With that thought, some of Ellie’s mounting desire slipped away. “What do you think Sam’s plan is?” she asked softly. Samael was an enigma. He was an archangel who had once been the Old Man’s favorite but who was displaced by Michael. He was also the thirteenth Adarian, but unlike the other twelve, he had not been discarded by the Old Man and sent to Earth all those years ago. For some reason the Old Man had kept him in their realm. He’d left only when the four favored left, in order to track down the archesses himself. Or at least that was the assumption.
The truth was, nobody knew what Samael’s motivation or plans were.
He was certainly more powerful than the four favored, a fact he made more painfully clear as time passed. And he made life hell for them at every given opportunity. Four months ago, Sam had tricked Uriel into signing a contract that indirectly caused him to become the very same vampire he played in Hollywood. The curse had nearly torn him and Ellie apart at a time when they had just found each other and should have been focusing on growing closer.
Why had Samael done this? they had wondered. He claimed that he wanted an archess of his own—for his own reasons. But in the end, true to his enigmatic ways, Samael had turned the other cheek and shown a different side of himself by helping Ellie and the brothers defeat the Adarians in a harrowing battle in Texas. He was mysterious and dangerous in equal measures. Well, perhaps not quite equal measures.
He was very, very dangerous.
“Who knows?” Uriel said in answer to Ellie’s question. He sighed heavily, obviously disappointed in the turn of conversation. Then he slid his well-muscled arms around Ellie’s waist and pulled her back with him as he sank farther into the cushions of the couch. “But I’m starting to believe he exists for no other reason than to tempt me to kill him.”
Ellie cocked her head to one side and narrowed her gaze on her lover. “Oh?” She noted the tightness in his jaw and the unconscious possessiveness in his flexed muscles. He was irritated that she was bringing Sam into the conversation just then. Samael was a distraction Uriel didn’t want Ellie to have at that moment. “Jealous?” she asked.
A hint of Uriel’s smile was back. His hand slid beneath the wire of her bra. “Always.”
* * *
General Kevin Trenton was a tall, well-muscled man with blue-black shoulder-length hair and ice-blue eyes. He was also known as Abraxos, the leader of the Adarian race, the first archangels created by the Old Man and consequently discarded to Earth due to their frighteningly immense powers. Over the years, he’d changed his name many times and now most of his men simply referred to him as General.
At the moment, Kevin stood in front of the mirror above the sink in one of the many rooms in the Adarian headquarters in Texas. In the mirror’s reflection, he saw the tall, strong form of one of his men fill the space in his doorway. “Come in, Ely.”
Elyon was a black man and one of Kevin’s best fighters. As with all the Adarians, Elyon’s name had naturally been shortened over the last few millennia. His Adarian abilities had long ago proved themselves to be of the nastier, more potent variety. Among other things, with a single touch, Ely could wither a person’s body around its skeleton, sapping it of the water it needed to fill out its human cells. After a few seconds, Ely’s victim would fall at his feet, lifeless and crumpled as weathered parchment.
Ely nodded once and entered, but Kevin did not fail to notice the quick, nervous glance the Adarian shot toward the bound victim in the corner of the room.
The human male had been cuffed to a chair and apparently drugged. His eyes were unfocused and half-closed. He had put up a struggle when Kevin’s men brought him in, and his clothes were torn in places. Where the rips in the material of his pants rested against his skin, blood soaked it a fresh, wet red. His button-down dress shirt had been equally mistreated, but it was the sort that had once been worn beneath a suit coat and tie.
“Pay him no heed,” Kevin told the soldier. He turned and retrieved the razor blade he’d set on the counter alongside a basin of water and a clear drinking glass. He picked up the glass, then turned back to face the Adarian.
Ely’s amber-colored eyes were shot through with a sudden strain of apprehension at the sight of the blade, but his dark, handsome face managed to maintain a semblance of impassivity that Kevin was admittedly impressed with. Ely had always been an incredibly strong man, even among Adarians. That was why Kevin had chosen him for this test.
