flames were licking toward me along the shining metal of the sword that impaled my chest, and I reached up, grasping the blade, and pushed the fire back at him.
I could feel the heat but the blaze didn’t burn my hands as it moved back over the protective hilt, onto Sammael, onto the rough fabric of his clothing, erupting in flames.
He screamed, and yanked the sword free. I collapsed like a marionette whose strings had been cut. I was lying in a river of blood, and if I’d been able to speak I would have told Raziel to find something in which to bottle it. I was dying, and there would be nothing for the Fallen who counted on the Source for sustenance.
But I couldn’t speak. I was so tired. It seemed as if I’d been battling forever, and I needed to rest, but there was too much primal satisfaction in watching Sammael thrash and struggle in a conflagration. He was dying in hideous pain, and I guess there was enough Old Testament in me after all that I reveled in it.
“Allie. Beloved.” It was Raziel’s voice. I was probably already dead—there was no way he would call me
I felt him pull me into his arms, and I struggled, able to summon up a dying panic. “No,” I said. “There are sparks. . . .”
He ignored me, pulling me against him, and he put his hand over the gaping wound in my chest. I saw the last remaining spark jump to him, and I moaned in despair, even as the pressure in my chest grew harder, sharper. “This is ridiculous,” I said weakly. “Now we’re both going to die, and we aren’t cut out for Romeo and Juliet—”
“We’re not going to die.” I heard the pain in his voice, and I wanted to scream at him.
He pressed his hand against my chest, and the sudden pain was blinding, so powerful that my body arched, jerked, and then collapsed in his arms again. The bleeding had stopped, and I knew he’d healed me—somehow managed to close the wound, seal the tear.
But I was dying. He couldn’t stop that.
“No,” he said. “I won’t lose you. I can’t.” He pulled me against him, and his face was hard, cold, bleak. He reached out a hand and stroked my face gently, and I knew he was saying good- bye. And then he yanked his own shirt open and tore into his skin, ripping across the flesh so that blood spurted out.
I knew what he was going to do the moment before he did it, and I opened my mouth to protest. Opened my mouth as he pressed it against his wound, and the blood ran into my mouth, hot and rich, and my cold, cold body turned to fire as I drank from him, deep gulps of the sweetness of life, his life’s blood becoming mine.
He was trembling, his arm burning beneath my head. He pulled me away, and I could feel the wetness of his blood on my mouth. He leaned down and kissed me, full and hard and deep, the blood mingling between us, and the last barrier dropped away. “I love you,” he said, the words torn out of him.
“I know.”
He rose then, in one fluid movement, but I could see the weakness in him. “If I don’t make it,” he said in a low growl, “promise me you’ll live. The Fallen will need you. You’re the Source, even without me.”
“No. You live or I won’t,” I said, stubborn and angry.
He didn’t argue. His wings spread out, a gloriously iridescent blue-black, and a moment later we were soaring out of the cave, up and up into the night sky. I could feel his strength failing as he carried me. The ocean was ahead—he just had to make it that far, but heat was spreading, much faster than it had that first night, and I knew that giving me his blood had quickened the poisoning, and I wanted to hit him.
I did the only thing I could. “Don’t you dare drop me,” I warned him. “We didn’t go through all this to have me splattered on the cliffs like a drunken seagull.”
He laughed. It was only the faintest tremor of sound, but it was enough. He pushed, managing to rise higher, and then the last of his strength left him, as well as consciousness, and I knew we were too far from the ocean, we were going to crash like a modern Icarus.
I wanted to die kissing his beautiful mouth. His arms had gone limp, and I clung to him, turning my mouth to his, and the movement angled his winged body into the wind.
A breeze caught us, slid underneath us, and suddenly we were gliding, moving ever faster on the wind, crossing the night sky at a nightmare speed, and then falling, falling, spinning, my arms wrapped around him, my mouth on his, the blood between us, as we plummeted . . .
