It would be hours before she got to the Radisson Blu. She was suddenly grateful that British cars got about a thousand miles to the gallon. She hadn’t seen a gas station anywhere along the road since she’d left the airport.
Christ, you’re in a good mood, Jules, she told herself as she took a minute to rub her eyes while the cars in front of her came to a full stop once again. Lighten up. You landed safe and sound. Everything else is trivial. But the stupid airline had lost her luggage, and her right butt cheek was numb from sitting, and she was terrified that she was going to get into a wreck and wind up in a foreign jail before the end of the day.
The car behind her began honking. Juliette looked up and peered at the driver through her rearview mirror. Past her own honey-brown-haired, hazel-eyed reflection, she caught sight of the man in the BMW behind her. The man was middle-aged, from what she could tell. Gold wristwatch? Maybe silver; hard to tell in this light. Balding with glasses. He had a cell phone to his right ear.
Juliette frowned. What the hell was he honking at?
Up ahead, traffic began to crawl forward once more. Jules reached a good five miles per hour, before it once again slowed to a halt and she sighed.
The driver in the BMW behind Juliette leaned on his horn. Jules glanced up, caught him in the rearview mirror, and shot him a dirty look. In response, he palmed the horn and kept it down. What the hell? she thought. Does he think I can make the three hundred cars in front of me move faster? Does he actually think I can go anywhere?
Thunder rolled across the highway, rumbling the windows in their panes and temporarily drowning out the sound of the BMW’s horn. Lightning crashed to the right of Juliette’s car, somewhere not too far away, and when she began to count the seconds, she didn’t even reach the number one before the sky erupted with a bellow of sound.
She jumped a little and ducked instinctively. Somewhere over the green hill, in the neighborhood of the suburbs, car alarms went off.
Juliette turned on her car radio and got nothing but static on every station. She tried to swallow and found her throat a little dry. Her head was aching now as tension rode up through her arms and into her neck.
Her car was presently stuck underneath an overpass and the damp gray cement had been decorated by no fewer than ten different gangs. Juliette frowned at the visual cacophony of paint as a man dressed in shabby clothing came slowly lumbering around the corner of one of the overpass’s support columns. His shoes had no toes and he was holding a hat. There were a few coins in the hat, not much paper. However, in Britain, the coins tended to be worth a lot more than they were in the US, so that wasn’t necessarily telling.
Juliette automatically began rummaging in the backpack beside her in the passenger seat of the rental car. She knew she had some two-pound coins in one of the outer pockets. She checked ahead as she dug around; the traffic still wasn’t moving, so she was safe. Once she found the coins, she rolled down her window and called out to him. At first, he didn’t seem to hear her. Thunder once more rolled over the traffic jam, making it harder for her to gain his attention. She tried again and again, and on the third attempt, he looked up, his blue eyes stark against his ruddy face and stubbled chin.
Juliette waved him over and the man hobbled to her window. She handed him every coin she had and the man took them gently in his stained fingers as his weathered lips cracked a grateful smile.
Behind her, Mr. BMW laid into his horn a third time.
Juliette’s eyes widened. She raised her head to look at him through her rearview mirror. He glared at her and her blood began to roar through her eardrums. She slowly narrowed her gaze, glaring back at him. She was normally a nonconfrontational person, but this guy was pushing the envelope with her.
In response, he flipped her the British rendition of the bird: a backward peace sign.
And then the hood of his car erupted into white sparks and flame as a bolt of lightning shot through it like a massive white-light tree trunk. Juliette saw the strike as if in slow motion. Time slowed down, allowing her to witness the billions of minuscule tributaries of electricity that shot off the massive main column of the bolt. It reminded her of one of those glass balls that you put your hand on and the static electricity shoots from the ball toward the center of your palm.
But the sound was deafening. There was a blast, like a bomb, and then a high-pitched ringing and little else. Juliette knew that somewhere, just outside this little bubble of reality that the lightning bolt had affected, even more alarms were going off, horns were being honked, and people might be getting out of their cars now.
But for her, there was only time, slow and impossible—and the man behind her, who now literally could not let go of his cell phone as the electricity from the bolt shot through his car and into the cabin, zapping his glasses until they singed his eyebrows and nose, and melting his wristwatch onto his arm.
I did that, she thought suddenly. Mr. BMW was screaming now, but there was no sound. Only the ringing and a muffled reality. He clutched his arm and fumbled for the door handle and Juliette could only watch, in stunned realization.
She knew it in the core of who she was. It was a certainty, like the knowledge that the sun would rise in the east and that thinking took place in the brain. She had called the lightning on that man’s car.
That was me.
Reality freezes at points in a person’s life. Time is like everything else—relative. It took years for the man in the BMW behind Juliette to come to his senses and feel for his slightly melted door handle, open it, and scramble out into the street to topple over. It took another year for her to open her own door and rush out into the street after him.
With guilt heavy on her shoulders, she propelled herself forward, through the waning gale to the unconscious man’s side. She saw her fingers at his throat, checking for a pulse. A century later, she was leaning over him, hoping to feel his breath against her ear.
