Warrior (Fallen)

by Kristina Douglas

  I was getting a very bad feeling about this. Some of the men had begun an odd chanting, and the sound, so foreign and strange, gave me goose bumps. I wanted to get away, I wanted to run. I looked up. Michael’s dark eyes impaled me and my feet were frozen to the ground.

  “Let the bond be sealed by blood,” Raziel said, not sounding particularly happy about the whole thing. I glanced back to Michael, and his eyes were half-closed, his mouth open, and it almost seemed as if his teeth had elongated. Impossible. He couldn’t—

  He struck like a snake, fastening his mouth to Allie’s wrist. She didn’t flinch, but I tried to pull away. Rachel’s strong hand held me firm. What the hell was he doing to Allie? Giving her the mother of all hickeys? Why?

  And then I saw the blood trickle down over her wrist. He lifted his head, and there was blood on his mouth, blood on his—his fangs, and he used his tongue to bring the last of it into his mouth.

  “Oh, hell, no.” I tried to yank free, but Rachel had anticipated my reaction, and her fingers tightened painfully.

  “The union is sealed,” Raziel said in an unhappy voice. “The Source has been blooded and the bond is accepted.”

  Michael released Allie’s arm, only to take mine, and Rachel’s tight grip had been a caress compared to his steely fingers. Everyone stepped back, leaving me to stare up in frozen horror into Michael’s cold eyes. “It is done,” he said.

  He dragged me through the crowd of people murmuring disjointed congratulations. The woman named Martha was still offering some kind of protest, but Michael wasn’t listening, seemingly intent on getting me out of there, which was a good idea, since I was on the verge of screaming.

  We were moving so fast I could barely catch my breath, out of the garden and along the rocky beach. Michael dragged me around the side of the building and headed toward a large, one-story structure that glowed in the sunlight. The halls were empty when he pushed me inside, towing me down white, unadorned corridors to a wide door at the far end. He pushed it open, shoved me in, and closed the door behind us.

  “What . . .” I began, trying to catch my breath, “the hell . . . are you?”

  He’d finally released me, and I rubbed my abused wrist. He moved to a wall of glass, staring out at the restless ocean, and took a deep breath before answering. “I told you. We are angels who have fallen from heaven, cursed to live out eternity on earth.”

  “Last I heard, angels weren’t vampires,” I snapped, trying to stay calm. And I’d thought I was in such good shape. I was nothing compared to the man I’d supposedly married.

  He didn’t bother looking at me. “They aren’t. This is part of our curse. Just being kicked out of heaven wasn’t enough of a punishment. We are cursed to drink blood as well. Blood-eaters are despised in our tradition. The Supreme Power thought it only fitting.”

  “So you go out and kill people and drink their blood?”

  He made a disgusted noise. “Of course not. We can only drink the blood of our bonded mates.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What do you mean by that? If you think you’re biting me, you’re out of your mind. And I thought Allie was Raziel’s . . . er . . . bonded mate.”

  “Allie is different. Allie is the Source. She provides nourishment for those of the Fallen who aren’t bonded. If we eat the blood of anyone else, we could die. It is the Source or our own mates.”

  I still didn’t like the sound of this. It was as if I’d fallen asleep and woken up in the middle of a Terry Gilliam movie. Much as I loved Time Bandits, I certainly didn’t want to live in that world.

  “And you chose the Source? I thought you kept telling me I was your bonded mate.”

  He turned to look at me, and there was no emotion on his face. It was as if I didn’t exist. “I have no intention of touching you. We aren’t even bonded by the rites of the Fallen. This is a legal union, sealed by blood. It didn’t have to be your blood.”

  So much for Irish princesses or faux Botticellis, I thought, irrationally annoyed. I didn’t want him touching me, did I? I certainly didn’t want him coming anywhere near my veins. “Good thing,” I said. “I’d put up a hell of a fight.”

  He was unimpressed. Good. I preferred having some tricks up my sleeve. I intended to get out of here the first chance I got, and I would need the element of surprise. Michael was far too observant.

