real.
The kitchen was too small for both of us, but for him to leave he’d have to brush past me, and I knew he really didn’t want to touch me. It was lovely to think that it was unshakable lust keeping him away, but I knew it was more likely annoyance—I’d done my best to make him want to strangle me.
“No,” he said, “I don’t want to strangle you. I just want you to go away.”
“As long as I need to.”
“Well, that time is now over. Turn off the switch, or whatever it is you do. Stay the fuck out of my brain. Don’t read my mind, don’t cloud my thoughts, don’t wipe out my memory. Keep your distance.” I didn’t bother trying to keep the snarl out of my voice. I’d had enough of this crap.
He was looking dangerously close to be being amused. His gloriously striated eyes glinted for a moment, but I seriously doubted that Raziel possessed even a tiny trace of a sense of humor in his cold, still body. Sure enough, the expression vanished so quickly I was sure I’d imagined it.
“Or what?” he said.
“Stop it!” he said with complete horror, pushing away from me as if burned by the sultry image in my brain.
I smiled sweetly. “I’ve got a hell of an imagination, Raziel,” I said, calling him by name for the first time. “Stay out of my head or prepare to be thoroughly embarrassed.”
Taking the plate of doughnuts, I sauntered back out into the living room.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SHE WAS A WITCH. SHE SHOULD have been humble and weepy and afraid of me. Instead she was the complete opposite, and the quick vision of her sex fantasy was having the expected effect on my body. Azazel was right—I’d been celibate too long.
I stayed in the kitchen, not moving. I’d thought I at least had my body under control. In truth, it was no wonder I was hard, with that brief fantasy she’d indulged in. I had no idea whether she really found it appealing or whether it was just part of the game she was playing.
No, it was real. As I’d seen the thought, I’d felt her own fevered reaction, as intense as mine despite the brevity of the image. If that had simply been an intellectual exercise, it wouldn’t have been so . . . disturbing.
I had to get rid of her, and fast. I needed her out of my rooms, out of my world. There was no way in hell I was going to let them invoke the Grace of forgetting, but apart from that anything would be an improvement. Sarah was always looking for someone to mother—Allie Watson was the very thing. I could pass her over, then go out on my own and not have to think about her anymore. It might take a day or two to get her out of my system, but I could do it. I could turn myself off. As long as she wasn’t living in my apartment and taunting me.
I was getting closer to Lucifer’s burial ground. I could sit and listen and hear him deep in the earth, feel his call vibrate through my body, and I was close, so close. I didn’t need to get distracted by a woman with a mouth that wouldn’t stop moving and erotic images invading my mind.
Why the hell had Sammael brought her up to the cave in the first place? He knew better than anybody that place should be off-limits, particularly to an interloper like Allie Watson. It was the closest we’d come to Lucifer, the Light, and to have her bumbling around with her incessant questions was close to blasphemy.
Not that I believed in blasphemy. That was part of why I was here, wasn’t it? Because I, like the others, refused to follow the rules, to kill without question, to wipe out generations and scourge the land. I had looked on a human woman and fallen in love, and for that I was forever cursed.
Surely there was something wrong with an ethos that equated love with death. It was so long ago I wasn’t sure I could remember what we’d been thinking, could barely remember her. But I couldn’t forget the emotion, the passion that had driven me, the certainty that choosing life, choosing human love, was the right thing to do. It had been worth it, worth everything, and I had never regretted it.
I could regret the vulnerability, the need that had driven me to such a desperate act, but it no longer mattered. I had done what I had done, and I wouldn’t wish it changed. But it would never happen again.
Uriel knew how to use vulnerabilities. He knew how to torture, even with the rules that kept him from wiping us out. I wasn’t going to let him use me again.
So perhaps there were times when I wished I could still feel that innocent, powerful love. Hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of years, millennia, piling up, and I’d never been able to recapture that pure, essential passion that had made me destroy everything.
But I still would have done it. Chosen to fall. We’d been taught that the humans were like cattle—you trained them, destroyed them if they disobeyed, never answered their questions, and, most of all, never looked upon them with lust.
