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Authors: Heather Killough-Walden

Avenger's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels (18 page)

BOOK: Avenger's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels
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She shook her head and looked back at Uriel. “And where are you while all of this is happening? Oh, right. You’re on TV. Talking with Jacqueline Rain. You’re on the big screen, flashing fake fangs for teenyboppers in Hollister jeans and Hot Topic T-shirts.” She laughed, the sound harsh and cold even to her own ears. “You’re fucking famous,” she accused. “The Angel of Vengeance is famous.”
“Eleanore, there’s something you need to understand—” Michael began, but Eleanore saved him the trouble of continuing. She spun on the blond archangel and fixed him with a look that she knew reflected all of the righteous wrath she was feeling in that moment. “And
you
. . . Which angel were you, Michael? Don’t tell me you’re
Michael
—as in
the
Michael? Wow. And here you are in this gorgeous marble mansion when tornadoes and hurricanes are killing children, and cancer and AIDS are running rampant, and things like religion and race are breeding wars that never end. Why is that? Don’t have a magic spell for those things, Michael?” It wasn’t really a question. And wisely, Michael didn’t try to answer it.
“No. Of course not.” Ellie shook her head resolutely and closed her eyes, both weary and desperate to convince herself of what she was saying. “Because if you did, surely you would have used it by now.”
“We never had those abilities, Eleanore,” Michael told her. He had straightened, pushing himself off of the wall, and now there was a good deal of calm influence behind his words. “Even before we were given human form, we were anything but omnipotent.” He looked at the floor and shrugged helplessly. “It’s something that people have never understood.”
Eleanore wasn’t placated in the least. If anything, his words made her angrier. “What you’re all telling me is that angels are really nothing but holy parlor tricks?” she said softly. “Beautiful and bright and sort of flashy—but utterly fucking useless?” She whispered the last bit, turning in place to meet each of their gazes as she quietly but firmly put the accusation out into the open.
It was a challenge, of sorts. She wanted them to tell her she was wrong. She was daring them—practically begging them—to prove otherwise.
But none of them could accept such a challenge, because in the end, she knew she was right. Whatever their reasons, they had failed to save the world from the evil within it. And they would lose.
“I’m no angel,” Eleanore repeated. “I am
not
one of you.”
 
Though she had yet to raise her voice, she was clearly disgusted now; Uriel could feel her ire making his skin cold and his face hot. He felt like a starving man looking down into the water to watch a giant fish sniff at the worm on a hook—and then turn and swim hastily away.
He was losing her. He would never win her back now; she was slipping from his grasp. Because she hated him. She hated
all
of them. And from her perspective, she had every right to. Hell, he couldn’t blame her either.
Uriel stuffed his hands into his pockets, his lips pressed into a grim line. He felt the bracelet then; smooth metal caressed his fingertips. He closed his eyes as his heart rate picked up and his stomach did a flip. There was always that. As a last resort. If Ellie chose to fight them on this and refused to stay at the mansion, she would be easy pickings for Samael. He couldn’t let that happen.
And speaking of the Fallen One, Uriel couldn’t even begin to tell her about Samael until she at least accepted who she was. The one depended upon the other.
Eleanore finally lowered her head to rub her eyes. After a long pause of silence, she whispered, “I want to go home.”
“It won’t be safe for you there,” Max told her. “I may have missed someone at the site of the accident this morning and we mustn’t forget the broadcasted message that Christopher Daniels sent out.” Here, he paused and shot Uriel a pointed look.
“Hey, she said she forgave me for that.”
Gillihan rolled his eyes. “I’m afraid that in any case, you’re better off remaining here until we can determine the best and safest course of action from this point on.”
Again, Eleanore was silent and, not for the first time since knowing her, Uriel found himself wishing that he’d possessed Azrael’s ability to read minds. He wondered what she was thinking.
Finally, she sighed and her shoulders slumped. “This is all just too much. . . .”
Max was up and out of his seat in a flash. He strode toward her, his expression one of deep understanding and concern. “I know, Ellie,” he said as he came to stand before her and offered her his hand.
She looked up at him and, for some reason, she took it. Uriel was impressed but not surprised. Max just had that way with people....
“We will figure this out,” the guardian told her gently, giving her hand a squeeze. “In the meantime, we can have whatever you need brought from your apartment to the mansion.”
“I need to call my parents,” she mumbled. From the tone of her voice, she sounded numb. It was a sort of soft monotone, without inflection; a distracted kind of muttering, done only as a vocalized reflection of some troubled internal thought.
“Of course,” Max said, giving her one final squeeze and gently letting her go. He looked up at Uriel. “I had her car brought here and placed in the garage. Her purse and phone are in the passenger seat.”
Uriel nodded. “I’ll get them.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets. “Ellie,” he said softly.
She turned to face him and he saw the confusion in her eyes. It was coupled with weariness and doubled by disbelief. She was nearly in shock. He frowned and very gently cupped the side of her face with his hand.
She instinctively closed her eyes at his touch, and hope blossomed inside of Uriel. It was a start.
“Would you like to come down to the garage with me? Get some fresh air?” he asked. He recalled the tubs of Ghirardelli cocoa on her kitchen shelves. “And we can stop in the kitchen on the way out; I can make you some cocoa.”
Eleanore gazed up at him and he waited with bated breath for her reply. Finally, she nodded. “Fresh air would be good.”
And cocoa,
he added with a smile
. I bet I had her at cocoa.
 
