She was a moth to the flame.
The vicar called for the rings, and Sophie actually felt Azrael’s gaze lift. He gracefully pulled the set of heavy gold bands from the inside pocket of his black tux and handed them to the handsome groom. Gabriel took the rings with a very real smile and turned to face his bride.
Sophie found herself transfixed by the image of Gabriel sliding the band onto Juliette’s slim finger. The knotted gold Celtic design winked in the moon- and candlelight, fitting Juliette’s finger perfectly. It rested on her hand like a brand, final and complete, and Sophie imagined the tall and enigmatic Azrael sliding a ring on her own finger in the same fashion.
And then she blinked. Her heart thudded hard behind her rib cage. Where the hell had that image come from? It had appeared out of nowhere, clear as day, and now it was refusing to fade away. She could almost feel the physical weight of the metal on her finger—and the heat of Azrael’s touch on her hand.
Sophie felt her face flush with embarrassment. If he only knew what she was fantasizing about in that moment!
With a small start, she realized that the ceremony was over. The pipers began to play “Amazing Grace,” and Juliette and Gabriel kissed. The vicar said a few more words in Gaelic—which Juliette seemed to understand—and then she and Gabriel turned to head back down the makeshift aisle.
The moon was in its last night of being full above them. Its blue-white light cast the decorated castle and its grounds into stark, beautiful contrast. Streamers and ribbons of lace and satin had been strung between stone columns and draped over the battlements of Slains Castle so high above them. The waves of the waning tide crashed against the rocks far below, and seagulls sang the last, piercing notes of their nightly lullabies.
Roses and lavender scented the air, which was unnaturally warm for this time of year. While the rest of the people who had gathered to see the wedding—namely, members of Gabriel’s clan—were unaware of the reason behind the unseasonable pleasantness, Sophie knew that the warm weather was due to Eleanore Granger, the first archess to have been found by the four favored.
Eleanore was Uriel’s archess. As an archess, she possessed powers much like Juliette’s—a fact that Sophie was still trying to wrap her head around. Ellie and Jules could both control the weather to some extent, throw things around with telekinesis, and manipulate fire where it already existed, and most important, they could heal.
It was this power to heal wounds and sicknesses with no more than a touch that really set the archesses apart from every other supernatural creature in the world. And that was another thing Sophie had been forced to take in rather quickly. Apparently, archangels and archesses were not the only ones to inhabit the planet alongside unsuspecting humans. There were others out there—other beings with powers.
Still, none of the other paranormals possessed the ability to mend injuries and pain. This power belonged to the archesses and to Michael and seemed to be limited solely to them.
Juliette had sprung a lot on Sophie, to be sure. But luckily for Jules, Soph could handle it. She didn’t have a lot of memories from her early childhood. But what she did have from those precious days, she held on to with an unequaled fierceness. She had had six precious years with her parents. They’d died in a car accident a week before her sixth birthday. Until that day, Sophie had been in paradise.
Her mother was an assistant curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Her father had been a pilot. When he was out of town on a job, Sophie’s mother would take her to the museum after hours and the two of them would explore ancient Egyptian tombs and tell ghost stories in what Sophie called the Whale Room.
Sophie’s mom, Genevieve Bryce, had been a unique woman possessed of an open mind. Nothing was impossible to her. “‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,’” she would quote to Sophie. It was one of the few things she could remember her mother saying. Such things as magic and miracles were not pipe dreams upon which to fantasize, but very real possibilities to Genevieve. This respect for a world greater than human knowledge was passed on to Sophie, even in the six short years she had been with her parents.
It was enough, luckily, because otherwise, what Jules had told her over the last few days would have sent Sophie to the loony bin. Or convinced her that Jules belonged in one, anyway. If Sophie hadn’t been the person she was, Juliette would have had a much more difficult time bringing her best friend into the circle of archangel knowledge.
Now that she was here, witnessing the archangels’ immense physical presence and stark gazes firsthand, she was definitely convinced that magic could exist. To say nothing of what Ellie was doing with her powers.
There was also the small fact that Juliette had actually shown Sophie her wings. Real honest-to-God wings. Apparently, Juliette could control when they appeared and when they didn’t, which was fortunate, because the wings were massive and stretched to a good seven or eight feet on either side. Most impressive of all, perhaps, was the fact that the wings were actually functional.
That one hurt a little. Sophie was happy for Juliette and all that she’d found in the last few weeks. Jules deserved the best. She was a kind soul and always had been. She was empathic, understanding, and giving, and Sophie was lucky to have her as a best friend. That Juliette never judged Soph for her past or her lack of a family or “proper” education was like a gift from the Fates to Sophie. She didn’t know what she would do without Jules.
And yet, when Juliette had spread those magnificent wings of hers and beat the air with them and risen from the cliffside where they’d been standing, Sophie had experienced a pang of something she’d never felt before toward Juliette. Jealousy. Envy.
It was a sour, bitter kind of feeling that left a bad taste on her tongue and coiled tightly in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t help it. She would give anything for the ability to leave the Earth’s bonds and escape all that there was while she was trapped there on the ground. To rise above it all. She would give anything.
