hair away from his face again. He looked so young, so innocent, even though he had to be thousands of years old, and I wanted to lean forward and kiss his forehead as a last benediction.
So much for touching gestures. His eyes flew open, and they were no longer dull and listless. His breathing had become regular, and his color was back. Whether it was supposed to work or not, my blood had given him enough strength to hang on.
I eased him down carefully on the grass. “I’ll be right back. I need to see to someone.” Tamlel was no longer moving. The tide was receding, leaving him beached on the wet sand, and I knew it was too late. And I knew I had to try.
I ran back down to the shore, tripping over the carnage, falling to the sand beside him. He still breathed, but his eyes were closed, and I knew that he was very close to death.
I put my bloody arm against his lips, but he didn’t react, and I cursed my foolishness. It had been a fluke—there was no way my blood could save anyone. I didn’t belong here—the poor creature at the front entrance was simply in better shape than I’d thought, and my weak,
Tamlel’s skin was icy cold now as death began to move over him, and I knelt beside him, hopeless, crying, the useless blood dripping down my arm.
And then, at the last minute, I pried his mouth open and held my arm over it, letting the blood drip onto his tongue, twisting the cut to make it bleed more, oblivious to the pain.
His mouth fastened on my wrist, and I felt the sharp pierce of his teeth in my skin, opening my vein so that I bled more freely. The other man hadn’t bitten me, but Tamlel was holding me, sucking at me, his hands clutching my arm so tightly that it was numb.
I was growing dizzy, and I wondered if it was blood loss or the horror of the night. It didn’t matter—dizziness was preferable to the reality that surrounded me, to the death and horror that had turned an idyllic escape into a charnel house. I closed my eyes, growing weaker, when I heard a roar of such blind fury that I knew that all the Nephilim hadn’t been defeated, that I would be torn limb from limb. Something grabbed me, jerking me away from Tamlel, and I went flying through the night air, landing breathless on the bloody sand, prepared for the death I had managed to avoid.
I looked up, expecting to see the huge, unwieldy shape of a Nephilim. But it was no monster silhouetted against the moonlight. He was covered in blood, it matted his hair and covered his skin, but I knew those eyes, Raziel’s eyes, blazing in fury as he turned on Tamlel, his fangs bared in attack.
“No!” I screamed, certain he was about to tear his friend limb from limb. A moment later the rage drained from his body, and he turned to me, sinking to his knees beside me in the sand, pulling me into his arms. The smell of death and sweat and blood covered him, and I sank against him in weak relief.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I don’t know . . . did I hurt you?”
I was past speaking. I could only shake my head against his chest, trying to get closer to him.
Something folded around me, soft as feathers, dark as the night as everything went black.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IF IT HADN’T BEEN FOR THE FOUL stench, I might have slept forever. It was a gray day, somehow different from the gentle mist that usually enshrouded Sheol. I lay in bed, unmoving. The light that came in through the windows was murky, filtered, and the bed beneath my poor, aching, bruised body was much too comfortable to leave. I rolled over reluctantly. The last thing I could remember, I’d been flying through the air, dragged away from Tamlel by a furious monster, and in that brief flash I’d been convinced I was going to die. Until I looked up and saw Raziel.
I couldn’t remember much more. Someone had managed to drag my ass upstairs and cleaned me up. I hadn’t slept alone—somehow I knew that. I was stark naked, and the blood and filth had been washed from my body by some ghostly handmaiden. Raziel had tended to me, despite his own wounds.
Raziel had carried me upstairs and seen to me.
Had I dreamed it all? I looked at my arm, searching for tooth marks. The wound was still there, a long scratch from my biceps down to my wrist, but it had already closed up, healing, and there was no sign that two of the Fallen had fed on me.
Just as Sarah’s wrist had healed instantly when she’d fed Raziel. But I couldn’t think about Sarah.
I pushed back in the bed. I hadn’t meant for it to happen last night and I couldn’t believe it had done them any good. My blood had been nothing more than a pacifier. An empty breast for a starving infant, bringing momentary comfort but no sustenance. But at least it had eased them, and for that I could spare a few pints of blood. Until Raziel had appeared with a roar of rage, pulling me away from Tamlel, about to kill his old friend. Had the battle temporarily stripped his sanity from him? Why would he want to hurt Tamlel?
