“Everyone loves dirty laundry,” Monte said. And then he fidgeted a bit and smoothed his gray suit before he muttered, “Except me, that is.”
Max sighed heavily and adjusted his glasses. He looked as tired as Michael did.
“We’ve done all we’re capable of,” Az told his guardian gently.
“Agreed,” Max said. “Let’s go home. And then you can fill us in on what the hell is going on.” He gave Azrael a sharp look that said no wool had been pulled over his eyes, and then he turned and began making his way through the small crowd on the boardwalk.
Azrael nodded at Randall and the other vampires by way of farewell. A few minutes later, he and his brothers had opened a portal inside a deserted ferry building and were stepping through and into the foyer of the mansion. Gabriel headed immediately for the fridge and its waiting beers. He pulled two from its interior and then turned and handed one to his lovely bride. She smiled a grateful, tired smile, twisted the top off, and put it to her lips.
Michael turned the water heater on for tea. It wasn’t as if he actually needed the appliance to boil the water; he could have done so telekinetically. But the act of making tea was often more soothing than the drinking of the tea itself.
Uriel sat on the end of one of the stuffed leather couches in the living room and pulled Eleanore’s weary body onto his lap. She instantly curled up against him, ducking her head into his chest and closing her eyes.
Max moved farther into the living room, took off his glasses, rubbed his nose and eyes, and then gracefully took a seat in the large plush chair adjacent to Uriel. Az waited. And Max looked up, pinning him with his knowing, dark stare.
“Sophie is my archess,” began Azrael. Sometimes it was best to get right to the point.
* * *
Sophie came awake amid roiling nausea, deep, hard chills, and a terrible need for denial. She moaned low in her throat, overwhelmed by the sickness building inside her, and then rolled over to get off the bed so she could throw up.
A gentle hand touched her chest as she faced the edge of the bed and, a second later, the nausea was gone. Sophie looked up into a set of fathomless black eyes.
“Uro,” she said softly, not trusting herself to speak too loudly should the nausea hear her and return with a vengeance.
Uro smiled a tender, gentle smile, making Sophie’s breath catch despite herself. He knelt beside the bed, all grace and strength, and softly placed his hand over hers on the comforter. “Yes,” he said.
“Are you a vampire too?” she asked, knowing already what the answer would be. No human could take away pain the way he just had. No human was as beautiful as he was or could play the guitar the way he played or could even kneel as gracefully as he had just knelt. She knew he was a vampire. And that probably all of Valley of Shadow were as well.
“Yes,” he admitted readily. “And yes, the others are as well.”
“Can you wipe my memories from my mind?” Even as she asked it, she felt the sob rising from deep within her chest. And as she spoke the last word of the question, the sob pushed itself out and she gave in to it, curling in on herself as her eyes filled with tears.
A little over a decade ago, she’d killed a man. She’d shot him with his own gun.
She’d killed a man.
Everything else paled in comparison to that realization. It was as if she’d been watching a movie about murderers and all this time she’d been sitting back and thinking, “Wow, that sucks. I’m glad I’m not one of them.” And then she’d awakened to find that the movie was a dream and she was “one of them” after all. All of life had become a horror movie, a bad dream, a waking nightmare.
“Oh God,” she whispered amid the sobs that wracked her frame and drenched the satin comforter beneath her with salty pain.
“I cannot, dearest Sophie,” said Uro gently, his voice wrapping around her like a blanket. It slid along her skin, silk on her flesh, and massaged her emotional nerves. “Or I would.”
“I want to die,” Sophie told him, meaning it with all her heart. She didn’t want to live with the knowledge of what she’d done. “I thought you vampires had magic powers!” She felt angry, desperate, like she wanted to crawl out of the skin that housed the brain and bones that had caused that death on that hill eleven years ago. She couldn’t stand herself, didn’t want to be her, didn’t want to take another breath that would fuel the person she now realized she was.
