Raziel

though, you’re worse trouble.” I kissed the side of her neck, tasting her skin, breathing in the smell of her blood as it rushed through her veins. So easy just to make one small piercing, just take a taste. I moved my mouth behind her ear, fighting it.

She was holding herself very still. “W-w-why?” she stammered.

“I can kill the Nephilim,” I whispered. “I can fight them. But I have too hard a time fighting you.”

She turned her face up to mine, and her hands reached up to touch me. “Then don’t fight,” she said in a tone of such practicality that I wanted to laugh.

“At least I won’t rip out your heart.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I said. And like a fool, I kissed her.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I KNEW PERFECTLY WELL THAT I WAS an idiot to do this, but right then nothing could have stopped me. His body was pressed up tight against me, and the heat and strength of it calmed my panic—but brought out a whole new raft of fear. His mouth was hot, wet, carnal, as he kissed me, his slow deliberation at odds with the crazed rush of lust that had overwhelmed us last night. He slanted his mouth across mine, tasting, biting, giving me a chance to kiss him back, his tongue a shocking intruder that somehow felt right. In my somewhat limited experience, men didn’t really like to kiss; they simply did it to get to the part they did like.

Raziel clearly enjoyed kissing—he was too good at it not to enjoy it. He was in no hurry to push me into bed, no hurry to do anything more than kiss me.

He lifted his head, and his strange, beautiful eyes with their striated irises stared down at me for a long, breathless moment. “What are you doing?” I whispered.

“Kissing you. If you haven’t figured that out yet, I must not be doing a very good job of it. I must need practice.” And he kissed me again, a deep, hungry kiss that stole my breath and stole my heart.

“I mean why are you kissing me?” I said when he moved his mouth along my jawline and I felt it tingle all the way down to . . . I wasn’t sure where. “You just told me you’d rather face the Nephilim—”

“Shut up, Allie,” he said pleasantly. “I’m trying to distract both of us.” He slid the dress straps down my shoulders, down my arms, exposing my breasts to the cool night air, and I heard his murmur of approval. “No bra,” he said. “Maybe I’m going to like your new clothes.”

He moved his mouth down the side of my neck, lingering for a moment at the base of my throat, to the place where he’d left his mark, and I reflexively rose toward him, wanting his mouth there, wanting . . .

But he moved on, and I stifled my cry of despair. And then forgot all about it as he leaned down and put his lips on my bared breast, sucking the nipple into his mouth. I caught his shoulders, digging my fingers into them as I arched up, offering myself to him. I could feel the sharpness of his teeth against me, and I knew a moment’s fear that he would draw blood from my breast, but his hand covered my other breast, soothing, stimulating, so that my nipple became a hardened button to match the one in his mouth, and I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, not there, not anywhere, he told me, and I felt his consciousness enter my mind, a deliberate invasion as intimate and arousing as his tongue and his cock.

His eyes were black with desire now, and he pushed the fabric of the dress down to my hips, baring my torso, nuzzling beneath the swell of my breast;

and then his hands were on my thighs, drawing the dress slowly upward, and I was feeling rushed, greedy, desperate for him, wanting him inside me, wanting him now, and I raised my hips, mindlessly searching.

He wants this, I thought dazedly, reveling in the certainty of his need. He wanted me. He wanted nothing more than to bury himself in my body, to soak in the forgetfulness of lust and desire and completion, to lose himself, and to bring me with him on a journey of such transcending desire that the very thought frightened me, and I tried to pull away. I hadn’t had time for second thoughts during our frantic couplings. Now I could be calm, detached, dismissive as I needed to be, except that I needed him even more than I needed calm, and his hands were running up my bare legs now, his fingers inside the lacetrimmed edge of my panties, touching me, and I let out a muffled yelp of reaction, followed by a moan of pure pleasure as he began pulling the panties down my legs.

And then he jumped away, so quickly I almost fell. The blackness was gone from his eyes and at the moment they were like granite, and I wondered what the hell had happened. And then I heard the screams.

Different from the distant howls and shrieks of the Nephilim, safely beyond the borders of Sheol. These were closer, the guttural howls echoing through the five floors of the building. These were here.

“Stay here,” he ordered tersely. “Find someplace to hide. If worse comes to worst, go out on the balcony and be prepared to jump.”

I stared in astonishment at the angel who’d just told me to commit suicide. “What . . . ?”

