Death's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels (20 page)

Someone stepped through them.

Chapter Twenty

K
evin smiled as he turned from the blank apartment wall he used these days for scrying. The image of a sleeping Sophie Bryce on a black bed shimmered and disappeared as he looked away. “As you can see, she is coming into her powers,” he told his fellow Adarians. Mitchell, with his fathomless black eyes and black hair, reclined effortlessly against Kevin’s desk and listened intently, the slight hint of a smile on his handsome face.

Luke, with his classically beautiful face and mass of curly blond hair, sat still in a nearby chair, his expression enigmatic and deceptive. Of all of the Adarians, Luke was the one who found himself appealing to the largest crowd. His surfer-boy good looks made an impression on both women and men, and his bright eyes and easy smile charmed people of all ages. But Kevin knew the Adarian’s facade to be particularly beguiling; he was capable of harsh, fast assault the likes of which often left his fellow Adarians in a kind of quiet awe.

Ely, for his part, stood as always—big and strong, his massive arms crossed over his chest, his body radiating pent-up power and the control it took to keep from letting it loose.

Kevin went on. “When we step through, she’ll undoubtedly be alarmed. We’ll be underground, so she can’t zap you with lightning,” he said, referring to an archess’s power over the weather. “But keep your guard up.” He turned to Luke, whose light blue eyes reflected a little something more this night. Luke, whose original name so long ago had been Laoth, had a host of very useful powers at his disposal. Much like a vampire, he could hypnotize mortals, put them to sleep with no more than a locking gaze, enter and control their dreams, and cast both darkness and silence upon any given area.

Kevin wouldn’t have time to knock Sophie unconscious using drugs or any method that wouldn’t cause her real harm before Uro was able to contact Azrael about the attack. However long it took them to subdue both the vampire and the archess would be long enough for Uro to send word. Kevin and his men would have to move very, very fast. Because of that, Luke was going to have to overwhelm the archess straightaway and yank her back through the shadows.

She wouldn’t be conscious for long. Once she was out, she could be easily transported. As long as she wasn’t awake, she wouldn’t be fighting, and the Adarians wouldn’t have to contend with lightning bolts being called down on their heads or automobiles being thrown at them via telekinesis or tiny flames at the ends of cigarettes or candles being morphed into raging fires that would come after them with a vengeance. Archesses were a very powerful breed. They weren’t to be taken lightly.

“You know what to do,” Kevin said, nodding at Luke.

He nodded back, just once, and his ice-blue eyes flashed with cold resolution. Together, he and the others stood and moved to join Kevin in front of the darkened corner of the office.

It had been a frustrating few nights for Kevin. He’d truly believed that by combining the blood of certain Adarians and ingesting it, he would be able to withstand the effects of daylight to some minute degree. However, every attempt he’d made to get the magical concoction right was an epic failure, and he had the permanently scarred left hand to prove it.

It appeared that some things were more powerful than others, no matter what the circumstances. For a vampire, the sun was the ultimate danger. It was the threat of oblivion no matter what steps he took to fight it.

The unfortunate discovery threw a wrench in Kevin’s plans like nothing else could have. His attack on the Four Favored and their latest archess was originally going to come during the day, when Kevin knew “Lord Azrael” to be out of commission. But that course of action was no longer an option for him.

However, when fate closed a door, it opened a window and invited Kevin in.

According to the research he and his men had done over the last few days, most vampires were not able to move through the shadows as Azrael could. It was a peculiar and highly useful skill that came solely to the elusive black dragon—and to vampires with vast age and experience.

Nevertheless, Azrael had apparently possessed this ability since the very beginning. He’d
always
had it.

This made Kevin wonder what made the archangel vampire different from those he created. Certainly, he was the first vampire to exist on the planet. That made him special enough. However, more interesting—and perhaps promising—to Kevin was the fact that Azrael was the former Angel of Death. He was an archangel.

And so were the Adarians.

It was with this knowledge playing through his head that Kevin had approached a shadow in the Adarian headquarters, for the first time seeing it not as an immaterial aftereffect of light and substance and the crossing of the two, but as a
possibility
. A doorway.