“Bare your wrist, Ely.”
Ely hesitated for a mere heartbeat before he raised his arm, rolled up his sleeve, and offered his right wrist to his general. Kevin lowered the razor blade to the inside of the man’s wrist and Ely’s body became a statue, unbreathing, unmoving.
The blade sliced swift and clean and the blood welled up at once. Kevin caught it with the glass as it escaped from the wound and ran down Ely’s wrist in a thick, crimson tributary. As the glass began to fill, Ely’s gaze wavered. He looked away from his wrist and focused on the wall. And then, eventually, he closed his eyes and swallowed hard.
“You look a tad pale, Ely,” Kevin joked, as it was actually difficult for Ely to look pale at all. Ashen at most, perhaps.
Ely said nothing. He was clearly not amused and knew better than to say anything unless he could say something nice.
When the glass was three-quarters full, Kevin set it down and retrieved the gauze bandaging from the counter. He wrapped this around Ely’s wrist and pressed hard on the wound until the red on the gauze stopped spreading.
“Get yourself some protein,” Kevin told him calmly. “And then return.”
Ely was very obviously confused and more than likely curious as to what the hell his general planned on doing with his blood. But he had been trained to follow orders and he’d done so for the last several thousand years. Now was no different; he nodded, said, “Yes sir,” and left the room, softly closing the General’s door behind him.
Kevin turned toward the bound, seated man and approached him. “If you have any final prayers, I suggest you utter them now. Not that anyone is listening.”
The man made no attempt to speak behind his gag. He only looked up at Kevin and let his heavy head drop back onto the top of the chair.
Kevin raised the glass of Adarian blood to his lips, closed his eyes, and began to drink. He swallowed tentatively at first. He was uncertain, after all. This was just a hunch, an experiment. And blood tasted terrible, whether it was angel blood or not.
But after the first few swallows, he felt able to drink more readily. He finished off the glass and left it, stained burgundy, on the counter above the man’s head. Then he leaned over the bound man and pressed his hand to the human’s chest.
He searched for the new ability within himself the way he always called forth his own abilities, and attempted to open that familiar channel inside that would allow the power to arc through his body and out into the world—out into the man before him.
He knew what he wanted to do.
Nothing happened right away, but the passage of inordinate amounts of time had taught Kevin nothing if not patience. He waited, ever determined, and left his hand where it was. The man’s eyes opened and focused on Kevin, his expression both lackluster and confused and yet filled with hatred. Kevin ignored him.
And then the man’s eyes filled with something else. It was pain, easily recognizable. He tried to scream behind his gag, but the sound was muffled and weak. Kevin smiled, instinctively pressing his hand harder against the man’s chest. The man bucked beneath the touch, shrieking into the gag and trying to get away despite the drug running through his system.
But he wasn’t going anywhere. And Kevin could see that his experiment was working when the man’s skin turned slightly green. Then gray. It was drying, cracking and flaking around the hairline. The cracking spread, crisscrossing his flesh, until the man stopped screaming and sat still as his body was leeched of every last drop of moisture within it.
When the foul deed was completed, K
evin extracted his hand with a strange crackling and sucking sound and stepped back. The corpse tied to his chair was nothing more than a mummy’s remains and Kevin had the sudden sensation that if he was to touch it again, it would crumble to dust.
He looked down at his hand and pondered what had just happened.
For centuries, Kevin had been searching for some means with which to give himself and his men the power to heal. The Adarians had been on Earth for thousands of years, and in that time, they had seen battle with many foes, almost all of them of a supernatural nature. The Old Man had used Earth as a trash heap for the creatures he created for eons. Most were in hiding now, having learned that fighting one another was only seeing them to extinction. For the most part, they stayed in the shadows, often passing themselves off as human, and left one another alone. But for many, many years, this wasn’t the case, and Kevin and his men had collectively sustained more injuries than they could count. The ability to heal was the one ability they lacked, and it was invaluable. The Adarians were hard to kill in that human, mortal wounds did not destroy them. However, the wounds healed painfully slowly, nearly at a human rate.
