Raziel

feel the light enter his body again. “I think I hear her,” he said softly.

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS ALMOST DAWN, AND THE MAN next to me was dying. His body felt as if it were on fire, and the coals had spread beneath his skin, emanating an unearthly red glow that lit the darkness after the fire had finally died out. He hadn’t made a sound in hours; even his moans had been silenced. Sometime in the night he’d released his hold on me, and the heat from his skin had become unbearable. I wondered why his clothes hadn’t burst into flames.

I’d done what I could to cool him down—I’d managed to strip the leather jacket from him and put it beneath his head as a makeshift pillow, then unfastened his denim shirt and pulled it free from his jeans, opening it to the cool night air, feeling oddly guilty about it. The skin on his chest and stomach was smooth, with just a faint tracing of golden hair. Human, I’d thought, and laughed at myself for thinking anything else. I’d reached out a hand to touch him, unconsciously drawn, and yanked my hand back, burned.

His mouth was a grim line of pain. At least I was spared the disquieting view of those disturbing teeth. I must have been hallucinating, and no wonder. I didn’t know where I was, when I was, or how I’d even got here, and the night had been filled with the terrifying sounds of predators. No wonder I was imagining things.

Even now my brain wasn’t working properly. One thing was clear—I wouldn’t have come here on my own. So it was only logical to assume this man had brought me here; and being a city girl, I wouldn’t have come willingly. While I liked a pretty face as much as the next female, I was preternaturally wary.

So why was I so determined to protect this man? This man who didn’t seem to be quite human, teeth or not? The glow of fire beneath his skin was far from normal. Yet I knew that I had to keep him alive, I had to stay with him.

The first light of dawn was beginning to spread over the tall trees that guarded the clearing. Whatever foul things had lurked in the bushes were long gone, and there was nothing keeping me here. I could walk out of this forest—it couldn’t go on forever. The man was dying; there was nothing else I could do for him except see if I could find help. I should save myself, and if he survived, fine. It wasn’t my business.

But it was. I moved closer to him, as close as I could get to the ferocious heat that burned deep inside his bones. “It serves you right,” I whispered, wishing I dared put my hand on him, to push the tangled hair away from his face without getting scorched.

Except that he’d been hurt pulling me back from whatever horror I’d somehow imagined behind what was most definitely solid rock. I couldn’t remember, but that much I knew. He’d been trying to save me, and for that I owed him something.

I edged closer to him, and the heat seared me. I felt tears form in my eyes, and blinked them away impatiently. Crying wouldn’t do any good. If I leaned over and let them fall on him, they would sizzle and evaporate like water on a skillet.

“Oh, hell,” I muttered disgustedly, wiping them away. “You shouldn’t have to die, no matter what you did to me.” I moved closer, and my face felt sunburned. “God help me, don’t fucking die on me,” I said desperately.

The sudden flash of light was blinding, thunder shaking the ground, and I was thrown back against the stone wall. Panic swept through me—what if it opened again; what if this time he couldn’t save me? I scrambled away from it, then turned to look for the dying man, and I knew I was hallucinating again.

His body was surrounded by a circle of tall figures, shrouded in mist, and there were wings everywhere. Maybe he’d died. They must be angels coming to take him . . . where?

One of them picked him up effortlessly, impervious to the heat of his flesh. I was frozen, unable to move. Sure, he was dead and on his way to heaven, but I had no strong desire to accompany him. I wanted to live.

But I could feel eyes on me, and I wondered if I could run for it. And I wondered if I really wanted to.

“Bring her.” The words weren’t spoken out loud; they seemed to vibrate inside my head. I was prepared to fight, prepared to run before I let them put their hands on me, before I let it happen all over again . . . but there was nothing but a blinding white light, followed by dark silence, as a blackness deep and dark as death pulled in about me.

“Shit,” I said weakly. And I was gone.

I WAS COLD. AND DAMP. I could hear a strange sound, a rushing noise almost like the ocean, but there was no ocean in the forest, was there? I really didn’t want to move, even though I was lying somewhere hard and wet, the dampness seeping through my clothes and into my bones. In my Swiss cheese of a memory, it felt as if every time I opened my eyes things had gotten worse. This time I was going to stay put with my eyes tightly shut—it was a lot safer that way.

