Juliette knew better than to say anything. Whatever he was up to, it wasn’t worth letting her guard down. She watched him carefully as he finally took his hands out of his pockets so that he could pull a cigarette from the inside pocket of his sport coat, place it between his lips, and flick a lighter to life, shielding it from the ocean breeze. The end of the cigarette began to glow red and he extinguished the lighter and repocketed it. With utter calm and conviction, Mitchell took the cigarette out of his mouth and focused his dark, piercing gaze on her once more.
“If you grant me your word that you’ll remain with me and give me your blood when I ask for it, I will let you live.” He blew a small cloud of smoke, his eyes glinting as he watched her take in his words.
Juliette had no idea what to make of the offer. It was terrifying for her to think that her only two options in life now were to give herself over to an Adarian to be his eternal prisoner—or to die. The thought left her momentarily speechless. She stared up at the dark-haired man and opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again when she realized she had nothing to say.
What could she say? Even if she thought the offer sound and was crazy enough to accept it, how could he be sure that she wouldn’t go back on her promise?
“As I said, Juliette,” he told her, taking another drag of smoke and lowering the cigarette once more, “I know you’re a woman of your word.” He blew a small cloud. “Integrity, Juliette. It’s what sets you apart from the others. If you make a promise, you keep it. Don’t you?” His voice had dropped, becoming almost intimate. She was amazed that she could hear him even over the cacophony of battle going on around them. It was something about the voices of Adarians and archangels—they always managed to make themselves heard with perfect clarity.
“Abraxos would never let me live.”
At this, Mitchell gave a small laugh. He shook his head. “The General is in love with Granger. I don’t have to be able to read his mind to know as much. He won’t be able to kill her. He understands, perhaps better than anyone.”
Juliette stared at him, shocked by the news. Abraxos was in love with Eleanore? Ellie had told Juliette about Abraxos—about how he’d appeared to her when she was a teenager. She’d had a crush on him. He’d been her first crush, in fact.
There was obviously more to it than that for Abraxos. And now everything Uriel and Ellie had told her about Kevin Trenton’s drive to get his hands on Ellie made even more sense than it had before. Abraxos wasn’t only bitter that he couldn’t heal—he was bitter that Ellie wasn’t meant to be his.
Despite the severely warped situation she was in, Juliette found herself reasoning. What Mitchell was asking her for made sense, in a way. If he really wanted her to live, then giving him nonstop access to her blood was as good as killing her. Once he used his dose of healing power, he could return to her for another. On and on. All he needed was her word that she wouldn’t deny him.
She could even understand why integrity would be important to Mitchell. He could obviously read minds. She imagined that after centuries of reading duplicitous minds, he would long for the solid reliability of a mind that meant what it said. Nevertheless, Juliette was not going to let her empathy with the Adarian snap the trap shut. “What in the world would make you think I would ever make such a deal with you?” she asked him then, and though her own body was weak, she, too, managed to make herself heard.
Mitchell smiled and shrugged, dropping the cigarette to smash it under one boot. “I assumed you would rather not die.”
“You assumed wrong,” she told him. It was true. She had lived many lives—and died many times. And in all those existences, the most painfully grievous moments had been not when she was dead but when she’d been very much alive—and suffering. There were worse things than death.
Mitchell considered her answer for a moment, his gaze searching hers with uncomfortable intensity. “You are not afraid to die. I can understand this. After all, it’s nothing new to you.” He came toward her again and Juliette fought not to step back. She chanced a glance behind her and found that she had maybe three feet to go before she would be flush with the cliff’s ledge.
“However, something in this life is new to you,” he continued. “You’ve never truly loved before, have you, Juliette?”
Juliette’s head whipped back around, her gaze cutting to his eyes. Trepidation unfurled within her gut. Dying was one thing . . . but this was skimming the edges of something more dangerous.
