very strong. I could tell them, and then head back upstairs and wrap my body around Allie’s and wake her slowly.
I’d tried to be careful, afraid I’d hurt her. She was small, unused to me, and the thought of causing her pain was enough to slow the raging tide of my hunger for her. But I hadn’t been able to stop, any more than I’d been able to keep from feeding from her. Yet she’d been able to take everything with no more than a slight wince. More proof that she was made for me, when I’d refused to believe it for so long. No ordinary woman could take me as she had, not without pain that would preclude pleasure.
I’d felt her tighten around me in helpless response, felt her give everything to me. She was mine, and I was hers.
I was no longer alone. I turned to see Sammael land beside me, light as ever, his light-brown wings folding down around him. His face was set, emotionless, and I greeted him without rising. He’d lost his mate as well. His grief had to be very deep indeed. So deep that he didn’t allow it to show.
“Azazel has left?” he said.
I had watched over Sammael after he’d fallen. Helped him with the huge adjustments, listened to him, advised him when he’d asked for counsel, stayed with him when the terrors hit him. If Azazel was an older brother, Sammael was a younger one. Someone I protected, guarded against evil.
I looked at Sammael and I saw the emptiness in his eyes. And I knew the truth.
I REACHED OUT FOR RAZIEL, but he was gone. The bed was already cold where he had been, though mostly he’d been on top of and beneath and behind and around me. I should have slept for days after all the things we’d been doing. Instead I was awake and wondering where he was. And when he’d be back, beside me, inside me, again.
I didn’t want to get up—the evening air was cool and the covers were deliciously warm. Hadn’t someone told me I wouldn’t have to use the bathroom as much? They’d lied.
I got up, noticing with lascivious amusement that my legs were shaky. I staggered to the bathroom, understanding for the first time the term
He’d left his marks on me. The bite mark on my neck, two pale puncture marks that looked like something out of
I headed for the shower, stepping beneath the warm spray that was always at exactly the right temperature. Just another one of the perks of the afterlife, I thought. I’d always hated fiddling with showers to make sure the water temperature was right, particularly in a prewar apartment building in New York City with antique plumbing. The lovely perfection of the shower in Raziel’s rooms was joyful indeed.
Not to mention that there were seventeen different sprays, ranging from the rain-forest shower overhead to the myriad massaging sprays coming from the silver pipe, each aimed at a strategic part of my body. I reached for the liquid soap and almost swooned. It had the same spicy scent that clung to Raziel’s golden skin. I closed my eyes and slathered myself with it, letting the water sluice it away from me.
The bathroom was filling with steam, and I sat on the shower’s teak bench to enjoy it; a moment later I heard the door open, and my pulse leapt. He was back, sooner than I expected. I’d never shared a shower with a man. Sharing one with Raziel would be . . . delicious.
“I’m in here,” I said unnecessarily. “Why don’t you join me?” It was astonishingly bold of me—while shyness had never been my particular failing, sexual openness was equally foreign. But I had looked into his eyes and known how much he wanted me, and no foolish misgivings would get in my way. He wanted me, and for now I could let myself accept it, revel in it. He was mine.
I could see his outline through the heavy mist in the bathroom, moving toward the shower’s doorless opening, and I rose in one fluid gesture, ready to move into his arms, when something stopped me. I froze, tilting my head to listen to him, but there was nothing but silence from the man who stood there.
It wasn’t Raziel. This man was shorter, broader. Dangerous. I’d already called out to him—there was no chance of pretending that I wasn’t there. No chance of slipping out of the open shower and hiding behind the bathroom door. I was trapped.
I left the shower running, on the off chance that whoever was in here had an aversion to getting wet, even as I realized how foolish that was—it wasn’t the Wicked Witch of the West who was threatening me. He moved closer, and the overhead spray beat down on his blond curls, his well-modeled face, and I felt relief wash through me. It was Sammael. Raziel must have told him to bring me to him.
His expression was odd, almost vacant, as he reached past me and turned off the water. He paid no attention to the fact that I was naked, but that didn’t surprise me. I was hardly the type to inflame the passions of most men, and Sammael had just lost his beloved wife. He was probably barely aware of me.
