CHAPTER
ELEVEN
For the second time that night, Eleanore’s hopes rose
suddenly, spiking hard when she could make out the flat, shimmering
plane of paved tarmac up ahead through the trees. She drew nearer
and came to the wet, black asphalt to see that it bordered the
wrought-iron gates of a cemetery.
You’ve got to be kidding me. She almost laughed at
the Gothic irony of the situation. Running for
my life through a graveyard. Perfect.
The paved ground
simply served as a makeshift driveway. In both directions on either
side of the establishment, the woods—thinned out though they were
by a dawning winter—were endless and twisted. It would be an
arduous, if not impossible task to make her way through them. She
had no choice but to go through the graveyard.
She scanned the
burial ground, took in the crooked crosses and crumbling
headstones, and then slipped through a small opening in the gate
left by the rusted lock and chain.
There were no fresh
graves within the cemetery. It was old and worn and overgrown with
now-leafless vines. The stones were cracked; some simply acted as
beds for weeds and vines that had long since made their rooted
claim on the weathered names and dates. From the state of some of
the sun-bleached plastic flowers laid upon the stones and covered
with rain-splattered mud, Eleanore wondered whether the cemetery
had been forgotten altogether.
It filled her with a
deep sense of sadness to walk between the markers, viewing the
etched carvings one after another. The older they were and the more
worn the dates, the younger the dead. One pair of particularly
small and tilted stones bore the dates of children—a brother and
sister—who had died merely a year apart. When she studied the
dates, she realized the first had died while the mother was
pregnant with the other.
Eleanore could not
run through this hallowed ground. Time was pressing in on her, the
sun had already gone down, and the temperature had already dropped
dramatically.
But the souls that
had been left here beneath her feet pulled at her, clutched at her,
and forced her into a state of reverence and respect. The dates on
the stones begged to be read, the names noticed and whispered
aloud. The dead wanted to be recognized. Whether they’d been there
for one year or a hundred. By the time she reached the other side,
the etchings were no longer discernible and mist had fully
enshrouded the hallowed ground.
The night was
complete and upon her. Eleanore stood at the iron cemetery gate and
wrapped her hands around the rusted metal bars. She would have to
climb to get out on this side. She gave the gate a quick shake to
test for sturdiness, and it held. Then she took a deep breath and,
to gather her strength, she rested her forehead against the metal,
closing her eyes.
“They are speaking to
you.”
Eleanore jumped and
spun around to face the source of the deep, melodic voice. A tall
man stood there, five yards away, dressed in black from head to
toe. His long raven hair reminded Eleanore of her own; the color
blended seamlessly with the sable material of his jacket. His eyes,
however, were stark and gold as the sun. They nearly glowed in the
frame of his pale, handsome face.
At once, Eleanore was
petrified. She could not even ask him what he was talking about.
Her mouth was instantly dry. This was the stuff of nightmares. A
cemetery, a deserted road, a stranger who was undoubtedly ten times
stronger than she was. One who barely looked human.
“The dead,” he said,
with a slight nod to the nearest headstone. “The ones who stay
behind. They always speak, but mortals never hear them. You’re
different, though. They can sense that. It’s why you walk with
respect through these grounds, isn’t it?” He spoke softly, yet his
voice resonated with an easy charisma in the hollowness of the
night. And it sounded vaguely familiar....
He stepped toward her
then and shoved his hands into the pockets of his black jeans. It
was a casual gesture, done perhaps to put her at ease.
She tried to ask him
what he wanted. Her lips parted and her tongue moved, but no sound
whispered past her teeth. She was too frightened. The night had
held too many unsavory surprises. She’d most likely worn herself
out in her mad dash through the tangled woods.
Her back was pressed
against the cold metal of the gate; its rusted edges cut into the
damp material of her hooded sweatshirt. She wondered whether the
protein bar she’d eaten would provide enough energy to call another
bolt of lightning from the damp sky.
“I won’t harm you.”
He smiled a small smile and she could have sworn there was
something predatory about it. But it was dark and she couldn’t
quite tell. “I’m here on my brother’s behalf,” he
said.
What brother? she tried to ask him.
Finally, she was able
to make some sound. “Who—” Her voice broke, cracking in dryness.
She swallowed, half coughed, and tried again. “Who the hell are
you?” she finally croaked.
“I’m Azrael,” he told
her calmly and continued to draw closer. “Uriel is my brother.” His
long legs ate up the ground very quickly, despite his easy,
unhurried pace. And she could go nowhere.
She remembered them
mentioning Azrael. He was the brother who hadn’t been at the
mansion when she was there but who apparently had more power than
they did. Looking at him now, she could believe it.
