Messenger''s Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels

  As a result, she lived modestly.

  However, now Juliette could afford just about anything she wanted. Of course, she couldn’t buy a mansion in Beverly Hills, but she didn’t want a mansion in Beverly Hills. And if the miniseries took off, even that mansion might find a place on her list of possibilities if she decided she ever wanted it.

  It really was like a dream. The offer had come at a time when Jules was beginning to doubt herself and her sanity. She’d been nearly destitute for so long and grossly overworked between her thesis and her volunteer jobs. She thought she might be reaching a breaking point, because something strange happened during her stay in Australia.

  She had been on the beach alone, enjoying a few rare minutes to herself. She’d been staring out over the waves when she saw a surfer go down and not come back up. Somehow, despite her diminutive size, she’d managed to drag his unconscious body out of the water and onto the beach. She could see the head injury and knew he was in bad shape, and then—and then she did something she could not explain. She put her hand to his chest and imagined that she’d healed him.

  In retrospect, Juliette thought she understood what had happened. She must have been hallucinating. It was the logical explanation. The jet lag, the pressure of her studies, and the responsibilities she’d taken on as a volunteer at the local children’s home—it all must have come to a head. Most likely, the man survived only because Juliette got up after her imagined “healing” and ran to the nearest lifeguard station to alert the authorities to the surfer’s accident.

  For days and nights, Juliette had thought on those strange, surrealistic minutes and wondered what the hell was happening to her. What kind of a breakdown was it that made a person imagine she was healing someone? She’d thought of dropping out of the program and quitting her volunteer positions. She’d considered telling her parents that she just couldn’t handle it all anymore.

  And then Samuel Lambent came along, a saving grace and guardian angel, and he’d offered her this deal. When the contract arrived via FedEx, she’d opened it, grabbed her pen, and signed it after barely reading it. Almost immediately after scrawling her name on the black line, she’d felt her stress levels drop. It was as if a massive weight had been lifted from her shoulders and chest—a dark veil pulled from her mind.

  She could kiss Lambent.

  Juliette couldn’t wait to get started. Her best friend, Sophie Bryce, was watering her garden for her and had agreed to stay at her rental home, as it was preferable to Sophie’s tiny apartment anyway. Jules was well aware of how lucky she was to have a friend like Soph. The girl had a hard life of her own, yet she had never even blinked before agreeing to help Jules out while she flew around the world to do this research. If Soph was jealous, she didn’t show it.

  Juliette smiled and made a promise to herself to buy something special for Sophie in Edinburgh. Or maybe Glasgow. She wasn’t exactly looking forward to renting a car and learning to drive on the wrong side of the road, but everything else about her life in that moment sounded just about perfect.

  * * *

  Och, not again. “Bloody hell,” Gabriel muttered under his breath. He couldn’t believe it was already happening again. He’d been in Rodel, Scotland, for only a few months!

  “Get the nuts!” someone in the pub yelled. A few of his mates laughed. “Stoke the bloody fire!” another shouted.

  Gabriel ran his hand over his face and tried to look properly embarrassed. It was hard, though. He was more frustrated and angry than embarrassed. He really hadn’t meant for things to go so far this time. Whereas he’d always been admittedly a touch proud in the past when this happened, now it seemed a weary practice, both pointless and painful.

  “Ye’ve gone tae far on this one, Black.” Stuart leaned over and spoke softly across the table. “Dougal’s got it in for yae. I dinnae like tae think what will happen if those fecking nuts don’ meet this time.” His accent was thick, as was normal for one who had lived on the islands all his life.

  “They won’ meet, Stuart. They never do,” Gabriel replied just as quietly.

  Stuart Burns was in his seventies and built hard as nails. He’d never done anything but fish in his life, and fishing on the Outer Hebrides of Scotland didn’t make for an easy existence. It either killed you or made you stronger, and in Stuart’s case, it had done a little of both. In fact, that was how he and Gabriel had met. Gabriel had pulled him out of the icy waters of the North Sea during a fishing accident in Stuart’s youth.

