CHAPTER
NINE
“What about him?”
“He’s not what he
pretends to be,” Uriel said. “Did you get my things from the car?”
she asked, quickly changing the subject and turning away from him
to stand on her tiptoes and gaze down the long line of vehicles.
Presumably she was searching for her own MINI Cooper. But clearly
she was uncomfortable with the subject of Lambent and didn’t want
to discuss him. He wondered why.
Uriel stared down at
Eleanore’s head and frowned. “Ellie, you need to listen to me right
now. What I’m trying to tell you is very important.”
He moved forward to
take her arm and turn her back around, but as he stepped toward
her, the sun’s thin rays at the slats in the windows of the garage
shifted and a stream of it hit his eyes. He squinted against it,
instantly irritated, and pulled back.
Then he frowned
again. That was weird.
“Ellie, please turn
around and talk to me.”
“I can’t see my car
from here—it must be behind that SUV down there.” She started off
along the row of cars once more, and he was forced to follow her.
Instinctively, he turned his face away from the light at the
windows, not even realizing he was doing so.
She was moving
quickly and he could feel his irritation rising. “Eleanore, Samuel
Lambent is not just a media mogul, and I know you think he’s a nice
guy. . . .” He flinched when the sun hit his eyes once more, but
gritted his teeth against the pain. “But you couldn’t be more off,”
he finished through a clenched jaw.
Eleanore ducked in
between two of the vehicles to her left and Uriel hurriedly went
after her. “Ellie, his name isn’t actually Samuel. It’s
Sama—”
Sharp pain shot
through his right eye and into his skull, immediately lancing
everything from his brain to his stomach with agony. He instantly
stopped, and once again acting on instinct, turned away from the
windows, clutching at his gut as he ducked behind the large SUV
beside him. He crouched low and closed his eyes. The pain eased,
and as it did, he noticed that his breathing was ragged.
Heavy.
What’s happening to me . . . ?
This wasn’t normal.
He rarely felt pain, and when he did, it was either fleeting or an
injury, in which case, Michael would heal him and that would be
that. This was different. Something was definitely
wrong.
“Here it is!”
Eleanore called from several cars down.
Uriel ignored her and
concentrated on his body. The inside of his left wrist was
throbbing. Beneath the buzzing of the lights overhead, which were
suddenly louder than before, he also discerned the faint sound of
something splashing.
Drip . . . drip . . . drip . . .
He tried to steady
his breathing and listen more closely. Then he looked down to see
small, bright crimson splashes on the polished concrete of the
garage floor. Each flower of dark red was a tad larger than the
previous one. As he looked on, another flower joined the bunch. And
then another.
They were coming from
his fingertips. Slowly, he turned his hand over. Streams of bright
red had streaked across his palm and down his fingers. He followed
their trail to the now-stained cuff of his long-sleeved thermal
shirt and then roughly shoved it farther up on his
arm.
His wrist was
bleeding. The wound was small but deep; it was the piercing he’d
given himself with Samael’s blade-tipped pen. He’d thought it
healed—apparently not.
“Eleanore!” He raised
his head and rested it against the grill of the vehicle behind him.
He closed his eyes and waited for her reply.
“Yeah?” She was
farther away now.
“Please . . .”
Come here, he thought, wanting her
near. Needing her near. “You need to know the truth! ” he told her,
even as the pain was back in his head and it wrenched the breath
temporarily from his lungs. He swallowed hard several times, choked
down bile, and continued. “Samuel Lambent is one of
u—”
That was as far as he
got before the real torture kicked in. There was a ripping sound
from inside his skull and blood erupted in his mouth. He cried out,
unable to stop himself, and slammed his head against the SUV’s
radiator cover. His gums bled and throbbed in an anguish unlike any
his long existence had ever known. With a bewildered, horrified
fascination, Uriel felt his canines elongating from behind his
tongue.
Oh God, he thought. Azrael!
Help me!
