Avenger's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels

  Uriel looked up at Eleanore.

  “The four of us decided we wanted to come after you. It had never been done before. No angel had ever fallen to Earth before. We had no clue what would await us here.” He shrugged. “But the Old Man granted our wishes and we left. We thought it would be a lot easier than it was. Unfortunately, your souls were scattered and we had no idea where to look. Our communication with the Old Man was completely cut off; we haven’t been able to contact him in two thousand years. It’s like we entered an entirely different universe. For all we knew, the four of you could float in limbo for eons or you could be born and born again and we would miss you by chance.” He shrugged and shook his head. “It’s amazing to me how little we understood about the human realm before experiencing it for ourselves. Even the Old Man had no clue.” At that, he paused and frowned. In a softer voice, he said, “Sometimes I think he still doesn’t.”

  Eleanore was silent as she digested this. She should have felt overwhelmed, but aside from her initial anger earlier, she felt strangely . . . calm. It would explain so much. Why she had always been different. Her ability to heal. It even made sense, suddenly, that she’d never really minded her lack of any kind of boyfriend. Men were always vaguely interesting to her, but when she had to pick up and move, they were the least of her concerns.

  And now she knew why. They weren’t meant for her.

  Uriel was.

  That explained her fascination with him from afar. Why she dreamed of him and read his articles and even sat through his movie just so that she could peer into his green eyes.

  “You . . . seem okay with this,” Uriel said. She looked up at him to find an almost painfully hopeful expression on his handsome face. “Are you?”

  Eleanore smiled a small smile and shrugged. “You know, I think I actually am.” She believed him. She believed Max. She was an archess and Uriel was her soul mate. It was an amazingly peaceful realization. As if she’d had a scratch she couldn’t reach her whole life. And now it no longer itched.

  “Who’s doing your job now that you’re no longer the Angel of Vengeance?” she asked softly. It was something that she’d been wondering since he’d first admitted as much.

  “No one. Humans don’t need angels to do their work any longer. Not that they ever did. Humans have amazing imaginations and their capacity for punishing one another far outdoes anything I ever came up with. In the end, revenge finds its own way, as does everything else we once delivered to the world.”

  Ellie said nothing. She couldn’t disagree with that.

  Uriel took her by the upper arms, squeezing gently. “Are we okay?” he asked, his eyes no longer glowing.

  She shrugged and offered him a confused but friendly smile. He smiled back, looking relieved.

  Then he turned away from her and opened the door to the garage. A vast, echoing darkness yawned open beyond, and he stepped into it. Eleanore blinked while her eyes tried to adjust and she hesitantly followed him in, looking around as she did so. The garage door was solid but for severely tinted windows punctuated by thin slats of clear glass that allowed very small beams of sunlight into the vast garage. The windows were most likely tinted to protect the paint jobs of the vehicles inside. Something hummed electrically in the blackness and something else tinked in mechanical rhythm. Machinery of some kind. She heard Uriel run his hand over the wall, and turned to find him searching for the light. He found it, flipped the switch, and the fluorescents popped to life above them. The garage came into sudden, flickering view. Eleanore stopped in her tracks and stared.

  Uriel disappeared into the row of vehicles and she lost sight of him. “What are all of these?” she asked, her tone filled with wonder. The closest “car” to her was by far the most bizarre, and barely recognizable as something that moved—it was the wheels that made her believe it was some sort of transportation device. Otherwise, it looked like something from the middle ages. Its wheels were huge, its “carriage” was nothing but a gigantic flat wagon, and the entire contraption was connected to a massive conical tank with one giant tube sticking out of it.

  Eleanore slowly moved toward it and placed her hand on the carriage. “What the hell is this thing?”

  “It’s technically the first automobile ever invented,” Uriel told her, his voice carrying over from somewhere deeper within the garage. “It was designed in 1335 by a man named Guido da Vigevano. He was also a doctor and a good friend of Michael’s.”

  A friend of Michael’s . . .

