The weight atop them became heavier. With a budding sense of doom, Angel realized why. The men who’d shielded them were unconscious. Probably dead.
But there was smoke everywhere now, and even under several layers of people, she was inhaling it. It burned her lungs and stung her eyes. She tried to move, but just as she was beginning to panic due to the pressing weights on her, Sam moved above her, shoving off the bodyguards to get to his feet. He grabbed her arms and lifted her alongside him, and Angel found her footing in a world of blaze and ash.
Sam spared the slightest glance to the fallen men, and Angel saw something there in the depths of his gaze. But then it was gone, shoved into the background of a world of chaos and misery.
She coughed when she tried to inhale.
Whatever had been behind the door was now in the hall, and it was burning like mad. “We have to get out of here!” she cried, then coughed again because the last word got stuck in her throat behind a building grime.
Sam didn’t respond. He’d already been pulling a transport orb from his pocket; she’d forgotten they were there. Now, he palmed it tightly with one hand and yanked Angel closer with the other, wrapping his arm around her waist so hard, she could barely breathe. But that was okay; she couldn’t breathe anyway.
A moment later, the smoke and fire blurred into smears of red and gray, the heat began to ebb, and the world spun. They were in a transport tunnel.
Angel closed her eyes and hugged Sam back. Whether it was self preservation or something else, she had neither the time nor the desire to ponder. The tunnel came to an end nearly as quickly as it had spun to life, and Angel felt carpet under her feet.
She opened her eyes as Sam stepped slightly back, loosening his grip on her enough that she could regain her balance. Once he knew she was fine, he let her go completely and pulled away.
Angel stood in the center of a hotel room with a double queen bed, television, and an opening on the other end that no doubt led to a bathroom. It was a standard room, not a suite, and nothing too fancy, but not exactly low-end either. It was just a basic hotel room.
“Where are we?”
“This room is one of several I’ve had shielded over the years. We’re in Boston at the moment, but we won’t be staying long. We’re just going to get you changed and then we’re moving on.”
Angel blinked. She looked down, only now remembering that she was in a gorgeous satin red dress and wasn’t wearing any shoes. The dress was now ruined, fraught with miniature tears and smoke stains.
She nodded. “Right.” Then she frowned. How was she supposed to change? This wasn’t her place. She had no clothes here, and no powers with which to summon them.
Sam moved to a large ornate piece of wooden furniture against one wall. “This armoire will supply any clothing you need. Simply imagine what you want, then open it.”
Now that she looked at it closely, it was obvious the armoire was not a normal part of the décor in the room. “I’ve heard of something like this,” she said as she moved toward it. “But it was a small box that supplied food.”
“The Hollow Box.” He nodded. “It so happens the armoire was made by the same genius. I believe he also has a hat box, a gym bag, and most impressively, a garage.”
She gaped at him. “You mean you can imagine whatever car you want –”
“That’s the idea.” He smiled.
She pondered that for a moment, suddenly imagining Sam speeding along in some sexy muscle car. Or on a motorcycle.
She’d actually seen him on a bike once. Just once.
Her mouth watered, and her knees at felt weak. There was a picture she’d never be able to get out of her head. It was a candid shot taken of him while he was out riding his own Harley Davidson Fat Boy. Until then, the media had only ever seen him in suits. But in the photo, which had been caught by someone with a camera phone, he’d been in jeans, a black T-shirt, and a rugged pair of riding boots. His hair was messy. He was suddenly the very portrait of a laid back billionaire with a body like Superman’s and a mind like Lex Luthor’s.
He wasn’t wearing a helmet. Of course, the world had viewed him as a gorgeous fool; men all over added a note of dangerous recklessness to their lists of things to be jealous of him about, and women everywhere began drooling buckets. But Angel had known a helmet was simply pointless.
He was Sam.
Now that photograph slammed back into her mind, but this time it was an entire movie, with wind and the thrumming, thunder-roar of a V-twin engine.
She jerked out of her reveries and looked up to find Sam watching her with silent and keen interest. From the glint in his gun metal eyes, she was guessing he had a pretty good idea what she’d been thinking.
She cleared her throat. “Um, I need privacy if I’m going to change.”
His smile was back. “Very well.” He took a step back and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. The look was drop-dead sexy. “I’ll go wash the smoke out of my eyes.” He turned and headed to the bathroom around the corner.
When Angel heard the door close, she exhaled a shaky breath. She stared down at her hands as if she didn’t recognize them. What the hell was she doing? People were dead back at that play house. She and Sam were running for their lives. And she was standing here in a hotel room flirting with the Fallen One. Thinking about motorcycles and garages and tight blue jeans.
“Oh God. I am so screwed.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The knowledge that he could somehow find the one who’d caused him this inescapable suffering, who’d allowed his love to wither and die, and that he could exact the justice that was so sorely needed for this crime, was all that kept Gregori going. It was all that had kept him going for a very long time. Life was tired, Earth was weary and disgusting, and humanity was failing at best. He was beyond done with it all, and ready to join Amara… wherever she had gone. If death would allow it, he would hunt the realms for her. They would be reunited.
