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Authors: Heather Killough-Walden

Avenger's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels (37 page)

BOOK: Avenger's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels
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It had all been painful.
Eleanore recalled her promise to Samael. It was a deal made in blood. If Uriel had hurt her, did she need to go to Samael now?
No.
She did not. Not this time. Because the pain had also been pleasure.
The realization of
why
her night with Uriel did not necessitate her running to Samael for protection was nearly more shocking than what Uriel had actually done. She couldn’t count this as an attack; she couldn’t claim that Uriel had caused her any undue suffering because, the hard truth of it was, Eleanore had
wanted
Uriel and the volatile, violent nature that came with his vampire form.
He’d done everything she had secretly needed him to do—everything she’d yearned for. How could he have known? Had he even been aware that each time he had taken over and forced more submission into her trembling form, he was only fulfilling her dearest, deepest secrets and desires?
Eleanore shuddered as she recalled the many times she’d brought herself to orgasm while alone—in her shower, in her bed, even in the car once while stuck in traffic. She was a sexual creature by nature, but had never been able to explore that side of herself with another person.
Last night, Uriel had somehow been able to see right through her to give her what she needed. She’d never had an orgasm like the one he had brought her to. And she wanted more. Right now, in fact. In that rented bed in that quaint two-story cottage on that cool, foggy shore.
She was actually wet for it; she could feel Uriel’s warmth at her back, his strong presence wrapped around her. She could sense her own naked vulnerability, and even the throbbing soreness of the bite marks on her neck was turning her on.
She glanced down at the strong, well-muscled arm draped possessively over her and thought of Uriel’s whispered words.
I love you.
Had she imagined those words or had he really projected them into her mind? If he hadn’t, then she was losing it. But if he
had
and he’d meant it, then . . .
Her eyes trailed over the handsome planes of his sleeping face. With her fingertips she gently touched his cheek and brushed them over his lips.
He’s so perfect,
she thought.
And he’s mine.
And then she almost laughed. She let her hand drop and shook her head.
I’m hopeless,
she thought with a slight smile.
He’s obviously exhausted. Let the poor boy rest.
She glanced across the room at the windows again and pondered the color of the fog. It had to be very early morning, perhaps just after sunrise. The sky was thick with the soup of grounded clouds. She could barely make out the edge of the balcony just beyond the glass doors.
Very slowly, so as not to wake the archangel beside her, Eleanore slipped her small frame out from beneath his heavy arm and rose from the bed. Uriel frowned where he lay in the center of the mattress, but he didn’t wake. He seemed deeply under and barely stirred as she padded across the room toward the adjoining bathroom.
Once there, she closed and locked the door behind her. She needed a long, hot shower.
 
“Something is wrong.”
Michael looked up from where he was seated at the table, dressed in the blue uniform of an NYPD officer. “What do you mean?”
Max frowned and put down his coffee cup. “I don’t know.” He couldn’t put his finger on it. There was a sour taste in his mouth, though. The air felt strange; as if it were charged with some kind of negativity. There was a churning in his stomach that he’d never felt before.
“I think it’s Uriel,” he finally said.
Michael put down his own coffee cup and narrowed his gaze. “Az said he was doing well when he left him with Ellie.”
“I know, but . . .” Max shook his head, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. He could always tell what was going on with his archangels. He was their guardian; he was connected to them in an indelible way. And right now, he kept seeing Uriel’s face in his mind’s eye. There was fog around him, but as Max concentrated, the fog lifted, revealing the rising sun over an ocean of blue.
He froze. He straightened and pinned Michael with a stunned look. “He’s in trouble.”
“Where is he?” Michael asked, pushing from the table to stand.
“The West Coast,” Max replied, also standing. “Give me a few seconds and the mansion will take us there.”
 
Clever, Uriel. Very clever.
Uriel frowned in his sleep, uncertain whether he was hearing someone speak to him, or if it was his own voice that was floating around in his head.
I’m impressed, brother. You managed to get what you wanted, didn’t you?
Now Uriel’s blood began to run cold. He recognized the voice. Samael was speaking to him, but Uriel couldn’t seem to open his eyes to face the Fallen One. He couldn’t wake up. He felt strangely heavy and sedated.
You had fun torturing your archess. I’m obviously jealous. However, though you caused her a good deal of physical pain in your . . . methods, I can’t take her from you. You only did as she desired.
There was a sharp spike of unfathomable envy that prickled at Uriel’s skin.
And that doesn’t count.
There followed a stillness, filled with electriclike loathing and a simmering desire for revenge. Uriel recognized
that
well enough. He was the former Angel of Vengeance, after all.
But, of course,
Samael continued slowly,
you knew that.
What’s happening?
Uriel thought. He couldn’t get his bearings. He had no idea where he was; everything was dark around him and his brain felt clouded. He again tried to wake, to rouse himself and come into something solid. But his world would not cooperate.
Laughter. Low and ice cold.
Tsk
,
tsk
, Uriel. You can fight me all you want. But you’re a vampire now. How soon you forget your new weaknesses. There are some things, little brother, which you most assuredly cannot fight.
Fear, real and hard and life-threatening, lodged itself in Uriel’s gut. It churned there, burning up his mind even as his form—wherever it was—went numb with a cold certainty. Death was beyond this wall of black around him. Death awaited him.
All he would have to do is open his eyes.
Close, Uriel, but no cigar. Death does await you, but it isn’t your sleep that holds it at bay. It’s your archess who unconsciously keeps you safe. She doesn’t even know that she protects you. She has no idea that it’s by her own instinctive will that clouds surround your chamber, blocking the sun from your sleeping form.
Shock ramrodded through Uriel at Sam’s words. He remembered everything in that split second—the night before, the taste of Eleanore, his delicious, perfect claiming of his beautiful archess.
And then he remembered the room and its many windows that looked out over the ocean and the open sky beyond. He’d fallen asleep without a care—and forgotten all about the impending morning and its very bright, very deadly sun.
There was more laughter, evil and dark and all around him.
I suggest you wake soon, little brother. Because I can control the weather as well. And I’ve never been fond of cloudy days.
With that, Samael’s presence slipped from his mind and Uriel’s heartbeat ratcheted up to a hard-drumming, painful degree.
Wake up, damn it! Fight this!
He knew from one night’s experience that vampires did not actually become comatose during the day, and yet he couldn’t fight the sleep that had been draped so heavily over him.
It was Samael’s doing. The Fallen One had some sort of power over this cursed form. It made sense, being that Uriel was a vampire by Samael’s will alone.
At the edge of Uriel’s senses, there was the slightest prickling of pain. It was so distant, it was barely noticeable. More like a tingling, really. But it was foreboding in the extreme and Uriel became more desperate.
He imagined his body moving, his fingers twitching, and reached out with every ounce of his power to rouse his slumbering body from where it rested, so helpless and immobile, on the mattress beneath him. He failed.
The distant tingling at the edges of his body spread to a slow-growing burn.
 
