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

  Uriel settled this unnerving, unnatural gaze upon her and smiled.

  It was not a reassuring smile.

  No matter what happens, whatever you see—don’t run from me. . . . Those had been his words.

  “Uriel . . .” Oh God, she thought. Run was exactly what she wanted to do. It was instinctive. When a predator with big, sharp teeth pins you in his crosshairs, you run.

  But he’d warned her not to. And somewhere in the tornado of Eleanore’s thoughts, she knew he was right. Running would only make things worse.

  He took a step toward her. It was a determined, deceptively calm prowl.

  “Oh, Uriel,” she breathed, feeling dizzy with fear.

  “Yes, Ellie?” His voice sounded like satin and it slid around her like a silky vise, squeezing her will within its dark influence. It sapped her strength to move away any farther.

  “Snap out of it!” she told him—begged him—not even sure what she was saying. She was grasping for words that would bring back the Uriel that had been holding her only moments ago.

  He continued to advance. Her instincts told her to step back, but she remained stubbornly frozen in place. As she watched him come nearer, an idea flashed through her head. He calmed down when I touched him, she remembered. Outside of the August, when he’d gone into monster mode on the teenagers, it had been Ellie that brought him back to himself.

  Another step. He was closing the distance between them.

  Eleanore swallowed hard and tried to take a calming breath. “I know you aren’t going to hurt me, Uriel,” she said, shaking her head once for emphasis. “I trust you. You’re stronger than that. You’re an archangel.” Against every defensive fiber in her being, she took the final step forward herself, closing the gap so that they stood toe-to-toe and she gazed up into his eyes. “You’re not a vampire.”

  Uriel seemed to pause, staring down at her through those black portals, studying her carefully. But she couldn’t tell what he was thinking; his eyes were so alien to her—devoid of color or emotion.

  “Please remember who you are,” she whispered, slowly reaching up to place her palm against his cheek. “And who I am.”

  Uriel could feel it again. But it was stronger than before. It was surging through him unchecked, beckoning him to use it. It was an angry sort of power, like a monster caged and starved and tormented through the bars—then suddenly unleashed upon the world that had imprisoned it.

  At inception, he had scented Eleanore’s blood, like desire and need and want all mixed together and bottled into a perfume. And she was there, standing before him, defenseless and beautiful, wind-blown and a touch cold, her skin ever so slightly dampened by the salty mist in the air. She was temptation in human form and he had never, ever felt so hungry.

  She’d spoken his name—breathed it in fear—and at first it only fed the fire in his blood. But then she’d told him to snap out of it. She’d told him that she trusted him. And, though the curve of her chin and the beguiling tilt of her neck was very nearly killing him, she’d told him to remember who he was.

  Who she was.

  And he couldn’t help but do as she commanded—because she was his archess. She had been made for him and, if you discounted the sequence of events, then in essence, he had been made for her as well. He could never hurt her.

  She raised her hand and touched his cheek and the monster inside of him backpedaled into its cage, leaving him stunned and . . . something else. He couldn’t put a name to it. But it was staggering.

  He could only gaze down at her as his world slowly turned from red to the normal nighttime hues it had been cast in before he’d pulled off the bracelet. His vision changed. His blood stopped rushing. The need within him tamped down and receded to a dull, insistent throb. It was not exactly comfortable—but it was the same aching need he always felt when he was near Eleanore.

  He could handle it.

  His canines receded to their normal size. He shuddered once beneath her touch and then lifted his own hand to cover hers on his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “Did I scare you?”

  She smiled at that. He’d obviously scared the hell out of her. But she was brave. She was so, so brave and she amazed him to no end.

  “Only a little,” she fibbed, shrugging it off. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” Uriel said. “But it seems you’re always having to ask me that. You deserve better.”

  “What’s better?” she asked.

  “This.” And suddenly, his arms were snaking around her waist and he was pushing off of the sandy beach and taking her up with him.