He stepped into it, and as he did, the world shifted around him, becoming darker. Color was leached from the furniture in his office, turning reds and blues to black, and yellows to gray. His feet felt light; he could no longer feel the floor beneath them. His body felt less than solid, as if he would not be able to direct it to move or think or even breathe without careful concentration.

The sensations were striking and frightening enough that Kevin instantly found himself trying to step back out of the shadow. It worked; he came out of the shadow and into the “real” world of his office, and felt the pounding of his heart in his chest as he contemplated what had just occurred.

The second time he tried it, he lasted a little longer. The third and fourth times, he managed to come out elsewhere within the complex. And now he had a new plan. He wasn’t going to be able to take the latest archess during daylight hours, but if he played his cards right, he could use this shadow-walking ability to get to her nonetheless.

Using his ability to scry, Kevin and his fellow Chosen waited and watched as Sophie moved to San Francisco and got more or less settled. All the while, the former Angel of Death was one step ahead of her, and his vampires formed a web of protectiveness around her that gave the impression of being unbreachable. It admittedly irritated Kevin that she was so closely shadowed, but he couldn’t blame the archangel. Sophie was a rare and precious bird and there were big bad wolves out there. He was one of them.

Finally, the moment he’d been waiting for arrived—and Sophie Bryce was left alone in a cave that Azrael no doubt believed only he and his oldest created vampire, Uro, could enter. He had never been more wrong. Since Kevin had learned how to move through the shadows, he’d helped his brothers master the same skill.

Uro would have been no match for Kevin alone. Kevin had been stronger than any of Azrael’s created vampires
before
he’d become one himself. He’d been created with the ability to change his shape, a power he’d used against Uriel months ago. He also had the ability to fly. As an Adarian, he possessed superhuman speed and strength. Now? By absorbing powers from other Adarians, Kevin had acquired the ability to control animals, create fire, call lightning from the skies, manipulate electricity, and create enormous blasts of force that were able to repel large objects as if they’d been struck by a hurricane’s wind. As a vampire, his speed and strength were increased many times over, his form could become no more material than mist, and he possessed the power to control human minds.

In a battle between himself and Uro, one on one, the other vampire wouldn’t stand a chance. However, Kevin would not even be alone tonight. He would be accompanied by his three Chosen.

Kevin turned toward the long, tall shadow before him and stepped into it. As before, he was dwarfed in darkness and silence and the world shifted into a two-dimensional representation of itself. He concentrated on breathing, on moving, on continuing through to his final destination. He kept the image of the cave in his mind, saw the shadows in the cavern as they had appeared in the scrying vision on his wall. And the darkness responded to this knowledge, pulling him through, guiding him where he wanted to go.

It seemed like a lifetime, but only seconds passed before he was coming out the other side. It was like stepping off an escalator. He shifted his gait, scanned the cave, and came to several split-second decisions even before he’d fully emerged from the darkness.

Sophie was seated on the black bed, obviously having awoken between the time that Kevin had scried upon her in his office and now. Uro, on the other hand, was already rushing Kevin, as he imagined the vampire would do. Before Mitchell, Luke, and Ely even stepped out of the shadow behind him, Kevin met Uro halfway.

There was no give; Kevin’s body collided with Uro’s with such force that the breath left his lungs and his brain shook inside his skull. The impact was stunning and unexpected, but there was no time to absorb it or recuperate. Uro seemed to know what to do in this kind of fight; he was spinning with Kevin in his arms and Kevin had barely enough time to inhale and flex every muscle in his body before he was slammed painfully against the stone wall. The torches on either side of them tumbled to the ground, flickered, and went out. On the other side of the room, Sophie quickly got to her feet and began frantically looking around, no doubt searching for a weapon of some kind. Her head snapped back around to face him when Ely and the others stepped into the room after him.

