Death's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels (23 page)

Sophie’s eyes widened.

And then Gregori was swiping his hand across the girl’s throat. Something metal in his grip glistened in the dawning sunlight just before the blade sliced clean through the girl’s neck, opening her artery to the world.

“Noooo!” Sophie’s cry of shock and alarm ripped from her lungs. For the most horrid moment, she was frozen in time and space, unable to move, as if held there in place by the greedy, envious hands of the long-since dead. But the moment passed and Sophie found herself rushing forward.

The girl’s eyes were golf-ball wide, her sweatshirt quickly turning red with the drenching of her blood. Sophie wrapped her hands around the teenager’s neck, her fingers fumbling for something to close. But it was like trying to grip the fins of a fish; her flesh was wet and open and Sophie’s hands slid along the surface, dipping ineffectually into the gap of death Gregori’s blade had carved.

“No! God, please, no!” Sophie cried. Somehow, the girl’s ropes had come undone and she now slid to the ground. Sophie followed her down, her arms trying to catch her limp body and seal her wound at the same time. It seemed the world had shrunk to only the victim and Sophie.

The girl’s eyes were rolling back in her head. “No, no, no, no, no.” Sophie had no idea what she was saying any longer.

You can heal her, Sophie. You can fix this. If you try.

And then Sophie’s hands were moving from the girl’s throat to her red-soaked chest. There was no thought, no premeditation. Her head was filled with the roaring of her own blood through her ears; the universe had receded. She simply saw the wound, felt the impending death, and knew she didn’t want it to happen.

Fix it.

Whether or not the thought was her own she would never know. She closed her eyes when her hands began to heat up. The warmth spread from her palms to her fingertips and intensified, instantly drying the soaked material beneath her touch. It moved up her wrists and into her arms, chasing away the chill of the Rock’s whipping winds like a friendly flame.

As it spread across her chest, Sophie let her head fall back. She felt weak and a little dizzy . . . but she also felt warm and tingly and the terrible, gripping fear that had possessed her moments before was now gone. There was no sound or outward indication that the task had been completed, but Sophie knew it was all right when she slowly removed her hands, lowered her head, and opened her eyes.

The girl was still gagged. But her eyes were not quite as wide, and her breathing had gone from desperate, ragged breaths through cloth to a more even, relaxed rhythm. Sophie looked from her face to her neck. The clean-sliced gash that had been there seconds earlier was gone; the girl’s throat was whole, the skin healed.

“Imagine what you could have accomplished on that bridge,” said Gregori. His voice poured over her from behind, deep and melodic. Sophie closed her eyes, picturing the accident, the semi truck dipping through the sky, the
Calliope
shattered. “Or what you might have done when any one of your foster fathers got out of hand.”

Sophie’s eyes shot open, her stomach gripped with the instant memories and the loathing that came with them. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. She didn’t understand what she was doing there on that rock in the early-morning hours. She didn’t understand why Azrael, the Masked One, the former Angel of Death, was in her life. She didn’t understand why she was an archess, why she had these powers, or why they had arrived only now . . . when it was too late for so very much.

A part of her didn’t understand the world and couldn’t comprehend what it had become with all of its supernatural beings and magic and fated romances. That part of her mourned the loss of her best friend to an archangel and the loss of her own freedom to the same destiny.

There was another part of her that seemed to sit back, take a deep breath, and rest easy under the knowledge. It was as if she had been waiting all her life for this secret to be told, for this reality to finally make its appearance. That part of her was okay. But it was far too small for her liking.

“Of course you don’t understand,” said Gregori. “Why would you? It isn’t important to the powers that be that you understand why this has been done to you. The one who created you doesn’t care if you’re confused, or that you suffered.”

Sophie turned and looked up at Gregori. His dark stars beckoned, his ice-blue eyes mesmerizing. He shook his head, just once, and knelt gracefully beside her. Sophie experienced the briefest fear that he would dirty his beautiful white suit. But then his cologne was wafting over her and his body was inches from her own, and all she could do was gaze up at him, her lips parted, her entire being in awe.

He’d almost killed this innocent young girl, and yet she couldn’t hate him. She feared him and respected him. But the anger sat in the back of her mind and refused to stand.

“This is what I have come to give you, Sophie. I’ve come to give you the choice that your maker took from you two thousand years ago.” He smiled a charming, friendly smile, as if they were about to share an inside joke, and it took Sophie’s breath away. And then he raised his hand and Sophie saw that between his fingers he held a single flower.

It was a dandelion. It was the lowliest of blooms, a weed, a bane to gardeners and groundskeepers across the globe. But it was perfect, every petal smooth and long and rounded.

It was also black.

Chapter Twenty-four

“Y
ou have to rest. We’ll go after her.”

Azrael’s skin hurt. His head hurt, his heart hurt, his very blood hurt. The sun had come up and he wasn’t belowground, sleeping. Each passing millisecond drained him more completely, more painfully than any mortal could have imagined.

“Just tell us where she is.” Michael’s sapphire eyes glittered with knowledge. He was well aware of where Azrael had been. He knew whom Az had gone to for help.