Over the course of thousands of years, many wounds are sustained by a single individual. It amounts to vast amounts of pain.
One day, not two decades ago, Kevin happened upon a little girl who displayed the ability to heal with no more than a touch. For twenty years, he followed her. She grew into an extraordinarily beautiful young woman with lustrous black hair and striking blue eyes. Her name was Eleanore. And she was an archess.
Kevin had had it all planned out. He would introduce himself, earn her trust, and she would join him and his men, willingly offering up her healing power to them for their use. One of his abilities was the power to change forms. He did so, appearing to Eleanore as a teenage version of himself when she was a mere fifteen years old. He could tell that she was falling for him, but before he could get close enough, she and her family caught the scent of danger on the wind and disappeared. The Grangers disappeared again and again over the years, always moving from one place to the next in order to protect Eleanore and her amazing abilities. It was the greatest frustration of Kevin’s painfully long existence, because as time passed, he found himself desiring Eleanore not only for her abilities—but for herself.
Eventually, and unfortunately, despite all of Kevin’s careful watching and planning, Uriel happened upon Eleanore as well—and recognized her as his. The ensuing struggle to secure the archess eventually culminated in a terrible battle on a turbine field in Texas, ending in the Adarians’ defeat.
In Dallas, where that battle had taken place several months ago, Uriel had proved himself at a distinct advantage by sinking his fangs into the throats of Kevin’s men and draining them. In doing so, he temporarily absorbed their powers and was able to use them against the Adarians.
Since that telling battle, Kevin and his men had lain low. They’d recuperated, regrouped, and reassessed their goals. Or Kevin had. He had also never stopped thinking about what Uriel had accomplished.
Nor had he stopped thinking about the fifth archangel. At least, that was what Kevin assumed the man was. He’d been unstoppable . . . and oddly familiar to Kevin.
Uriel’s transformation and the stranger’s unexpected appearance had been troubling enough to warrant several months of idle planning before attempting anything further on the archangels or their precious, irreplaceable archesses.
But at the moment, Kevin was touching upon something that might amount to a real plan. This little experiment had proved his suspicions.
Just as Uriel had been able to do, Kevin was capable of absorbing the power of another Adarian by drinking his blood. Already, he could feel the power he’d taken from Ely waning. It’s temporary, he thought. That made sense; Ely was the true owner of the ability and Ely was still alive. The power did not reproduce but was lent through the taking of Ely’s blood. And now that I’ve used it once, it has returned to its rightful owner, he realized.
Kevin turned his hand over and looked up at the door through which Ely had disappeared. Three of his Adarians had died on the turbine field in Texas. But nine remained, including himself. Eight of them waited for him beyond that door. Kevin pondered their individual powers and the implications of what he’d just learned. And he wondered. . . .
He pulled a tarp over the prisoner’s withered body and stepped back. In a moment, Ely returned and Kevin approached him. “Bring Xathaniel to me.”
Ely nodded again and left once more. Xathaniel, also known as Daniel among the Adarians, was what Kevin would consider the weakest member of their group. His only power was the power of invisibility. While invisibility certainly had its uses from time to time, Kevin was more interested in offensive powers that could be used in battle, and that one didn’t cut it. However, it wasn’t unworthy of consideration for what Kevin had in mind.
If he was able to absorb an Adarian’s power temporarily through the taking of his blood, what would happen should he drain the Adarian dry? What if he killed the man he drank from? Would the power he absorbed remain his?
“Sir, Daniel is not in his room. He seems to have left the complex.”
Kevin turned to face Ely, whose large frame was once more eating up the space in the doorway. “Oh?” He pondered this a moment. Daniel may have stepped out for coffee or a beer or even to get laid. His men had needs, after all. “Bring him to me when he returns.”
Ely nodded and left.