She said nothing. She didn’t need to, though, and she knew it. She knew that the moment she thought of Gabriel and his silver eyes and his captivating brogue, he was reading those thoughts as well—stealing them from her in the most merciless and intrusive manner.
His smile was back. He cocked his head to one side, again shoving his hands into his pockets. “What would you do to save him, Juliette? Would you make a promise if his life depended on it instead of yours?”
Juliette froze. She thought of Gabriel and the life she had decided she wanted to have with him. Here. In Caledonia. She’d never experienced a sense of home before, not in all her many lifetimes. But Gabriel could give her that—Gabriel would give her that. She knew it in the very fiber of her being.
Unless he couldn’t. Because he was dead.
She swallowed and nearly choked on the dry lump that had formed in her throat. Mitchell watched her for another moment more, and then he reached into the back waistband of his jeans and extracted a shard gun. He held it down at his side for a few short seconds—and then raised it, along with his gaze, until they were both directed at something above her head.
Juliette spun around to see Gabriel and another Adarian fighting several yards away. The Adarian had him around the neck in a fierce death grip. But the Adarian was also injured and bleeding from several wounds across his strong body. The fight seemed to be well matched.
Except that Gabriel’s back was turned toward her. Juliette’s heart flipped in her chest and her stomach turned. His broad back was the perfect target for Mitchell’s shard gun.
“No,” she whispered, having lost her voice.
“You have three seconds, Juliette. Take off the bracelet and I will consider it your vow to willingly join me. You will live—and so will your precious Messenger.”
Juliette had no further time to think. Either she surrendered, or Gabriel would die. Fury boiled to life within her. She was so sick to death of people shooting Gabriel with those shard guns. How many times had Azrael said he’d been shot? And here was another Adarian again—threatening to do it some more.
With a bitter cry of frustration, Juliette curled her fingers around the bracelet and gave a quick yank, ripping the golden wreath from her wrist with a blinding flash. At once, she felt her powers swell, an influx of energy and ability that had been kept just out of reach while she’d worn the band.
Mitchell’s dark eyes sparked and his cruel lips curled up in a slow, satisfied smile. “That’s better,” he said, lowering the deadly weapon.
Juliette’s heart was cracking open. Visions were flashing before her mind’s eye. Gabriel at her doorway, the salt of the sea in his hair. Gabriel across from her at the breakfast table, laughing as he told her a story. Gabriel as he bent to claim her lips with his own while his body was buried so deeply within hers.
Gabriel, her archangel.
“Not anymore, little one,” Mitchell said softly as he closed the distance between them so that he towered over her. He curled his finger beneath her chin and tilted her head so that she was looking into his eyes.
Her cheeks were wet.
“You’ve given me your word,” he told her, his gaze intense. “And to make certain it can never be broken—” He released her chin, raised the gun, aimed it at Gabriel, and began to pull the trigger.
Juliette screamed, “Noooo!” She found herself rushing forward before she knew what she was doing. All she was consciously aware of was that she didn’t want Gabriel to die. She couldn’t stand th
e thought of him being shot again. Not even once more. Not when she could do something to stop it.
She ducked her head, using her shoulder like a football player. Using every ounce of her strength, she slammed into Mitchell’s tall body, spinning as she did so. The unexpected impact gave her enough momentum to turn them both and keep going. One step, two . . . The third crumbled beneath their booted feet as the cliff gave way underneath them.
Juliette closed her eyes when the sky opened up to embrace her. She’d been here before. She remembered the feeling. The air was open; there were no footholds or handholds in space. Time slowed. It very nearly stopped.
She sensed Mitchell pulling away from her, his own body falling as hers was. She let him go. It would be over soon.
There were precious seconds remaining. An eternity—and certainly long enough for her final, perfect sentiment.