I licked my lips and tasted salt. There were voices in the distance, a low, muffled chant in a language older than time.

Keep your eyes closed, goddamn it. This had all been one hellacious nightmare, and clearly it wasn’t time to wake up. Once I could feel my comfortable bed and my five-hundred-thread-count cotton sheets beneath me, then it would be safe to wake up. Right now consciousness was nothing but more trouble, and I had had enough.

But all my self-discipline had been reserved for my writing, and when it came to anything else, like denying my curiosity, I had the willpower of a rabbit. I decided to open my eyes just a slit to verify that, yes, I really was lying in wet sand at the edge of a rocky beach. And out in the waves the men stood waist-deep in the water, holding the body of my . . . my what? My kidnapper? My savior? It didn’t matter what the hell he was, he was mine.

He wasn’t dead. I knew this as I struggled to my feet, my whole body feeling as if it had been kicked around by monkeys. He wasn’t dead—yet they were letting him sink beneath the surface as they chanted some kind of garbled nonsense. They were letting him drown, burying him in the sea, and I was not going to let that happen, not after working so hard to keep him alive last night.

I’m not sure whether I said something, screamed “No!” as I raced toward them. Out into the icy water, shoving past them as they let his body go, diving for him before he could sink beneath the turbulent waves.

It was only when my hand touched him beneath the water, felt him turn and his hand catch mine, that I conveniently remembered that I had never learned to swim.

The words came out of nowhere, dancing in my head:

Full fathom five thy father lies:

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea- change Into something rich and strange.

The words were muzzy, dreamlike, but now I was the one sinking. What an idiot I’d been, diving after him. I was going to die after all, and it was no one’s fault but mine. I should have known I’d hear Shakespeare when I died.

I would suffer a sea change, entwined with the demon lover beneath the cold salt sea, and I welcomed it, dazed, when his mouth closed over mine beneath the briny surface, his breath flowing into me, my body plastered against his as I felt life return. A moment later I found myself propelled to the surface, still trapped in the dead man’s arms. The dead man who had pulled his mouth away, and was looking down at me from those strange, silvery black eyes.

Then we were standing waist-deep in the ocean, the waves breaking against us, and he was holding on to me as he looked to the men who had brought him here, a dazed, questioning expression on his face.

Which was basically how I was feeling. A sort of a sodden WTF, and the only thing familiar to hold on to was this man beside me.

Which was basically how I was feeling. A sort of a sodden WTF, and the only thing familiar to hold on to was this man beside me.

“She called for help,” one of the men said from the shore. “You told us to bring her.”

The man threw back his head and laughed, unexpected and unguarded, and relief washed through me. His teeth were white and even. I’d been imagining the fangs, of course. Vampires weren’t real. I couldn’t believe I even remembered that particular hallucination.

He scooped me up in his arms, and I rested my face against his wet chest as he carried me out of the surf, not quite sure why. The footing must have been uneven, yet he carried me without a misstep, almost gliding over the rough sand. I’d never been carried in my life—despite my short stature I was built upon generous lines, and no one had ever been romantic enough to scoop me up and carry me to bed.

Of course, that wasn’t what this man was doing. Come to think of it, what the hell was he doing? I looked up at a huge stone building set on the edge of the sea, and I squirmed, trying to get down. He ignored me. That, at least, felt familiar.

He didn’t put me down, and I found I knew him well enough not to expect that he would. He’d kissed me. Sort of. He’d put his cold, wet mouth on mine and breathed life into me, when he was the one who’d been on the verge of death.

“You wanna put me down?” I demanded in a reasonable voice. Not that I expected him to be reasonable, but it was worth a try. He said nothing, and I struggled, but his grip never tightened. It didn’t need to; it was loose but unbreakable. “Who the fuck are you?” I demanded irritably. “What are you?”

He didn’t answer, of course. The other men came up to us, and I had the oddest sense that they were surrounded by some kind of haze or aura. It must be a reaction to the salt water. No matter how hard I tried to focus, things stayed as hazy as my memory.

“We can get rid of her now, Raziel, before it’s