“They’re here.” His voice was flat, grim. “The walls have fallen.”

I froze, the numb, mindless horror washing over me. “The Nephilim?”

He was almost at the door, but he stopped, wheeled around, and came back to me, catching my arms in a painful grip. “You can’t let them near you, Allie. No matter what. Hide if you think you’ve got a chance. This is a long way to climb, and their bloodlust will send them after the nearest targets. But if they reach this floor . . .” He took a deep breath. “Jump. You don’t want to see or hear what they’re capable of, you don’t want to risk getting caught by them. Promise me, Allie.” His fingers tightened. “Promise me you’ll jump.”

I had never backed off from a challenge, never taken the easy way out in my entire, too-short life. I looked up into Raziel’s face and could sense the horror he was seeing, the horror he was letting me catch only a glimpse of. A glimpse was enough. I nodded. “If I must,” I said.

To my astonishment, he kissed me again, a brief, fast kiss, almost a kiss good-bye. And he was gone.

There was no place to hide. The bed was too low to the floor, and when I burrowed into the closet, the screams from below still echoed, even when I covered my head with my arms and tried to drown them out. I struggled back into the bedroom. I didn’t know if the screams were getting louder or the Nephilim were getting closer. I’d promised him, and I might have a thousand and one characters flaws, but I never broke a promise. I pushed open the window and climbed onto the balcony. And then froze.

The sand was black in the moonlight, and it took me a moment to realize it was blood. There were bodies everywhere, or what was left of them.

Headless torsos, arms and legs that had been ripped free, gnawed on, and then discarded. And the stench that was carried upward on the night breeze was the stuff of nightmares. Blood, old blood, and decaying flesh. The stink of the monsters that crawled below, searching for fresh meat.

I climbed onto the ledge, peering over, and had my first shadowy sight of one of them. It was unnaturally tall, covered with some kind of matted filth, though whether it was hair or clothes or skins of some kind I couldn’t be sure. Its mouth was open in a roar, and I thought I could see two sets of teeth, broken and bloody. It had someone in its hands, a woman with long blond hair and black-streaked clothes.

She was still alive. The creature was clawing at her, ripping her open so that her guts spilled out onto the sand, but her arms were still moving, her feet were twitching, and I screamed at it to stop, but my voice was carried away by the crash of the surf, lost amidst the screams and howls.

For a moment I stood paralyzed. The woman was finally still, her eyes wide in death, and the creature turned, moving in an odd, disjointed shuffle, heading inside. I couldn’t even count the number of bodies on the beach—they were ripped in too many pieces. And I knew then I couldn’t join them on the beach, doing a graceful swan dive to my death. What if I didn’t die right away? What if I lay there while the Nephilim found me, tore me apart while I still lived?

And how could I hide in my room when I could do something? That poor woman down there—if someone had been able to distract the creature, she might have been able to crawl to safety. But there was no one alive on the beach.

I didn’t hesitate, didn’t allow myself to fear. By the time I reached the third-floor landing I’d decided I was crazy, but I didn’t let it slow me down. Destiny was a stupid word, a word for heroines, and I was no heroine. All I knew was that I could do something to help, and I had to try.

The bodies started on the second floor, women of the Fallen who’d tried to escape, but were clawed and hacked and gnawed on by the monsters who’d somehow invaded the vale of Sheol. The stench was overpowering. Way in the past, when I’d started writing, I’d done research on crime scenes, had heard about the smell of week-old bodies that clung to the skin and hair of the police and couldn’t ever be eradicated from their clothes. It was that kind of smell that washed over me now, one of decayed flesh and maggots and rotting bones. Of old meat and ancient blood and shit and death.

The first floor was a battleground. I could see five of the Nephilim, tall and ungainly, easily recognizable. I took in the scene quickly: Azazel was fighting fiercely, blood streaming from a head wound and mixing with his long black hair. Tamlel was down, probably dead, as was Sammael, and I realized with belated horror that it had been Carrie out on the sand, fighting to the end with the monster who was devouring her.

The noise, the smoke, the blood, were too much. I couldn’t see the other women, couldn’t find Raziel in the melee. The Nephilim who fought Azazel went down, and a moment later its head went flying, the rest of it collapsing into a useless pile of bones as Azazel turned to face the next attacker.

And then I saw Sarah behind him. She held a sword in her hand, and her face was calm, set, as Azazel