He was now petrified
with the absolute knowledge that a transformation had come over
him. His fear for himself was bad enough; his fear for Eleanore was
greater. She was in this garage with him—somewhere—and the hunger
that was now dawning within him and yawning awake scared the hell
out of him. He could smell his blood where it continued to gather
in his palm and spill over onto the garage floor.
And he could smell
hers as well.
There was only one
man he could think of who might be able to help. Only Azrael
possessed the ability to hear him. But it was daylight and the
Masked One would be confined by the sun to his quarters under the
mansion.
Despair sliced
through Uriel. He gasped for breath beneath the onslaught and cried
out again, using all of his mental capacity. There was nothing else
for it.
AZRAEL!
“Uriel?” Eleanore’s
voice came tentatively around the cars several vehicles down. “You
okay?”
She can sense something is wrong. He knew it was
part of who she was—her ability to heal. He knew that now; as he
knew with dreadful certainty that if he didn’t get away from her as
soon as inhumanly possible, he was going to hurt her.
When he’d sworn to
her that he would never allow anyone to harm her, he hadn’t
considered that one of the people he might have to protect her from
was himself.
Az. Please help me.
And then he heard
Azrael’s voice in his head. I’m sending the
others, Uriel. Try to remain calm.
His brother’s tone
was tranquil and controlled, but forceful in the way it carried
through Uriel’s mind and echoed in the chambers of his
consciousness. It instantly filled him with hope. They were on
their way.
At the same time, he
heard Eleanore’s footsteps drawing nearer. “Uriel? Where are you?
Are you okay?” She was more worried now and moving quickly from
vehicle to vehicle. He could smell her drawing nearer . . . She
smelled like . . . like . . .
Oh fuck.
She smelled like sex
and dinner and satisfaction and heaven and he was in agony, his
insides in knots, his body on fire and frozen at once, his fangs
now fully developed and his gums throbbing. His vision had turned
slightly red and everything in the room was entirely too bright.
His head felt as if it would explode.
Explode ...
Unless he sank his
fangs into Eleanore’s throat and drank her in. Her blood would stop
his pain. It would end this torture. He knew what he was becoming
now. He’d played the part on screen enough to recognize the
symptoms. He had no idea how it was happening or why, but he was
becoming a vampire.
And he needed Ellie.
. . .
“Ellie, I’m here,” he
whispered, croaked, and called to her.
In turn, her
footsteps changed direction, breaking into a run as they neared
him. He looked up as she came around the corner.
“Eleanore, get
back!”
The door to the
garage was slammed open on its hinges to bang noisily against the
adjacent wall. Eleanore stopped in her tracks and stared at
Gabriel, Michael, and Max Gillihan. They were rushing toward
her.
As if in slow motion,
she looked down at Uriel. Eyes red as fire gazed back at her,
freezing her in her tracks. His handsome face had gone pale, his
hair was longer and darker, his lips were parted to reveal the
cruelest set of fangs she had ever seen. They were white as the
moon, long, sharp, and faintly bathed in his own blood. His body
was shaking, trembling with unholy need; she could feel his pain
and knew what was going on in his body as she always knew when
looking upon the suffering. His hard muscles were even more
pronounced than normal, and a deep, throaty growl was emanating
from the recesses of his throat.
Eleanore couldn’t
scream. She couldn’t even gasp. All she could do was stand there
and stare through wide eyes as the monster who had only moments
before been an archangel rose from his crouched position and leapt
toward her.
Everything happened
very quickly then; time seemed to pick up speed and momentum so
that each event blurred by in rapid succession: Uriel’s transformed
features rushed toward her face; someone was shoving her roughly,
his hand slamming into her chest with such force that it knocked
the wind from her lungs; she went sailing backward to violently
smack into one of the garage walls, banging her head against the
concrete and her hip against a large metal tool chest as she
dropped to the ground, stunned.
