Kevin stared at him for a very long time. Even the seagulls were silent, and the waves that should have hit the shore decided to stay out at sea.
“Very well,” said Kevin finally. He looked from Ely to Luke and then to Mitchell. There was something strange in his blue-eyed gaze. “I’m sorry to learn you all feel that way.”
Mitchell watched as his leader turned away from them then. He watched as Kevin moved back out across the field of black dandelions, nothing but the faint beams from the dim, cloud-covered moon to light his way. But Mitchell knew it wasn’t over. There was not a snowball’s chance in hell that it was over. He knew damn well what was coming—he could have timed it to the very second.
This was how it had to be. This was what it had come to. They had started with twelve brothers and one leader; and in the end, they were just three brothers and one madman. It was the end of their era, the epilogue to their tale.
So when Kevin suddenly spun, blurring with inhuman speed, and his power fanned out in the mother of all offensive attacks, Mitchell was ready for him. And so were Luke and Ely.
Because they knew it too.
* * *
My heart isn’t beating.
It was a strange thought to wake up to, but it was the first thing he noticed. Kevin had always been one of those people who could feel their own heart beating. It throbbed through his temples and the insides of his arms and the backs of his knees. His pulse was a constant companion—there, but dull and in the background. It was a gentle and welcome reminder that he was alive.
But now there was nothing flowing through the insides of his arms. There was no taut pull through the artery in his neck, no comforting thud deep within his chest. His heart wasn’t beating.
How can this be? How could he be thinking? How could he feel the damp dandelions beneath him and hear the seagulls on the island if he was dead?
Kevin opened his eyes, utterly baffled as to how he was able to do so. The horizontal plane of the ground beneath his head slowly came into focus. As it did, he found himself staring at a pair of shining black dress shoes and the perfectly cuffed hem of dark suit pants.
“Welcome back,” came a stranger’s voice.
Kevin frowned and slowly pushed himself up. His body felt light and that confused him. He felt as though he should be stiff, seized by something like rigor mortis. But everything moved as he wanted it to and there was no pain.
As he got to his feet, he took in the figure before him. The man was of average height and average build, not pudgy but not overly cut or thin. His brown hair was thinning on top, and his blue eyes were without any special vibrancy. Yet there was a feel to the man’s aura that struck Kevin right off the bat. It made no sense, but Kevin knew that he would be dead if not for this man. He knew it without needing to be told.
“Make no mistake, general,” said the man, his lips turned up in the slightest of smiles. “You are very much dead.”
It would have been a chilling thing for most people to hear. It not only meant that the man was reading Kevin’s mind—which no one had ever been able to do—but it also meant that Kevin was right. He was dead. But for some reason Kevin felt next to nothing, and he certainly felt no fear.
“You have no reason to fear anything any longer,” said the man. “You have nothing left to lose. And that’s why you are not afraid.”
“Why did you bring me back?” asked Kevin. It seemed the only reasonable thing to ask at that point. Most of his brothers had been murdered over the last several months, the Four Favored were undefeated and claiming their archesses, and the only three other Adarians left in the world had turned on him and killed him. And yet all he could seem to care about was why this stranger had animated his dead corpse. “And will I start rotting now?” he asked, almost as an afterthought.
The man’s brow lifted and his look became both incredulous and very serious. “No,” he said firmly. “It wasn’t I who animated you, but my employer. And of course you won’t rot. He doesn’t make such messy mistakes.” Then the man clasped his hands behind his back and moved around Kevin, his gaze on the ground and its black dandelions, and then on the bay and the city that sparkled beyond. The storm had passed, Kevin noticed. Offhandedly, he wondered where the archess who had caused it was.
“He brought you back because there is about to be a war, general. A culmination, if you will.” The man in the suit stopped and looked at Kevin once more, pinning him with his beady eyes. “He is going to need someone experienced to lead his army, and he believes you are the right man for the job.”
Kevin considered this, realizing at once that there was nothing to consider. And then, as if it had been sitting on his tongue for thousands of years, simply waiting to be said, Kevin replied, “I am his to command.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
The storm followed her. It remained on the outskirts of the world, but Az caught the lightning flashes in the distance, lighting up the horizon. It sat there, a massive gray beast, and watched its archess, waiting to roll in at the slightest provocation.
He could handle the storm. That wasn’t what worried him. It was the anger behind it that troubled him.
He could read her thoughts once more; that barrier at least had been broken. Azrael had her blood in his veins now. It was the first time he had ever had a woman’s blood in his veins, and the fact that it belonged to his archess made it a tie that bound them inexorably.
Azrael relished how much more easily he could breach the walls of her mind, but he was torn by the things he read there. He’d never been inside the head of someone who had been through what Sophie Bryce had been through. It was like watching a movie loop. Images continued to flash before them both: police officers taking her by the hand after her parents’ deaths; headstones in a cemetery; one leering male face after another; a gunshot that rang out through her soul like a firecracker in the night. And then the man in white.
Now Azrael knew what Gregori looked like. It was an unsettling observation, to say the least.