He took my arm, not gently at all, and pulled me from the shower, tossing a towel at me. “Dry yourself,” he ordered in his expressionless voice.
Something was wrong. With Sammael, with the situation, and fear sliced through me. Had Raziel been hurt?
I turned to him, about to demand an explanation, when something stopped me. He stood so still, waiting for me, his face blank, his eyes dead. Mourning his wife, I thought. But I still couldn’t rid myself of the belief that something was terribly wrong.
I didn’t waste any time, though toweling off and dressing while Sammael watched wasn’t one of the most comfortable things I’d ever done. I kept my back to him, turning around once I’d done up the white shirt and loose black pants I’d once more filched from Raziel. I still couldn’t face bright colors, but plain white seemed too mournful. “Are you taking me to Raziel?” I asked.
“Of course.” There was still that strange disconnect going on, as if he were in shock.
“I’m so glad you survived, Sammael,” I said. “I know the loss of Carrie must be so hard for you.”
He didn’t blink. “He’s waiting for you,” he said.
Where? I didn’t say the word out loud, though I’m not sure why. Feeling unsettled, I let my mind reach out, delicately, searching for Raziel.
There was no answer. Not even the muffled consciousness I’d been able to reach when he was deliberately closed off to me. Was he asleep? Had he gone somewhere to rest after the energetic hours we’d spent?
But he wouldn’t have done that. When I’d drifted off to sleep the last time, I’d been folded in his arms; in his repletion he hadn’t held anything back. He’d wanted nothing more than to sleep like that, his body entwined with mine.
And now he’d vanished. I jerked my head around to stare at Sammael. “Where is he?” I asked again. “Why isn’t he here?”
“He wants you to join him. He’s in the caves.”
A cold, creeping sickness filled my belly. He was lying to me. Raziel had told me never to come to the mountain again, and there was no reason for that to change, even in our recent rapprochement.
I began to back away slowly. I had no idea whether I could run faster than one of the Fallen, but it was certainly worth a try. “Let me just get a cup of coffee,” I said brightly, turning toward the kitchen.
“No.”
I raised an eyebrow, feeling haughty. “No? If I want a cup of coffee, I’ll get one,” I snapped. “And if what Azazel said is true and I really am the Source, you’re going to be relying on me for blood for the next little bit, however long it takes you to find another mate. So don’t piss me off.”
“I won’t need your blood,” he said. “The curse will be lifted, and I’ll be back where I belong.”
I didn’t need his expression to verify what I already knew. “You let the Nephilim in,” I said in a sick voice, remembering the sound and the stench of them, the hideous tearing of bodies, the screams of the dying. His own wife torn apart and devoured. I wanted to throw up.
“There is no new life without the end of an old one. The Fallen should have been wiped from this earth aeons ago. Once the Fallen have been destroyed, the new order can come to pass, and I will ascend to my throne in heaven.”
“Ascend to your throne? Do you think you’re God? Jesus?”
He gave me a look of withering disdain. “You know nothing of these matters. I will join Uriel as the guardian of heaven and earth, and wickedness will be burned out. The Fallen will be entombed in the middle of the earth as Lucifer has been, there to suffer eternal torment—”
“I get the picture.” There was a messianic gleam to his eye now, and I’d learned at my mother’s knee that there was nothing worse than a zealot. “And what happens to me?”
“You are the whore of a fallen one. There is no mercy or forgiveness for you.” He took my wrist, his hand grinding my bones together, but I bit my lip and didn’t say anything. “He awaits you.”
He dragged me out onto the narrow terrace, and I gave up all dignity and shrieked for help, prepared to fight like hell before I let him throw me over.
Instead he put one beefy arm around my waist and soared upward, into the moonlit sky.
I stopped struggling. He could easily have dropped me, and I’d never liked heights. Yes, I know I was supposed to be over all my phobias, but there were a lot of things that were supposed to be true that so far had failed me.
I hadn’t been afraid when I flew with Raziel. But Raziel was my mate, my soul, everything to me. Since I was