There was a roar—and
then a growl . . . some screaming, things breaking. Shattering?
Eleanore blinked lazily; the world was out of focus and sound was
distant, like an echo.
She was scared. She
was also very sleepy. But worst of all was the nausea. It came fast
and furious, like it did with a migraine, and Eleanore tried not to
retch. It took her a half second more before she was closing her
eyes again and summoning all of her strength to heal herself. She
knew it was her head. She knew it as if she could see the injury
from a doctor’s vantage point. She saw the concussion and the blood
pooling beneath her skull and she concentrated on that—and on the
nausea it created.
Just as the nausea
ebbed and Eleanore was again resting back against the wall to
exhale with new weariness, she felt breath on her cheek. The garage
had gone eerily quiet.
She opened her eyes.
Uriel knelt before her, his hands pressed to the wall on either
side of her, trapping her there. The irises of his eyes were
burning red; she could actually see the movement of flames within
them. He bared his fangs and a deep, low, predatory rumble
surrounded them both like thunder.
Eleanore swallowed
hard, her heart rate kicking up a few hundred notches. What the hell is happening to him? Once more, her
life had been plunged into mad chaos. “Uriel,” she said softly,
trying desperately to find the strength to reason with him.
Self-preservation was kicking in. She could feel a little of her
power still there, but she’d used a lot healing her concussion.
Still, if she needed to, she could move a few objects—maybe aim for
his head. “Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered. “You
promised.”
She gazed up into
those eyes and felt lost. The world around them melted away into a
monochromatic background. He’s a
vampire. It was irrational and impossible, but there it was.
He had become the Jonathan Brakes of America’s imagination. He’d
become the vampire, the darkness, the hunger.
It suits him, Eleanore thought. It was one of those
crazy, senseless thoughts that raced unhindered through a person’s
mind when they teetered on the precipice of madness-inducing
fear.
He’s beautiful. He’s going to kill me, but he’s
gorgeous.
The corners of
Uriel’s mouth turned up then, offering the slightest, cruelest
smile.
“I can read your mind
now,” he told her, his voice deeper and more seductive than it had
been before. Can you hear me, my
love?
She was startled that
he could make his own thoughts heard in addition to being able to
read hers. His laughter echoed through her mind, low and rumbling
and erotic. And Uriel’s eyes sparked, his pupils suddenly expanding
to nearly engulf his red burning irises.
Eleanore wasted no
energy screaming. Instead, she focused as she never had before,
noticing several things in quick succession. The back of Uriel’s
leather jacket was smoking. There was a thin beam of light from the
slats in the garage windows trained on him from behind. There was a
motorcycle a few feet away from them both.
And then Eleanore
concentrated every ounce of remaining power she possessed and
willed the motorcycle behind Uriel to rise from its resting spot
and rush, full-speed, toward the darkly tinted garage windows. She
sent it flying as fast as she possibly could and hoped it would hit
the glass hard enough to shatter it.
It did.
The garage door shook
violently in its casings as the motorcycle slammed into the metal,
denting it beneath its chrome weight. The glass instantly exploded,
splintering into a million tiny fragments of crystal and flowering
outward in shimmering shards of destruction. The sound must have
given Uriel pause, for his smile was gone and his pupils instantly
shrank to normal size, revealing once more his red and burning
irises.
And then the light
streamed freely through the windows and Uriel was ducking, rolling,
rushing for cover behind the SUV he’d been crouched beneath moments
ago.
Eleanore squinted
against the sudden sunlight that flooded the garage, and then she
scanned her surroundings, searching for the other archangels.
Michael was pulling himself up from where he’d apparently been
thrown against a far wall. His chest was covered in
blood.
Eleanore’s gaze left
his form and traveled to Gabriel’s seemingly broken body where he
lay, facedown, a few yards from Michael. The back of his head was
bloodied; it matted his dark hair and stained his neck and right
arm. A familiar terror raced through her when she realized that she
hadn’t the strength remaining to bring a full-grown man back from
the brink of death. But when he, too, began to stir and push
himself up off of the ground, relief flooded her
system.