If death did not allow it, if there was nothing remaining once the body and mind disintegrated, then so be it. Oblivion was better than pain.
Some indeterminate amount of time ago, he’d been on the verge of ending it all. He’d lingered in this realm, going through the motions of existence, but afraid of whatever lay beyond. He’d been about to give up… when he’d realized that the Old Man was no longer in the angel realm. He wasn’t sure how he’d come about the knowledge… it was as if he’d learned it all in a dream or something. It was the same way with his knowledge of the Culmination. It was vague and there was no recollection of the source of his intel; he simply knew.
When he’d realized the Old Man wasn’t in the angel realm, it had given Gregori renewed hope, and a reason not to kill himself. Whatever realm he was in, he would no doubt be weaker. He would be vulnerable. That was reason enough for Gregori to keep going.
He’d hunted for the Old Man ever since.
As far as the Culmination was concerned, his knowledge of it dictated that it would occur when all the archangels were mated with their archesses. And at that time, it would send the angels back to their own world. Gregori reasoned that the Old Man, wherever he was, would join them there, and Gregori would not be allowed to follow.
If that happened, then obviously Gregori would never have his revenge.
So, with purpose, Gregori had set out to stop the Culmination at all costs. He approached the archesses that remained and attempted to hinder their progress. He needed time. He needed to figure out where the hell his old boss was.
Gregori had fingers of power stretched throughout every realm that adjoined Earth. He had men in dimensions that would make the mortal mind spin. But no one had seen hide nor hair of the king of angels. The Old Man was untraceable. Seemingly lost.
It was no wonder at all to Gregori that any time the archangels had attempted to contact him, they’d never been answered. Communication between himself and the rest of existence seemed to have been completely cut off.
<
br /> Once more, Gregori had begun to lose hope. He would never find the bastard.
And then – just last week – everything changed once more.
Gregori had been in his home in the arctic, the only place where the cold pain of the landscape matched the same cold pain residing in his soul. He’d been thinking of Amara. She filled his mind even as his heart emptied to nothing. He’d looked up from his reveries as the vibration in the air shifted, and new knowledge entered his mind.
He’d been searching for the Old Man for so long, needing justice for so long, by now he must have been connected to him somehow. That could be the only explanation. Because he’d suddenly known where the Old Man was.
He would never find him by looking for him out there in the other realms.
The king of the angels was actually here, on Earth. He had been all along.
Right under my nose.
To say that Gregori had felt another renewal of hope was a disgusting understatement. It was suddenly more essential than ever that the Culmination not occur. Gregori pulled in his armies, amassing them on Earth, and even started recruiting more. The archangels had no idea how vast his reach was or just how many resources he had at his disposal.
He planned to show them. He would pin-point the Old Man’s location, and if the archangels got in his way, he would unleash holy hell upon them.
At least, that had been the plan.
But, one second, he could feel the Old Man’s presence there on Earth, somewhere, and Gregori was closing in on his location. And then, the next moment… he couldn’t. He simply could not feel him any longer.
It happened immediately after the series of tornadoes ran roughshod over Kansas City, Missouri. Gregori had zeroed in on him there and was about to pounce. But once the storms were gone, so was all trace of the Old Man. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Somehow, it was related. The sky was quiet again, and the Old Man had vanished.
Maybe he’d gone back to the angel realm. Or maybe he was dead.
“No.”
He hadn’t realized he’d spoken the word out loud until the ice of the wall across from him cracked. He watched as a hair-line fracture climbed from the right corner of wall beneath his portrait of Amara to the ceiling so high overhead. It kept going, traveling along the magically carved ice until it reached the chandelier. The crystalline shapes in the chandelier shook, clanking together like a wind chime.
A single shape of ice broke free from its casing and crashed twenty feet to the ground, where it shattered like a snowball on impact. Bits of ice spread across Gregori’s right shoe. He looked at them as if they were the most interesting things in the world – and yet, as if he could not have cared less about them.
“No,” he repeated, this time more softly. He would find him.
The girl holds the key.
Angel was supposedly the archess for Samael, the archangel that the Four Favored loved to refer to as the Fallen One. But Gregori knew the truth about that, too. He was like a fucking repository for all these ancient truths, all this knowledge. Without warning, it would surge through him, born from nowhere, and in place of blood and oxygen, sometimes it fueled him. As it did now.
Angel was the key to finding the king of the angels because she was not, in fact, Samael’s archess. She was the Old Man’s.
Gregori doubted that Sam recalled why he wanted Angel. He doubted Sam could remember that he’d decided to claim Angel as his own mate in an act of revenge against the Old Man. He had been angry because he’d been displaced at the Old Man’s side for doing nothing other than questioning his actions. No one was ever supposed to question the boss. And for that, Michael the Warrior Archangel had taken his place as favored.
Samael had seethed.