Eleanore shut off the stream of water in the shower and ran her hands over her head, shoving her hair out of her eyes. She stepped out, wrapped a towel around her, and started to pat her long hair dry with another one.
The bathroom was thick with steam and the mirror was fogged up, but her gaze was caught by a stream of light from beneath the bathroom door.
For some reason, it gave her pause. She frowned at it, feeling as if it were out of place.
It shouldn’t be there,
she thought warily. She didn’t know why, but she strongly felt as if the light were wrong.
She threw off her towel and quickly pulled on her jeans and T-shirt, leaving her undergarments on the floor. Then she opened the door and stepped out into the room beyond.
It was too bright. Daylight flooded the room, no longer kept at bay by a thick blanket of fog beyond the second-floor balcony. Eleanore’s gaze automatically fell on Uriel, his strong body immobile and half-covered by the sheet on the bed. He was on his back, deep in sleep, his handsome face pale, his lips blanched, his hair longer and darker than it had been before the curse.
The curse,
Eleanore thought numbly.
A single, überbright stream of light had crept at an angle across the carpet and made its way to the bed upon which Uriel lay.
Realization hit her like a sledgehammer, and she barely suppressed a cry of alarm when she saw the stream of light had run its course, from the tips of Uriel’s fingers to the palm of his outstretched hand, and the wrist and forearm beyond. Everywhere it touched, it left a scorch mark, deep and black and smoking. The smell of burnt flesh registered in her brain at the same time that she hit the mattress and was covering Uriel’s body with her own.
She tried to bring the clouds back, tried to call up a storm with her powers, but the weather wouldn’t answer her. She drew Uriel’s arm across his chest and tried to roll him off of the bed, but he was too heavy—uncommonly so. It was as if he were weighted down by some unnatural force.
She sat back a little and tried to use telekinesis on him, hoping to move him in that manner instead. No doing. He wouldn’t budge.
The sunlight crept up her back; she could feel its heat through her thin T-shirt. It outlined her shadow across the far wall.
Desperation wrenched a half sob, half cry from her throat. She needed help in moving him. She took a chance and called out. “Is anyone out there?” She hollered the question at the door, hoping against hope that someone would hear her. “Somebody please help me!” she called. “Hello!” she tried one last time.
Where was Tilda? Where were the other bed-and-breakfast tenants?
She couldn’t move from where she was or the sun would hit Uriel again.
Think, Eleanore! Think!
She racked her brain.
Inspiration struck her at the sound of a Harley’s engine on the road that ran along the front of the bed-and-breakfast. She remembered the Harley she’d lifted and shoved into the window of the garage in Uriel’s mansion.
She could do the same thing now, only in reverse. She turned to spear the table against one wall with a determined glare. The table began to rattle—and then it lifted from the floor and floated toward the window, turning on its side as it neared the sliding glass doors. Eleanore concentrated on laying the table against the window and managed to block a small amount of the sun. However, light poured in over the top of it and she realized that she needed more furniture.
She lifted a chair next—and then another one. But balancing them all was beginning to be a problem and she could feel that the stream of sunlight was now on her shoulders. She was running out of time. A weakness was stealing over her. She was getting tired.... Uriel had taken a fair amount of her blood and this use of her power was draining her.
Come on, Ellie! Think, damn it!
Her gaze drifted over her lover’s features, so cold and so handsome. He was dying there in that bed; she knew it. He would die, his gorgeous body eaten up by the daylight because there was nothing to protect him from it but a flimsy little sheet....
The sheet!
Eleanore cried out with frustration that she hadn’t thought of this before and instantly focused her attention on the blankets and towels in the rooms of the suite, instead of its heavy furniture.
A flurry of different materials sailed across the room toward the tall windows and drew themselves across the glass. She blocked out the sun a little more with each layer she added to the makeshift curtains. As she worked, she couldn’t help but curse Tilda just a little for not providing the huge glass doors with blinds of their own. But she wasted little time on her anger; she was feeling very tired as it was. The important thing was to protect Uriel from the direct sunlight until she could figure out how to move him.
BOOK: Avenger's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels
11.94Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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