My scream had stopped him. And his arms around me, his mouth against my temple, had been safety, protection, love.
No, not that. He wasn’t going to love anyone ever again.
That horrible smell, mixed with oily smoke, was enough to make me throw up. I climbed out of bed slowly, my body aching, and grabbed the robe that hung on the back of the bathroom door. It was an ancient kimono, the heavy silk oddly reassuring as it draped over my naked body, and I walked barefoot into the living room, half afraid I’d find Raziel there, half afraid I wouldn’t.
He wasn’t there—the place was deserted. I headed over to the open windows and looked out, hoping to see a tall, familiar figure on the beach.
The bodies were gone, but the sand looked black with the spilled blood. I could see smoke off to the right, and without thinking I climbed out onto the balcony to get a better look, wincing as my knee cramped up. There was a huge bonfire, tended by three of the women. I couldn’t recognize any of them—
they looked as battered as I was feeling—but they kept a close watch on the flames, and it took me a moment to realize what was causing the horrific stench. It was a funeral pyre for rotting flesh. They were burning the bodies of the Nephilim.
The Fallen couldn’t do it. Fire was poison to them—a stray spark and they might die. It was up to the humans to deal with the fire. Up to us to clean up the mess. But Sarah was gone.
The bloodstained beach in front of the house was deserted. The mist was light, covering everything like a depressed fog, but there was no sign of life.
Who had survived? What were they going to do now?
I climbed back inside and went to the closet and then froze, looking at the colorful clothes. The dress I’d worn yesterday was nowhere to be seen. The dress that Raziel had almost managed to pull off me, the dress I’d used to try to stanch Sarah’s blood as it poured from her body.
Sarah was dead. There was no get-out-of-jail-free card, no way for Sarah to become immortal like her husband. If there were, Azazel wouldn’t be so grim, and Raziel would still be happily married to bride number forty-seven or whoever. And I’d be roasting in hell.
Today wasn’t a day for colors, it was a day of mourning. I considered Raziel’s black clothes, then went with a loose white skirt and a tunic, looking like a cult member once more. I ran a brush through my tangled hair and took one last look at my reflection in the mirror. I looked pale, as if I’d lost a lot of blood, and I wondered just how much Tamlel had taken from me. Had he even survived?
There wasn’t a thing I could do about how I looked—I was probably a lot healthier than most of the other survivors. Which damned well better include Raziel. No, I wasn’t even going to consider any alternative. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to reach into his mind.
I met with the mental equivalent of a door slamming shut, and I laughed with overwhelming relief, a relief I didn’t want to examine too closely. He was alive, and still bad-tempered.
There was blood on the stairs. Someone had made an effort to clean it up, but the smears were still visible, and I was glad I’d decided to put on the white sandals instead of going barefoot. The thought of walking on dried blood held a tinge of horror. I’d as soon force my feet into those damned stilettos that had brought a swift end to my promising life.
I didn’t know whether my exhaustion was physical or emotional. I had to stop at each landing to catch my breath, and it gave me plenty of time to observe the battle stains that marred most of the surfaces. Blood on the rugs, gouges in the walls.
The dratted dizziness lingered. Had giving my blood to Tamlel and the other Fallen done this to me? Raziel had told me the wrong blood was dangerous—the horror of last night was making my memory far from clear, but Tamlel couldn’t have taken that much blood, could he? There were no marks on my arm apart from the long scratch, and no reason why giving my blood should have helped them or hurt me. At least, not according to Raziel.
But I was feeling like I’d just donated blood and forgotten to take a cookie. Did they give blood transfusions here? Because I had the unpleasant suspicion that I could do with one.
The massive entry hall looked very different in the murky light of day. The bodies were gone. So was most of the furniture, which had been smashed during the battle. The smell of death lingered, the wretched stench of the Nephilim, the smell of decay. I shivered, peering out the open door, but the beach was still deserted. The blood on the sand had dried to a dark rust. It would take a heavy rain to wash it away.
I looked over at the funeral pyre. I had no desire to get closer—the smell upwind was bad enough. I looked closer at the fire, at the burning limbs and the spit of roasting fat, and I shuddered, feeling faintly nauseated. Was Sarah part of that mountain of flames? Were the others? Surely not.
I turned and walked back into the house. There was no one in the public rooms, and I had the sudden uneasy suspicion that the surviving Fallen might have left, abandoning this place and the few