  The soft part of Stuart had died in that water. What was left was rigid and right and strong to an absolute fault. But he was a good man, deep down, and a dependable friend. Stuart was the only human alive who knew Gabriel’s secret. He was the only one in Scotland who was aware that Gabriel Black was not in fact the son of Duncan Black, as everyone else believed, but was actually Duncan Black himself, because every member of that particular Black family was actually the same man. Stuart was the only soul privy to the knowledge that there was really no such thing as Duncan Black or even Gabriel Black—there was only Gabriel, the eminent Messenger Archangel and one of the four most celebrated archangels in existence.

  Over the centuries, Gabriel had spent a lot of time in Scotland. Some of those times were less pleasant than others. Europe had gone through an Inquisition, a plague, and countless wars, and the tapestry of Scotland’s history was woven from thorny thread. Nonetheless, when she was a fair land, she was a beautiful land, and Gabriel fell in love with his bonnie Caledonia.

  However, he could never stay for too long, as he didn’t age, and people would begin to wonder why a fifty- or sixty-year-old man still looked to be in his thirties. Gabriel always left before this could happen. And then, twenty or thirty years later, he would return and pass himself off as the son of the man whose name he had claimed the last time he was in Scotland.

  Gabriel’s explanations were always generally the same. His “father” had eloped with a woman from another village or town or city—and Gabriel was the result. Again and again he did this, because not much could keep him away from Scotland. Not for long, anyway.

  Gabriel had especially wanted to return this time around. Life had become surreal at the mansion he shared with his three brothers, and in the States, of late. Uriel, one of his brothers, had recently found his archess, and in her a taste of the true happiness so long desired by the archangels. For two thousand years, the former Angel of Vengeance had searched for the female archangel made solely for him by the Old Man. And a few months ago, he had finally come across her. Uriel was the first of his brothers to find his archess. The archesses were treasured, not only by their mates, the archangels—but by the Adarians, a separate and frighteningly powerful race of archangels. The Adarians wanted the archesses for their unique ability to heal. When Uriel located Eleanore, so did the Adarian leader. A series of battles ensued, both physical and mental, and the archangels won, more or less. Now Uriel and Eleanore were happily married in the US.

  Gabriel was elated for his brother. Knowing that the feat was possible and that the treasured women they had all sought out for twenty centuries were in fact real filled Gabriel with a sense of promise after having nearly given up hope that he would ever find his own archess.

  But at the same time, it was hard to see Uriel and Eleanore together and not wonder . . . would he have to wait a week for his own archess to come out of the woodwork? Or would it be another two thousand years? He wondered whether his brothers Michael, the Warrior Archangel, and Azrael, the Angel of Death, felt the same way.

  The thought was too heavy to bear. So, he’d come back to Scotland, and he’d been welcomed by his homeland with open arms. Some arms more open than others.

  Across the pub, the fire had been stoked and a metal grid tray had been placed across it as a makeshift grill. Gabriel stifled an inner groan when two large hazelnuts were extracted from the kitchen in the back and brought into the fray of Scotsmen out front.

  “Christ,” he muttered
. It was a long-standing tradition in the Western Isles of Scotland, though it was supposed to happen only during Samhain, otherwise known as Halloween. However, the people of the Isle of Harris had changed their custom for this particular occasion, on account of one Duncan Black, a treacherously handsome silver-eyed, black-haired man whose existence had called for quite a few hazelnuts in his time.

  Tradition stated that two hazelnuts were to be thrown onto the fire, one for each member of a couple. When the nuts heated up, they would pop and “jump.” If they jumped together, the couple was deemed destined for a happy life together, and usually married shortly afterward. If, however, the nuts jumped apart, the couple had better break up. And soon.

  Much to Gabriel’s regret now, the late Duncan Black had been popular with the lasses, to say the least. Gabriel knew for a fact that none of Duncan’s “nuts” had ever jumped together. Hell, if they’d even tried, he would have used telekinesis to keep them apart. He was a man with a man’s needs, but none of the women he’d been with were meant to become his bride.

