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

  Max wasn’t surprised. Lilith often helped the archangels when it came to dealing with Samael. It was simply part of who she was: selfless, brave, wise. It was one of the many things that Max admired about her.

  “What the hell happened?” Michael asked.

  Gabriel reached up to the top shelf of the liquor cabinet and took down the same bottle that Max had poured his drink from. With one hand, he positioned Max’s glass, still in the guardian’s hand, and with his other, he refilled it. Max watched him do this in irritation and vague bafflement. When Gabriel had finished, he returned the decanter to the top shelf and then once more took the glass out of Max’s hand to throw back his head and swig its contents in one swallow. This time, when he returned the glass to his guardian’s grip, Max’s jaw muscle twitched. Gabriel gritted his teeth, belched, and turned away from the liquor cabinet to make his way toward the couches at the center of the room.

  Max rolled his eyes and set the glass down on the countertop with an exasperated thunk.

  “Gabe,” Michael repeated, as calmly as he could, given the circumstances. “What the hell happened at Sam’s fortress?”

  Gabriel glanced at his brother and shrugged. “Wha’ can I say? He offered her wha’ we could no’ give her.”

  “Which is?” Max asked, now completely sober once more. It was pointless to attempt insobriety around Gabriel. The archangel would always have him beat at that particular game.

  “A lift to Uriel’s curse.”

  Michael swore under his breath and Max found himself pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off an oncoming headache. “And what did she have to give him in exchange?” Max asked.

  “Now, only you’ll be able to figure that out, Max.” Gabriel smiled a lopsided smile before he plunked himself down on one of the plush leather sofas.

  “Meaning you have to ask for her contract as well,” Michael clarified. “The devil only knows what may be in Eleanore’s agreement.”

  “Well put,” Max agreed somberly. Samael was an archangel, but Michael and his brothers had long since taken to referring to him as the Dark Prince and every other nickname that came with the title. And after all, why shouldn’t they? Samael was dangerous and devious to the extreme. The names fit.

  Max had never felt so tired. Once more, he ran a hand through his hair, realizing that he’d picked up on the habit from one or more of the archangels. It seemed they all did it. “I’ll see what I can do about getting a copy. In the meantime, where is she?”

  “She’ll be stayin’ at the August,” Gabriel supplied in his lazy, drawling brogue.

  “That’s a relatively new hotel,” Max pondered. “In Vegas.” He frowned. “I expect she felt safer staying away from Texas at this point.”

  “Indeed,” Gabriel agreed.

  Michael made a derisive sound. “Only Samael would consider Sin City a safe alternative to Texas.”

  “Mr. Farnsworth, I’m afraid a deal is a deal.”

  Lilith paused outside of Sam’s office in the Tower. It was open and she had a clear view inside. He was on the phone and his back was turned toward her so that he could gaze out the window of the sixty-sixth-floor corner space. He was fond of the view; it seemed to put his mind at ease. She didn’t bother knocking; she simply slipped inside and waited for him to finish.

  Samael chuckled low in his throat and Lilith paused in her quiet travel across the room. She didn’t like the sound of that laugh; it was one of his more dangerous tones.

  “Listen to me now, Farnsworth.”

  There was a pause. Then Samael continued. “You wanted Comeuppance to make a certain amount of money. It has done so. I kept my end of the bargain. It’s time for you to keep yours.”

  There was another pause, and then Samael began to turn in his swiveling leather chair. “That’s what I thought. See you soon, Mr. Farnsworth.” He set the phone down in its receiver and glanced up at Lilith. “You told them.”

  “Yes,” Lilith admitted right away. “It was better for her.”

  Samael’s lips curled into a small smile. “Oh, without a doubt.” He sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers in front of him. “It matters little,” he said.

  “I bet.” Lilith’s gaze narrowed. “You got what you wanted from her, didn’t you?”

  “Not entirely,” he said. “But it’ll do for now.”

  Lilith sighed, suddenly feeling very tired. She’d been feeling that way a lot lately. It was this world. It would take the strength out of the best of them. She was in awe of the human population; she had been for a very long time.