“Which angel”—she
swallowed hard, nearly coughing again, her throat was so dry. She
fought past the uncomfortable tickle and finished—“are
you?”
At this, he stopped
in his tracks and something sparked in those unearthly amber eyes.
He glanced at the cemetery around him and then looked back at her.
He said nothing, but he didn’t have to. She knew.
“You’re the Angel of
Death.” She felt numb even saying it.
Azrael nodded slowly,
and Eleanore was once more struck with a familiarity. There was
something—rock star–like—about him. He
reminded her, in that moment, of Lestat.
Eleanore blinked.
Then her eyes grew wide. She put her fingers up, blocking out the
top half of his face. It was a dead match. “You’re the Masked One,”
she whispered.
He raised his head
again and his gaze sparkled. He smiled.
Eleanore didn’t know
what to make of this new development. It seemed everyone in Uriel’s
little “family” was famous. She was getting used to it, and a touch
jaded. But above all, she was still scared.
“Look, I need some
time to figure this out,” she told him, clearing her throat to go
on. “I don’t want to go anywhere with you right now, s-so don’t
even ask.” She glanced down at his booted feet, which took another
step toward her. “And you can stop coming closer, too,” she added.
“I don’t care how famous you are.” She shook her head. “I don’t
trust you.”
“Wise girl,” came
another voice.
Eleanore jumped a
little against the metal bars holding her in place and turned to
see Samuel Lambent calmly step out of the shadows of the more
tangled and forgotten area of the cemetery. He was dressed in a
suit tonight, one that was charcoal gray and perfectly tailored.
The vision of him was surreal in this haunted and ghostly
setting.
Azrael turned to look
as well, though he did not seem at all surprised. His expression
didn’t change. His gold eyes simply glittered in the misty
darkness.
“So many people have
run afoul after trusting that particular angel.” Samuel nodded
toward Azrael.
Eleanore’s brow
furrowed, her eyes wide. What the hell?
What was Lambent doing here? How did he know that Azrael was an
angel? What the bloody banks was going on?
She was beginning to
feel like she’d been caught by those men in the parking lot after
all and shot full of tranquilizers. This was some sort of
drug-induced dream. The cemetery, the fog, the Masked One—and
Sam.
Except that she was
in too much discomfort for this to be a dream. She was so cold. Her
legs hurt. Her lungs hurt. Her skin stung where branches and thorns
had torn through her clothes and sliced her open.
“It’s not a dream,
Eleanore,” Azrael told her gently.
Sam chuckled. His
white-blond hair brushed his shoulders. It looked fine as feathers
and starkly bright in the surrounding darkness. There was a light
behind his dark gray eyes now, adding to the surreal quality of his
appearance.
“S-Sam?” she
muttered, feeling stupid. Why couldn’t she talk right? Is this what
real terror did to a person? Exhaustion? Was she in
shock?
“I’m sorry, Ellie,”
he told her. “Things were not supposed to go this
far.”
“She isn’t yours,
Samael,” Azrael said then, his tone quiet but laced with undertones
of malice. “Why will you not accept this?”
Samael? thought Eleanore. Did
I hear that right?
“Not yet.” Sam
shrugged and smiled a broad smile. “And I stress yet.”
I have to get out of here, Eleanore thought then.
She could feel that something extremely bad was about to go down.
It was a vibration in the air around her, a buzzing sensation in
her blood.
“Can you feel them,
Azrael? Those whose ancestors you brought to this place know that
you walk among them. They are restless.” Samuel chuckled again,
clasping his hands easily behind his back as he slowly paced to a
place somewhere between Azrael and Eleanore. He glanced at her and
there was genuine amusement in his crackling silver
gaze.
“Enough,” Azrael
said. He spoke without anger and without any real force, but his
voice carried across the darkness with incredible beauty. He also
sounded weary. Genuinely weary. “Speak the truth, Samael. For once
in your ungodly existence.”
At this, Samuel
Lambent threw back his head and laughed heartily. The sound was as
deep and rumbling and beautiful as the voice of
Azrael.
Eleanore was simply
bewildered. She would have given almost anything at that moment to
be transported somewhere safe and bright and free of men
altogether.
Sam stopped laughing
and turned his piercing gaze on her. It took her breath away to be
suddenly under such a weight.
“Anything, Eleanore?”
Eleanore blinked.
He read my mind....