When she did, she sat back on her heels and looked down at his melted watch and scorch marks. Then, without premeditation, she placed her hand to his chest and closed her eyes.
It was what she had done in Australia. But she didn’t have time to contemplate the madness of it. Her body was acting of its own accord.
All around her were the sounds of people stirring. Someone was yelling about calling ambulances and someone else was yelling back that an ambulance would never make it through anyway. There was still thunder, but it had settled a bit. There was the crackling of a fire and Juliette knew that it was the interior of the BMW she was listening to as it smoldered and popped itself into oblivion. A thrum of hard fear rushed through her at the sound. She didn’t mind fires when they were contained, and even enjoyed a warm blaze in a hearth, but fires on their own were ravenous, unpredictable forces that belched poison and consumed everything in their paths.
She heard rain falling, though, and also knew the fire would soon be put out. She was soaked through and growing cold just as the familiar heat gathered beneath her palm, spread up her arm, and seeped into the sleeping body of the man beside her.
This isn’t happening, she thought, as weakness stole into her body while the man stirred in front of her and his burn marks melted away. I can heal . . . and I can call lightning from the skies. It was a floating realization, a faint voice whispering in the halls of her conscious mind. It was a verity, though, real enough that it couldn’t be ignored.
She opened her eyes to find the man she’d given money to standing across from her, watching her silently. Her heart thudded hard in her chest and she froze, feeling as paralyzed as a deer in headlights.
Beneath the light touch of her palm, the injured man rolled over a bit, turned his head, and opened his eyes. Juliette glanced down at him, blinked, and then hurriedly removed her hand and slid back a few inches.
She felt tired, more weary than she should have. She now recalled feeling the same way after healing the surfer in Australia. This is real. What I did in Australia was real. Not a br
eakdown. It was real.
The man looked up at her, blinked when rain fell into his eyes, and threw his arm over his face. Then he frowned. “You,” he said, his features filled with disdain. “Are you robbin’ me or somethin’?” he asked in a heavy Scottish accent.
Juliette was taken aback, despite the impossibility of the situation. But she was not one to be mistreated. His words instantly got her ire up. Once she recalled the rudeness he’d displayed only minutes ago, she recovered and met his look of disdain with one of her own. “You fainted,” she told him, “like a little girl. I was only trying to help you out.”
He blinked again, this time not from the rain, and then glanced at his burning car. Black smoke curled up from the shattered sunroof and billowed above the street before the rain and clouds ate it up.
The man looked back up at Juliette. And then, in a most unexpected move, his face broke a broad smile and he began to laugh. It was a pleasant laugh: a chuckle, deep and true. “Figures,” he said. “I finally get somethin’ worth a shite out o’ me divorce and God goes an’ takes it away again. He really does like me ex-wife better than me.” He sat up, and because Juliette was there in front of him, she found herself helping him.
Once he was upright, he looked at her again. “You look like her, you do,” he said. “When she was a younger lass.” He ran his hand over his bald head, washing away a bit of the rain, and then sighed. “She was too good for me. She knew it—I should’ve.” He shook his head. “I’m sorrae I’m such an ass.”
Juliette blinked. That was why he had honked at her and flipped her off? Wow, she thought. Must have been a rough divorce. She licked her lips and tasted rain. “It’s okay?” What was there to say to that? She was trembling, but she managed a small smile.
He shrugged helplessly. “You really look like her now that I don’ have me glasses. Everythin’s blurry.” He glanced around at the ground and, not finding them, seemed to give up. “The name’s Albert.” He held out his hand.
Juliette hesitated briefly and then grasped it firmly, never one to give a limp handshake, no matter what the circumstances. “I’m Juliette,” she replied. Then she glanced at the cars around them. Sirens could now be heard in the distance. Someone was arguing over a fender bender about twenty cars down. Juliette and the BMW guy were starting to acquire an audience.
“Oy! Are you okay, there?” A pair of teenage boys was peeking tentatively around the car behind the smoldering BMW. They appeared genuinely concerned.
“Do we need the paramedics?” one asked.
“One’s already on the way, James. Can you no’ hear it?”
Their conversation continued and Juliette ignored them. She leaned a little closer to Albert. “Can you stand?”
“I think so. I thought the lightnin’ had done me in bu’”—he looked at his arms and felt his face—“I guess I was wrong. Me ears are no’ even ringin’ or anythin’.”
Juliette knew why. As the storm quieted around her, reflecting her own emotions, that truth stomped its foot and banged on the door of her consciousness, asserting itself blatantly. Albert had been plenty hurt by the lightning and she’d been the reason for that damage, not any deity. She was also the reason he wasn’t hurt now. That was the truth.
However, what she said was, “Maybe God doesn’t like your ex-wife better than you, after all.”
Albert met her wry smile with a lopsided grin of his own and she helped him stand.
Twenty minutes later, the police arrived and managed to get everyone back into their cars—except of course for Albert, whom they forced into an ambulance on the sheer principle that he’d been inside of a car struck by lightning.
Juliette caught his good-bye nod, returned it, and got back into her own car at the behest of the police. As she settled, still shaking, into the driver’s seat and looked over the steering wheel, her gaze met one of stark blue.