  It hit her then, in that moment. How truly old Uriel and his brothers were. It was one thing for someone to tell you that they were immortal. It was another to be standing a few inches away from proof to that end.

  Eleanore moved away from the vehicle and stared down at her hand. She’d just touched the very first automobile ever made. How many people could say that? “Does it work?”

  “Not without help,” Uriel replied, suddenly standing next to her once more.

  Eleanore jumped and spun to face him. She hadn’t heard him come up beside her. He smiled. “And these other cars?” She gestured to the long row of vehicles that seemed to progress from oldest to newest in one solid line of history.

  “All invented or owned by people we’ve known throughout the years. Michael loves anything with wheels, so most of them are his.”

  “I see.” Eleanore looked from the 1335 vehicle to the next, which appeared to be a massive tricycle with steam pipes and vents all over it. After that came a recognizable steam engine, albeit a small one. Then something resembling what she would have identified as a Model T. After that, it was one long line of smoothed-out angles, better paint jobs, less wood, more leather, rubber, and chrome.

  Eleanore left the ledge where she was standing and walked in front of the line of cars until she was standing before an early-model Harley-Davidson. “Michael likes motorcycles, too?”

  “Like I said—anything with wheels.”

  Eleanore had to smile at that.

  Samuel Lambent would love this, she thought.

  Someone cleared his throat behind them and Eleanore and Uriel turned to see Michael and Gabriel standing in the doorway to the garage.

  “What do you think?” Michael asked, pride clear in his features.

  “I think you’re a heck of a collector. I know someone who would probably pay top dollar for this one.” She gestured to the Harley.

  “Oh?” Michael asked, somewhat amused. “It’s not for sale. But out of curiosity, who?”

  “Samuel Lambent,” Ellie replied without thinking.

  The garage fell into silence around her and she looked up to see each of the men staring at her, somewhat stricken expressions on their handsome faces.

  “What?” she asked, wide-eyed.

  Gabriel looked up at his brother. “We need to tell ’er about Sam.”

  Eleanore turned from him to Uriel, who glanced at her and then glanced away, as if he couldn’t meet her gaze.

  “She’s already met him, Uriel, and you know she’s gotten the wrong impression of him,” said Michael.

  “Who?” Eleanore asked, unable to stop herself. “I’ve got the wrong impression about who?”

  “Samuel Lambent,” Gabriel answered, before Uriel could.

  “Enough, Gabe. I’ll handle this.”

  “All right, then, but best make it soon; the weesack’s obviously made ’imself out to be a bloody hero.”

  Eleanore turned to face Uriel once more and found her hands on her hips. “What the hell is going on, Christopher?” She corrected herself with a quick shake of her head. “I mean Uriel.” It was going to take some getting used to, no matter how attracted to him she was.

  “You two leave.” Uriel leveled his brothers with a hard, meaningful look. Michael shrugged and left right away. Gabriel returned the dark gaze with one of his own, nodded once to both of them, and then followed Michael out, closing the door behind him.

  Finally, Uriel turned back to Eleanore and sighed. “I’m sorry
, Ellie. They’re right. We need to talk about Samuel Lambent.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “What about him?”

  “He’s not what he pretends to be,” Uriel said. “Did you get my things from the car?” she asked, quickly changing the subject and turning away from him to stand on her tiptoes and gaze down the long line of vehicles. Presumably she was searching for her own MINI Cooper. But clearly she was uncomfortable with the subject of Lambent and didn’t want to discuss him. He wondered why.

  Uriel stared down at Eleanore’s head and frowned. “Ellie, you need to listen to me right now. What I’m trying to tell you is very important.”

  He moved forward to take her arm and turn her back around, but as he stepped toward her, the sun’s thin rays at the slats in the windows of the garage shifted and a stream of it hit his eyes. He squinted against it, instantly irritated, and pulled back.

  Then he frowned again. That was weird.

  “Ellie, please turn around and talk to me.”