Az brought them to the location he wanted and headed for the shore, gently setting Sophie down in front of him on the deserted Northern California beach that was protected by a tall line of cliffs on one side.
Sophie got her legs beneath her, a little wobbly at first. Then she straightened, looked around for a second, and ran a shaky hand through her long, beautiful hair. The ocean breeze immediately caught it and blew it back across her face once more.
She ignored it and turned to look up at Azrael. “Where are we?” she asked. He could hear the slowly returning fury tiptoeing around her voice, ever threatening.
“Just north of Trinidad,” he told her. “I have a place here.” He watched her carefully.
Sophie seemed to consider this for a moment and then tore her gaze from his. He felt literally colder when she did so, as if the temperature around him dropped in the absence of the heat in her eyes.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked softly.
It was a good question. It was a fair question. “I don’t know,” he told her honestly. He looked out at the dark expanse of ocean and the faint outline of the horizon where the clouds slowly crawled in. “That depends on you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she shot back.
Azrael wanted to sigh in frustration, but managed to simply walk a few paces away instead. Clearly, her ire was returning fast. At this rate, she would be using telekinesis to slam boulders into him within minutes.
He stopped at around five feet and turned back to look at her. His gaze fell to her right hand, which rested at her side. The mark on her palm was faded, but definitely not gone. This Gregori had far too much control over Azrael’s archess for his liking.
“You need to look inside yourself, Sophie. This isn’t you.” He took a deep breath and went on. “You have every right to be upset. But this fury that is racing through you is like a poison and it’s spreading. It doesn’t belong in you, Sophie. Someone else put it there.”
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Sophie stared at him for a moment, her expression vacillating between a building wrath and a dawning comprehension. She bit her lip—just briefly—and Azrael’s hand curled into a fist. And then she shook her head and said, “What would you know?”
“About poison?” Azrael asked matter-of-factly. “About something evil that burns through your veins, eats its way into your soul, and bores a hole in your spirit that almost nothing can fill?” He paused, trying for the umpteenth time to regain his composure. “More than you can possibly imagine.”
He knew it was a mistake as soon as he’d said it, but it was too late.
Sophie turned on him and he could feel the clouds pouring in now, racing across the ocean’s expanse like an army of darkness. “What the hell would you know about me, ‘Lord Azrael’?” she cried. “You don’t know me! You have no idea what or who I am!”
“I know you more deeply than you know yourself,” he told her, meeting her halfway on the anger front.
Sophie’s golden gaze narrowed dangerously and Az felt the first wet wind of her rising storm kiss his cheek. “Oh, that’s right,” she said vehemently. “Because you’ve been reading my mind.”
Az matched her narrowed gaze with one of his own. “That’s funny,” he said, flashing her a mean smile. “From what I’ve learned by being in there, I would think you’d like it.”
Sophie’s gold eyes sparked and lightning crashed into the sand three hundred feet away. Ruthlessly, Azrael kept going. “After all, having actually been inside your mind, I happen to know that one of the things you love about the big bad vampire is the fact that he can read your mind in the first place.”
He moved then. A blur and a gasp from Sophie, and he was standing over her and she was reeling back to get away. He stopped her cold with a strong arm around her waist. “Because then he knows just what to do to you, doesn’t he, Sunshine? He knows how to do it—and when.” He punctuated his words with a tightening of his grip on her.
Sophie’s hands found his chest, automatically pressing against him defensively. But he could tell what she was thinking now. She couldn’t hide anything from him any longer. Her efforts to defy him were not only useless, they were a lie.
He had seen inside of her. The hatred that was scorching her inner being to ash was unwelcome. She was a slave to it, as helpless as if it were whipping her into submission. She wanted to be free of its influence as desperately as Azrael wanted her to be.
She glared at him, her eyes shooting daggers, but a very large part of her liked being trapped in his arms. Even if he hadn’t been able to read her innermost desires, he could sure as hell smell them. A sweeter, more tempting nectar did not exist.
Azrael was a patient man. Thousands of years had sanded down the edges of his temper. But Sophie was another matter entirely. She was temptation and frustration and seduction all rolled into one amazing body, and there was only so much even Azrael could take.
So, as she glared at him and the sky boiled in her mounting anger, he gave in to his monster and put out a quick mental call. One vampire’s bite had faded the mark on her hand and whittled away at her defenses. Az couldn’t help but wonder what two bites at once would do.
It was something she had always fantasized about.
Within seconds, he glanced up through the building fog of Sophie’s storm to see something tall and dark emerge from the shadows beneath an outcropping of boulders against the cliff face. His wicked smile broadened.
* * *
Sophie didn’t want to be angry. A part of her honestly empathized with Azrael and his brothers. It wasn’t their fault that they were here, on Earth, searching for something that had been created for them, waved under their noses, and then torn from them two thousand years ago. It wasn’t Azrael’s fault that he’d been made the Angel of Death in the first place.
Someone else had been pulling his strings, just like someone else was pulling hers. She didn’t mean to be furious at Azrael. But he was here right now and the storm that raged inside her wouldn’t stay put. It leaked out through her pores, through her eyes, through her words—and Azrael was right. It was like a poison, eating away at her while she tried so desperately—and failed—to let it go.