  I looked around. He’d dragged me into a small, utilitarian apartment with a comfortable-looking sofa, french doors overlooking the beckoning ocean, and an alcove off to the right with a smallish bed in it. I sighed in relief. Clearly not the bed to consummate a marriage. No television or computer, however. That was no problem. I’d had enough television and movies to last several lifetimes. They had taught me everything I knew. It was time to learn from the real world—as soon as I could get away from these people and start to live.

  “What is this place?”

  He’d been prowling the room, roaming into a kitchenette, peering into the refrigerator, opening the french doors. The warm sea breeze blew over me, and I closed my eyes for a moment, taking it in. “Your home,” he said.

  “Who else lives here?”

  “Only you and I live in this place.” It seemed as if he didn’t even want to clump us together in words. “This building is the training center. The rest of the Fallen and their mates live in the main house.”

  Not good. No allies to come to my rescue if need be. I looked around me, uneasy. “We live here?”

  “You live here. My quarters are in another section of the building.”

  “Oh,” I said brightly. Things were looking up. I was alone in this part of the building with doors to the outside, to the hypnotizing ocean, and I suspected my new husband or mate or whatever was going to keep his distance. Getting out should be a piece of cake. “Well, if that’s all, you can go.”

  His head jerked up and he surveyed me for a long moment. Were he anyone else, I might have seen the glimmer of a smile. “Yes, Your Majesty. If you want something to eat, check the refrigerator. Allie will come by later and explain how things work around here.”

  Allie, who’d held out her wrist and let him drink from it. I thought I hid my reflexive shudder, but his smile was unmistakable now, cynical, as he saw my reaction. “Why don’t you take a nap? When you wake up, maybe you’ll find this is only a dream.”

  “Is it?”

  “No. But you can always hope.”

  I watched the door close behind him and felt some of the tension drain from my body. I wasn’t sure what made me edgier—his hostility or his unearthly beauty.

  I never would have thought beauty would be such a bothersome attribute in a husband, but it wasn’t a comfortable thing. The sheer perfection of his skin, the intensity of his dark eyes, the grace of his lithe body, even the rope of tattoos that slithered around him, made me edgy. Johann had been a handsome young man—a youthful infatuation. Yet his impressive good looks had never disturbed me the way Michael’s did. His high cheekbones, the sweep of his tawny lashes over those distant eyes, his surprisingly sensual mouth, made me feel . . . nervous. Which was silly, since he’d made it perfectly clear he wasn’t coming any closer to me than was strictly necessary. Thank God. The gods. Though apparently I was one of the gods. Thank me?

  No, that was ridiculous.

  Or was it? Like the White Queen in Through the Looking-Glass, I had been raised to believe in six impossible things before breakfast. My life had never had any similarity to the lives on television or in the movies, nor anything in common with the lives of the other girls at the secluded school I attended or the nuns who watched over us. I had begun to believe there was no such thing as impossible.

  I was the reincarnation of a Roman goddess. I had just married an angel who happened to be a vampire. After that, everything else was minor.

  RAZIEL SAT IN his chair in the great hall, hands clutching the lion-headed arms tightly. Allie put her arms around him, drawing his head to her breasts. “Aren’t you e
ver going to get used to it, my love?”

  “No,” he said against her in a sulky voice.

  Her laugh was soft and sexy, and she knelt beside him, sliding a hand along his taut thighs. “Poor baby.”

  “Michael should have taken his mate’s blood. He was just being stubborn, as usual. He’s going to have to accept her sooner or later. Accept his curse. He’s survived more than two hundred years on the blood of the Source, and I’m sick of it. Let him get his own.”

  “True enough.” She pressed against him. “After all, she’s a goddess. Even if she’s not immortal, she should still live a long time.”

  The words hung between them, and finally Raziel spoke. “We don’t know how long you’ll live, Allie. Is that what’s been bothering you? Why you’ve sought out Martha? You haven’t aged in the last ten years. I think my blood—”

  “Hush,” she said, moving her hand higher, brushing against his hardness. “We won’t talk about that now. Instead, why don’t you tell me what you felt when Michael took my wrist?”