  “Sam, tell me that you didn’t destroy that woman,” Lilith finally sighed. She was too weary to make small talk anymore. She wrapped her arms around herself as if to stave off a cold wind. It brought her some amount of comfort.

  Samael was quiet in his chair. Then he stood and closed the distance to the window, pressing his palms to the glass. “I asked for a promise, Lily. Nothing more. I give you my word.”

  “You didn’t weave a thousand lies into her contract?” Lilith asked, incredulous.

  “No.”

  Lilith blinked. She straightened, letting her arms drop to her sides. She was confused, to say the least. She knew that Samael had asked Eleanore Granger to come to him if she and Uriel fought—or some such nonsense. But she had assumed that there was more to the contract than met the eye. Could Samael truly mean that there was nothing more to their agreement? That her trust was all he had requested of the archess?

  Samael lowered his hands and turned away from the window. He fixed Lilith with a steady, unreadable gaze. “No one in this world trusts me, Lily,” he said, again using the more personal nickname he sometimes called her by. Then he laughed softly, the sound self-deprecating and quiet. “For good reason, no doubt.” He shook his head. “Not even you.”

  Lilith wasn’t sure what to say. His words took her slightly by surprise. For one thing, they were true. Oh, so very true. Not one soul in the universe trusted Samael. They hadn’t trusted him for two thousand years. And though he was also right about there being good reason for such distrust, she was jarred to hear him admit it. What must it be like to exist without the trust of man?

  “Is it so wrong for me to want this one thing after two thousand years?” he asked her then.

  It was a long while before Lilith could respond, and the silence permeated the room, its walls, its book-filled shelves, and was punctured only slightly by the sound of jet planes and helicopters from beyond the window’s thick pane.

  When she did finally answer, it was without voice. Lilith simply shook her head. Once.

  And called it good.

  If Eleanore hadn’t been so weary, she would have been incredibly impressed by everything Samael had done for her over the course of the day. His private jet had flown her to Vegas in a little less than two hours. And then, when his limousine had finished transporting her to the August hotel on the Strip and she’d entered her suite, it was to find a closet full of clothing and shoes waiting for her.

  They were all brands she loved. There were Frye boots, Dr. Martens, Converse sneakers, Ed Hardy jeans, T-shirts, and leather jackets, Victoria’s Secret everything ... all in her size.

  On the table was a feast of foods from chocolate-covered strawberries to expensive cheeses and crackers and there were cold drinks in the minifridge.

  But perhaps her most amazing find of all was the thing that was lying in the middle of the massive king-sized bed in her room.

  It was her Fossil purse—and inside it, everything that she had left behind when she’d vacated her car right after the accident on Slide Road, which was only yesterday morning, but seemed like an eternity ago. Eleanore had no idea how Samael had managed to get it out of her car in the angels’ mansion. She would have thought the ever-changing magical building was impenetrable. Regardless, there it was. She had her driver’s license, her credit cards, her cell phone—everything.

  She chalked it up, again, to the magic that had
become her life and then she showered and changed into some of her new clothes.

  She enjoyed hotel rooms. It was bizarre for a person in her situation, forced to move around as much as she had. But she couldn’t quite explain it. She loved that “free” feeling of being able to go anywhere in the world and know that wherever she went, she could just get a room at some hotel or motel or hostel or bed-and-breakfast—and she would have, at the very least, a bed to sleep in.

  She also loved seeing new places, which was lucky for her, since she had little choice in the matter. She’d never been out of the country, but she had been all over the US. She had literally traveled from sea to sea, and hotel rooms had long since become like second homes to her.

  It was dusk now on Wednesday afternoon, and she gazed out of her floor-to-ceiling windows onto the ever-brightening neon circus that was the Strip below. She thought of Uriel and wondered what he was doing at that moment.

  Uriel awoke from his sleep much like he always did—slowly, gradually, and not at all as he had expected a vampire would.