Now he held her tight and no matter how she tried to pull away, her body felt every hard inch of him against her . . . and it was driving her crazy. The weather echoed her emotions, the wind racing, the clouds boiling until they were too heavy to remain in the sky and dropped to the beach instead, covering it in a thick, impenetrable gray. Through the fog, she heard thunder rumble, shaking the sand beneath her boots.
It was all too much, and Azrael was the icing on the madness cake. From afar, on a stage, and even over the radio, the man’s presence was stifling in its charisma. Up close and personal, he was overwhelming. There was no other word for it.
His power was a nearly tangible thing. It wrapped around her like silk cords pulled taut. She felt like the fly in a spider’s web, and every wiggling attempt she made at freedom only tightened the trap around her.
But despite the fact that she knew it was her defiance that had Azrael on the offensive, she couldn’t reel herself in. The fury poured from her like water from a broken dam.
She glared at him helplessly when all she really wanted to do was kiss him . . . taste him. What she yearned to do was run her hand through his hair while he sank his fangs into her throat again.
My God, she thought. There was no description for that kind of pleasure. The moment Azrael had pierced her skin, she’d been awash in a rapturous bliss so deep, she’d gone instantly weak in his grasp. Only that pleasure seemed to have the power to take the fight out of her.
Do it again, she thought desperately. She wanted to cry out, even as she tried again to pull out of his arms. She wanted to beg him for the mercy that only he could deliver, even while she instead turned her attention to the nearest sea-weathered boulder on the beach. Her powers were out of control; the boulder began to rise from where it had been pounded into the earth by a trillion waves. Sand shifted and cracked, then cascaded around its circumference as the stone rose. Sophie squeezed her eyes shut against the fury. Lightning crashed somewhere nearby, rolling over them like a warning.
No, she thought. Take this hate away from me. . . .
“With pleasure, Sunshine,” said Azrael.
Sophie’s eyes flew open. Her head whipped around and she caught the flash of fang and the spark of red at the centers of Azrael’s dark pupils. In the next heartbeat, a magical warmth hit her from behind and a second pair of strong hands wrapped around her wrists to pull them to her sides. A hard chest pressed to her back as her arms were held tight. Her eyes widened and she inhaled sharply as if to scream.
“Shh,” whispered a voice in her ear.
Uro!
The stone to her right dropped with a thud, sending sand flying.
Sophie shivered; the feel of another strong body at her back brought her breath up short, silencing the scream that had lodged in her throat. She was trapped between them, held immobile by the pleasure that was already riding through her body at their very closeness.
She gasped as Uro tightened his hold and moved in. Sophie made a shuddering sound and caught Azrael’s smile. It was lascivious, unforgivable, and breathtakingly beautiful.
She felt him loosen his arm around her waist and watched in disbelief as he deftly brushed her hair from her neck. His fingers touched her skin as he did, sending electric rivulets of pleasure across her flesh.
She choked back a moan; the dichotomy of feelings was too intense. She was terrified and angry, and she was burning with a sexual longing unlike any she’d ever known. She couldn’t believe Azrael was doing this to her, couldn’t fathom that Uro had joined in. The power washing over her built up an anticipation that was so intense it had to go somewhere—it had to do something—or she was afraid she might honestly die.
Lightning slammed into the rocks at the base of the cliffs behind them, sending pebbles fl
ying in a shower of shattered stone.
The men waited as the thunder rocked over them and rolled away. And then Uro whispered, “Trust him, Sophie.” His breath caressed her ear. “Trust us.”
Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .
Sophie closed her eyes. Azrael slid his arm around her waist once more, his hand spanning her back to press her against him. She felt his free hand shove through her hair and fist gently at the back of her head. He pulled—and she rested her head against Uro’s strong shoulder. She could actually feel Azrael’s triumphant smile through her closed lids. She sensed him bending over her, closing in on her. He was everywhere, all around her. His presence was too strong to block out by simply shutting her eyes against it.
And then she felt his breath on her other ear and she gasped, but there was nowhere for her to go. They had her now. She was well and truly trapped.
“Remember my promise, Sophie,” he told her softly, his words sending delicious chills across her entire body. “Last time was the first of many.”
She tensed; she knew it was coming. And then she felt the men do the same. Their bodies went taut with purpose, their grips on her tightened, and Sophie cried out.
Their teeth pierced the tight skin on either side of her neck at the same time, driving deep. Sophie’s eyes flew open, but she didn’t see the sky. There were stars and planets and something that tore through time and space the way she’d imagined it would look at the end of the universe, but it wasn’t the sky. It wasn’t here. She was on another plane, in another universe that consisted only of extremes. Colors exploded before her, flowering like fireworks. She fell into them, light as a feather on the wind. There was no pain here, no discomfort. The anger she’d felt rushing through her only moments before was ebbing away. In its place was a pleasure both tranquil and restless, anticipation made tangible.
As the pain left, her pleasure grew. Deep down, a tension swirled to life, throbbing with every beat of her heart. It pulsed and ached, never hurting, only demanding.