Death's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels

  Luckily, it was enough; 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 presences and intensely vivid 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, stretching 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 empathetic, understanding and giving, and Sophie was lucky to have her as a best friend. They’d met while in high school and during Sophie’s stay with her fifth set of foster parents. As luck would have it, and like so many people who became fast friends, they’d been given lockers right next to each other. Juliette noticed the Jack the Pumpkin King poster in Sophie’s locker and mentioned that she was going solo to a Reel Classics replay of The Nightmare Before Christmas that Friday night. There was almost no hesitation before she went on to ask Sophie whether she wanted to tag along. And that was it. Their friendship was almost magical, it happened so fast and formed so strong. That Juliette never judged Soph for her past or her lack of a “real” family or, when they got older, a “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 spread those magnificent wings of hers and beat the air with them and rose from the cliffside where they’d been standing, Sophie had experienced a pang of something she’d never before felt toward her friend. 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 Earth’s bonds and escape all that was trapped below. To rise above it all. She would give anything.

  Gabriel and Juliette reached the end of the aisle and Gabriel’s Scottish friends 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 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 as the enormity of the event finally hit her. 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 sound 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 meant 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 that in the realm of angels. Never had he lost focus in this manner. He felt like he had the flu. But 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 at it, and it could sometimes take years.

  Azrael would 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 his 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 deadly aversion to the sun—these symptoms 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 inside. 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 that he 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 .
. .

  Now, 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.

  Chapter Two

  “Hey, Az? You in here?”

  Azrael looked up from where he bent over the sink, his head down, his hands gripping the porcelain with dangerous strength. Michael slowed as he came through the restroom door and caught sight of him. The blond archangel took in Azrael’s bent form, saw the reddish glow to his gold eyes, and his expression became wary. “You okay?” he asked.

  For the first time in what seemed like ages, Azrael didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure how to respond to his brother. Was he okay?

  Not by a long shot.

  He straightened and ran his tongue over his teeth. They were in check. “I’m fine.”

  “You look hungry.”

  Azrael went with it. “I am.” It certainly wasn’t a lie.

  “You haven’t fed tonight?” Michael asked, his brow furrowed. If Azrael had bothered to read his brother’s mind at that point, he surely would have heard Michael thinking that it was Gabriel’s wedding—it was a big event—and that Az should have taken his meal before attending. Michael was right. And Az had fed before coming. He just hadn’t planned on the maid of honor being his archess.

  “I guess it wasn’t enough,” he stated simply. His voice was as melodic as ever, but now it had a sharp edge to it.

  Michael studied him closely and Azrael kept his features neutral. Michael had always more or less acted as the “leader” of the four brothers, and for good reason. He was good at leading because he was good at reading others. He didn’t need to be able to read Azrael’s mind to know that he was lying.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” Michael asked calmly.

  Azrael took a slow, deep breath and turned away from his brother to once more glance at his reflection in the mirror. He could have come clean in that moment. He could have told Michael about Sophie. But he didn’t, and there were a thousand reasons why.

  Michael was the Old Man’s favorite. It was the main bone of contention between the brothers and Samael, the archangel they were consistently at odds with—Michael unwittingly usurping that particular throne. And yet, against all logic, Michael would be the last to find his archess. Why was that? If Az told him about Sophie, Michael would wonder if he’d done something wrong. How had he fallen out of the Old Man’s favor?

  He would ask, and he would get no answers. The four of them had been involuntarily out of touch with the Old Man since their arrival on Earth. Michael would be left to speculate, and the notion would drive him nuts. That was bad enough. Az didn’t want his brother to suffer in such a manner.

  To make things worse, Michael would grow antsy and distracted. At the moment, the former Warrior Archangel was a cop for the NYPD. He was understandably their best officer. He was an archangel, after all. Michael alone prevented more homicides and beatings and rapes than all the other members of the precinct combined. It wouldn’t be good for him to suddenly become distracted. How many humans would suffer for it?

  Then again . . . the archesses were the reason the Four Favored were on Earth to begin with. It was for their mates—and not for the good of the human race—that Azrael and his brothers currently resided on the planet. Where did they draw the line between circumstance and responsibility?

  Still, Michael’s current lack of an archess wasn’t Azrael’s only reason for remaining silent about Sophie.

  While Az had been standing across from Sophie beside Gabriel and Juliette at the altar, he had dipped into his archess’s mind. He hadn’t been able to help himself. She was three feet away—and he’d needed to be closer. He couldn’t touch her. He couldn’t kiss her. He couldn’t step forward, wrap her in his dark embrace, and take her to the skies.

