couldn’t be a mistake, no matter what it felt like.
She was just like so many others I had brought here. People stripped of their artifice, shocked and needy, while I herded them on to their next life like a shepherd of old, not wasting much thought on the entire process. These humans were simply moving through the stages of existence, and it was in their nature to fight it. Just as it was my job to ease their passage and see them on their way.
But this woman was different. I knew it, whether I wanted to admit it or not. She should have been anonymous, like all the others. Instead I stared down at her, trying to see what eluded me. She was nothing special. With her face stripped free of makeup and her hair down around her shoulders, she looked like a thousand others. The baggy clothes she now wore hid her body, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t care about women, in particular human women. I’d sworn off them for eternity, or for as long as Uriel kept me alive. This one should have been as interesting to me as a goldfish.
Instead I reacted to her as if she somehow mattered. Perhaps Azazel was right, and swearing off women and sex had been a bad idea. Celibacy was an unhealthy state for all creatures great and small, he’d argued. It was even worse for the Fallen. Our kind need sex as much as we need blood, and I was intent on keeping away from both. And instead of things getting easier, this woman was resisting.
I paid no attention to my hunger—it had nothing to do with her, and I could ignore it as I’d been ignoring it for so long. But she was somehow able to fight back when no one else could, and that was something I couldn’t ignore.
There was no question—Allegra Watson was supposed to be here. I had stood and waited as she stepped in front of the bus, moving in to scoop her up at the moment of death and not a second before.
I never lingered. There was no need for her to suffer—her fate had been ordained and there were no last-minute reprieves. I had watched the bus smash into her, waiting just long enough to feel her life force flicker out. And then it was over.
Some argued when I brought them away. In general, lawyers were the biggest pain in my ass, also stockbrokers. They cursed me—but then, they weren’t heading where Allie Watson was heading. Lawyers and stockbrokers and politicians uniformly went to hell, and I never minded escorting them. I took them to the darkside, pushing them over the cliff without a moment’s regret.
It always shocked them, those who were banished. First they couldn’t believe they could actually die, and when hell loomed up they were astonished, indignant.
“I don’t believe in hell,” many of them had said, and I always tried to resist the impulse to tell them that hell believed in
“You’re a goddamned angel,” one had said, never realizing quite how accurate he was. “Why are you sending me to hell?”
I never bothered to give them the straight answer. That they deserved it, that their lives had been filled with despicable, unforgivable things. I didn’t care enough.
Goddamned angel, indeed. What else would a fallen angel be, a creature cursed by God and his administrator, the archangel Uriel? As man had developed and free will had come into play, the Supreme Being had all but disappeared, abandoning those in heaven and hell and everywhere in between, leaving Uriel to carry out his orders, enforce his powerful will. Uriel, the last of the great archangels to resist temptation, pride, and lust, the only one not to tumble to earth.
The curse on my kind had been clear: eternal life accompanied by eternal damnation. “And ye shall have no peace nor forgiveness of sin: and inasmuch as they delight themselves in their children, / The murder of their beloved ones shall they see, and over the destruction of their children shall they lament, and shall make supplication unto eternity, but mercy and peace shall ye not attain.”
We were the outcasts, the eaters of blood. We were the Fallen, living our eternity by the rules laid out.
But there were the others, the flesh-eaters, who had come after us. The soldier angels who were sent to punish us instead fell as well. They were unable to feel, and driven mad by it. The Nephilim, who tore living flesh and devoured it, were a horror unlike anything ever seen before on the earth, and the sounds of their screams in the darkness rained terror on those left behind, those of us in the half- life.
We had taken one half of the curse: to live forever while we watched our women die, and to become eaters of blood. While the Nephilim knew hunger of the darkest kind, a hunger for flesh that could only be fed with death and terror.
This had been our lot. Two of the oldest earthly taboos —eating human flesh and drinking human blood. Neither could survive without it, though we Fallen had learned to regulate our fierce needs, as well as the other needs that drove us—that had driven us from grace in the beginning, before time had been counted.
In the end the Fallen had made peace with Uriel. In return for the task of collecting souls, we were allowed at least a measure of autonomy. Uriel had been determined to wipe the Fallen from the face of this earth, but the Supreme Being had, for once, intervened, staying our execution. And while there were no reversals of the curses already in place, there would be no new ones levied against us. For what little joy that brought us.