We’d been sent to earth with our appointed tasks. Azazel had been sent to teach the people metalwork; his job had been to train and to pass on the magic. The first twenty each had jobs, and we’d done well enough at first. But the longer we remained on earth, the more human we became. The hungers started, hunger for food, for life, for sex. And we started thinking that we could make this benighted world a better place. We could bring our wisdom and power, we could experience love and dedication. We would intermarry and our children would grow strong and there would be no more wars and God would smile.
God didn’t smile. There were no children—the curse was swift and vicious. We were damned for eternity. Because of love.
No wonder the woman wandering around my rooms annoyed me. It wasn’t just her prattle—she was right, it was a pleasant voice. But after all these years I had no use for humankind, for women in particular. And this woman, of all women. A moment of unexpected sentimentality, and I’d complicated my existence and that of the Fallen. No woman was worth it.
Still, it was my choice, my mistake, and my only option was to fix it, even if I wanted to pass her off. There had to be someplace we could send her where she wouldn’t cause trouble. And then we could deal with Uriel’s wrath.
I was the keeper of secrets, the lord of magic. Within me resided all the wisdom of the ages, and I had been sent to earth to give that knowledge to its hapless inhabitants. So how could I be so fucking stupid?
I glanced down, adjusted myself, and followed her into the living room. She was sprawled on one sofa, barefoot. My clothes fit her too damned well—I was going to have to see about something loose that covered up all the curves but was colorful enough to keep her happy.
God, why did I have to start worrying about keeping a woman happy? Especially a woman like Allie Watson.
Her long, thick brown hair was much better than the short bleached cut she’d had when I found her. Her face was prettier without makeup. She shifted, turning to look at me without getting up.
I walked over to one end of the sofa. “Where do you want to live?”
She’d been looking both annoyed and slightly downcast, but at this she brightened. “I’ve got a choice where I go?”
I didn’t think so, but I was grasping at straws. The one thing I knew, it couldn’t be hell. It was nothing personal. I hadn’t come this far to let Uriel win.
“Maybe,” I said, not exactly a lie. “I imagine it depends on your talents, where you can make yourself useful. What can you do?”
She appeared to consider this for a moment. “I can write. My style is slightly sarcastic, but I’m sharp and literate.”
“We have no use for writing.”
“So I’m in hell after all,” she said glumly. “No books?”
“What would we read? We’ve lived millennia.” “What about your wives?” “I have no wives.”
“I don’t mean you specifically, I mean all the women here. Sarah and the others. Don’t they want to read? Or do you guys give them such a fulfilling life, trapped here in the mist, that they don’t need any kind of escape?”
“If they wanted to escape, they wouldn’t be here,” I said in the voice I used to shut down arguments.
I should have known it wouldn’t do any good. She didn’t seem to realize that was what my voice signified. “I’m not talking about physical escape,” she argued. “Just those times when you want to curl up in bed and read about crazy make-believe worlds. About pirates and aliens and vampires . . .” Her voice trailed off beneath my steady gaze.
“What else can you do?”
She sighed. “Not much. I’m useless at Excel. I type fast, but I gather you don’t have computers here.” For a moment she looked horrified as she understood everything that meant. “No Internet,” she said in a voice of doom. “How am I going to live?”
“You’re not alive.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” she said grimly. “So clearly you don’t need Excel. Let’s see—I’m a demon at trivia, particularly when it comes to old movies.
I’m actually quite a wonderful cook. I kill plants, so I’d be no good in a garden. Maybe you could find me some commune-type thing? Without the Kool-Aid.”
I remembered Jonestown far too well. “You don’t need the Kool-Aid, you’re already dead,” I said.
“Lovely,” she said sarcastically. “So do I get married? Have kids? For God’s sake, at least have sex again?”
“Again?” It always managed to startle me, the way women of the current times simply gave their bodies when and where they wished. Two thousand years ago they would have been stoned to death. A hundred years ago they would have been outcasts. The human women who came to Sheol had been the