Kevin considered Xathaniel and his invisibility. If his little experiment worked, that invisibility would soon belong to Kevin permanently—and Daniel would be dead.
* * *
Samuel Lambent was a man of many secrets, not the smallest of which was the fact that “Samuel” was not his real name, and being the richest, most powerful media mogul in the world was not his full-time job.
Samuel Lambent was actually Samael, the incredibly tall and handsome, ash-blond archangel with charcoal gray eyes, known to a select few as the Fallen One. Right now, the notorious archangel was staring at a photograph that had been given to him months ago by one of the many “men” he employed around the world. It was a photograph of Juliette Anderson, the second archess. She was bent over the unconscious form of a man who had just been pulled from the sea after a surfing accident. She’d had no idea that she was being caught on film. She was dangerously unaware that her little secret could so easily fall into the wrong hands.
The archess was beyond precious, able to heal with no more than a touch, control the weather, influence fire, and move objects with her mind. However, it was unclear whether Juliette was aware of the extent of her powers.
Samael had thought long and hard about what he planned to do with little Juliette. The five-foot-three archess posed several options to Samael. It all depended upon which direction he wanted to go from here.
He could take her. He could make her his. It wouldn’t be difficult; it never was for him. Plus, she was innocent—and he had something he could offer her. Juliette Anderson’s bank account was on the shallow end of the pool, and always had been. Her parents were professors, but in fields that paid inadequately, and they squandered their money on travel, backpacking trips, camping expeditions, and the like. Neither of them knew how to save anything, and Juliette had learned long ago not to ask them for financial assistance. They would give it, but they couldn’t afford to, and it was hard on Juliette’s ego.
Oh, he had something he could offer. Sam had walked among the human race for a good while. And he knew well that, of money and sex, money was the more powerful lure. It truly was the root of all evil.
Anderson was gorgeous. There was a smoothness to her healthy, tanned complexion that normal humans did not possess; her archess’s soul was hard to hide, just as it had been for Eleanore Granger. Juliette’s hazel eyes shifted from light brown to stark green with the slightest provocation, if Samael’s photographs were any indication. Her lips were full and pink, her teeth stra
ight and bright white, her thick shining hair a mass of fantastic waves the likes of which Sam had only ever seen once before. On the first archess.
Juliette was beautiful, and as of yet, the four favorites were unaware of her existence. Making her his would forever deny at least one of them his match. That, in and of itself, was an incredibly tempting proposition. The warmth and pleasure he imagined he would feel with her in his bed made the idea of claiming her himself nothing short of a blissful win-win situation.
But . . . no.
Sam had other plans. Broader plans—that, thus far, were coming to delightful fruition. Of course, it helped that he was able to so easily manipulate events from behind the scenes. Strictly speaking, Juliette Anderson wasn’t the one Sam was after at the moment. But if she somehow wound up in his bed anyway, the universe would get no complaints from him.
CHAPTER THREE
“Great.” Juliette scowled at the darkening sky through her windshield. “Juuust great.” She pursed her lips and clutched the steering wheel until she was white-knuckled. It was hard enough gauging the distance between the tires and the side of the road when you were seated on the right side. But the traffic was bumper-to-bumper and the car felt like moldy plastic around her, and she hated the fact that she was even sitting down again, much less stuck on a foreign road with no hope of reaching her hotel anytime soon.
Should she even be able to find it. Luckily, she had a GPS on the dash to help her with at least that much. And it had the most wonderful British voice to tell her she was going the wrong way.
Again, Juliette chanced a glance up and was a little surprised to see lightning spiderweb across the sky. The peal of thunder followed two seconds later.
Personally, Juliette enjoyed a good storm. But what it did to traffic was never a good thing. The roads sucked enough as it was; there were strange signs everywhere, the streets were basically shoulder-width narrow, parking was parallel or nothing, and there were simply too many vehicles that needed accommodation on a road system that had been built a thousand years ago. Throw in wet conditions and what you had was a big fat slow-moving mess.