  He knew this better than nearly any other man alive. And he’d never been more certain of the truth than he was now that Uriel had found his archess. There was hope where there frankly hadn’t been for far too many years.

  And so it was with very real chagrin that Gabriel realized he was right back in “Duncan” Black’s shoes after a mere few months of residing once more in his hometown. It seemed the Black family line was doomed to drive women crazy and men insane with jealousy no matter what.

  Gabe felt a little less at fault this time, however. He had had no idea that Edeen was Angus’s sister and he’d heard well enough about Angus Dougal’s reputation. Edeen had come on to Gabriel the first night he’d been back in Harris, when he was signing up for part-time work on Stuart’s boat. She’d told him she had “family” here, but was unattached. Gabriel, of course, was interested. After all, Edeen was a beauty with that shoulder-length flaxen hair and those green eyes. He’d done what any red-blooded man would do! He was innocent enough in that, wasn’t he?

  Edeen Dougal was laughing. Gabriel could hear the light sound from across the room. She was seated with her friends at a round table near the window. When Gabe looked up and met her gaze, she offered him a teasing smile and a wink. It was a reassuring gesture to him, because it meant she thought this was funny. She wasn’t taking it seriously.

  Gabriel nodded.

  At least there was that. Now the only one who would be truly disappointed would be her brother, Angus. Gabriel lifted his head and turned slightly until he had Angus in his sights.

  Angus gazed back. It was a cold, hard, green-eyed gaze in a face that many women found nearly as handsome as Gabriel’s. Gabe suspected that probably had something to do with the man’s ire. Of course, the rest of the ire came from the fact that Gabriel had bedded Angus’s sister. This was a very religious and superstitious community. People didn’t generally go sleeping around—especially with the sister of one of the most dangerous men in town.

  Angus was tall and solid and as hard in his musculature as Stuart Burns was in the bones. And he had a chip on his shoulder; that much was easy for Gabriel to decipher. If the hazelnuts didn’t meet, he was going to try to prove something with Gabe.

  And that wouldn’t end well. Because there wasn’t a human on earth who could best Gabriel in a fight—and at the same time, the last thing Gabe wanted to do was make real trouble by harming a clansman four months into his stay in Harris. Especially when that clansman also happened to be a cop.

  “Get me out o’ this,” he whispered to Stuart, his own accent barely discernible when compared with the accent of the man beside him.

  When Stuart laughed, it sounded like autumn leaves scratching across the ground in a gust of wind. “Yae got yerself into this, Black. Ye’ll get yerself out.”

  Gabriel shot him a look and took a deep breath. He was about to stand up and make some sort of case for not using the hazelnuts as his father and grandfather—and great-grandfather—had done, when Edeen, herself, stood up and waved for everyone’s silence.

  “Listen up!” She got on her chair and then, with the help of a few men around her, stood on the table next to her. “Ye’ve all had yer fun!” she said, putting her hands on her hips and eyeing the men dead-on. “Now enough’s enough! This is tae be a Samhain tradition, not a March tradition, and I fer one don’t take kindly to yae suggestin’ I marry a man based on what a fecking nut decides tae do!”

  There was laughter throughout the pub then, some of it nervous, as women didn’t generally swear a lot on the Outer Hebrides. But Edeen Dougal was a force unto herself and they knew enough to accept it when she did.

  Angus Dougal pushed through the crowd and came to stand before her. On the table, Edeen stood a half foot above her brother’s mass of brown hair. She glared down at him, daring him to say something. He dared. “Edeen, get yerself down from there an’ don’t interfere—”

  “Och, shut up, Angus. Ye’re no’ me da’.” She made a dismissive gesture toward her older brother and rolled her eyes. “Awa’ with ye an’ bile yer heid.” She jumped down from the table and sauntered toward the front door, tossing a lock of her blond hair over her shoulder as she did so. “I’ll no’ take part in this; I’ll have nothin’ of it.” She turned and addressed the patrons of the pub, in general. “Ye’re all a wee bit childish, don’t ye think?”