Into the sea. We plunged deep, the icy water a shock, tearing me away from him. It was so dark, so cold, and I’d lost him, gliding downward through the churning water. You could only cheat death so many times, I thought dazedly, and this time I closed my eyes against the saltwater sting, let my breath out, knowing I had nothing left to fight with. Raziel would survive; the ocean water would heal him, and he would find what he needed.
This time I would drown. I had already suffered a sea-change of such magnitude that there was nothing left, and my bones would be coral, my eyes pearls. Shakespeare in my ear.
Someone was there, a hand brushing mine as I floated, and I opened my eyes to see Sarah, serene and beautiful, smiling at me. All I needed was a bright light, I thought, smiling back at her. There was no one else I wanted to meet on the other side, and I reached out for her.
She shook her head. Her mouth didn’t move, but I heard her words clearly. “Not yet,” she said. “Not for a long time.”
I shook my head. I was so tired of fighting.
“Wait for him,” she said. “He’s worth waiting for.”
A strong hand grasped my wrist, yanking me upward, and I went, bursting up into the cold air endless moments later, coughing and choking in Raziel’s arms as he struck out toward shore.
We collapsed on the beach, exhausted, both of us gasping for breath. Raziel rolled onto his back, and I could see the blood on his wet clothes. My blood.
I was face down in the sand, and I knew I should roll over, but I didn’t have the strength to do anything but lie there and struggle for breath.
His hands on my shoulders were gentle as he turned me over to face him. He brushed the wet sand from my face, my hair, and looked down at me with impatience, with annoyance. With love.
“The first thing you do,” he said in a rough voice, “is learn how to swim.”
And he kissed me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
FIVE YEARS LATER SARAH LIED. I SWEAR TO GOD I somehow did the impossible and managed to gain ten pounds since living in Sheol, most of it in my ass. Fortunately, Raziel had a weakness for Renaissance women, and he still found my slightly overripe body irresistible.
The Nephilim were gone, vanquished, at least from this continent. A few were scattered into the wild, but since they survived on small animals and the flesh of the Fallen they would eventually starve. Unfortunately, Raziel told me they could live centuries without feeding, so this would take a while. I refused to consider the idea that that explained their foul, ravening hunger.
Small groups would remain on other continents—a handful in Asia, a larger group in Australia, sent there by Uriel in search of renegade Fallen and then abandoned. That wasn’t my worry. I had no intention of ever leaving Sheol again.
Raziel taught me to swim. Of course, with Sammael gone and the Nephilim effectively routed, there was no need for me to get into the icy-cold ocean, but Raziel had a bossy streak. Not that I put up with it, but if I could see common sense behind his autocratic announcements, I tended to give in, after as much delaying as I could manage, even if it was my idea in the first place. Raziel did better when people weren’t kowtowing to him, and I considered it my duty to keep him off balance.
He didn’t like being Alpha. And he hated me being the Source, though after the first few bloodings he managed to keep his jealousy in check. Tamlel and Gadrael sat on him the first two times, just to make sure he didn’t tear anyone’s head off. I could read his thoughts, and knew it was a close call.
I have no idea whether the fact that I loved being the Source made things easier or harder for him. If I was to have no children, I could at least nourish and nurture the Fallen, and I welcomed the chance as a way to alleviate some of my mourning. I never spoke of my longing for children to Raziel, and he never spoke of it to me. But we knew each other’s thoughts, and shared the pain.
There was no word from Azazel. Most thought he was dead, including me, but Raziel believed otherwise. He would return, Raziel said, when the time was right. There would be a sign, and he would be back.
I might have been getting fatter but I wasn’t getting any older. My face was unchanged—no crow’s-feet forming at the corners of my eyes, no laugh lines, though I found I could laugh a lot in the hidden mists of Sheol. I never fed from Raziel again, even though he knew I wanted it. Instead I gave him my body, my blood, and he gave me ecstasy, annoyance, and the deep abiding love that I’m not sure exists in ordinary life.
I had no idea how long I would live, and I didn’t worry about it. In the timeless world of Sheol, you had no choice but to live in the moment; and if I couldn’t live up to Sarah’s gentle example, I did well enough.
Until the day she turned up. Lilith, the demon wife.
And all hell broke loose.
The End