  “You know what I felt,” he growled. “Fury. Jealousy.”

  “Yes, love.” Her hand enclosed him. “And what else?”

  He tried, not very hard, to push her hand away. “If you think I become aroused when I see you with another man, you are wrong. I’m not that perverse.”

  “You’re wonderfully perverse, in all the best ways,” she corrected him. “And no, I think you become aroused when you are reminded of what we share, and you want to get me alone and in private to act on it. To wipe out any trace of another man’s touch.”

  A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You think you know me so well.”

  “I do know you so well.” She pushed her hair away from her neck, tilting her head for his full access. “I can feel what you feel. You can feel what I feel.”

  His rough laugh increased her arousal. “True enough, unless you shield your thoughts,” he said, covering her hand with his, pushing it against his erection. “This isn’t a good time.”

  “This is an excellent time,” she murmured.

  He reached for her, pulling her onto his lap very carefully, and slid his hand beneath her hair, tugging her closer. “You are a wise woman.”

  “I am,” she agreed, closing her eyes, waiting for the first touch of his mouth against her neck, his teeth against her vein.

  “We should be in bed for this.”

  “We should spend our lives in bed,” she said. “Sometimes we just have to make do.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  IT WAS SHEER WEAKNESS, I ADMIT IT. I should have gotten the hell out of there the moment he left me. It was more than clear he wasn’t coming back anytime soon, and it was a perfect time to leave. I hadn’t established any routines where my presence might be missed; I could just go and no one would realize it until it was too late.

  Go where? That was the question. According to the woman named Rachel, I was somewhere off the west coast of North America, which didn’t narrow it down much. If Michael could leave and go out into the rest of the world, so could I. Of course, maybe flying was part of the escape route, and I didn’t appear to be growing wings. Then again, no one in the crowd at the ceremony had appeared to have anything protruding under their clothes, including Michael. Which reminded me.

  What I knew of angels came mainly from Dogma. In general I didn’t watch fantasy movies—I had a voracious appetite for real life, normal people, everyday happenings. But I hadn’t been able to resist Dogma. In that movie, the angels had no genitalia—maybe these didn’t either. Maybe all this talk about celibacy was because they had no other choice.

  I hadn’t seen any children around, after all. Maybe I was worried about nothing. Though having someone drink my blood wasn’t exactly nothing, but he’d made no move toward me.

  I should go right now. But I was starving, exhausted, and thoroughly shaken. If I took off in this state, I wouldn’t get far. I did as Michael had suggested, checking the refrigerator, and found cheese, fruit, yogurt—all my favorite things. In the door was bottled water from Norway and Scotland, and cans of Diet Coke.

  I’d never tasted it. I’d seen it in movies all the time—product placement, they called it. But soda wasn’t allowed at the convent school, and nothing like that had ever appeared at the castello.

  It only took me a moment to figure out how the top opened. There was a hiss as brown liquid bubbled out of the small hole I’d created. I took a tiny sip.

  And spat it out in horror. People actually liked this crap?

  But this was my new world. Not just Sheol, but beyond, where I firmly intended to be, and everybody seemed to drink this instead of water. I took another sip, letting the bubbles sting my tongue before swallowing. Not much better.

  I pulled out cheese and crackers, hoping to disguise the taste, and sat down on the white sofa in front of the sliding glass doors that overlooked the sea. The food didn’t quite kill the taste but made it palatable, and I worked my way through the can, then forced myself to take another.

  It was already getting darker. What time was it in Italy? Did the contessa know Pedersen was dead, and that I had killed him? Did it even matter?

  The sea breeze was blowing in, and I could taste the salt on my lips. Part of me longed for it, to feel the water on my feet, my skin. But I was exhausted by all I had been through.

  I looked at the bed longingly. There was no reason why I had to escape immediately. It would be better if I acclimated myself to this strange place first. Besides, I had never been so weary in my life.