Max Gillihan was
nowhere to be found.
Eleanore looked down
at Uriel once more. He was safely sequestered in the shadows behind
the large vehicle and currently spearing her with hard, hungry
eyes.
She started beneath
that gaze; there was such determination behind it, it bordered on
hatred. But there was pain in those eyes as well. She would always
be able to recognize such a thing. And despite the obvious danger
he posed as he crouched there and branded her with that gaze, she
was hurting for him. By all logical reasoning, she barely knew him.
And yet—he was everything. She couldn’t stand to see him
suffer.
Uriel . . . she tried, thinking that she could more
effectively reach him through her thoughts. Uriel, I don’t know what’s happening to you, but we can
figure this out together. I want to help you.
The low growl was
back, deep and resonant as thunder.
Please trust me, Uriel. She began speaking rapidly
in her mind now, trying to distract him from his pain and hunger;
she could almost feel it herself, the way she always did with those
in pain. I know something strange is
happening—something unnatural. I know you’ve become a vampire. But
I trust you. She plunged on, hoping at least some of it was
getting through. We have to fix this; you owe
me a gala on Thursday.
“Eleanore, get away
from there,” Michael called to her, his voice much weaker than it
had been before. She glanced in his direction to find him doubled
over, his arm wrapped tightly around his bleeding midsection. He
hadn’t healed himself yet, and because she had grown up with the
same healing ability, she automatically assumed that it was because
he didn’t want to waste his power in case he needed it for
something worse later.
When she turned back
to Uriel, it was to find him with his head down; he was no longer
gazing at her. His eyes were closed, his hands curled into fists at
his temples.
Uriel? she whispered mentally.
It hurts . . . came the weak, raspy reply. Even in
her mind, he sounded agonized.
The sun? she ventured.
Everything. The sun, his empathic voice
continued, the hunger . .
.
“We need to get him
inside!” Eleanore turned to Michael, and then to Gabriel, who was
now standing on two unsteady legs, bracing himself against the far
wall. They both looked at her as if she were
certifiable.
“Please!” she called
to them. Her legs were shaking beneath her. She felt nearly as
tired now as she had after healing the little girl and her father
at the accident that morning.
Gabriel closed his
eyes and ran his hand over the back of his head. He flinched,
hissing through clenched teeth. Then he opened his eyes again, now
a glowing, molten platinum, and leveled them on Eleanore. They
startled her, forcing a step back.
“First, tell ’im to
put on the fucking bracelet!” Gabriel shouted harshly, coughing
after he did so. Blood appeared on his lips.
Eleanore frowned and
turned back to Uriel. The bracelet? she
asked him, forcing the mental thought into his head.
Smart . . . keep me from . . . using my powers,
came his agonized reply. Uriel lowered his hands, unclenched his
fists, and shoved his right hand into the front pocket of his
jeans. When it came back out again, his fingers clutched the thin
gold bracelet that he’d been wearing when he’d been in her
apartment. It shook in his trembling grasp and he flinched when it
reflected a stray beam of sunlight, as if to magnify its cruel
potency.
No way, Ellie thought. It was true? The story he’d
told her about the bracelet—it was all true? It was really magical?
If what he’d told her was true, it would bind all of his
supernatural abilities inside of his body. It would render him
powerless. She remembered how she’d been confused as to why an
angel would need its powers bound. He’d given her that enigmatic
smile and a shrug.
Now she knew. Angels
were not necessarily always angels.
She watched as he
lowered the bracelet to his left wrist and touched it to his flesh.
On contact, the gold wreath evaporated in another display of bright
light and then reappeared, seamlessly wrapped around his
arm.
And that answers the question of how he got it on,
she thought.