  Eleanore screamed. The world was falling away, vertigo rushing in to take its place, and everything blurred into one dizzying, terrifying motion as Uriel spun toward the heavens, holding her so tight that his embrace felt like a steel seat belt, strapping her body to his.

  She shut her eyes against the unexpected change, clinging to the archangel with every ounce of her strength. She wondered if she was going to faint.

  And then, just as suddenly, the wind ceased lashing her hair against her face. Her stomach dropped back out of her throat, and the air stopped biting. Eleanore was surrounded by silence, all-encompassing and vast. There were no seagulls, no waves hitting the shore. There was nothing but the sound of her trembling breaths, in and out in a nearly hysterical rhythm. Several seconds of this passed before she dared open her eyes.

  Her face was pressed to Uriel’s chest. She’d buried it there in fear.

  She chanced a movement, pulling her head away to look up and over the hard swell of his biceps. Darkness spread into the distance, curving against the horizon just enough that she could tell the Earth was, in fact, round. The ocean was endless beneath them, dark and foreboding and, perhaps, bottomless.

  Far, far below was the tiny white strip of beach they’d left behind. Their campfire was but a speck of beckoning warmth. The surf looked like a slow-rolling string of froth, moving lazily toward the shore. Over the water, the white wall of fog waited patiently, and small dots of black dove in and out of the mist—seagulls, playing in the night, their cries silenced by the distance between themselves and the angels that hovered above them.

  “So now it’s my turn to ask,” Uriel whispered, his lips caressing the curve of her ear. “Are you all right?”

  Eleanore slowly blinked as the stillness around them gradually calmed the frantic beating of her heart. They hovered in the air, separate from the rest of the world, apart from the chaos that existed on the ground. And little by little, Eleanore realized how perfect it was. How peaceful.

  “Yes,” she whispered, giving him a small nod. “It’s so quiet.” She turned in his embrace and looked up at him. She could barely see him in the darkness and his frame was outlined by the moon, making his expression a secret. But she caught a glinting in his eyes, flashing green as emeralds, and it reassured her.

  “You won’t let me go?”

  Very softly, he said, “Not for anything.”

  A breeze picked up again, gentle and tentative. She could tell that he was slowly lowering them back toward the ground. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Up the beach. Here, let go of my shirt and take my hand.”

  Eleanore glanced down at his offered hand. His other arm was still wrapped securely around her waist. She thought of Superman and how he had taken Lois Lane flying above Metropolis with nothing more than a grip on her fingers. She smiled a nervous smile and pried one of her hands out of the back of his shirt so that she could lay it across his palm.

  His fingers closed tightly, possessively, over hers. “Now let go with your other hand,” he whispered, his words once more caressing her ear.

  “No way.”

  He chuckled, the sound sending delicious shivers down her spine. “Trust me, Ellie.”

  “Uh-uh.” She shook her head.

  “You’ll regret it later if you don’t take the chance right now,” he told her softly. “You trusted me enough to stick around
when I took off that bracelet. If I didn’t hurt you then, why would I hurt you now?”

  He had a point. But it didn’t matter.

  “I can’t,” she told him.

  There was a brief moment of silence as he seemed to be contemplating something. Then, in a more serious tone, he said, “I can help you.”

  Eleanore looked back up at him, trying to meet his gaze.

  “I can make you relax. If you let me inside . . .” He leaned down and laid a very gentle kiss on her forehead. “In here.”

  “You mean hypnotize me?”

  He laughed at that, loud and clear. It was a delicious, rumbling sound. “Yes. Basically. But only if you want me to.”

  Eleanore considered it. “You won’t make me do a strip tease for you or cluck like a chicken, will you?”

  Again with the laughter, this time a low chuckle that warmed her abdomen—and places lower down. “That I can’t promise. I like chickens.”

