Death's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels (5 page)

Now, just after the wedding and while Jules was still wearing her gown, was probably not the best time to share it either. Juliette was about to embark on her honeymoon and Sophie was still reeling from the twenty minutes she’d spent standing a few very short feet from the lead singer of Valley of Shadow.

The mere thought of the man made Sophie’s insides heat up almost painfully.

But the subject of moving had brought Sophie’s secret rushing back to her, and now she simply had to get it out. There was no reason for her to stay in Pennsylvania, especially now that Jules wouldn’t be there any longer. There was also no reason why Jules wouldn’t be happy for her.

“I got a scholarship to Berkeley,” she said quietly, feeling a rush of elation even as she admitted it. It was the first time she’d said it out loud. It was like she’d been afraid she would jinx it.

Over the years, Sophie had acted in countless plays and musicals. It was one of the ways she had made money while working various minimum-wage jobs. The roles didn’t pay much, but they reminded her of her mother, who had been a big fan of Shakespeare and of the arts in general.

On Halloween, Sophie almost always managed to dress up in three different costumes for the chance to act out the roles of three different people or monsters. She liked losing herself in a role and escaping from her own life for a while. But what she
really
loved to do was dance. She’d wanted to be a dancer since she was a child and she and her mother had spontaneously begun dancing in the aisle at the grocery store. Sophie’s mother had loved music, and it was one of the genetic, bone-deep, instinctive things that she and her mother had in common. There was something about slipping into the lyrics and letting them take over that had always appealed to both of them. It was like acting without having to speak.

When Sophie lost her parents, music carried her past the pain and fear and loneliness. At the orphanage, she wore her earbuds day and night. And when she was alone? She
moved
to that music. And she was
good
at it. Not that anyone but her closest friends knew this.

As it was for so many little girls, getting a degree in dance and somehow earning a living through it was a dream. For Sophie, it was an especially impossible one. She was an orphan, after all. Money was tight or nonexistent, and she lacked the essential support of proud, advocating parents.

So she shelved the idea of dancing professionally. Then, a year ago, she’d realized that she was twenty-five and wasn’t getting any younger. Most of her friends were pursuing advanced studies. Like Juliette. For a dancer, she was
especially
old. Dancers became prima ballerinas at age fifteen. At twenty? They were nearly finished with their careers.

At this point Sophie was no longer interested in being in the spotlight onstage. She would always love dance, but her priorities had changed with age. Now she was far more interested in learning whatever it took to teach dance to others. In particular, she wanted to teach children.

Regardless, time wasn’t waiting for her.

And with that realization came the nerve Sophie needed to finally give it a try. She took the necessary exams and filled out applications. Berkeley was a shot in the dark; she only applied there because if she could get in, then she could rest easy knowing that the money her parents had left her was going toward an education at one of the best schools in the world.

She’d never expected to actually get in, much less to receive a scholarship. But being an orphan had helped on that front, since considerable financial assistance was often available for such prospective students. And now here she was. If she wanted to, she could begin classes in the fall.

San Francisco was outrageously expensive, but luckily for Sophie, her parents had left her a bit of money when they’d died. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to help pay for a place to live. Sophie had been granted access to the account when she’d turned twenty-one, but she’d never touched it. To her, it felt like all that was left of her parents’ legacy. She didn’t want to squander it on something perishable. And everything seemed that way to her—perishable.

But not this. This was knowledge. It was a solid foundation upon which she could stand. She could live with spending her inheritance on an education. It was perhaps the one thing in the world worthy of its cost to Sophie.

She had also saved most of the money she’d made working as a housekeeper at various hotels in Pittsburgh. She loved the job. She just put on her iPod, let AC/DC or Leonard Cohen or Valley of Shadow seep into her bones, and danced her way through the rooms, making each one as welcoming as possible. She was good at her job, and though it didn’t pay much—just enough for rent, food, and clothes—she almost never failed to receive a tip when her clients left. More often than not, there would be a twenty sitting on the bedside table with a note of thanks. Or a ten-dollar bill and a hand-drawn picture from a five-year-old. These tips she put into the same savings account that held her parents’ money.