“Say nothing to him,
Ellie!” Azrael commanded from where he stood. His gold eyes were
now blazing bright as fire. They reminded Eleanore of Uriel’s
brilliant frozen gaze as he’d looked upon her in the garage only
hours ago. “Do not speak, and guard your thoughts well,” Azrael
told her. Something in his golden eyes held a very real
warning.
She looked from
Azrael to Samuel, and in her mind she replayed her meeting with the
wealthy media mogul. She thought of the motorcycle crash and his
injury that had been uncommonly difficult to mend. And now here he
was. In a cemetery on a dark night, when he shouldn’t have been
able to find her at all.
Eleanore suddenly
found herself doubting Samuel Lambent. Samael, she thought. Azrael had called him Samael.
Was he the same Samael Uriel told her about in the mansion? The one
who had caused her and the other archesses to be lost to the
archangels all of those years ago?
Sam cocked his head
to one side and studied her very carefully. He turned to face her
fully, spearing her with eyes that were abruptly and unexpectedly
unnerving.
“Who, then, shall you
be taking counsel from on this night, Eleanore?” he asked her
slowly, softly. There was danger in that gaze, but there was
something else as well. Pain? He smiled a small, self-deprecatory
smile. “Death or the ‘Devil’?”
That’s it, thought Eleanore. Her creep-out-o-meter
had just pretty much exploded.
The tombstones were
heavy enough to do damage to a human if slammed into one
telekinetically—but she was no longer so sure Samuel was human. And
she honestly didn’t feel that she’d yet regained the strength it
took to call lightning forth from the skies. Not that it would stop
either of the men with her.
As worthless as she
knew it would be, the only recourse left to her, despite
everything, was to run. She spun around and grasped hold of the
metal bars of the gate behind her, bringing her legs up with the
intent of vaulting over it.
But it was Samuel
Lambent’s tall, suit-clad form gazing steadily at her from the
other side that stopped her short. She hadn’t seen him move, of
course. And it should have been impossible for him to be standing
behind her at one moment—and then be standing thirty feet away,
outside of the cemetery the next.
“Running will do you
no good,” he said as he came toward the gate from the other side.
He said it matter-of-factly and looked down at the ground as he
walked. He was a gorgeous man in an expensive suit merely
contemplating a fact, nothing more.
Eleanore
instinctively let go of the rusted bars and stepped back from the
metal barrier that now seemed so utterly flimsy.
Sam paused where he
was and casually unbuttoned his suit coat. He shoved his hands into
his pant pockets. “Running will only weaken you, Ellie,” he said
with a shrug. Another few lazy steps forward and he sighed heavily,
nearly closing the distance between himself and the gate. When he
finally reached it, he looked up, caught her eyes with his, and
peered all the way into her soul.
In no more than a
whisper, he said, “I promise you that you will need all of your
strength once I get you alone.”
The air around
Eleanore shifted with an unnatural wind. It whipped at her hair and
blew debris into her eyes just as she was shoved roughly backward
and went flying across the cemetery to land on her back on a patch
of grass and mud several yards away.
Eleanore lay stunned
for a moment, listening to the shriek of bending, wrenching metal
and the violent crunch and splinter of wood. And then she rolled
over and pushed herself up onto her elbow, using her other hand to
shove her long black hair out of her face. But arms came around her
then, strong bands of steel that hauled her backward across the
ground and against an equally hard body.
Self-preservation
kicked in and Eleanore went into overdrive, fighting furiously in
her captor’s grip. But the fight did no good and it didn’t last
long before her captor was twisting her arm behind her, and she was
contemplating the lightning once more.
“Zap me and you’ll
get yourself, too. Be a good girl and hold still.”
She recognized that
voice. It was Jason something or other, Samuel Lambent’s personal
assistant.
Despite the
fight-or-flight reflex pouring adrenaline into Eleanore’s blood,
she was beginning to feel well and truly spent. Exhaustion was
creeping in around the edges when metal cuffs were snapped onto her
wrists and Jason’s arms came around her once more.
She couldn’t move.
There was nowhere for her to go. Jason held her tight as she peered
across the cemetery to where two men were fighting, their tall
forms locked in mortal combat. Each had a hand around the other’s
throat. The air was charged with lightning, and it wasn’t
Eleanore’s doing. There was also a deeper darkness to the night
around them. It was more cloying, colder and blacker. It seemed to
linger in patches and moved as the two struggling figures moved. It
followed them, welcoming its honored guests, laying out its shadows
for them to tread upon and draping them in its finest sable cloaks,
as was befitting their stations.