  “Humans have it wrong.” Azrael spoke from where he was sitting, Indian-style, on top of a table a few feet away. He was watching Uriel with keen, glittering eyes. “We don’t die during the day. We don’t stop breathing, and our hearts always beat.” He smiled, flashing fangs. “We’re just night owls.”

  “I’m hungry,” Uriel stated simply as he shoved himself up and off of the cool, stone bed he’d spent the day on. He’d tried a normal bed first. But his body had been stiflingly hot; it had craved the coolness of the marble in this chamber that Azrael had created long ago, and for the very same reason.

  “And that’s another thing.” Azrael chuckled. “We get really crabby when we don’t eat.”

  Uriel raised a brow and smiled wryly. “So what’s next?”

  “We eat,” Azrael said with a shrug, suddenly leaping to his feet on the table in one strong, graceful movement. The torches in their sconces along the wall flickered with the sudden turbulence of the chamber’s cool air.

  “You pull that shit onstage much?” Uriel asked, realizing that he didn’t often catch his brother’s performances as the Masked One.

  “Occasionally.” Azrael smiled.

  “I can see why you’ve made such an impression,” Uriel muttered, swinging his legs over the edge of the stone slab and hopping down. His body moved differently in this state. It seemed to blur into each action, moving at a much greater speed than normal.

  “Why doesn’t the bracelet stop me from moving like this?”

  “Your ability to move quickly is no more a vampire power than the ability to run is a human power. It’s simply part of your vampire physiology,” Az explained.

  “This is going to take some getting used to,” Uriel said as he stared down at himself.

  “Nah.” Azrael jumped down from the table, blurring in the air as he did so. It was like watching a movie, but without the screen. “It’s reflex,” he explained. “It won’t take long at all.”

  Uriel blinked and Azrael was suddenly standing directly in front of him, less than a foot away. The tall, dark archangel gazed steadily at him with those eerie golden eyes. “Now follow me. I’m initiating you.”

  “Sounds very eighties vampire gang,” Uriel retorted dryly.

  “And what better place to be a Lost Boy than Sin City?”

  “Vegas? You’re taking me to Vegas for dinner?”

  Azrael laughed. “Nope,” he said. He waved his hand at a tall, dark wood door in a stone wall of the chamber. The door and wall surrounding it shimmered, waving in and out of existence like some Hollywood special effect. Then it disappeared completely and a warm, noisy darkness was revealed just beyond the opening. Azrael turned back to Uriel, his smile as wickedly sharp as ever. “We just woke up, remember? It’s breakfast.”

  Uriel chewed on his cheek. “Right,” he said. This was definitely new. It would seem that Azrael was a different person if you caught him at night, on his own turf. Doing his own thing. He even joked. Azrael never joked. He was Death, for crying out loud. But right now, the tall, dark archangel was smiling, and there was a lightness to his step he didn’t normally display.

  Uriel realized then that he didn’t know his brother very well at all. How many years had it been since the two of them had held a real conversation with each other? Much less done anything together—anything at all? It had been years. Thousands of them.

  Well, that’s about to change, Uriel thought. Whether they wanted it or not, they had been thrown into the roles of teacher and student. And, strangely enough, teaching seemed to come naturally to Azrael. He led without pretense and even seemed to be enjoying himself. Wonder of wonders.

  “Are you ready?” Azrael asked then.

  Uriel turned to study the dark opening in the chamber wall. He knew enough about the way the mansion worked to know that the portal Azrael had opened most likely led directly into the city of Las Vegas. Probably, it opened into a back alley somewhere. Or an abandoned warehouse.

  He nodded once and watched Azrael step into the darkness. When Uriel followed on his heels, a warm breeze welcomed him, along with the sound of wailing sirens, muffled dance club music, and an argument between two drunk lovers down the street.

  “Ah. Vegas,” Azrael said as they stepped out of the alley and onto the sidewalk, taking in the atmosphere. They didn’t worry about the portal to the mansion behind him. The multidimensional house knew how to take care of itself; the opening was already gone.