She’d received the acceptance letter from Berkeley almost four weeks ago, and the fact that it was in a ginormous envelope filled with a folder and course catalogs had given the acceptance away even before Sophie had read the words on the front page. The acceptance and scholarship constituted a change in her luck that she was completely unprepared for. She hadn’t known how to react to it. She was afraid that if she was too happy, the fates would take it away from her. If she celebrated, she would ruin it. She was afraid to brag, afraid to even smile.

Now, finally speaking the words out loud had a dual effect on her. It was liberating. And it was also terrifying.

For a moment, Juliette just stared at her and blinked. Sophie was sure that a number of questions were most likely going through her best friend’s head:
Berkeley? Sophie applied to school? When did this happen? A full scholarship?

And then a smile spread across Juliette’s face and her green-brown eyes glittered with understanding. “So
that’s
why you were talking about going back to school the other day,” she said, referring to the afternoon that she and Sophie had spent walking through the Hogsmeade-style streets of Edinburgh. The subject had turned to school and aging and now Juliette obviously put two and two together and figured out why. Sophie had been thinking of her own situation, her own acceptance, and the fact that she would be a twenty-five-year-old freshman working on her undergrad degree at one of the most famous universities in the world.

Sophie mirrored Juliette’s smile and nodded. “Yeah, I guess it was.”

Juliette turned to fully face her and took Sophie’s hands in her own. Her smile was so genuine, it melted Sophie’s heart. Again, she was struck by how lucky she was to have a friend like Juliette. It was what Sophie imagined having a sister would be like.

“I’m sorry I can’t act surprised,” Juliette said with a laugh. “’Cause I’m not. I knew you would break down and apply one day, and I knew they would beg you to come once you did.” And then Juliette’s eyes were shiny with what looked like tears. “You’re a dancer, Soph. I bet your audition tape knocked ’em dead.” They hugged. A wealth of unspoken congratulations for each other passed between them in that moment. They both had a lot to be grateful for.

“Can I get in on this?” came a deep brogue.

Sophie pulled away enough to see Gabriel Black, Juliette’s new husband, standing on the stone steps of the castle behind them. His silver eyes were shining and his smile was stunning. He looked like a model in a tuxedo catalog, too good to be real. And then Michael and Uriel joined him on the top step. The three of them together in their respective finery was a breathtaking sight. Sophie blushed and Juliette laughed.

But under the blush, Sophie realized she felt something else. Azrael wasn’t with his brothers.
Where is he?
she wondered. It was incredibly disconcerting to find that she felt immense disappointment.

Oh no
, she thought.
I’m crushing on him bad
. No, it was worse than a crush. Sophie actually felt an ache in her chest as she stood there and scanned the faces of the men before her. She just wanted them to be Azrael. She would have traded them all for his tall frame and golden eyes.

My God
, she thought as she swallowed hard.
I just met him!
One night—a few short hours—and I’m obsessed. I need to get out of here.
She could feel her smile slipping, and just as she knew her friend would, Jules noticed. Out of the corner of her eye, Sophie could see Jules do a double take.

“Soph?” Jules asked, her tone concerned. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Sophie swore, feeling at once guilty for the lie.
I need to get back to the States and move to San Fran before I start stalking him
, she told herself. She glanced up from Juliette to find Michael’s impossibly blue eyes pinning her to the rock upon which she stood. He seemed to be looking right through her. She remembered that he was a cop. It fit him because she felt as if he were reading her for clues.

“I just forgot to eat, that’s all,” she insisted.

“Well, we can’t have that,” said Michael. He came forward, as did Uriel, and the two men hooked their arms in Sophie’s. She could have inhaled her tongue right then and there. It was an immensely strange feeling to be touched in such a friendly manner by two men of their stature. Not only were they gorgeous—they were archangels.

And yet . . . they weren’t Az.

Still, she couldn’t help the deepening of her blush as they pulled her away from Juliette, whom Sophie could hear laughing and softly speaking with her new husband where they left them overlooking the North Sea.