Kevin ignored the archess and the other Adarians; he knew his men would quickly overwhelm her, and he could afford her no more attention. The pain of his body hitting the wall had a focusing effect. In that moment, he seemed to remember who and what he was. All of his abilities raced to the surface and lined up, ready to be used. With no more than a spike of his will, his body became insubstantial, turning to mist in Uro’s strong grip.

Uro backed up. Kevin, miraculously still able to form clear, coherent thought despite the fact that there was no physical brain involved, used another of his powers. A sharp shot of magic rushed Uro, hard and painful. In a blast of forced air, Uro’s body went flying back across the cave to hit the other side with incredible force.

Another torch was knocked from its sconce. Kevin quickly took in the status of the cavern’s inhabitants: Ely and Mitchell stood back, one on either side of the room, their glowing red eyes focused on Kevin’s vampire opponent. Sophie Bryce was unconscious, held firmly in Luke’s strong grip. They’d worked fast, as he had instructed them to, but the seconds were not on their side and it was time to end this.

Uro’s normally black eyes were glowing a hellish red as he slowly turned in place, taking in the fact that he was surrounded. Kevin waited until Uro turned back around to face him; he was never one to strike a man from behind. Then he pulled his power from inside and focused it once more, heating it with vampire speed to release it in the form of a massive fireball.

He could feel the flame suck the oxygen out of the air in the room with surprising speed; whatever magic had created the oxygen in the first place hadn’t been made to keep up with such a thing. The fire raced across the cave as if sent by a flamethrower and struck Uro’s oncoming form with a vengeance.

The vampire was lost in the blaze, his body swallowed by the red-orange inferno and once more thrown back across the underground space. Kevin wasted no time, refocusing his energy in order to surround Uro’s burning body with a force field of dark, painful energy.

There was no escape for the ancient vampire. Kevin’s force field trapped him within the flames even as it slammed him against the far wall. The only torch remaining in its sconce tumbled to the ground and went out, but there was plenty of light in the cave.

Lightning struck somewhere aboveground, but the thunder could scarcely be heard over the bellowing roar of Uro’s pain.

The world had slipped into slow motion for the occupants of that cave, every movement stretching into a short eternity. But in the real world the fateful fight had taken mere seconds. Still, it was long enough for Uro to have called Azrael. The former Angel of Death could be trusted to be on his way, and Kevin’s force field would not last long before it dissipated and Uro was once more free.

With this knowledge hard on their heels, Kevin rematerialized, not wanting to face the enigmatic forces of the shadow world in anything other than his true, physical form. Mitchell and the others joined him in the darkest corner of the cave, their minds united in the knowledge that they had very little time.

There, Luke handed Sophie’s sleeping body to Kevin. He was the one who had the most experience traveling through the shadow realm, and
none
of them had any idea what would happen when they tried to take someone who
wasn’t
a vampire through with them. It was best to leave the task to their leader.

Kevin hugged Sophie to his chest and took a deep breath before he stepped into the darkness. At once, he noticed the difference. It was strange and difficult enough to pull his own body through the dim, surreal dimension. Dragging an unconscious captive with him was disturbing. At first, it felt as though something were trying to pull her out of his arms. He had to hold on with everything he had. It took him longer to move through, as if his limbs were weighted down or mired in quicksand. This sensation persisted, making it difficult for him to concentrate on breathing, on his own every movement, and he began to worry about Sophie. Was
she
breathing? Would the shadow dimension suck the life from her sleeping body?

Kevin pushed on; every action trailed behind, lagging through time. But after a few difficult seconds, he recognized the solidness of the shadows he was approaching and knew the trip was nearly over.

Not long after that, Kevin was stepping out of the shadows once more, this time with Sophie, and moving into Kevin’s office. He looked down at the beautiful woman in his arms and was relieved beyond comprehension to see her chest rise and fall with normal breath. Now he knew.

As the others arrived behind him, he turned and handed the sleeping archess to Luke. Luke smiled and took her with more than willing arms. Clearly, just as Mitchell had taken a liking to Juliette and Kevin had fallen for Eleanore, Luke was more than a little taken with Sophie Bryce.