He dropped to his
hands and fell forward. At the same time, both Gabriel and Michael
erupted into motion, rushing forward to grasp their brother by the
arms, one on each side of him. Eleanore stepped back out of the way
as they lifted him from his kneeling position.
Instantly, a ray of
light struck his left hand and the left side of his neck and he
bellowed in pain. They dropped him as he ducked down, trying to
cover the redness that had appeared in a line across his neck and
the back of his hand.
“Here!” Max was back
and running from the entrance of the garage to where the three of
them crouched down behind the black SUV. He was carrying what
looked like a thick leather tarp. He didn’t hesitate in tossing the
black material over Uriel’s smoking form. Michael and Gabriel
instantly wrapped it around him tighter and then, with a nod to
each other, they once more attempted to draw him out of the
Bronco’s shadows and across the garage. This time, there was no
howl of agony and the team was able to move quickly.
Outside the broken
garage windows, the sky began to darken with storm clouds. No one
but Eleanore noticed. The weather had always reflected her
emotions. Now was no different. She was torn by both fear
of Uriel and fear for him and the sky was likewise torn between light
and building darkness.
As the two men
ushered their brother back into the mansion, Eleanore hung back.
She felt like a vessel composed of bewilderment and adrenaline.
Just when she had come to accept that Uriel was an archangel and
she was his archess—just when she thought she might actually be
okay with the fucked-up events of the last few days—he’d changed on
her.
He’d become something
else. She wasn’t sure what to do now. She wasn’t sure what to
think. She was numb—in shock. She was more than a little
confused.
Max turned as the
brothers went past and gently took Eleanore by the arm. “Are you
all right?” he asked, leading her to the door as well.
She nodded. Then
shook her head. “What happened to him?” she asked. Her voice was
higher pitched than normal.
Max’s brow furrowed
with concern. “I don’t know,” he told her. “Let’s get you
inside.”
She turned to go with
him, but then suddenly stopped short. “W-wait,” she said, shivering
violently. Shock was setting in. Max must have noticed it and
recognized it for what it was because he shrugged off his coat and
draped it over her shoulders.
“D-did he know
s-something like this was going to happen?” Her teeth were
chattering now, as if she’d just gotten out of a cold swimming
pool. “I mean . . . he h-had that bracelet on him, right?” Ellie
looked up at him. “He t-told me what it does. Why was he c-carrying
it if he didn’t kn-know this would h-happen?”
Max Gillihan visibly
paled. He blinked behind his glasses and looked away, taking a
slow, deep breath. “It’s complicated,” he told her. “Come inside,
Eleanore. You’re not doing so hot. I’ll make you some coffee or
tea.”
An idea came slamming
into her in that moment, broadsiding her as if she’d crossed the
street against traffic. “Oh my G-god. It was m-meant for me, wasn’t
it?” She knew it was true, even as she said it. Uriel hadn’t known
this was going to happen; he hadn’t known he would turn into a
vampire, for whatever bizarre reason. He’d been carrying the
bracelet to use it on her. Because she was an angel. An
archess.
Max closed his eyes
and put his hands on his hips, his lips in a thin, grim line. He
thought long and hard about his response before he replied. Then he
said, “Like I said, Ellie, it’s complicated.” He sighed defeatedly
and his shoulders dropped. “The bracelet was only a precaution. We
had no idea how you would react to learning what you are. Most
women these days would rage at the idea of having been created for
a man.”
He was trying to
reason with her, but she was only half hearing him now.
I’m not safe here, Ellie thought. It
was an irrational, shock-induced thought and it whiz-banged through
her mind like a pinball. First they’re angels
and so am I and now Uriel is a vampire and I know they were going
to use that damn bracelet on me. . . . She continued to
shiver, but her focus sharpened and her gaze narrowed. I can’t trust these men. I can’t trust
Uriel.
Max opened his eyes
and studied her expression. “There’s much to explain, Eleanore, and
I’m sorry that it’s all coming out like this. It couldn’t have gone
worse. But if you’ll give us a chance, we’ll make it right.” Max
turned and headed for the door of the garage. “Please come with me
and I’ll see that you get warmed up.”