Beside her, in that distant sort of way people notice things when they’re in the throes of any kind of madness, Sophie felt Uro move. She felt his hands on her arms as he drew her to a sitting position.
“Sophie,” he said softly, and his voice curled over her, washed through her, and stifled her next sob. “Look at me,” he instructed gently.
Sophie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and looked up. She would have expected her vision to be blurry through the film she’d left on them, but Uro’s handsome face was in clear, perfect view. His bottomless black eyes pulled her in, made her want to search for constellations.
She stilled, feeling a sense of calm come over her as she fell into those eyes. Was there a star there? A comet?
“That’s it, Sophie,” he said with a pleased smile. His fingers gently brushed a lock of hair from her wet cheek. “Here,” he said, reaching into the inside pocket of his sport coat. When he produced a genuine woven handkerchief, Sophie was just surprised enough to give him a baffled expression.
“Old habit,” he told her. “Where I’m originally from, we carried these with us everywhere we went so we could wipe the sweat from our brows.” He paused and the darkness in his black eyes became so deep, so dense with the passage of time that Sophie was struck with a feeling of nostalgia. “It was long ago.”
Sophie slowly took the cotton cloth from his hand and said, “Thank you.”
“It is my pleasure.”
“I . . .” She paused, both relieved and bewildered that she felt calm enough to form normal, coherent sentences and that she no longer wanted to kill herself. The pain of her memory seemed distant now, as if it were residing in a room separate from herself and she’d simply closed the door. It was still there—but she couldn’t hear it screaming any longer. “I think I need to blow my nose. It might be gross.”
Uro’s dark eyes flashed with something like stardust and he threw back his head and laughed. It was an amazing sound, much like Azrael’s laugh—but not quite.
“I challenge you to do worse than what I have seen and heard,” he told her, his smile jovial and light. “In fact, I used to wake up my brothers by blowing my nose in their ears every morning.” He paused again and straightened. “Again, long ago.”
Then he stood and moved to the fireplace, turning his back to her. “If it makes you more comfortable, I will cover my ears.”
Sophie wanted to laugh then. She really did. She didn’t know why; it wasn’t that funny. But he was taking her pain away, and for that, she just about loved him. With a smile of relief, Sophie put the handkerchief to her nose and blew. She was sort of glad, actually, that he was holding his ears.
When she was finished, she folded the handkerchief up tight and shoved it into her jacket pocket. As she did, she realized that she was missing something.
Her leather messenger bag had gone down with the Calliope.
“Was the driver okay?” she asked Uro as he turned back around to face her.
He didn’t seem surprised by her question, and Sophie wondered whether he was capable of reading her mind like Az could.
“Yes,” he told her. “He is safe, as are the others who were involved in the accident.”
Sophie frowned. “How? Did you guys save them? Can vampires heal people?”
Uro looked sad for a moment. “Unfortunately, no. However, Lord Azrael’s brother can heal, as can your friend Juliette and Uriel’s wife, Eleanore. They came to the bridge to help.”
Sophie’s eyes widened. “Jules is there?” she asked. She wasn’t sure how she f
elt about that. On the one hand, she felt a little homesick for her best friend and a little left out that she and Eleanore were working together without her. On the other hand, there was a nasty taste budding on her tongue and a strange chill riding up her spine at the thought of the accident. She didn’t want Juliette anywhere near it.
And then there was a third issue, a new and unfamiliar sensation. Sophie felt the dawning need, deep down inside, to be there on the bridge with them—not as a friend but as an archess.
She was just starting to wonder whether it would feel the same and work the same for her as it did for Juliette when Uro straightened. The air in the cavern shifted, becoming abrasive. Sophie stiffened and Uro turned toward the shadows on one side of the room.
Someone stepped through them.
Chapter Twenty
Kevin smiled as he turned from the blank apartment wall he used these days for scrying. The image of a sleeping Sophie Bryce on a black bed shimmered and disappeared as he looked away. “As you can see, she is coming into her powers,” he told his fellow Adarians. Mitchell, with his fathomless black eyes and black hair, reclined effortlessly against Kevin’s desk and listened intently, the slight hint of a smile on his handsome face.