Chapter Three

A
zrael watched the exchange in silence. He went unnoticed where he waited in the shadows above Slains Castle’s highest crumbling turrets. He crouched low and still as a gargoyle and allowed his power to surround him like a shroud. It protected his presence from his brothers’ detection. And from Sophie’s.

He listened to the news about her scholarship, which he was already aware of, having pulled the information from her surface thoughts as she’d stood opposite him at Gabriel and Juliette’s altar. He made a mental promise to himself then and there that at some point in the very near future, Sophie Bryce would dance for him. He would make sure of it.

And then he entered her mind once more, stepping onto the complicated grid of her consciousness as if he couldn’t stay away. He couldn’t. She was a drug to him already.

And it was there that he tasted her desire for him—and heard her self-deprecating guilt over those emotions. He listened as she vowed to flee to California in order to get him out of her head, and he tried not to laugh. As if there were any location on the planet to which she could flee to escape him.

But that was beside the point. The fact of the matter was, she didn’t
want
to escape him. She just had no idea that her feelings were completely natural. She was his archess. He was her archangel. There was no fighting that kind of fate.

“Okay, Sunshine,” he whispered to himself from where he remained hidden atop the castle walls, his black trench coat flapping about him like a cloak in the cold wind coming off of the sea. “If you want to go to Frisco, then to Frisco we will go.”

He watched as his brothers led her off toward the reception hall, and for the first time in his existence he met the green-eyed monster of very real, very possessive jealousy. This he tamped down with a steadfast resolution. He wasn’t going to lose control. Somehow, he’d managed to hold it together all night. He wasn’t about to let go now, just when he was starting to get a handle on the situation.

He waited until Sophie and his brothers disappeared over the rise and Juliette and Gabriel wandered away from the castle wall. Then Az leapt down from his hiding place and landed on the black rock of Cruden Bay’s cliffs with unnaturally perfect grace. He turned to face the dark waves of the North Sea, pondered his destination, and blurred into vampire motion.

Within seconds, he reached the doorway of an ancient kirk.

Shortly after their arrival on Earth thousands of years ago, Azrael and his brothers had been blessed with the use of a massive and very magical mansion. That mansion existed in so many dimensions and so many times, it defied all logic and physical law. It also imbued the archangels with the magical ability to open a portal through any doorway in the world—then through said mansion—and out the other side again, so long as there was a door to exit through at their destination.

Using this magic now, Azrael opened a portal through the old church’s doorway and stepped through. By the time he closed the swirling vortex behind him, he was in California’s Bay City. There, he again blurred into motion and took to the skies.

He could feel the heartbeat of San Francisco beneath him as he soared above its glimmering skyline. It was the pulsing culmination of a kaleidoscope of emotions. Several people he passed over were crying. More were laughing. A few were fighting. Firetruck sirens called out in the night while waves crashed onto a shore and slowly receded again. Sailboat rigging clinked rhythmically against boat masts, sea lions barked, and gulls cried to one another through the fog. Squealing brakes on cable cars synchronized with warning bells, and San Francisco weekenders gathered in squares and coffee shops to make the most of what remained of their time off.

Azrael knew exactly where he was going.

It was a fault of human reasoning that people automatically assumed those who were older would prefer older things. While this was often the case, there were exceptions. Age sometimes had little bearing on the novelty of a mind. And a novel mind thoroughly enjoyed new experiences and unexpected sights, sounds, or feelings.

Fisherman’s Wharf had been around for hundreds of years in one form or another. Fishermen had sailed out and thrown their nets from the wharves for as long as there had been settlers on the West Coast. Immigrants from China and Italy had each at one time called it home. San Francisco was the gateway to those seeking fortunes during the gold rush, and Angel Island in the bay was the Ellis Island of the West, having seen countless of the hungry, tired, and hopeful.

Pier 39 had not always been what it was today. It had been moved, destroyed, built up again, burned down, and restored. In 1978 one man decided to do what had previously been thought impossible: create a breakwater pier where families could go to shop, dine, and relax. He fought for the legislation and funding to make it possible—and against all odds, Pier 39 was completed in just one year.