  Eleanore shot him a sideways glance. “Okay. But just relax me a little and that’s it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Eleanore thought he would allow her time to prepare, but almost at once, she felt his presence within her mind, and not just her mind, but her body. It was like being infiltrated by gaseous morphine or Valium, mixed with a heavy dose of some kind of aphrodisiac. Words whispered in her ears, but she couldn’t make out what they were. They were indistinct and sent shivers through her—delicious, decadent shivers. Moisture pooled shamelessly between her legs. She couldn’t help it.

  She was incredibly turned on.

  Eleanore closed her eyes, unable to suppress the moan of slow, catlike pleasure that escaped her throat.

  “Let go now, Ellie,” he said, his voice carrying easily over the influential whispers caressing her body and mind.

  Eleanore could not help but obey. She let go of him. She felt his grip on her hand, tight as ever, but it was the only part of them still touching.

  “That’s it,” he told her. “Now open your eyes.”

  Again, she obeyed. Then he turned out toward the long line of beach beneath them and began to soar above it, taking her with him. She squealed with surprise when he dove closer to the ground until they were skimming a mere few yards above the surface.

  Eleanore knew that her eyes were saucerlike and her smile a mile wide. She could feel it, ear to ear, as the ground rushed by beneath her and her arms stretched out on either side of her. She became the flying Ellie that she’d always been in her dreams. It was wondrous; there was no discomfort, no fear, no pain. There was only the night and its endless ocean and its frothy waves and the way they all raced by underneath her. She felt as if she could reach down and run her fingers through the water like the fin of a shark.

  They dove through a bank of fog and came out the other side damp and breathless. Eleanore became transfixed with the reflection of the moon on the water. She wanted to follow it, to keep moving, to keep skimming there just above the ocean, and Uriel seemed to know this, because he let her.

  He never once loosened his hold on her hand. He simply guided her toward all of the places she wanted to go.

  She laughed out loud when they buzzed past a small pod of sea lions on an outcropping and the creatures barked back in surprise.

  Eleanore forgot about everything in those precious moments. She left it all behind. There were no contracts, no men with needles, no worried parents, no dead-end jobs, no dangerous fans with cell phone cameras—not up here with Uriel and the night and its salty wind.

  The night wore on and, eventually, Uriel began to lower them back down to the ground. He drew her close as they neared the paved asphalt of a bed-and-breakfast parking lot. When her feet touched down, it was with a gentle tentativeness, as she was wrapped tightly in Uriel’s embrace.

  They gained their legs beneath them and gravity worked once more.

  Eleanore gazed up into Uriel’s stark green eyes, which she could now see very clearly beneath the porch lights of the bed-and-breakfast. She wanted to tell him so many things. She wanted to thank him, especially. But she also felt breathless and high and fantastic and—because his influence had yet to drop away from her, she felt flushed. She yearned for him.

  She wanted to kiss him again. She wanted to show him just how much she’d enjoyed the flight.

  Something orange, like fire, flashed in the green of Uriel’s eyes and his hand slid up her back, pulling her harder against his chest.

  And then her stomach growled. Loudly.

  She blinked.

  Uriel closed his eyes, as if composing himself. And then he opened them again and pursed his lips to keep from smiling.

  “Inside with you,” he said. “There will be plenty of time for other matters after you’ve had a decent meal.”

  Sam finished reading the last of Juliette Anderson’s file and then gently set it down on top of the coffee table in front of him.

  She was a very interesting young woman. Born to twenty-two-year-old Abigail Anderson and twenty-five-year-old Scott Anderson in Sacramento twenty-five years ago. She was unlike Eleanore Granger in that her powers had not materialized until just recently. She was very lucky in some ways; she’d had a relatively normal childhood and had been able to go to college. However, she was unlucky in other ways. Samael’s men reported that she was frightened of her new abilities. She felt alone; even her parents were unaware of her double nature.