I love you, Gabriel. Maybe they would meet again. She loved him, after all. And I always will.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
What in the world could make Gabriel turn his back on a man like the Adarian he was fighting now? . . . It was a phantom of a thought, floating like a ghost in the back of his mind as he spun around, doing that very thing. But then he had his answer. It tumbled over the cliff in the form of a beautiful young woman, long hair flying, eyes closing, her body clutching to the enemy to take him down with her.
There was a sound, ripped from somewhere deep inside of him, but he didn’t consciously make it. He only knew he was moving faster than he had ever moved before, following the image that took his heart with it.
He didn’t reach her in time. Not to stop her. But his body, propelled by a love and loss too great to deny, left the safety of the ground along with her. He fell after her, clutching at empty air, his mind blacking out on all emotion save one.
That one emotion ripped him apart from the inside. It tore him open and left him gaping as he fell, exposed as he had never been exposed before.
A lifetime—several—passed before he’d made it far enough to touch her. Gabriel looked upon her lovely face, her closed lids, and her furrowed brow, and the world melted around them. His hand slipped around her wrist as the cliff face blurred beside them and the wind whipped through her hair. It was a final connection. If they were going to die this time, they would do so together.
Juliette opened her eyes. Gabriel’s consciousness froze in confusion. Her eyes were glowing. Their hazel brilliance now burned like gemstones, luminous lamps of amber and emerald so lovely, he literally stopped breathing. It wouldn’t matter in a moment; the world was about to end.
But Juliette blinked her glowing eyes and he felt her hand upon his cheek, warm and soft and pure. “I love you.” She mouthed the words, but he couldn’t hear them. The wind stole them from her.
They echoed in his mind.
“And I love you, lass,” he whispered. They were words he had never strung together in that order before. Not until now.
Now, he thought. Now we hit bottom—one hundred feet down. It’s over. He would not survive the fall. And if he did, he wouldn’t want to—not without his archess. As his last act upon the earth, he used his grip on Juliette’s wrist to pull her to him, hauling her into his arms to hold her tight.
He closed his eyes, his hand spanning the small of her back. And he waited.
And waited.
. . . and waited.
“Gabriel,” came her soft voice, whispered across the curve of his neck.
Gabriel’s hand moved up her back and stopped, sensing something different. It felt like a warp in the air, warm and nearly solid. Gabriel frowned, feeling strange. His body felt slightly numb. He no longer sensed the wind buffeting him. The sound of it was fading, being replaced by something oddly hollow. Like an echo.
He opened his eyes.
The cliff’s blurring face was gone. The ocean’s white-capped waves, frozen in waiting time, were gone. The night and its full moon were gone. The world had disappeared and all that remained were Gabriel and his archess standing together in a space of white fog and nothingness.
“Where are we?” Juliette asked. Her words bounced against the nothingness and were swallowed in its cotton.
“Nowhere,” Gabriel replied. He knew what was happening. But the knowledge was like a slow drug, and its piggybacking epiphany of joy was gradual, as if affected to a sluggishness by the dense mist around them. “No’ anymore,” he whispered. “No’ yet.”
And then he looked down at the woman in his arms and gradually let her go. For the second time in the space of the last few eternal seconds, he could not believe his eyes. “Juliette . . . ,” he gasped, utterly breathless at what he beheld. “My God . . .” His hand came up to cup her cheek. He could say nothing further.
There were no words.
Her archess eyes were glowing again, more stunning than anything he had ever seen. But even more bewildering were the massive brown and green wings solidifying at her back. The air warped around her, the shape of the wings shimmering and iridescent until, finally, they hardened into reality and Gabriel felt tears on his cheeks.
“My angel,” he rasped, his breathing ragged with emotion.
“Gabriel,” she whispered, and he watched as her own glowing eyes began to shimmer with unshed tears. “You . . . have wings.”
It was hard, but Gabriel managed to pull his eyes off her form in order to glance over his shoulder. And she was right. Behind him in each direction stretched the magnificent plumage of two massive raven-black wings, run through with streaks of stark silver. “Wha’ do you know?” he whispered, too struck with awe to say much else. Everything was happening so quickly.
