A Matter of Time (The Angel Sight Series) (2 page)

I kept pace beside her for several more blocks, flirting with only my eyes and lips. The longer the exchange went on, the less bold she became, avoiding my advances. When I tried to hold her hand, she jerked away, shock widening her eyes. I could smell fear on her skin. My eyes flared black and I jerked her into a small side street.

She tried to scream. I slapped my hand over her mouth. With my influence graying my vision, I whispered
shizuka
, an order to calm her. She didn’t make another sound as I towed her toward the side street where the other Fallen and I had parted. It didn’t take long to find them. The draw one Fallen felt to his brothers demolished any distance standing in the way. Lucien had found us as well. He stood in the street, attracting the attention of pedestrians and angered motorists alike. Once in the alley beside my brothers, I slammed the woman’s back against the wall and coaxed her small mouth open. As the warmth and power began trickling in, the part of my brain I tried to turn off reminded me of a similar moment.

A young female, not much older than a girl, with long, dark hair, greenish-hazel eyes, and a few faint freckles looked up at me through the steam of a shower spray. Her clothes were soaked, making her gray pajamas practically see-through. But I didn’t look at what her body had to offer under those clothes; instead I was focused on her face and her words.

“I want you to. You need it to survive.” Her voice. Soft, like a whisper, but still forceful.

“I can get by without it,” I told her, brushing a wet lock of hair behind her ear.

“This isn’t up for discussion,” she argued, pulling me down by the back of my neck.

In that moment it took everything I had
not
to keep from feeding on her, but to keep from …
kissing
her. I turned my head away, shirking her surprisingly strong grip. “Not. Gonna. Happen.”

Well at least I sounded like me, because I sure wasn’t acting like me.

“Kade.”

When I looked back at her, my vision was gray. She didn’t flinch or so much as blink at my black eyes. Her fingers gripped my gray shirt. Thick drops of water rolled off my nose and chin and onto her. She tilted her head up to me, the long ends of her hair tacked to the concrete wall behind her.

I pushed off the wall, but the girl’s grip wouldn’t give. I closed my eyes, gripped my hair with a tight fist. “I can’t. Not to you.”

Her fingers brushed against my cheek. I flinched and shirked her touch, turning further away. The girl was tenacious, circling around to stand in front of me, her hands around my waist. The touch was light, yet fiercely intimate. The way my throat burned with thirst, but my pulse pounded like a nervous teenager, was enough to drive me off the edge.

“We have to stick together.” She pressed her body against me and wound her arms around me, pinning my arms to my sides. “Just promise me if you need it, you’ll come to me.”

I didn’t dare open my eyes, or touch her. I just waited for her to leave. Listened to her grab a towel and leave the room. The second the door clicked closed, I slammed my fists against the concrete wall. “Not even if it means my life, Ray.”

I swallowed my last gulp of the Japanese woman’s soul and returned to the present. The woman in my arms slumped to the floor, dead.

Rayna.
The reason I had kept myself in check for so long. The reason I had been trapped in Hell in the first place.

Laughter of the Fallen around me faded into nothing but the past as I looked down at the bodies piled at our feet.

Chapter Three

Rayna

I didn’t know how much more of this hell I could take. The blade slashed my arm for the fourth time in the same place, cutting almost to the bone. The scream exploding up my throat finally found a voice, one that ricocheted off the cavern-like walls of Lucien’s torture room.

“Come now, Rayna,” Lucifer’s only son cooed, wiping the flat side of the knife against my cheek, leaving a trail of my own blood, still hot from my body, in its wake. “Why not be reasonable today? All I’m asking is that you use the power I gave you. It’s not that hard. I’ve seen you do it before.”

Turning my face away from him, I pulled my chains taunt to help ease the painful transition of my muscles mending themselves, the fibers stretching to reconnect. The process had been slower lately, causing so much more pain than before.

I’d lasted so long already, years by my count. I wouldn’t give in now. Or ever. If I did, the next step would be him forcing me to kill angels with the blast of energy I’d shot out of my gray wings only once before. I licked my lips, wet with blood. I had been biting them to keep from screaming.

I drew my gaze up to meet his in the dim light. “Is that all you got?”