  She was a beautiful woman. As an archess, that was to be expected. The folder he’d perused contained various photographs, taken at different angles. She had a wealth of shining brown hair that fell in thick waves down her back. Juliette, or “Jules” to her friends, was a fair amount shorter than Eleanore, coming to a very petite five feet and three inches, but within her tiny frame was a vortex of strength, energy, and power. Her beautiful hazel eyes glowed with it, as well as with kindness. According to her file, the woman volunteered for numerous charities and freely donated money and personal belongings.

  She was lovely, inside and out. But Samael suspected, as well, that it probably made it that much more difficult for the new archess to maintain a low profile. People noticed women like her.

  Just as they had always noticed Eleanore.

  And speaking of Eleanore . . . Samael leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers over his stomach. He wondered how she and the new vampire were getting along.

  He, of course, hoped it wasn’t that well. But, whether it was or not, it hardly mattered. The gala was tomorrow night. The archangel and his soul mate would most assuredly be in attendance.

  But they wouldn’t be alone.

  Not by a long shot.

  General Kevin Trenton appeared quite young to be a general. But he was not like most men. He was . . . different . He always had been.

  Right now, it was his own different nature that he pondered as he watched the recorded footage of Eleanore Granger healing a man and his daughter immediately following a car accident in a small town in West Texas.

  It had taken precious time and resources to locate the footage. According to his men, despite the fact that the accident scene and subsequent healing had been messy, evidence of the event turned out to be nearly nonexistent.

  Kevin wasn’t happy. This cover-up meant that someone was looking out for Eleanore. Someone else out there was thinking along the same lines that Kevin had been thinking for years.

  Granger was a very special woman. She had something that Kevin and his men didn’t have—had never possessed—and desperately wanted. Her need to heal her fellow man had come naturally to her. And it was that healing ability that had drawn him to her all those years ago.

  Eleanore Granger needed to be brought in. There was no more time to waste. He had tried to capture her after a lucky flux had located her in a mid-Texas town called Rockdale, where several of his men happened to be stationed, but somehow she’d escaped him.

  Her ability to elude him was positively bewildering.

  Kevin wasn’t cert
ain what Christopher Daniels had to do with Eleanore, but he suspected that the actor was not all he seemed to be. Furthermore, Kevin was fairly sure that Daniels, too, had something to do with the temporal fluxes his team had been charting all over the planet.

  It all centered on Granger. He needed to get his hands on her.

  Christopher Daniels had a promotional event in Dallas to attend tomorrow night. Kevin knew that Eleanore would be accompanying him. With luck, a careful plan, and a good number of skilled men, Granger would be under his control by Friday morning.

  Uriel had never been forced to exercise as much control over himself as he had tonight. First the kiss in front of the hotel. Then the stupid fans. Then he had taken the bracelet off.

  He was going a little batty on the inside. On the outside, he was calm, he was in control, he was understanding and gentle, but he had no idea how he was holding it together as well as he was because, frankly, Eleanore was making him crazy. If he hadn’t had two thousand years to learn to exercise immense control over his own body, he would have a painfully raging hard-on at the moment. Luckily, all he had was a throbbing gum line and a pair of fangs that would not totally disappear.

  He managed to hide those fairly well, making certain that Ellie couldn’t see his face when they were pronounced. But how long would he be able to keep this up?

  Christ, he thought, as he followed her through the front door of the bed-and-breakfast. He could smell her arousal. He knew she was wet with desire for him. He’d known it from the moment his influence had coiled inside of her, releasing the need she kept so carefully in check. He knew he was subduing her, breaking her will, and though he hadn’t meant to do it, there was a part of him that was anything but sorry that he had. It had caused his own monster to awaken, rear its head, and sniff the air. His gut had clenched, his jaw tightened, his hunger spiking hard.

  He had given her a taste of something she had always yearned for and, in return, she’d felt true happiness. Somehow, it made him love her even more.

  Love her?

  He could hear that her heart still beat rapidly in her chest and he couldn’t help it when his gaze slipped to the curve of her taut ass in those tight jeans, swaying gently as she walked ahead of him.