It was the man that she’d given money to. She’d forgotten about him. He’d watched her heal Albert.
Juliette swallowed hard and peered into the man’s eyes. Slowly, he lifted the coins she had given him for her to see. Then he nodded once, slowly and surely, as if to say I understand, and Thank you. And then he put the coins back into his hat, turned around, and walked away. She lost sight of him as he rounded the corner beneath the overpass.
A few seconds later, Juliette followed the car in front of her as traffic began its slow crawl back to life. The rain had all but stopped and the sun peeked through the clouds up above. And Juliette was no longer uncertain of her sanity. Now she was uncertain of just about everything else.
* * *
Daniel knew he was on borrowed time. His plan had taken him from the Adarian complex and across the Atlantic to where the second archess had just landed. It was a risky plan and it wouldn’t be easy to execute.
But his life depended on it.
Abraxos was going to kill one of his men. The tall and handsome, raven-black-haired, blue-eyed Adarian General had been the first archangel in existence. He was the leader of the Adarian army, which had been tossed out by the Old Man eons ago and had been forced to scratch out an existence on this trash heap of a world the humans called Earth.
And now, because the General knew of the existence of the archesses and their inherent healing power, the Adarian leader was evolving a horrid plan. That plan involved kidnapping every one of the archesses and murdering them so that the General, and a few select Adarians, could live out the remainder of their immortal lives enjoying the healing power of their archess blood.
Only a few would be chosen to receive the blood. Daniel knew he was not to be one of them. In fact, he knew that if he had remained behind, he would have been killed outright. That much had been painfully clear. The General believed that Daniel’s ability to become invisible was the only power Daniel possessed, and that apparently wasn’t enough to keep Daniel alive. The General needed a guinea pig—and he’d chosen Daniel for the mortal task.
However, the General was mistaken. Daniel also had the power of prophecy, of divination: the ability to see into the future.
He’d always kept this second ability a secret from the General because the power of prophecy wasn’t an easy one to use, no matter how valuable it was. It hurt him to use it. Every time he performed a divination, it left him sick and weakened and in vast amounts of agony. No amount of morphine was capable of ridding him of this pain. It was a supernatural suffering, without recourse.
As long as these side effects were not his own to suffer, Abraxos would not have cared how horrible they were, and he would have forced Daniel to use that power with great frequency to locate the other archesses or supernatural beings. The advantages to knowing your opponent’s next moves before they did were enormous. So Daniel had hidden his prophecy power from his leader, and only his ability to turn himself invisible had been of any use to Abraxos—that was all the General knew Daniel had to offer.
Several days ago, Daniel had performed a divination. He didn’t normally do so, again because of the pain, but he’d been riddled with a foreboding feeling and wanted to know why. So, he decided to put up with the pain long enough to satisfy the niggling sense that the prophecy was necessary. He performed the divination and had seen within it something wholly disconcerting: the General and his plan to kill Daniel by ingesting all of his blood. The entire scene unfolded before Daniel’s mind, along with the General’s reasons for doing so.
Whether Abraxos’s plan made sense or not was another question entirely. As far as Daniel was concerned, it was an impossible dream that the Adarians would ever successfully get their hands on even one of the archesses, much less all of them. As far as Daniel was concerned, Abraxos was going mad and that plan alone proved it. But that was beside the point. The General would carry out the worst part of his plan no matter what, and kill Daniel whether the rest of the design made sense or not.
Daniel wondered whether the General had chosen another Adarian to die in his stead now that Daniel had
escaped. Maybe he had—and that soldier was already dead. If that was the case, he wondered who it might be. And he wondered if it had worked. Had Abraxos been capable of absorbing the Adarian’s power?
If so . . . would he decide he wanted more abilities? Would the General now go after any of the other men for their powers? Where would it stop?
Daniel knew that he’d been originally singled out by the General because all he seemed to offer was his invisibility. But if Daniel could prove that he had more to offer, it might just ensure that the General never turned on him and decided to take his power as his own. Abraxos would not want to suffer the agony that came with using the divination ability himself, so Daniel highly doubted that his leader would take such a power from him. But the General would allow Daniel to live as long as Daniel was the one to suffer the pain—and as long as Daniel delivered a prophecy whenever the General wanted him to.
Even if it promised a life of agony, it was better to Daniel to use his divination ability whenever his leader saw fit rather than face the gruesome death he had foreseen in that terrible glimpse into the future. It was his only hope. He could never leave the Adarians; he could never disappear entirely. He didn’t belong anywhere else and knew of nowhere to go—and it didn’t matter. No matter where Daniel went, the General would find him eventually. There was no escape from him. And the Adarians were the only family Daniel had ever known.
He had nothing else. This plan had to work.
All he needed was Juliette Anderson. She was his proof. Other than Eleanore Granger—who was now not only married to one of the archangels but very much in the public eye as the wife of a famous actor, and hence virtually untouchable—Juliette Anderson was the only archess known to exist. And thus far, Daniel was fairly certain that only he knew she existed. The archangels themselves were clueless.