He stopped in the
hall when he realized she wasn’t following him and turned to face
her. Eleanore swayed just a bit on her feet, but she managed to
meet his gaze. And then she called the lightning forth from the
skies.
She knew exactly when
to duck and cover her ears.
The white-hot
electricity snaked through the garage windows, not rising from the
ground as it was supposed to, but birthed from some unknown spot in
the sky and out of her single-minded will for it to exist. The path
of its heat seared the air behind Eleanore as she dove for the
ground, covering her head in desperation. The backs of her fingers
and knuckles singed as it passed through. Somewhere overhead, it
blasted through the wall and Eleanore knew that it had taken a
direct route through Max Gillihan on its way.
She didn’t bother to
roll over and look at him after the thunder had ceased booming.
Instead, she pushed herself to her hands and knees, shook her head
to clear it, and then shoved herself to her feet. Only then did she
bother to look.
Gillihan was lying on
his stomach, facedown, and there was a black scorch mark on the
back of his button-up shirt. Near his unmoving fingers lay a gold
bracelet. Eleanore instantly recognized it. It was another bracelet
exactly like the one Uriel had just used on himself.
Bastard, she thought. He was
going to use it on me. Smart man. It would have saved him a
lightning bolt.
With that thought,
she bent down, retrieved the bracelet, and pocketed the item. Then
she turned to hastily make her way across the garage toward the
window that the motorcycle had shattered. She used a nearby pickup
truck for leverage and grabbed hold of the windowpanes, hoisting
herself up. She sliced her palms as she did so, but she barely
noticed the pain. Once up, she planted her left boot firmly on the
windowpane and then vaulted herself over the ledge and out into the
yard beyond.
It was lucky that
she’d pulled this trick while still on the first floor. The grass
she landed on was thick and wet. The air was dense with moisture,
as if it had just seen the passing of a summer storm.
Eleanore straightened
slowly and looked around. The road in front of the mansion was
deserted and unpaved; the mud was fresh and deep; a storm had
definitely come through. Puddles of water littered the messy street
in depthless potholes.
She turned and
glanced up at the building she had just escaped and was shocked to
find herself staring at the door to an old, weathered barn. There
was no mansion in sight.
Eleanore gaped for a
few seconds, utterly befuddled. At last, she shook her head,
decided to chalk it up to yet another supernatural impossibility,
and turned back toward the dirt road.
The land across the
street was undeveloped and dense with scrub brush, Russian thistle,
and low-lying trees that were more thorn than leaf. Foliage was
like that in West Texas.
Eleanore wasted no
time in sprinting across the long, manicured lawn of the mansion .
. . or barn. The desert air was cold and damp in the post-rain
twilight and she was already beginning to feel its chill through
her clothes. Temperatures dropped drastically at night in Texas.
She needed to get into town, find a phone, and call someone for
help before she got hypothermia.
Too bad her car was
stuck in the garage in the mansion. Wherever the hell that
was.
She knew she needed
to act before the sun went down, because something told her that
when it did, Uriel the vampire would not be in pain any longer. And
she was willing to bet he would come after her. The look in his
eyes had more than assured her of that much.
“Holy fuck, what
happened to you?” Gabriel asked.
Max pushed off the
wall of the archway that led to Michael’s bedroom and removed his
hand from his mouth where he’d been holding a white handkerchief
against his lip. It was stained with blood. “I was struck by
lightning.”
Gabriel frowned and
then craned his neck to peer around Max’s still-smoking body.
“Where’s Granger?”
“She’s
escaped.”
Michael slowly stood
from where he had been seated beside Uriel’s semiconscious form.
The archangel-turned-vampire was spread-eagled and manacled, thick
chains trapping his arms and legs to the head- and footboards of a
metal-framed bed.