Luke, with his classically beautiful face and mass of curly blond hair, sat still in a nearby chair, his expression enigmatic and deceptive. Of all of the Adarians, Luke was the one who found himself appealing to the largest crowd. His surfer-boy good looks made an impression on both women and men, and his bright eyes and easy smile charmed people of all ages. But Kevin knew the Adarian’s facade to be particularly beguiling; he was capable of harsh, fast assault the likes of which often left his fellow Adarians in a kind of quiet awe.
Ely, for his part, stood as always—big and strong, his massive arms crossed over his chest, his body radiating pent-up power and the control it took to keep from letting it loose.
Kevin went on. “When we step through, she’ll undoubtedly be alarmed. We’ll be underground, so she can’t zap you with lightning,” he said, referring to an archess’s power over the weather. “But keep your guard up.” He turned to Luke, whose light blue eyes reflected a little something more this night. Luke, whose original name so long ago had been Laoth, had a host of very useful powers at his disposal. Much like a vampire, he could hypnotize mortals, put them to sleep with no more than a locking gaze, enter and control their dreams, and cast both darkness and silence upon any given area.
Kevin wouldn’t have time to knock Sophie unconscious using drugs or any method that wouldn’t cause her real harm before Uro was able to contact Azrael about the attack. However long it took them to subdue both the vampire and the archess would be long enough for Uro to send word. Kevin and his men would have to move very, very fast. Because of that, Luke was going to have to overwhelm the archess straightaway and yank her back through the shadows.
She wouldn’t be conscious for long. Once she was out, she could be easily transported. As long as she wasn’t awake, she wouldn’t be fighting, and the Adarians wouldn’t have to contend with lightning bolts being called down on their heads or automobiles being thrown at them via telekinesis or tiny flames at the ends of cigarettes or candles being morphed into raging fires that would come after them with a vengeance. Archesses were a very powerful breed. They weren’t to be taken lightly.
“You know what to do,” Kevin said, nodding at Luke.
He nodded back, just once, and his ice-blue eyes flashed with cold resolution. Together, he and the others stood and moved to join Kevin in front of the darkened corner of the office.
It had been a frustrating few nights for Kevin. He’d truly believed that by combining the blood of certain Adarians and ingesting it, he would be able to withstand the effects of daylight to some minute degree. However, every attempt he’d made to get the magical concoction right was an epic failure, and he had the permanently scarred left hand to prove it.
It appeared that some things were more powerful than others, no matter what the circumstances. For a vampire, the sun was the ultimate danger. It was the threat of oblivion no matter what steps he took to fight it.
The unfortunate discovery threw a wrench in Kevin’s plans like nothing else could have. His attack on the Four Favored and their latest archess was originally going to come during the day, when Kevin knew “Lord Azrael” to be out of commission. But that course of action was no longer an option for him.
However, when fate closed a door, it opened a window and invited Kevin in.
According to the research he and his men had done over the last few days, most vampires were not able to move through the shadows as Azrael could. It was a peculiar and highly useful skill that came solely to the elusive black dragon—and to vampires with vast age and experience.
Nevertheless, Azrael had apparently possessed this ability since the very beginning. He’d always had it.
This made Kevin wonder what made the archangel vampire different from those he created. Certainly, he was the first vampire to exist on the planet. That made him special enough. However, more interesting—and perhaps promising—to Kevin was the fact that Azrael was the former Angel of Death. He was an archangel.
And so were the Adarians.
It was with this knowledge playing through his head that Kevin had approached a shadow in the Adarian headquarters, for the first time seeing it not as an immaterial aftereffect of light and substance and the crossing of the two, but as a possibility. A doorway.
He stepped into it, and as he did, the world shifted around him, becoming darker. Color was leached from the furniture in his office, turning reds and blues to black, and yellows to gray. His feet felt light; he could no longer feel the floor beneath them. His body felt less than solid, as if he would not be able to direct it to move or think or even breathe without careful concentration.