Samael glanced up from behind his desk at the tentative sound of a knock at his door. He knew the knock well; he’d heard it, in its different forms, for thousands of years. Except for when it wasn’t a knock, but a slow and anxious peek behind the flap of a tent. But that was another world and another time.
“Come in, Lilith.”
The door opened to reveal a petite woman in a wool skirt, warm tights, knee-high leather boots, and a button-down silk shirt. A pair of reading glasses hung on a long string of beads around her neck. Her dark brown hair was neatly pulled back into a low ponytail that shimmered under the office lights. Her skin was smooth and held a youthful glow, but her dark eyes were ancient.
She stopped inside the office, gazed at Samael for a long, silent moment, and then slowly closed the door behind her. Then she cocked her head to one side and said, “You wanted to see me.”
Samael sighed heavily and sat back in his chair. “I need you to do me a favor.”
“Another one?” she asked quietly, almost sadly. “This behavior of yours is self-destructive, Sam.”
She was the very embodiment of contradiction, Lilith. She should have been as bitter and as angry as he was. More so, in fact. She had been the first of the Old Man’s creations that were thrown out, tossed down, and forgotten. When it happened, all of those eons ago, the moment had marked the dawning of Samael’s ultimately damning epiphany.
That the Old Man was not, in fact,
all
he pretended to be.
But that was another issue altogether. Lilith should have been filled with righteous wrath and a desperate desire for vengeance. Instead, she busied herself with reading and traveling and learning—and perpetually worrying about Samael.
It was confounding.
Samael thought for a moment before he sat back up in his leather office chair. “This is different.”
“Oh?” Lilith asked as she came forward and took a seat in one of the similarly lined chairs on the other side of his desk. She crossed her legs and placed her hands in her lap. “If this is different, then it doesn’t involve a contract, of course. And it wouldn’t have anything to do with your brothers.” She blinked a few times, to convey a faux innocence, and waited for him to reply.
A muscle in his jaw twitched and his gray gaze narrowed. “They’re not my brothers.”
“They’re more yours than mine.”
“That’s not saying much.”
“We all have the same father, do we not?”
Samael leaned forward and laced his hands together on the desk. “Will you do me the favor or not?”
Lilith sighed and pursed her lips. It was an oddly endearing gesture. She was a very attractive woman with porcelain skin, fine bone structure, and a delicate frame, though she always chose to dress conservatively, caring more for comfort and function than appearance. The effect was one of cuteness to a nearly painful degree.
She waited a long while before speaking. Finally, with a tone that reflected a weariness she must have felt deep, deep down, she asked, “What do you want me to do?”
 
“I’m in Hogwarts,” Eleanore murmured when they passed yet another corridor that shouldn’t have been there. The mansion was immense and didn’t seem to be tied to the laws of physics. It just went on and on.
“You get used to it,” Uriel told her, the corners of his lips curling into a self-deprecating and entirely attractive smile.
When they reached the garage door, he turned to face her and Eleanore found herself growing nervous. She was alone with Christopher Daniels again. She’d been nervous enough when he was just a movie star. But now he was also an angel.
“Listen,” he said softly. “I really am sorry for what I did to you on national television.” He shook his head and laughed low. “I was so desperate to see you again, I seriously wasn’t thinking clearly.” He paused and asked, “Will you allow me to make it up to you?”
“You really are an archangel?” Eleanore asked.
Uriel blinked. “I was. I’m not sure what you’d call us now.” He shrugged. “Two thousand years on this planet will do strange things to a man. We’ve changed.”
“In a good way or a bad way?”
He squinted a bit as he considered how to answer that question. And then he shook his head. “We’re just different. Some good, some not so good.”
Eleanore processed that and took a deep, cleansing breath. The hot cocoa had helped a lot. He’d made it perfectly, with tons of tiny marshmallows.
“Ellie, please accompany me to the gala on Saturday?” He asked the question so suddenly and so softly, she wasn’t sure at first that she’d heard him correctly. But the look on his handsome face was one of such earnest hope, it seemed to surpass anything he’d ever pretended to feel on the big screen. A lot of women would have killed for him to look at them that way.
“Would I have to buy a new dress?”
“I don’t care if you go in hot pants and Rollerblades,” he said with a smile. And then his green eyes flashed with something mischievous. “In fact, that might not be such a bad—”
“And would you be picking me up?” Ellie interrupted quickly to change the subject.
He chuckled. “Of course.”
Eleanore paused and swallowed hard. The next question was the only one that really mattered. “And would you be able to . . . to deal with it if something happened?”
Uriel frowned. He leaned in, just a little. “Like what, Ellie?”
She loved it when he said her name like that. He’d never called her anything else and it sounded perfect coming off of his tongue.
“I don’t know . . . like SWAT teams and helicopters and handcuffs and men in white lab coats with needles full of tranquilizer?” She shrugged and tried to smile, but it had happened to her before and the images running through her head were very real and they scared her very much. She lowered her head and looked at the floor.
Uriel gently took her chin between his fingers and raised her head until she met his gaze. His green eyes had hardened, pinning her to the spot beneath their weight. His tone lowered further. “Ellie, talk to me. Did someone hurt you?”
Fragments of images flashed in her mind’s eye: rain-soaked skies, mud puddles, barking dogs, and needles. She shivered and at Uriel’s very determined, worried expression, she sighed in resignation.
And she told him everything. Then and there, in the hall outside the garage in his magnificent, magical mansion, Eleanore told him the story of her life, her powers, and the strange men who had hunted her family down. She told him about her narrow escape when she was fifteen, about how she was always on the move, and much to her horror, she found herself sharing how lonely she sometimes felt. Friendships were long-distance. Relationships with the opposite sex were nonexistent.
She’d only ever had a crush on one boy, Kevin, when she was fifteen—and that had never gone anywhere because she’d had to leave her home before she’d even had the chance to speak with him in person.
BOOK: Avenger's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels
11.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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