He recognized it all now. Uriel and Eleanore had gone through the same thing. The two had shared the experience shortly afterward and the other three archangel brothers were treated to a preview of what they might expect once they found their own archesses. This was Gabriel’s “choice.” He was here with Juliette now to make a decision: stay on Earth or return to his realm with his archess. He couldn’t believe it. It was truly coming to pass. It wasn’t a joke, he wasn’t being teased, and it wasn’t a dream.
He looked back at Juliette. “You have them, too, luv.”
She blinked, her pink lips parting with a catch in her breath.
“Go on, then,” he said, tilting her head gently to the side with a curled finger beneath her chin. “See for yourself.”
She turned and shrugged her shoulder. Her gasp indicated that she could see them. “Oh my God . . .” Her voice trailed off in wonder. “What— How—”
“You sacrificed yourself to save me,” Gabriel said. He knew that now. It must have been why she had rushed the Adarian. He could feel it in his bones. “Didn’t you, luv?” he asked softly.
Juliette turned back to look up at him with those incredible glowing eyes and he had to fight not to tremble. She was humbling him. He didn’t deserve her.
She didn’t answer. But when she blushed and ducked her head, he knew it was true. “And that’s why we’re here,” he said, curling his finger beneath her chin once more. She turned her eyes to him again and he smiled. “Juliette, my sweet angel.”
He had no more words and even if he’d had them, he no longer wanted to speak. Right now, all he wanted to do was kiss her. Hold her. He wanted to know, for once and for all, that everything he was seeing was real.
So he bent over her and she closed her eyes. His lips brushed hers with a featherlight tenderness befitting angels. And then he pressed into her, claiming her mouth with his own, parting her lips and tasting her deeply. She was real.
She was very, very real. She was his archess and she would soon be his wife and he would make a home for them both. In Caledonia.
* * *
It never failed. Every time Gabriel kissed her, the rest of Juliette’s world melted away. It didn’t seem to matter what else might be happening. He simply subjugated her every sense, taking over without mercy. His kiss was a mandate, a cage, a loc
k and key—and as he tore down her defenses and ripped away her world, she could swear she heard the click as he bound her to him forever.
Her body heated up, her core melted, and she grew wet for him. A moan of longing and pleasure bubbled up from inside of her and he swallowed it, fisting his hands in her hair as if he couldn’t get close enough.
Someone cleared his throat.
Juliette stilled, feeling strange suddenly. Their surroundings had changed. Sound was coming in at them once again: the wind, the waves. The air was colder. Gabriel was still kissing her, but the urgency of the kiss had lessened a little. He apparently sensed it, too.
Juliette opened her eyes as he slowly pulled away, lowering his hands.
“This is a familiar scene,” said Michael from where he stood a few feet away, his arms crossed over his chest, his grin a mile wide. “Nice wings,” he said, winking at Juliette.
She had no breath with which to speak at that moment; Gabriel had more or less taken it all. But she did manage to glance over her shoulder again. Vast brown and green wings unfurled from the center of her back. Wings, she thought. I’ve really got wings.
Tentatively, and not at all sure of the strangeness of the musculature, she tried to move them. They responded beautifully, curling forward and brushing their feathers along the ground—and then extending again until they were raised high on either side of her in exultation. She couldn’t help but laugh then. The sensation was incredible.
“I have wings!” She giggled the words, turning once more to look up into Gabriel’s glowing silver gaze. He was staring down at her with immense pride, his grin ear to ear. His own wings flicked behind his back and drew Juliette’s wide-eyed gaze once more.
They were stunning, much more so than hers, in her opinion. Out here, in the black of night, they made him look like the tall, dark archangel he truly was. It was fitting. His colossal wingspan stretched more than ten feet in either direction. His feathers were a deep, dark pitch, shot through with marbles of silver that made them shimmer in the moonlight.