As he’d taken so many other liberties with the Old Man, Sam had secretly sworn Angel would be his own. He’d convinced himself that she belonged with him. As the revolution of the angel realm stirred and the Old Man cast everyone to the Earth, Samael had jumped down of his own accord so he could find Angel on his own.
He simply hadn’t expected to forget everything upon impact.
For two-thousand years, the Fallen One had been dreaming of her, craving her, and wanting her as his own. Maybe not initially for the right reasons, but after all this time, as any man would with such a creature, he’d become besotted. Now he longed for her with all the fierce determination that the others had desired their own mates. His need was as real as theirs. It just came from a different place.
Gregori could understand that.
In another life, in another realm maybe, he and Samael might have been kindred spirits. They both hated the Old Man, and for good reason.
Sam was a powerful man who played his cards close to his chest. He was an exceedingly smart man. He’d avoided everything Gregori had thrown at him, as had Angel. Even at the play house, where Gregori had caught word Sam would be taking her, they’d manage to escape the trap he’d laid.
It was almost unfortunate that Gregori had to go up against the Fallen One. He’d rather work with him than against him. What a team they would make. The Old Man wouldn’t stand a chance.
But Sam couldn’t be allowed to join with Angel, because whether she was originally meant for him or not, she was as much besotted with him now as he was her. Their souls would mate. The last of the archesses would be found and claimed. The Culmination would occur.
“No.”
Once more, the word filled the halls of his mansion of ice. And this time, tiny fissures appeared throughout the entire structure.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Thunder rolled in the distance. Sam straightened where he’d been leaning on the bathroom counter, attempting to compose himself. He’d entered the bathroom, shut the door, shrugged off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and splashed cold water on his face in an attempt to compose himself and clear his mind. But that thunder drew his attention now, and he wondered.
He wondered whether the warnings he’d been given about the power-negating spell were coming to fruition. He’d been warned that sapping so much magic from two creatures as inherently powerful as he and Angel might have extremely weighty consequences. The power had to go somewhere, after all. Magic did not simply cease to exist. It was transferred from one state to another, from one being or place to another, and changed. It was born and it could even die, but it never vanished altogether.
Storms seemed to be everywhere lately. He couldn’t stop and listen without hearing thunder.
They’re following us, he thought, and as suddenly as the thought occurred to him, another bolt sent massive marbles rolling across the heavens. And he realized he was right. It was true. The storms were following them because their magic was leaking out around them and into the atmosphere. It wasn’t that it was gone – it was that it was no longer directly connected to their bodies.
Just closely connected.
And if the storms were following them, then Gregori could easily follow the storms.
Sam let out an expletive and fisted a hand in his hair. All he’d wanted was more time. He could tell he was getting to her. And she’d sure as hell been getting to him. He was making progress. Why did it have to end so quickly?
There was a knock at the door.
“Sam? You okay?”
No doubt, she’d heard him cursing.
He opened the door to find her standing fully changed, now wearing jeans, high-top Converses in navy blue, and a navy blue V-neck T-shirt to match.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Are you ready?”
She nodded, then cringed a little when thunder rolled closer overhead. “There sure are a lot of storms these days.”
He took her hand and moved with her into the main area of the hotel room, grabbing his jacket from the bathroom counter on the way. Once at the center of the room, he pulled an orb from his suit pocket and held it in his hand. Maybe if they could move fast enough from place to place, and maybe if he could transport them to a location where it was alw
ays storming, Gregori wouldn’t be able to catch up and wouldn’t find them in the camouflage.
Maybe it would give him more time, before everything came crashing down around him.
“What are you waiting for?”
Sam blinked and looked up at Angel. There had been no impatience in her voice, only genuine concern. Her expression was worried – and beautiful.
“I… was just trying to figure out where to go.” He exhaled and almost laughed. He felt mystified. This indecision was unlike him.
“We’ll go to my place.” She laid her hand over the orb in his palm and closed her eyes. Clearly she’d learned how to use them by watching him, because a second later, the room blurred into streams of color and light as they entered a transportation portal.
This time, when it ended, Sam felt wood under his feet, and heard something that sounded remarkably like creaking. The swimming colors dissipated, and the room around him cleared. Angel stepped back and looked around, smiling.
Sam turned a slow circle. “You… live in a tree house?”
“Not exactly,” Angel said, grinning now. “It moves from place to place just like your Nautilus does.”
The room was large and multi-dimensional; there were more facets to it than there were to a diamond. Polished light wood floors stretched to the walls, which were composed of glass just like the walls of an atrium. For supports, more wood beams cast through the glass in a design that vaguely resembled a spiraling spider’s web. The walls rose up and over the tree house, offering 360 degree views of the forest canopy around them, and at its summit, a large round piece of glass spared an unobstructed view of the sky above.
To Sam’s left, a spiral staircase rose to a round loft that was fenced in by dozens of thin but apparently living cherry blossom trees. The petals cascaded slowly to the floor beneath the loft, drifting like pink dreams. Which was fitting, because through the gaps between the tree trunks, Sam could make out a bed.
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