  I took a third can of soda and walked over to the bed. It was bigger than my narrow one in Italy, but smaller than the beds in the movies. It was more than big enough for me, and I stretched out on it, setting the open can of soda on the side table.

  It was sinfully, divinely comfortable. Could something be both? Then again, that would describe a fallen angel perfectly. Sinful and divine. A fascinating contradiction, and if things were different, I’d be more than happy to stay here and explore it. It wasn’t as if Michael was any threat to me—this marriage was a formality, nothing more. He kept insisting he was celibate, and he had no interest in either my body or my blood. There was no real reason to be in such a hurry.

  Except I was finding the celibacy thing a little hard to believe, assuming he had all his equipment. There was something about him, the tightly coiled intensity, the way he moved, the way he looked at things, at me, that felt . . . sexual. Not that I had a great deal of experience in the matter, but I knew the difference between creatures who displayed a sexless presence and those who exuded sexuality. Michael, for all his protestations, was definitely the latter.

  And whether I liked it or not, when I looked at him I felt something. I couldn’t identify it, didn’t want to, but it made me uneasy, irritable, unsettled. As if I wanted something from him and I wasn’t sure what.

  Not my type at all. I liked sweet, gentle men who didn’t try to tell me what to do. I’d had enough of that with the contessa and Pedersen. The last thing I wanted was a stern, cold man bossing me around.

  But right now our plans coincided. He had told me to stay put and go to sleep, and I was exhausted, with a comfortable bed beneath me. I stretched out, kicking off the sandals Allie had given me and wiggling my toes. I’d need to find out what they’d done with my clothes and the euros I had stashed in an inner pocket of my jeans. I’d have to find a bank where I could trade them in, but that shouldn’t be difficult once I reached civilization. Depending on how far civilization was.

  I could hear the rough cries of the seabirds above the rush of the surf. The sound of the ocean had to be the most soothing noise in the world.

  I closed my eyes and slept.

  “SHE’S GOING TO WHAT?” Michael demanded, furious.

  “She’s going to die,” Martha said in a tight voice, clearly distressed. “On her twenty-fifth birthday. One month from now.”

  “And why the fuck did you wait till
now to tell me?” Michael snarled.

  “Behave yourself, Michael,” Allie said, sitting next to Martha at the table. “It doesn’t do to badger people.” The six of them were alone in the vast meeting hall: the two ruling couples, Raziel and Allie, Azazel and his wife, Rachel, otherwise known as the demon Lilith, plus Michael and the seer.

  “I don’t badger people. Am I badgering you, Martha?”

  The seer looked up at him out of troubled gray eyes. “You’re trying,” she said quietly. “You know I can’t control these things. Visions have been coming to me in bits and pieces, and sometimes they are simply shadows at first. The last one was clearer. She’s going to die on her birthday, in battle. You will bed her, blood her, train her, and she will then die for us.”

  “No,” he snapped. He wasn’t sure why. She was an albatross, an unwanted complication in his life when he desperately needed it to be simple. They were telling him it was finite, yet he refused to accept what was plainly a reprieve from a life sentence.

  “I don’t see why it bothers you so much,” Raziel said from his seat at the head of the table. “You fought this from the very beginning. You don’t want her in your life. This should make it all very convenient—in a few weeks’ time, you get to be the grieving widower. And this gives us one very crucial piece of information. The key words are she dies in battle. We’ve had no idea when Uriel is planning to strike. Now we know.”

  “Now we know,” he echoed tonelessly. “Is there anything else you’d like to share?”

  “Nothing I haven’t already told you,” Martha said, bearing up under his intimidating glare. He could usually scare the pants off most of the inhabitants of Sheol. Unfortunately, the five people in the room were impervious to his fierce temper. “You must consummate the marriage for the prophecy to come true. If you don’t bed and blood her, everything changes, and I can’t see what changes those are. They are so full of blood and darkness that I might as well be blind. You have to take her, Archangel.”