Across the graveyard,
Azrael threw Samuel against a crumbling crypt laced with dead ivy;
the impact cracked the mortar under Sam’s rock-hard body. But as
Samuel slowly straightened from the crumbling indentation behind
him, a moaning rose from the ground of the graveyard. It was a
whistling, screeching kind of moan that caused Eleanore to duck her
head and wish her hands were free to cover her ears.
The wailing, moaning
din grew in volume and Azrael looked around him at the gravestones
and matted, muddy earth.
Eleanore looked up to
see Jason smile a broad, white grin.
Samuel spoke, moving
away from the wall behind him and straightening his clothes as he
did. “Like I said, Azrael, they know you’re here. They know who you
are.” He looked down at the ground and the faint mist that was now
rising from each grave. He smiled. “And they’re not happy to see
you.”
The sound crescendoed
and the mists coalesced and darkened and floated toward the tall,
dark form of the one who had seen their father’s fathers to their
graves. It was like a dam of spirits had broken and the flood was
rushing toward the former Angel of Death.
Samuel turned to
Jason then and raised his hand. Before Eleanore knew it, Jason
raised his other hand toward his master and the world melted around
them.
“Why do you do this
to yourself, Sam?” She sounded like weariness itself, her tone so
soft, her voice so mournfully tender, that for just a moment,
Samael regretted having brought her to that stage. But the regret
was fleeting and flighty and left on the same fickle wings on which
it had flown in.
“It’s in my nature,
Lily.” He shrugged, gave her a sidelong glance, and then turned
back to finish preparing the drink he had been making for Eleanore
Granger—who waited with Jason in the sitting room next door. “It’s
who I am.”
“No, it
isn’t.”
At that, he smiled.
He spared her the mirthless chuckle, however, and simply shook his
head. “You’ll never give up, will you?”
“Nor will you,” she
retorted. She stood from where she’d been sitting on the couch
across from the bar at which he stood. “Such self-destructive
behavior.” She made her way to the bar beside him, and without
looking at him, she began to pour herself a drink. “Thousands of
years, and I am the only one to have glimpsed the side of you I’ve
seen,” she said softly. She glanced up at him over her shoulder,
and he met her dark gaze. “You torture yourself,” she told
him.
“Someone has to do
it.” His smile was self-deprecating and entirely charming. Then he
grew serious and his gaze narrowed. “How are you
feeling?’
For a moment, Lilith
appeared nervous under the weight of the question. Then she put
down her freshly poured drink without taking a sip. She
straightened her shirt and looked down at the marble counter of the
bar. “Better. I heal quickly.”
“Yes, I know,” Sam
said, cocking his head to one side and studying her more closely.
“I never would have sent you otherwise.”
She said nothing, and
avoided meeting his gaze.
“Gillihan insisted on
seeing you one last time before he left with the contract,” he told
her, watching her closely to see her response.
She blushed, if only
slightly, and looked up at him in surprise. It was answer enough
for him. His smile became one of dawning roguishness. “You’re in
love with the Guardian.”
“Enough,” she
insisted softly. “What is it exactly that Max will learn once he
studies the contract, Sam?” she asked, changing the subject. She
paused and sighed, turning the stem of the wineglass in her
fingers. “What have you done?”
Now Samael smirked,
turning away from the bar with two drinks in his hands.
“Stipulations, my dear. Details.” He shrugged as he made his way to
the door at the other side of the room. “Contracts are serious
business. Uriel knew that going into it.”
“You gave him little
choice.”
Samael stopped and
shot her a dark look over his broad shoulder. His tone was very low
when he replied, “There is always a choice, Lily.”
The sun was coming up
on Wednesday morning. He could sense it; there remained less than
an hour of night. Azrael had grown accustomed to its coming and
going and what it meant. But there was a vampire among them now who
had never before experienced a dawn through a vampire’s eyes. Az
could effortlessly read Uriel’s thoughts and emotions; it had been
easy when Uriel was only an archangel. It was even easier
now.
Uriel had always
regarded the day as any human would. It was simply the sun—it
existed and it did its thing and that was that. But now, as the new
vampire noticed its creeping rays slithering toward the horizon
like tentacles of an angry god, he was fully aware of it in a way
that no normal mortal could possibly comprehend. It was, in all of
its gigantic, gaseous glory, certain
death. And he felt as if it were coming for
him.
“I haven’t much
time,” Uriel said. His eyes were on the window and the thick
curtains that hung over it. They were black and velvet and behind
them were the protective wooden slats of venetian blinds. Beyond
the blinds and the window they covered was a courtyard underground.
This was Azrael’s wing of the mansion, as far from the reach of
daylight’s glowing orb as possible. And it wasn’t enough for Uriel.
He was still so new.