  “I can’t see my car from here—it must be behind that SUV down there.” She started off along the row of cars once more, and he was forced to follow her. Instinctively, he turned his face away from the light at the windows, not even realizing he was doing so.

  She was moving quickly and he could feel his irritation rising. “Eleanore, Samuel Lambent is not just a media mogul, and I know you think he’s a nice guy. . . .” He flinched when the sun hit his eyes once more, but gritted his teeth against the pain. “But you couldn’t be more off,” he finished through a clenched jaw.

  Eleanore ducked in between two of the vehicles to her left and Uriel hurriedly went after her. “Ellie, his name isn’t actually Samuel. It’s Sama—”

  Sharp pain shot through his right eye and into his skull, immediately lancing everything from his brain to his stomach with agony. He instantly stopped, and once again acting on instinct, turned away from the windows, clutching at his gut as he ducked behind the large SUV beside him. He crouched low and closed his eyes. The pain eased, and as it did, he noticed that his breathing was ragged. Heavy.

  What’s happening to me . . . ?

  This wasn’t normal. He rarely felt pain, and when he did, it was either fleeting or an injury, in which case, Michael would heal him and that would be that. This was different. Something was definitely wrong.

  “Here it is!” Eleanore called from several cars down.

  Uriel ignored her and concentrated on his body. The inside of his left wrist was throbbing. Beneath the buzzing of the lights overhead, which were suddenly louder than before, he also discerned the faint sound of something splashing.

  Drip . . . drip . . . drip . . .

  He tried to steady his breathing and listen more closely. Then he looked down to see small, bright crimson splashes on the polished concrete of the garage floor. Each flower of dark red was a tad larger than the previous one. As he looked on, another flower joined the bunch. And then another.

  They were coming from his fingertips. Slowly, he turned his hand over. Streams of bright red had streaked across his palm and down his fingers. He followed their trail to the now-stained cuff of his long-sleeved thermal shirt and then roughly shoved it farther up on his arm.

  His wrist was bleeding. The wound was small but deep; it was the piercing he’d given himself with Samael’s blade-tipped pen. He’d thought it healed—apparently not.

  “Eleanore!” He raised his head and rested it against the grill of the vehicle behind him. He closed his eyes and waited for her reply.

  “Yeah?” She was farther away now.

  “Please . . .” Come here, he thought, wanting her near. Needing her near. “You need to know the truth! ” he told her, even as the pain was back in his head and it wrenched the breath temporarily from his lungs. He swallowed hard several times, choked down bile, and continued. “Samuel Lambent is one of u—”

  That was as far as he got before the real torture kicked in. There was a ripping sound from inside his skull and blood erupted in his mouth. He cried out, unable to stop himself, and slammed his head against the SUV’s radiator cover. His gums bled and throbbed in an anguish unlike any his long existence had ever known. With a bewildered, horrified fascination, Uriel felt his canines elongating from behind his tongue.

  Oh God, he thought. Azrael! Help me!

  He was now petrified with the absolute knowledge that a transformation had come over him. His fear for himself was bad enough; his fear for Eleanore was greater. She was in this garage with him—somewhere—and the hunger that was now dawning within him and yawning awake scared the hell out of him. He could smell his blood where it continued to gather in his palm and spill over onto the garage floor.

  And he could smell hers as well.

  There was only one man he could think of who might be able to help. Only Azrael possessed the ability to hear him. But it was daylight and the Masked One would be confined by the sun to his quarters under the mansion.

  Despair sliced through Uriel. He gasped for breath beneath the onslaught and cried out again, using all of his mental capacity. There was nothing else for it.

  AZRAEL!

  “Uriel?” Eleanore’s voice came tentatively around the cars several vehicles down. “You okay?”

  She can sense something is wrong. He knew it was part of who she was—her ability to heal. He knew that now; as he knew with dreadful certainty that if he didn’t get away from her as soon as inhumanly possible, he was going to hurt her.

  When he’d sworn to her that he would never allow anyone to harm her, he hadn’t considered that one of the people he might have to protect her from was himself.

  Az. Please help me.