The sensations were striking and frightening enough that Kevin instantly found himself trying to step back out of the shadow. It worked; he came out of the shadow and into the “real” world of his office, and felt the pounding of his heart in his chest as he contemplated what had just occurred.
The second time he tried it, he lasted a little longer. The third and fourth times, he managed to come out elsewhere within the complex. And now he had a new plan. He wasn’t going to be able to take the latest archess during daylight hours, but if he played his cards right, he could use this shadow-walking ability to get to her nonetheless.
Using his ability to scry, Kevin and his fellow Chosen waited and watched as Sophie moved to San Francisco and got more or less settled. All the while, the former Angel of Death was one step ahead of her, and his vampires formed a web of protectiveness around her that gave the impression of being unbreachable. It admittedly irritated Kevin that she was so closely shadowed, but he couldn’t blame the archangel. Sophie was a rare and precious bird and there were big bad wolves out there. He was one of them.
Finally, the moment he’d been waiting for arrived—and Sophie Bryce was left alone in a cave that Azrael no doubt believed only he and his oldest created vampire, Uro, could enter. He had never been more wrong. Since Kevin had learned how to move through the shadows, he’d helped his brothers master the same skill.
Uro would have been no match for Kevin alone. Kevin had been stronger than any of Azrael’s created vampires before he’d become one himself. He’d been created with the ability to change his shape, a power he’d used against Uriel months ago. He also had the ability to fly. As an Adarian, he possessed superhuman speed and strength. Now? By absorbing powers from other Adarians, Kevin had acquired the ability to control animals, create fire, call lightning from the skies, manipulate electricity, and create enormous blasts of force that were able to repel large objects as if they’d been struck by a hurricane’s wind. As a vampire, his speed and strength were increased many times over, his form could become no more material than mist, and he possessed the power to control human minds.
In a battle between himself and Uro,
one on one, the other vampire wouldn’t stand a chance. However, Kevin would not even be alone tonight. He would be accompanied by his three Chosen.
Kevin turned toward the long, tall shadow before him and stepped into it. As before, he was dwarfed in darkness and silence and the world shifted into a two-dimensional representation of itself. He concentrated on breathing, on moving, on continuing through to his final destination. He kept the image of the cave in his mind, saw the shadows in the cavern as they had appeared in the scrying vision on his wall. And the darkness responded to this knowledge, pulling him through, guiding him where he wanted to go.
It seemed like a lifetime, but only seconds passed before he was coming out the other side. It was like stepping off an escalator. He shifted his gait, scanned the cave, and came to several split-second decisions even before he’d fully emerged from the darkness.
Sophie was seated on the black bed, obviously having awoken between the time that Kevin had scried upon her in his office and now. Uro, on the other hand, was already rushing Kevin, as he imagined the vampire would do. Before Mitchell, Luke, and Ely even stepped out of the shadow behind him, Kevin met Uro halfway.
There was no give; Kevin’s body collided with Uro’s with such force that the breath left his lungs and his brain shook inside his skull. The impact was stunning and unexpected, but there was no time to absorb it or recuperate. Uro seemed to know what to do in this kind of fight; he was spinning with Kevin in his arms and Kevin had barely enough time to inhale and flex every muscle in his body before he was slammed painfully against the stone wall. The torches on either side of them tumbled to the ground, flickered, and went out. On the other side of the room, Sophie quickly got to her feet and began frantically looking around, no doubt searching for a weapon of some kind. Her head snapped back around to face him when Ely and the others stepped into the room after him.
Kevin ignored the archess and the other Adarians; he knew his men would quickly overwhelm her, and he could afford her no more attention. The pain of his body hitting the wall had a focusing effect. In that moment, he seemed to remember who and what he was. All of his abilities raced to the surface and lined up, ready to be used. With no more than a spike of his will, his body became insubstantial, turning to mist in Uro’s strong grip.