities tied up into that single event alone, it was bewildering.
“Gabriel?”
“Yes, luv?”
“What are we going to do about the Adarian?”
Gabriel fell silent beside her for a long while, and Juliette wondered what was going through his head. She put herself in his position and tried to imagine what he was thinking. What was he supposed to do? According to him, his brothers, Max, and even Lily—there were many Adarians out there, and they were always looking for ways to get to the archesses. This was nothing new. Not really.
He couldn’t very well launch a hunting party for the Adarians. Where they found one, they were sure to find more. And at the moment, the archangels knew too little about the powerful warriors. There was no way to be certain that the second battle was one they would win. And now two of the archangels had very good reasons for not wanting to die.
Juliette blinked as she realized this. Both Uriel and Gabriel had found their archesses. Their lives had renewed meaning. And she could imagine that after hunting for something for two thousand years, they wouldn’t want to take any chances in losing it. They wouldn’t want to pull their archesses into an unwitting battle. After all, there was no way that Juliette would agree to stay out of a fight if she knew that someone she cared about stood a chance of being injured—or killed. Her power was too valuable. And she was willing to bet that Eleanore felt the same way.
“Never mind,” she said suddenly, not wanting him to have to admit that he didn’t know what to do. She could feel the heat radiating off him, and along with it was a new string of tension. She knew he was angry. She knew he was even afraid. She was instantly sorry for bringing the subject up.
On impulse, Juliette reached up, cupped the side of Gabriel’s face, and gently pulled his gaze to hers. His silver eyes were glowing—testament to his turbulent emotions. They were so stark in his handsome face, they momentarily took her breath away. She felt herself flush warm with the memory of how those glowing eyes had claimed her, even as his body had done the same.
There was, at once, an emotion uncurling within Juliette that she had never experienced before. It was both soft and hard and it filled her with both anticipation and fear. It was poignant. And it was promising.
Suddenly, all she wanted to do was kiss him. As if he could read her mind, Gabriel moved in, gently taking her lips with his own. The kiss was tender and sweet and mirrored the dawning realizations inside of Juliette.
The kiss slowly ended and Gabriel’s arms wrapped around her once more to pull her gently into him. His delicious food in her belly and the smell of his soap on her skin and the warmth of his home protecting her began to lull her to a place where the rest of the world melted. Little by little, Juliette accepted. She relaxed—and eventually, she slept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Juliette came awake with a slow, meandering awareness. She was enveloped in warmth and a mixture of hard and soft. She heard crackling and popping and knew there was a fire burning nearby. A moment’s uncertainty shot through her, but she smelled no smoke. She caught a whiff of masculine-scented soap instead, and opened her eyes.
A simply decorated room surrounded her. The walls were wood beams woven through with gold, the window was draped in a curtain of white and gold, and the sheet over her was white with gold threading. She blinked down at it. Her body felt sore . . . but deliciously so. She tentatively moved her legs and instantly felt the resulting twinge between them. Memories flooded her and she shivered. Then, slowly, she smiled.
“Good mornin’, lass,” drawled a deep, rumbling voice. As always, his accent purred across her skin like a delicious promise. He was behind her, spooning her, and she was in his bed. She turned her head to look up and found him on his elbow, gazing steadily down at her.
“How long have you been watching me?” she asked.
He smiled, flashing straight white teeth. “No’ long enough,” he said as he gently brushed a lock of her hair from her forehead.
Slowly, she rolled over in the bed to face him. Good God, she thought, as she stared up at the curve of his chin, the broad plane of his shoulders, and the vast expanse of muscle across his chest and midsection. I’m in bed with an archangel.
“Are you hun
gry?” he asked, his forefinger curled beneath her chin to raise her eyes. His own eyes were twinkling with amusement and obvious pride.
She blushed, having been caught at her blatant ogling. “Yeah,” she admitted. “I am.”
“Good, then. I’ll make you somethin’ to eat.”
Thirty minutes later, they were sitting at Gabriel’s kitchen table, sharing a Scottish breakfast sans the blood pudding, which she admitted she just couldn’t stomach the thought of. Gabriel had laughed and acquiesced.
Now they sipped strong, creamy tea and talked about their favorite subject—the history of Scotland. Juliette had never had this before. She had never known anyone who loved the land as much as she did, and she’d certainly never had a conversation with someone who knew as much about its past as she did. Now that she could actively recall aspects of the last two thousand years from a personal perspective—it gave new meaning to the subject. Gabriel gave it new meaning. Because even as she had experienced it, both good and bad—so had he.
Somehow, as they sat there across from each other at the round wooden table, their elbows firmly planted on the surface, their tea mugs never far from their lips, they managed to touch upon all the amusing aspects of the land’s history. His stories were self-deprecating and adorable, his voice like a Scottish lullaby. She laughed and he chuckled and the morning flew by in a new and special kind of camaraderie.
“I’ve go’ somewhere I want to take you,” he told her after they’d finished off their third cup of tea. “Are you up for a field trip?” he asked, silver eyes twinkling.
“Absolutely,” she said, finding herself in a wonderful mood despite the lingering dangers associated with being an archess. What was it, exactly, that had put the smile on her face? The tea? The breakfast? The company? All of the above and more . . . “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”