“What do you mean
she’s escaped?” Michael asked.
Max tossed the
handkerchief onto the bedside table and then froze when Uriel’s
eyes snapped open and his head turned toward him.
“You’re bleeding,”
Uriel said. His voice was not his own. It was still eerily deep and
held a strange echoing quality. His eyes also still burned a
bright, fiery red.
“Indeed,” Max said
softly. He watched his charge with a wariness that he was not in
the mood to exhibit at that moment. He was feeling rather sore and
burned out just then. Literally.
Pieces of his suit
shirt and trousers were missing in dark, smoking patches and his
hair was also rather darker than it should have been. If he’d been
human, he would have been dead, of course. As it was, however, his
recovery was taking a tad longer than he liked.
“Your girlfriend
zapped me with one billion volts of electricity. I’m afraid I bit
my tongue in the process.”
Uriel said nothing.
He simply continued to pierce Max with those burning eyes until Max
could take no more and turned away. He addressed Michael instead.
“She’s afraid of us now. She used the last of her power to hit me
with the lightning and then took the bracelet I had been about to
place on her. She ran out the broken window of the
garage.”
“She cut herself,”
Uriel said then, drawing everyone’s attention. The
angel-turned-vampire was staring up at the ceiling now. “You got
some of her blood on you when you were looking out the window, no
doubt.”
“It’s Sherlock
Holmes, the bloody undead,” Gabriel muttered, his eyes
wide.
He, Max, and Michael
exchanged glances, and then Max waved them toward the open door
that led to the hall beyond. They got the hint and followed him
out. Once outside, they closed the door behind them even though
each of them was well aware that if Uriel truly had become a
vampire, it would do little good.
“You were going to
bind her?” Michael asked, right off the bat.
“She knew about the
bracelet; I imagine Uriel blabbed. And she figured out that he was
carrying it to use on her. She was in shock and I didn’t trust her
to react rationally any longer. With good reason, apparently,” Max
explained.
Michael and Gabriel
said nothing.
Max changed the
subject. “I know what happened in the garage. The contract that
Uriel signed must have had some kind of stipulation within it—a
hidden clause, if you will—which prevented him from speaking about
Samael.”
“I’m sure he read it
before he signed,” said Michael.
“That’s why I
suggested it was hidden,” said
Max.
Michael ran a
frustrated hand through his hair and Gabriel swore under his
breath.
“Therefore, when he
began telling Eleanore the truth, he also began to change,” Max
explained.
“I’ll say this for
the bugger. ’s got a fucking good sense of humor.”
Max nodded and took a
deep breath. “What did Uriel do with the contract after he signed
it?” he asked Michael.
Michael shook his
head and shrugged. “He said that it disappeared.”
“I was afraid of
that. I’ll have to go and retrieve a copy. Luckily, I happen to
have such jurisdiction when dealing with Samael.” Max straightened
and added, “Until then, you two will need to watch over him
closely. Azrael had to go under again after wrenching us all into
action. When he awakens, have him take over for a bit. He’ll know
far better than you will how to deal with one of his own
kind.”
“I think it’s fairly
easy to tell that he’s hungry,” Gabriel suggested.
“Yes, and what do you
propose we do about it?” Max asked.
Gabriel shrugged and
shook his head. “I’m only saying.”
“We’ll figure it
out,” Michael said. “Now, what about Eleanore?”
“She took off
somewhere around the outskirts of the town she lives in, as far as
I could tell,” Max remarked. “The mansion repaired itself almost
immediately after her departure and it has shifted since then. It
must have known that she wanted to go home, so it took her there.”
He paused and considered his next words before he said, “I think
the best man for tracking her down would be Azrael. It’ll be night
soon. No one is better at finding prey in the dark than he
is.”
Michael and Gabriel
digested this in wary silence. It was a long while before Michael
sighed heavily and nodded. “Go get the contract, Max. Find out what
the hell is going on.”