  Her friends joined her at the front door a moment later, one pulling her jacket on over her sweater, the other adjusting the strap of her purse. Both looked highly amused and a touch embarrassed. But they were obviously used to Edeen’s shenanigans.

  With one more farewell nod to the pub owner and bartender, who nodded back with a knowing smile, Edeen Dougal and her companions left the pub.

  Gabriel could have wept with relief.

  “Ye’re saved, Black.” Stuart grinned, shaking his head admonishingly. “And by a girl, no less.”

  “Aye.” Gabriel raised his glass, a lopsided smile on his handsome face. “God bless the womenfolk.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “What do you think the other archesses will look like?” Eleanore was seated on Uriel’s lap, her finger idly twirling a lock of her long blue-black hair as she stared into the fireplace in the massive living room of the archangels’ mansion.

  “I don’t know. But you look exactly how I’d always imagined you,” Uriel said. “So probably they’ll look like whatever my brothers have in mind.”

  Eleanore turned to face her mate. Uriel was as handsome as ever with his jade green eyes and mass of dark brown wavy hair, but she frowned at him nonetheless, unable to hide her irritation with what he’d just said. Why should what a woman looked like be dependent upon what a man wanted?

  As if he could sense her irritation, Uriel smiled one of his devastating smiles and chuckled softly. “Of course, it’s also possible that it’s the other way around,” he said. “What you look like could very well determine what we want and expect.”

  She liked the sound of that a little better and offered Uriel a smile that said as much. She took in his thick hair and the impossibly handsome lines of his chiseled face and then peered into the green of his gorgeous eyes. She’d never said so, but he was her idea of perfection, too. He had been since the first time she’d seen him in a movie poster for Comeuppance, in which he played the main character, a vampire named Jonathan Brakes. Like Gabriel, all the brothers maintained a human identity, some more visible than others. Uriel went by the name of Christopher Daniels, an A-list Hollywood actor.

  Slowly, she cupped the side of his stubble-shadowed face and ran her thumb over his strong cheekbone. He narrowed his gaze questioningly. “You know, one thing I’ll always miss about that vampire curse Sam put on me is the ability to read your mind,” he said softly. “Penny for your thoughts?”

  Eleanore laughed and shook her head. “No deal. I know you can make gold out of anything in this room. Pennies won’t cut it, young man.”
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  He laughed, too. “I’m anything but young, Ellie.”

  It was true. She reasoned that, by all rights, he was more ancient than time itself. He had been on Earth for two thousand years, as had his brothers, but he’d existed as an archangel in another realm before that.

  “Well?” he hedged. “You gonna share?” His green eyes twinkled. “Or do I have to torture it out of you?” His hand slipped under the hem of her shirt and his fingers brushed teasingly—threateningly—against the lace of her underwire bra.

  Ellie’s heartbeat kicked up a notch, her temperature rose a few degrees, and her lips parted as she watched her husband’s pupils expand in hunger. As if he could sense her response, his smile turned dark, spreading to a dangerous grin.

  She decided to prolong the torture. “I was just thinking that with the Adarians out there and Sam watching over everything, it’ll be war for the others,” she admitted truthfully. She had been worried about the other archesses. She, herself, hadn’t had an easy life. She’d run from the Adarians since she was a little girl and their leader had spied her healing another child. The other archesses were one of the main reasons she had decided to stay on Earth with Uriel after their souls had united and they’d literally earned their wings four months ago. They’d had a choice then—they could have left Earth and returned to Uriel’s realm, or they could remain behind. They’d chosen the latter.

  Uriel’s smile stayed put; he clearly knew she was turned on and teasing him. “The other archesses?” He played along.

  Eleanore nodded. There were supposed to be three more women out there, somewhere in the world: three more like her. Each one would be gifted with supernatural abilities and each one was fated to become the soul mate of one of the four favored archangels. But it hadn’t been easy for her and Uriel. The Adarians, twelve very powerful archangels who were cast to Earth by the Old Man, were dead set on obtaining an archess of their own in the hopes of somehow absorbing the archess’s ability to heal. And Samael . . .