Gabriel and Juliette reached the end of the aisle and all of Gabriel’s clansmen and clanswomen began tossing flower petals upon the couple. Hundreds of white rose petals cascaded down upon the bride and groom amid shouts of congratulations. It was a heartwarming scene, especially when combined with the gorgeous music pouring forth from the pipers, who stood like sentinels along the castle walls.
“My best friend’s getting married,” she whispered to herself, in awe of the event, the importance of which was finally hitting her as Juliette laughingly pulled rose petals out of her mass of beautiful hair. And then Sophie watched as Juliette’s new husband leaned over and kissed her tenderly on the cheek. He closed his eyes, seemingly lost in the wonder that was his new bride.
And Sophie smiled. “Congrats, Jules. You deserve him.”
* * *
Azrael stood still in the men’s restroom of the portable guest- and bathhouse that had been erected outside of Slains Castle for his brother’s wedding. He was alone, and the air was filled with the hollow sense of foreboding. There was a storm brewing. It was a hurricane, hot and windy and destructive, and it was ripping through Azrael’s insides, begging to be released. He exhaled a shaky breath and pressed his forehead to the mirror in front of him, glancing up at his reflection as he did so.
Another human myth gone horribly awry. Vampires did indeed have reflections. It was the wraiths that didn’t. Azrael bared his teeth and laughed a cold, hard laugh at the thought. The most asinine things were going through his head at that moment. The thoughts were like fireflies on a pitch-black night, chaotic and useless and utterly distracting.
Sophie’s whispered thoughts echoed through his mind, taunting him: I would do anything. She’d been thinking about Juliette’s wings and wishing she could fly. If she’d had any idea how dangerously tempting her thoughts were . . . to say nothing of her reaction to the image he had so carelessly planted in her mind of the wedding ring sliding onto her finger. He hadn’t even me
ant to do it; he’d simply imagined it. However, he’d been in her head at the time, thoroughly rapt in all that she was, and she’d caught the impression clear as a bell.
Her heart had skipped, her cheeks had flushed, and her lips had actually grown fuller as blood rushed into them. Her eyes had become glassy and unfocused. Her breath had hitched. And Azrael lost a little of his sanity then and there at his brother’s wedding.
He’d never felt like this before. Not in his two thousand years on Earth—nor in the thousands upon thousands of years before, in the realm of angels—had he lost focus in this manner. He felt like he had the flu. Vampires didn’t get the flu. Archangels didn’t get the flu. The Angel of Death most certainly did not get the flu.
Azrael swore under his breath—and the mirror in front of him cracked beneath his palm, slicing into the skin of his hand. He blinked and slowly pulled away, straightening as he turned his hand over and gazed down at the welling red line across his palm. Even as he watched, it began to heal.
Azrael looked back up at the mirror and glared at the evidence of his rage. Lightning had indeed carved itself across the glass, a reflection of the storm that raged within him and was now breaking free. Get control, he told himself sternly. He was the most powerful vampire on Earth. If he couldn’t control his emotions, they would leak out in an incredibly destructive manner. Broken mirrors would be only the beginning.
He needed to think. He needed to plan. But Sophie Bryce was two hundred yards away, a walking, talking piece of the sun, and Azrael was losing it.
The lights in the men’s restroom began to flicker and the shadows in the corners grew longer. The temperature in the room seemed to drop. Thunder rolled in the distance. Again Azrael swore. He was fighting a losing battle. The image in the broken mirror reflected a tall, broad-shouldered man draped in stygian black, his sable hair framing a strikingly handsome face that was entirely too pale. Eyes that were entirely too bright.
And fangs that were entirely too long.
With a great amount of effort, Azrael forced his fangs to recede. He couldn’t get rid of them completely; his incisors would always be noticeably sharp and a touch longer than human canines. But with a good deal of concentration, he was able to make them look passable. This was a learned vampire ability; new vampires had to practice and it could sometimes take years.
Azrael should know. When he had left his realm and traveled to Earth with his brothers two thousand years ago, something had happened to him. Michael’s theory was that what Azrael had done up until then as the Angel of Death somehow negatively influenced Azrael’s material form on Earth. Unlike his brothers, Az had been transformed into some kind of supernatural monster.
At the time, there was no name for what he was. The fangs, the nearly unquenchable hunger for blood, the new and horrid deadliness of the sun . . . these had never existed in a being until Azrael came along. He was the first vampire. He gave himself the name because it sounded right.
It took him months to learn to control the hunger. It had been a very painful period of time, and in the years since then, he had never forgotten the way it tore him up inside, shredding his soul like tissue paper. Now, every night as he awoke with the stars, he thanked fate that he no longer suffered. He still had to feed. It was necessary for the survival of a vampire to ingest human blood every night. But his need had become a simple understanding of his physiology—and an acceptance of the same. He considered himself immensely fortunate and never took for granted the fact that he no longer craved and hungered the way he had in those horrid moments of vampiric inception.
But tonight . . .
As Azrael stood in the men’s restroom outside of the castle, he was gripped by acidic, mind-numbing fear. Because he felt it again. It was the same driving kind of need—one that shoved every other thought or desire or inclination ruthlessly out of the way and threatened absolute subjugation. Only this time, it was focused. Directed.
He hungered. He craved like a madman. But what he craved and hungered for was Sophie Bryce.
His archess.
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