Lucien’s lips tightened. “I will bleed every last drop of my essence out of you. We’ll see how bold you are with only human resistances.”

Lucien replaced the knife on the rack hanging along the blood-spattered wall, which was lined with every hand-held weapon known to man, all of which had found their way under my skin at one time or another since I’d come to Hell.

“That really is too bad, pet. I didn’t want to have to do this, really I didn’t … ”

I choked back the wave of terror that rose up my throat. He only said things like that when he had something truly horrifying up his sleeve. Last time, he introduced a bed of nails and several sets of fifty-pound weights.

He pirouetted to the door—despite the cave-like ambiance of the room, Hell was mostly large, open spaces with high ceilings and the occasional dark corners designated for torturing—and turned the knob. I gripped tighter to the chains wrapped around my wrists and tried to school my face into a blank mask. A tall, wide-shouldered man lurched inside. The door closed behind him, and the telltale click of the lock sliding into place on the other side of the door weighed heavy on my shoulders.

The newcomer took one more step into the room. The flickering sconces along the walls didn’t throw out enough of their orange light for me to distinguish anything but the whites of his eyes and bared teeth. He was grinning. “It’s good to see you again, Rayna.”

My poorly gathered tough-detainee demeanor slid off me like the last drops of blood from my healed arm. That voice. Deep, dark, shadowed. It couldn’t be.

Lucien dragged his heavy chair into the center of the room. With its high back and luxurious red velvet cushion, it really was more of a throne. He didn’t take his seat like royalty though; he dropped into it from the side, kicking his legs over one arm. “She’s all yours,” he said. All he needed now was popcorn.

Heavy steps plodded into the room,
thunks
followed by the eerie rattle of a chain. I kept my eyes low, a risky move since I’d learned down here that it showed weakness. But better weakness than the fear.

“You aren’t glad to see me?”

More footsteps. Growing louder. Until only stained brown boots stood in my eye line. The leather he wore creaked as he leaned in close. Closer. Too close. I shut my eyes.

“Shocking,” he whispered in my ear, his breath blowing my hair back. The last time that voice had whispered in my ear we were on top of the Golden Gate Bridge.

He chuckled, and the chain dragging beside him clattered. In one swing his weapon crushed my shoulder. My bones shattered. The spikes on the ball and chain shredded my skin and bore into the muscle. White-hot pain exploded across my body. My breath wheezed out. He wrenched the cursed weapon from me, and then creaked and rattled away. The chain clanked against metal, probably him throwing it over the weapon rack.

I swore the shaky breath I took next would be my last sign of weakness. At least until this session was over.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” I said, opening my eyes. “Of course you’d still be down here. Where else would a Fallen failure with no wings go?”

The wingless Fallen’s back was to me. Lucien, in his throne, quirked a brow and swiveled his head around toward our visitor. The unmistakable sound of the broadsword leaving the rack rang out. My will sank. The Fallen came at me. With his hand on my uninjured shoulder for leverage, I looked into Azriel’s eyes as he ran the sword through my already crumpled shoulder.

The surging pain exploded out of me in the form of more pointless screams. He hiked the blade higher, using his weight to his advantage.

If Azriel was anything like Lucien—and I would bet my life on the answer to that being a resounding yes—then I was in for a long session.

I pinched my eyes closed and started to drift away the way Kade had taught me so many nights ago. Sometimes not having a memory to focus on before taking a mental vacation could be problematic, but not for me. Not when the old memory bubbling up took me to a time when I was curled up in bed with Kade.

His hand ghosted over my midsection. My blood boiled beneath his touch. His fingers brushed aside my gray cotton shirt—Hell’s uniform for prisoners in the ninth circle—exposing the skin of my stomach. He squeezed.

I bolted up in the bed. “Ow, what’s with the pinching?” I rubbed the reddened skin to the left of my navel.

He anchored his weight on his arm, sitting halfway up. Soft blue light bounced off the floor beneath the door to our Almost Cell. It illuminated the then three years’ worth of markings covering all four walls. Our archaic calendar. Kade’s silhouette looked the same as it always did, large and dark, with flat black wings, since nothing shimmered down here. “I told you this wouldn’t be easy, but it’s something you have to learn.”