  “There.” Azrael nodded toward a pair of women halfway down the block. They were young—most likely no more than twenty to twenty-five years old. They were scantily clad, one in a leather miniskirt, the other in tight jeans and a pair of teetering heels.

  Neither was to Uriel’s taste, vampire or not. He shook his head and shot Azrael a sidelong glance. “No, thank you.”

  “Not the prey, genius,” Azrael scolded. He pointed higher to a spot above them in his field of vision, raising his hand so that Uriel followed the line of sight to a group of men standing up the street on the corner, half-hidden in shadow. “The predators.”

  Uriel’s gaze narrowed on the group of men. There were three of them, their faces covered in scruff and grime. All three were slightly toasted, and if the smell he picked up from this distance was any indication, they were also high on something quite nasty.

  “That’s the smell of meth,” Azrael told him. “They’re far gone. And they’re waiting for those two women to head straight for them.”

  Uriel was accustomed to acting on instinct. It was part of being an archangel. However, this time, when he sensed the danger and felt the evil intent on the desert breeze, the power he automatically called for wasn’t there. It didn’t answer.

  Uriel frowned and looked down at himself, and as he did, he caught the glint of metal around his wrist.

  Beside him, Azrael shifted. “You did put it on yourself, so it’s up to you to take it off.” Azrael nodded toward the powerful gold wreath that bound Uriel’s powers within his body. “But you should wait until you feed to do it,” he said soberly. “Once you take it off, the influx of your power will assault you and make it exponentially more difficult for you to accept the change that is trying to take place in your body. It may overwhelm you. And it will probably hurt.” Azrael’s tone was low, his words somber, and his golden eyes began to glow slightly with the weight of his warning.

  Uriel clenched his teeth and fingered the golden band around his wrist. “I can do this without my powers, I presume?” he said, nodding toward the trio of drugged-out miscreants down the street.

  At this, Azrael smiled again and laughed darkly. “But of course. Like I said, it’s in your physiology. You’re a hunter now; this is just reflex.” He turned to focus his ever-intensifying golden gaze on the men who were unwittingly waiting to become prey themselves. “It just makes it more fun.”

  “Very well.” Uriel left the bracelet alone and nodded at his brother. “Aft
er you.”

  Azrael blurred into motion without warning and Uriel was momentarily left blinking at the suddenly empty spot where the archangel had been standing a millisecond before. And then something inside of him slid into place. The click as it connected was nearly audible; at once he simply knew what to do. As Azrael had said, it was a reflex.

  Uriel’s vision changed. The scents in the air became visible trails that led in different directions. His hearing sharpened. He could make out the sound of beating hearts up ahead. Two belonged to the young girls. Then came the rapidly erratic beats of the abused hearts of the men ahead of them.

  It took a precious few of those wild heartbeats for Uriel to catch up with Azrael at the mouth of the alley where the men stood.

  A few more and Azrael had dragged two of the men backward into the waiting darkness. Uriel took care of the third. He wrapped his strong arm around the man’s neck and jerked him into the dank, smelly alleyway so quickly that both of their bodies blurred in the action. The man never knew what hit him.

  Uriel’s fangs found purchase in the side of the man’s neck. He fought past the urge to pull away when salt met his tongue and the stench of alcohol and unhealthy bodies filled his nostrils.

  Azrael’s influence was instantly in his head. It is sustenance, Uriel. And you’ve saved more lives here than your own.

  Uriel knew his brother was right. They were still archangels, after a fashion. In a way, it was still their job to deliver whatever kind of justice they were capable of.

  But it tasted like crap and, frankly, Uriel was sick to death of being an archangel. For once in his long-suffering existence, he would have preferred to be on the taking side of things instead of on the giving. He drank because he had to. The blood would keep him alive. But as he swallowed, he closed his eyes and imagined something else. It wasn’t this man’s blood he wanted to taste.

  At that moment, he would have given almost anything to be drinking from Eleanore instead. The scent of her blood had been a siren song to him. It still was. In fact, the memory of her temptation was so starkly clear, it was almost as if he could smell her there in Vegas.