  And then he heard Azrael’s voice in his head. I’m sending the others, Uriel. Try to remain calm.

  His brother’s tone was tranquil and controlled, but forceful in the way it carried through Uriel’s mind and echoed in the chambers of his consciousness. It instantly filled him with hope. They were on their way.

  At the same time, he heard Eleanore’s footsteps drawing nearer. “Uriel? Where are you? Are you okay?” She was more worried now and moving quickly from vehicle to vehicle. He could smell her drawing nearer . . . She smelled like . . . like . . .

  Oh fuck.

  She smelled like sex and dinner and satisfaction and heaven and he was in agony, his insides in knots, his body on fire and frozen at once, his fangs now fully developed and his gums throbbing. His vision had turned slightly red and everything in the room was entirely too bright. His head felt as if it would explode.

  Explode ...

  Unless he sank his fangs into Eleanore’s throat and drank her in. Her blood would stop his pain. It would end this torture. He knew what he was becoming now. He’d played the part on screen enough to recognize the symptoms. He had no idea how it was happening or why, but he was becoming a vampire.

  And he needed Ellie. . . .

  “Ellie, I’m here,” he whispered, croaked, and called to her.

  In turn, her footsteps changed direction, breaking into a run as they neared him. He looked up as she came around the corner.

  “Eleanore, get back!”

  The door to the garage was slammed open on its hinges to bang noisily against the adjacent wall. Eleanore stopped in her tracks and stared at Gabriel, Michael, and Max Gillihan. They were rushing toward her.

  As if in slow motion, she looked down at Uriel. Eyes red as fire gazed back at her, freezing her in her tracks. His handsome face had gone pale, his hair was longer and darker, his lips were parted to reveal the cruelest set of fangs she had ever seen. They were white as the moon, long, sharp, and faintly bathed in his own blood. His body was shaking, trembling with unholy need; she could feel his pain and knew what was going on in his body as she always knew when looking upon the suffering. His hard muscles were even more pronounced than normal, and a deep, throaty growl was emanating from the recesses of his throat.

  Eleanore couldn’t scream. She couldn’t even gasp.
All she could do was stand there and stare through wide eyes as the monster who had only moments before been an archangel rose from his crouched position and leapt toward her.

  Everything happened very quickly then; time seemed to pick up speed and momentum so that each event blurred by in rapid succession: Uriel’s transformed features rushed toward her face; someone was shoving her roughly, his hand slamming into her chest with such force that it knocked the wind from her lungs; she went sailing backward to violently smack into one of the garage walls, banging her head against the concrete and her hip against a large metal tool chest as she dropped to the ground, stunned.

  There was a roar—and then a growl . . . some screaming, things breaking. Shattering? Eleanore blinked lazily; the world was out of focus and sound was distant, like an echo.

  She was scared. She was also very sleepy. But worst of all was the nausea. It came fast and furious, like it did with a migraine, and Eleanore tried not to retch. It took her a half second more before she was closing her eyes again and summoning all of her strength to heal herself. She knew it was her head. She knew it as if she could see the injury from a doctor’s vantage point. She saw the concussion and the blood pooling beneath her skull and she concentrated on that—and on the nausea it created.

  Just as the nausea ebbed and Eleanore was again resting back against the wall to exhale with new weariness, she felt breath on her cheek. The garage had gone eerily quiet.

  She opened her eyes. Uriel knelt before her, his hands pressed to the wall on either side of her, trapping her there. The irises of his eyes were burning red; she could actually see the movement of flames within them. He bared his fangs and a deep, low, predatory rumble surrounded them both like thunder.

  Eleanore swallowed hard, her heart rate kicking up a few hundred notches. What the hell is happening to him? Once more, her life had been plunged into mad chaos. “Uriel,” she said softly, trying desperately to find the strength to reason with him. Self-preservation was kicking in. She could feel a little of her power still there, but she’d used a lot healing her concussion. Still, if she needed to, she could move a few objects—maybe aim for his head. “Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered. “You promised.”