“I know,” Max said,
glancing up. “I’m working as fast as I can.” The guardian watched
his charge with a wary, careful gaze. Uriel had been warned by his
brothers and by Max, as well, not to attempt to go after Eleanore
on his own. He was not used to being a vampire and couldn’t be
trusted not to lose control and hurt her.
Azrael could feel the
wrath that surrounded the former Angel of Vengeance like an
invisible, pulsing shroud. What they suggested may have made loads
of sense, but it was clearly driving Uriel mad.
Max returned his
attention to the task before him. In front of him rested a thick
slab composed of some combination of marble and limestone. It
resembled an altar, minus the candle wax drippings. On top of it
rested, un-scrolled, the contract that Uriel and Samael had both
signed.
On the other side of
the altar, Gabriel and Michael watched Max closely, their handsome
visages shadow-crossed, their jaws tight, their voices
silenced.
Across the room,
hidden in the shadows and leaning against a carved stone wall,
Azrael waited. He was still weak. Samael’s spell had taken him by
surprise and drained much of the strength out of him. The Fallen
One had called up the spirits of the dead that had not yet moved
on—and they’d gone after Azrael. Their bitter essences had speared
through him and about him, angrily devouring the life force from
him they so desperately yearned for. Az didn’t have a lot of life
force in him to begin with. He was a vampire. The spell had left
him weak beyond measure. And it had allowed Samael to escape with
the archess.
But Az had since
fed—twice—and now the darkness licked his wounds. He watched in
silence and knew what they were all thinking. He carefully gauged
Uriel’s every heartbeat, his every tightened fist, and every
impatient flexing of muscle within his tall, toned
body.
He was paler now,
Azrael noted. Uriel now resembled his infamous portrayal of
Jonathan Brakes much more closely than he did the alias Christopher
Daniels. Az had to smile at that.
“There.” Max’s
shoulders slumped, just a little, signaling that he was finally
relaxing in his effort to cast the spell that would disentangle the
knotted web of lies Samael had cleverly forced upon Uriel. He waved
his hand over the contract.
The black ink on the
document began to rise into the air above the altar, its inkiness
unwrapping from the paragraphs on the page. It hovered above the
stone slab and, as the archangels and their guardian looked on,
every letter of every word revealed itself to be composed of not a
single stroke of a pen, but of many. Each letter was composed of
several other letters—several other words—so that hidden within the
very language of the contract was another contract. And another.
Promise upon promise, layered so deceptively they would never have
been seen with an unaided eye.
“I suggest you read
it carefully,” Uriel muttered.
Max blinked and
turned to him, his eyes wide.
Uriel glanced at him.
“That’s what he told me.” His green eyes glittered darkly. “Before
I signed.”
“Yes, well . . .” Max
turned back to the hovering phrases, and shook his head. “Samael is
very good at what he does.”
“So what now?”
Michael asked, his blue eyes on the tiny print that continued to
unravel from the blood-signed document.
“Now I read it
carefully.” Max smiled wryly. “It’ll take me some time.” He turned
to Uriel. “In the meantime, you sleep. Samael won’t hurt Eleanore.
We’ve proof more or less to that extent right here before us.” He
waved dismissively at the unwrapping contract. “God only knows what
the man is really after, but he appears to want her heart, not her
body.”
“You mean not
only her body,” Gabriel
corrected.
Uriel’s eyes sparked
dangerously and began to glow. A very low, ominously deep growl
rumbled through the stone chamber and caused the flames on the
sconces to flicker unsteadily.
Gabriel’s silvery
gaze moved from his brother’s burning jade-green orbs to the fangs
that were so pronounced in Uriel’s warning snarl. “Right,” he
muttered softly. “Sorry.”
Max broke the tension
then, as he was so accustomed to doing. He stepped back from the
altar and turned to the shadows from where he knew Azrael looked
silently on. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
Azrael could see
himself through his guardian’s eyes. Gold eyes reflected in the
darkness and there was a stillness in the shadows around him,
predatory and dangerous. “Better,” he said softly.
“Good,” Max said,
nodding.
I will have to force him to sleep, Az told Max
then, using his telepathic abilities. He was referring to Uriel.
He’s set on going after her right
away.
At that, Uriel cocked
his head to one side and offered Azrael a somewhat cruel smile. He
may not have had the use of his vampire telepathy because of the
bracelet he wore, but it was as if Uriel had read Az’s thoughts
anyway.
Azrael stepped out of
the shadows, studying his brother carefully.
Samael knew Uriel too
well. There was more of Jonathan Brakes in him than anyone had
thought.