  So he’d settled for allowing his mind to touch hers instead. At once, the difference between her mind and those of other humans was staggeringly clear. The spirit of an archess was almost painfully complex and bright; like ninety trillion fiberglass lights woven in and out and over and through in a labyrinth of thought and possibility. Unlike sweeping up the dust-mote thoughts of humans, reading an archess or archangel mind took concentration.

  Sophie’s was even more complex than the others. At first, Azrael hadn’t understood why. He’d simply been silently astounded by the impossibly intricate networking of her brain. But as he stood there and tuned the vicar out and concentrated on Sophie, he’d become more clear as to why she posed such a puzzle.

  Her surface thoughts made his body come alive with something he’d never felt before. During his existence, he’d experienced pain, yes. He’d felt hunger and sadness, hopelessness and despair. He’d even felt the serenity of resignation that came with the knowledge that these things were a part of life—and in his case would go on forever.

  Then he heard Sophie’s words to herself. He has an archess out there, Soph. You can’t have him, no matter how freaking hot he and his long black hair and gold eyes and insanely gorgeous voice are. At the sound of those softly whispered mental words, Azrael had felt something entirely new. It was a tingly sensation combined with a horrid restlessness that bordered on severe anxiety. It was anticipation. It was happiness. It was hope.

  Sophie Bryce was into him. He had almost laughed aloud at the realization. It was an incredibly modern endearment and it was such an understatement of a sentiment when compared with the astounding importance of the situation. But that was what had gone through his head nonetheless. And it was something.

  However, once Azrael finished relishing the magic of her surface thoughts and began delving deeper, his tingly jubilation was smothered in a blanket of confusion. She was light and warmth on top—and shadows underneath. Sophie hadn’t led the easiest life. Her parents had been killed in a car accident when she was six years old. She went from foster home to foster home, each worse than the one before.

  It was as if the archess were cursed. She was surrounded by abuse and death, and with each passing year under these circumstances, her mind had woven more mazes for her to get lost in. Ways for her to forget.

  There were bits of her past, in fact, that even he couldn’t reach. Not easily, anyway. He was the Angel of Death and the oldest, most powerful vampire in the world. He could have ripped the memories from her if he’d chosen to, but she would know he was doing it and she would experience them again herself. She would remember things that her mind had obviously wanted her to forget. Azrael wouldn’t do such a thing to a normal human being. There was no way in hell he would do it to his archess.

  He had taken a mental step back and reined himself in. If she had secrets, he would let her keep them—for now. He’d gleaned enough anyway. He knew now that she had been through so much suffering in her young life, she was officially afraid of the human race, no matter how tough she pretended to be.

  Sophie was unnaturally attractive, and that attractiveness had earned her various unpleasant attacks from foster fathers and a few strangers. As a result, Sophie didn’t date much. She wasn’t physically “innocent,” but she was as spiritually innocent as they came.

  She currently worked as a maid in a hotel due to a lack of higher education, but she longed to one day open her own dance studio where she could teach children. Children, she trusted. It was an inherent need of hers to surround herself with the happy childhoods that she herself had not been granted.

  She had been wounded, and moving too quickly with her would only reopen those wounds.

  If Azrael told Michael that Sophie was Az’s archess, Michael might intervene. He might do something that made Sophie aware of the situation. Michael didn’t like
lies. He didn’t like secrets. He would come clean with Sophie—about everything—in an attempt to draw her immediately into the fold. He would tell her, point-blank, what she was and he would tell her what Az was; vampire and all.

  Az didn’t want that. Not yet. He didn’t want to do anything that might scare her away.

  Watching Uriel and Gabriel with their mates had been an educational experience. An archess had to grow to love her archangel unconditionally. She had to learn to trust him and had to give herself over to him completely. Sophie would never do that with Azrael if she was pushed. She was a rare bird, and just as delicate as one. She needed time.

  This wasn’t going to be easy, and Azrael didn’t need anyone making it harder on him. For now, Michael didn’t have to know.

  “It’s nothing,” he finally lied.

  Michael stood there, a few feet away, in the men’s restroom and simply watched Azrael. Az reached out and brushed his brother’s mind. Michael was well aware that Az was lying. The good news was that Michael had his own ideas as to what was wrong. The blond archangel thought that Az might simply be jealous. He was wondering whether watching two of his brothers find their archesses was putting pressure on the former Angel of Death.

  Fine, Az thought. Let him believe it.

  Several more beats of quiet followed before Michael broke the silence by clearing his throat. “I have a favor to ask,” he said, changing the subject and letting the issue drop with practiced grace.

  “Ask it,” Azrael replied.

  “I want to bring McFarlan in on something that is going on in New York. It’s a rape case, but I think something non-human is involved. Randall’s expertise and talents would really come in handy.”