This night, so very long ago, had marked the fiftieth day Lucien had taken Kade from our cage and returned him. I understood why he wanted me to learn how to take a mental vacation. He was worried whatever they were doing to him—he never spoke about it—they could soon do to me. He wanted me prepared.

“Sorry. You’re right.” I lowered myself back to the scratchy sheets on our small twin-sized bed and slapped his hand away when he pinched again.

“Focus.” His body was so close now; his heat molded his imprint on the lumpy mattress beside me. “You can do this. Whatever comes, you can take it.”

When he pinched again, I was in a hot air balloon in Albuquerque overlooking dozens of other balloons at the International Balloon Fiesta. I barely felt the pain as the balloon dipped and soared into the cloudless blue sky. My fear of heights didn’t matter in my imagination.

I was so focused on the sights breezing past my wicker basket that the next round of pinching and pulling didn’t bother me. Kade flung the covers over us, the sheet draping over my head. His breath blew hot on my ear. I incorporated a balmy wind into my journey. His lips pressed against the column of my neck. I held tighter to the basket, but the hot air balloon sank in the sky.

Against my wishes I felt every touch of his lips to my skin as they trailed down to my collarbone. I fisted the sheet in my right hand, opposite of the side where he laid. Another kiss and another, each bringing me farther and farther away from the sky to a new happy place. Something in him changed. Switched. His arms tightened around me and he nuzzled my neck. I didn’t think twice about breaking and returned fully to our cage, thinking back to the last time we were so close. So long ago. It must have been at least two years before.

Kade tugged the sheet further over us and moved up so we were nose to nose. His lips found mine with so much heat, so much need, I couldn’t help but lift my arms and wrap them around his neck, returning his need with my own. He deepened the kiss for one brief moment before he pulled back and said, “You broke. Try again.”

Instinctively I dropped my arms back to my sides, fighting myself not to overthink the exchange.

He was just finding the best way into my head. Lucien will do exactly the same. I have to be prepared.

Kade repositioned himself beside me again, close, but so much further away than he had been moments ago. His hot fingers trailed over my stomach again. I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate, but Kade’s hand touched so much more than my skin. Especially since he hadn’t let us get that close since our first kiss—one he probably thought I didn’t remember. He had soothed me with a kiss after Lucien had peeled the flesh from my legs to allow my human entrance into Hell.

Boldness guided my tongue as I parted my lips to beg him never to stop.

Before I could speak, he whispered, “I know.”

I stayed his hand by laying my own over it. “You don’t know. You have no idea.”

He molded his other hand around my waist, squeezing with barely contained strength. “I have every idea.” He escaped my hold and slid his hand up my stomach, mere inches below my breast. “I have so many ideas.”

My heart trailed up my throat so his fingers couldn’t feel the irrational thrumming it had picked up. His words sent chills and heat all over my body, causing my palms to sweat and goosebumps to coat my arms. With the boldness this place had shown me I possessed, I said, “Why don’t you show me?”

Kade distanced himself and threw off the sheet covering us, so I could just make out the lines of his face. “Don’t do that.” I leaned forward to sit up, but he placed the flat of his palm against my chest, just below the collarbone. “If you move again, I don’t know if I can control myself.” The truth to his statement was written in the tightness in his jaw, the flickers of muscles around his eyes, and the shallowness of his breaths. The unyielding blackness swallowing his eyes warned me it would be like this until we found a way out of Hell.

I swallowed and relaxed back into the bed, despite the ache growing in my stomach. I wanted so much more, but it wasn’t my place to push the issue if his control wavered again.

I opened my eyes, banishing the past and returning to the painful torture session in progress. I could drift away again soon, but if I didn’t at least pretend I was present, Lucien and Azriel would pick up on my meditation tactic and find a way to rid me of it.

Both bastards were still in their same locations, like I had been playing with life-size action figures and the life had crept out of them while I checked out. Only my wounded shoulder proved me wrong, bloodier and more thoroughly shattered than before. The pain from the healing was nothing I couldn’t handle. Not after what I’d already blocked out. Still, I grunted and wheezed. For show.