Azrael was not a young man and he most certainly wasn’t a tourist, but because Pier 39 had bucked the system and proven naysayers wrong, it was Azrael’s favorite place in San Francisco. It was also quite lovely at night. It was quiet in a hollow, echo-like way. It was there that he headed now.

The Pier became overcrowded on the weekends, but at ten o’clock on Sunday evening, six hours earlier than it had been in Scotland, the weekend revelers were beginning to put the finishing touches on their short escapes from reality. Street performers were packing up, musicians were putting away their instruments and counting their change, and the beggars were gathering on the sidewalks to share or exchange the day’s winnings.

As the stragglers drifted away, restaurants shut off their lights and wharf maintenance crews broke out the brooms and dust pails. Garbage and recycling bins clanked as they were emptied. Azrael’s boots echoed loudly on the wooden planks of the pier as he landed in a shadowed recess behind a shop that had string puppets dangling in its window.

Pier 39 was empty. There was no reason for people to remain once the shops had closed down. The calls of the sea lions just off the south side of the pier were harsh in an otherwise eerie silence.

Azrael strode slowly out of the shadows and approached the empty stage upon which performers plied their trade during the day. Beyond that was a massive, beautiful carousel. Az could imagine that during operating hours it whirred in a blur of color and sound as children lined up to ride dragons and sea creatures for three dollars a pop. Now the complex structure was covered in a plastic tarp, unmoving and silent.

Az took it all in with the same quiet sense of awe that he always felt when gazing upon the echoes of the world. Nighttime held afterimages of people coming and going, buying and selling, smiling and waving good-bye. And by the time Az’s boots followed the footsteps left hours before, only memories remained. They smelled like cotton candy and sea salt and waffle cones. And they felt like the caress of ghosts—there . . . but gone.

Azrael moved gracefully down the pier toward the sailboats anchored off the north side. He made his way past a handful of seagulls fighting over the remains of a corn dog and stopped at the wooden barrier, allowing the wind to whip through his hair. Then he closed his eyes and sent out a mental call.

At the moment, Valley of Shadow was on tour across the United States. With the help of the archangels’ mansion, Az and his band mates always showed up in time for each of their appearances. In fact, they were scheduled to play in San Francisco in two weeks. Azrael knew that Sophie planned to be in California by that time. He also knew that she would most likely jump at the chance to see the show. That is, if she wasn’t allowed to psych herself out when he invited her. Azrael could easily make certain of that.

In the meantime, he had two weeks to charm his way past her defenses and win her trust. That was the difficult part, and it wasn’t something he could use his powers for. No matter how strong supernatural creatures were, one thing they could never master was the ability to make someone love them. There were drugs that made women pass out, there were spells that made them sexually aroused, and vampiric powers could force submission with no more than a passing will. But true love was evasive and unattainable by any means other than one: it had to be earned.

And the truth was, Azrael wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. From the moment he’d laid eyes on Sophie as she’d helped Juliette down that aisle, Az had known that he was gazing upon a piece of his soul. The sunny piece; the opposite of his dark, dark moon.

But she didn’t love him. She lusted after him and dreamed of him and fantasized about him—or, at least about the Masked One—but she didn’t love him. Why would she? She had absolutely no reason to. She didn’t know him. Not yet, anyway.

Sophie was planning to leave Scotland the following day. He’d caught that thought skating through her mind. There was no point to her remaining there; her best friend would be honeymooning, and knowing Gabriel, there would be no interrupting that. Sophie didn’t want to feel like a third wheel, so she’d booked the trip home for sunrise.

And that was where things got complicated for Az. His brothers would most likely insist that she allow them to simply open a portal in the mansion for her and send her home the easy way, but that would fix only part of the problem. She might get home faster, but she would still be traveling by day.

Az might be the former Angel of Death and the king of all vampires, but his weaknesses were as strong as they came. He wouldn’t be able to watch over her once the sun came up. She might’ve been oblivious to it, but she needed watching. Sophie was an archess, and the Adarians were still at large. Their leader, Abraxos, was more dangerous—and more determined—than ever.