As long as we continued our job, the status quo would remain. The Nephilim would still hunt us by night, rending, tearing, devouring.
The Fallen would live by day as well, fed by sex and blood, with those needs kept under fierce control.
And Allie Watson was just one more soul to be delivered to Uriel before I could return to our hidden place. Do the job and get back before too much time elapsed. The duties of a fallen angel were not onerous, and I had never failed. Never been tempted. There had even been a time when I rushed to get back to the woman I loved.
But there had been too many women. There would be no more. I had one reason and one reason alone to hurry back.
I couldn’t stand humans.
This particular creature was no different, though I couldn’t understand how she had the strength to resist my resolve, even the small amount of resistance I felt beneath my grip. Her skin was soft, which was a distraction. I didn’t want to think about her skin, or the unmistakable fear in her rich brown eyes. I could have reassured her, but I’d never been tempted to intervene before, and I wasn’t about to make an exception for this woman. I wanted to, which bothered me. I wanted to do more than that. My hands shook with need.
I looked down into her panicked face and I wanted to comfort, and I wanted to feed, and I wanted to fuck. All of the needs I kept locked away. She didn’t need anything from me. If she did, she’d have to make do without.
But the stronger her panic, the stronger my hunger, and I gave in to the safest of my urges. “Don’t be afraid,” I said, using the voice given to me to soothe frightened creatures. “It will be fine.” And I pulled her forward, spinning her out into the darkness and releasing her as I stepped back.
It was only at the last minute I saw the flames. I heard her scream, and I grabbed for her without thinking, dragging her back. I felt the deadly fire sear my flesh, and I knew then what had been waiting for me, out there in the darkness. Fire was death to my kind, and the flame had leapt to my flesh like a hungry lover. I pulled the woman out of the dark and hungry maw that should have been what humans referred to as heaven, and I sealed my own trip to a hell that would have no end.
We tumbled backward, onto the ground with her soft body sprawled on top of mine, and I was instantly hard, my rebellious flesh overruling everything I’d been trying to tell it for decades, overshadowing the pain as a pure, unspeakable lust flamed through me, only to be banished a moment later.
An inhuman howl of rage echoed up from the flames. A moment later the rocks slid closed with a hideous grinding noise, and there was nothing but silence.
I couldn’t move. The agony in my arm was unspeakable, wiping out my momentary reaction to the woman’s soft body sprawled across mine, and I could almost be glad. The flames were out, but I knew what fire did to my kind. A slow, agonizing death.
It was one of the few things that could kill us, that and the traditional ways of disposing of blood-eaters. Beheading could kill us as surely as it would kill a human.
So would the minor burn on my arm.
If I’d only stopped to think, I would have let her go. Who knew how she’d spent her short life, what crimes she’d committed, what misery she’d inflicted on others? It wasn’t my place to judge, merely to transport. Why hadn’t I remembered that and let her fall?
But even as I felt the pain leaching away any semblance of common sense, I couldn’t help but remember I’d brought any number of innocent souls to this very place, seemingly good people, cast them forth, assured them that they were going to the place of peace they’d earned. Instead it had been hell, the same hell to which I’d taken the lawyers and stockbrokers. This was no temporary glitch. I knew Uriel too well. Hell and its fiery pit were Uriel’s constructions, and I knew, instinctively, that we’d been offered no alternative when we’d delivered our charges. I had been dooming the innocent ones to eternal damnation, unknowing.
The sin of pride, Uriel would have said placidly, with great sorrow. The cosmic hypocrite would shake his head over me and my many failings. To question the word of the Supreme Being and the emissary he’d chosen to enforce it was an act of paramount sacrilege.
In other words, do what you’re told and don’t ask questions. Our failure to do that was why we had fallen in the first place. And I had done more than question—I had just contravened the word. I was in deep shit.
Night was falling around us. The woman rolled off me, scrambling away as if I were Uriel himself. I tried to find my voice, to say something to reassure her, but the pain was too fierce. The best I could do was grit my teeth to keep from screaming in agony.