There was also Samael and his enigmatic plan to contend with. Neither Az nor his brothers or their guardian Max could determine what the hell was motivating the Fallen One to behave as he did. He’d gone after Eleanore Granger in the devious, underhanded manner for which he was infamous. And then he had gone out of his way to help Juliette Anderson escape the Adarians and wind up safely with Gabriel. Some days, Samael was blatantly opposed to the Four Favored. Other days, he appeared to aid them. He was a riddle. But whatever he was up to, Sophie wasn’t safe on her own.

Az waited only a few moments after summoning his subjects before he felt the air around him stir in a way both enticing and unnatural. He opened his eyes and stepped back. Three male figures dressed in varying degrees of black and gray landed gracefully on the pier’s wooden planks in front of him. All three of them bowed their heads with extreme deference, and it was only after several long moments of respectful silence that any of them spoke.

“Az.” One of the men greeted him in a deep, somewhat gravelly voice. He spoke the name tenderly, as a friend would, and his blue eyes glinted with something akin to love. He was quite tall, though not as tall as the Four Favored and certainly not as tall as Azrael. His reddish brown hair was thin on top, his blue eyes were intelligent, and his mustache gave him a friendly appearance. He looked a bit like a seasoned cop.

This was Randall McFarlan. His fangs were not as pronounced as those of the other two men; he was older than they were by centuries and had learned how to retract his teeth a good deal so that they were less noticeable. He looked to be somewhere in his late forties or early fifties and had the easygoing air of a man who had been very handsome in his youth but had probably not noticed it because he’d been concerned with other things. He seemed wise and gentle, and in this case, what he seemed to be was exactly what he was.

“Randall, I need your help and the help of your servants,” said Az. “You have humans who work for you. I need them to work for me now.”

Randall’s brow furrowed with concern. “Of course,” he said. “What’s goin’ on?” His words drawled, easy and slow, but the worry that laced them was evident.

Beside him, a younger-looking, thinner man cocked his head to one side and asked, “It’s something big, isn’t it?” He had short-cropped brown hair, blue eyes nearly the same color as Randall’s, and a disposition that was the antithesis of the older man’s. His face was open and youthful, and his tall, slim body seemed to radiate a hyperactive energy. “I knew it. I’ve had a feeling all week,” he went on matter-of-factly, nodding at his own words and clasping his hands behind his back as if he were pleased with his premonition. “It’s go time, isn’t it?”

Randall turned toward the younger vampire and frowned. “Terry, what the hell are you talkin’ about, ‘go time’?” he asked, shaking his head. “What is ‘go time’? ‘Go time’ for what?”

Terry blinked, looked from Randall to Az, and then shrugged. “I don’t know, I mean—just
go
time. You know. Something big is about to go down. Right? I can feel it in my bones.”

Randall rolled his eyes and took a deep breath. “Your bones, Terry?” he asked incredulously, managing to appear infinitely patient by the fact that he had yet to raise his voice. “Seriously?”

“Well . . . I
am
pretty old, you know. Don’t old people start feeling things in their bones?”

“Old
humans
do, Terry,” said the third man. He hadn’t spoken until now, but at the sound of his very soft voice, both Randall and Terry glanced at him. “Old vampires—not so much.” He shook his head a little, shrugged as if to make nothing of what he’d said, and focused on smoothing an invisible wrinkle from his sport coat. He was a middle-aged Hispanic gentleman, impeccably dressed in a crisp white button-down, brown slacks, a brown sport coat, and shiny brown dress shoes. His name was Casper MonteVega, but his companions had called him Monte for decades.

Azrael had created each of the three vampires before him for different and carefully considered reasons. Randall McFarlan had been in Ireland during the Elizabethan wars and was fatally wounded in 1584 when Az happened upon him. He was not the first vampire Azrael had ever created, and he hadn’t been the last, but he was one of Azrael’s most trusted. He worked under the radar on cases with Michael on occasion and had grown closer to the four brothers than many of the others that Azrael had created. At the moment, he happened to live in San Francisco. And right now, he was just coming off of his second ten-year stint as a night-shift police officer in Marin County. He had to space out the services he chose, in both time and location, to lessen the chance of being recognized, but one way or another he always found a way to serve on the force.