The Warrior Archangel still looked very tired; the bridge and Uro had taken their toll on him. But he’d had an hour or two to rest and eat and drink and Max had no doubt seen to it that he’d had the very best of all three. His quick police-officer mind may have been able to guess where Azrael had been during that time, but Michael had no idea what it was that Sam had asked of him.

Now Michael stood at the exit of the foyer, his arms at his sides, his gaze one that would brook no nonsense. He was in archangel mode, giving Azrael an order. And he wasn’t alone.

Uriel and Gabriel stood at either side of him and back several paces. Uriel’s eyes cut hard emeralds across the space between them. Gabriel’s flashed cold metal. None of them were in the mood to barter.

“We know he told you where she is, Az,” Gabriel said, his brogue deep now that he’d been back in Scotland for a while and he was feeling emotional.” An’ we also know you’re plannin’ to go after her yerself. An’ we’re tellin’ you it won’t happen.”

Azrael’s brain was beginning to boil. Gabriel was right. In his fury, he’d been planning on going to Alcatraz himself to face off against the Adarians. He would have taken the shadows, hoping for a path that would lead him past the sun, the water, and deep into the cold metal corridors of the infamous jail. But even as he’d planned it, he’d known it would either kill him or come very close.

Even without exposure to direct sunlight, any vampire awake during the day suffered the consequences, including him. It was not their territory, not their world. They were unwelcome blots of darkness on the sunburns and freckles and sunglasses glare that existed between dawn and dusk.

“Alcatraz,” he said softly. Traces of pain edged his perfect voice, tilting it ever so slightly. “Take the archesses. Take everything you have. The Adarians are not playing alone.”

Michael moved then, grabbing Azrael under the arm just as Az realized he was swaying. Gabriel took his other side and Uriel turned to face Max, who was watching his charge through calculating brown eyes.

“Azrael, you have to stay awake for another five to fill us in. Can you manage that?” Max asked. His tone was angry but calm, like that of a parent who was more than a little disappointed in his child.

Az nodded, not bothering to waste his breath.

“Get him below,” Max ordered.

Michael and Gabriel moved fast, ushering him through the house and down the corridor that led to his chambers under the strange, magical foundation of the mansion. Once they were sequestered three stories down and the only light touching any of them was shed by the torches that spontaneously sprang to life along the walls, Michael and Gabriel helped Az to the altar upon which he slept. There they released him.

Az pulled himself up on top of it and wasted no time lying down. He even closed his eyes. And then he said, “Abraxos somehow turned at least three other Adarians into vampires,” he said, beginning to fill them in on everything he knew. “And they’ve developed new powers.”

* * *

Sophie looked at the dandelion, fascinated by its intricate black petals that shimmered like a raven’s wings. Without thinking, she raised her hand, her finger poised to take the flower from him. She had to stop herself before she actually did so.

What was he offering?

“What is it?” she asked.

“A gift,” he said. “A reminder.” He smiled. “A way out.” He raised his other hand, took her fingers in his, and placed the flower in them. Again, the odd buzzing sensation passed through her skin and up her arms, both intriguing—and almost hurting—her.

As soon as she held the flower, he released her hand. She looked down at the black dandelion and felt as though she was holding something truly precious. Something unique. “It’s beautiful.”

“Freedom always is.” Gregori stood then, and Sophie watched him come gracefully to his full height. The imposing cut of his figure and the coldness in his eyes reminded her.

She turned to look down at the teenage girl whose life he had nearly taken, the one she had just saved.

The girl was gone.

“She was a lesson, Sophie,” Gregori told her quietly. Sternly.

Sophie turned back to face him and came to her feet, her fingers still clutching the black flower.

“Some lessons are harder than others.” With that, he took a step back and Sophie felt the world tilt beneath her. She moved, trying to catch herself. There was a blurred flash, a warping of the air around her, and she stumbled to the ground, pulling the bedspread off her bed as she fell.

The hardwood beneath her knees pressed into her kneecaps. Her gaze took in a knot in the wood, the gaps in the slats, a dust bunny she’d missed the last time she’d swept. She blinked, sitting up and looking around. She was in the bedroom of her apartment on Hemlock.

Sophie swallowed hard and closed her eyes, wondering if everything she’d gone through over the last twelve hours had been no more than an elaborate psychotic dream. Maybe she was under too much stress. Starting school at her age, with classmates who were much younger, wasn’t going to be easy. Maybe she’d forgotten how to study and would flunk out and lose her scholarship. Maybe being back in San Francisco, her mother’s favorite city, was too hard on her. Or maybe it was Juliette and her band of angels who were screwing with Sophie’s head. It all seemed a mishmash inside her, fooling her subconscious into reveries of spectacular proportions.

She’d always had a wonderful imagination. Maybe it
was
a dream.

A knot of foreboding pulled her stomach muscles taut and she gritted her teeth as images of guns and foster fathers and graveyards skated through her mind. But how
much
of it was a dream?

Not that
, she thought. In her heart of hearts, she knew that much had been real. She knew she’d been attacked by her foster father at the age of fourteen. She knew that he’d taken her to the ground in the middle of the cemetery where her parents were buried. And she knew that rather than allow him to rape and murder her on her mother’s grave, she had had taken his gun from him and shot him.

With an odd, choked sound, Sophie opened her eyes and looked down at the cuff of her sleeve. It was stained red with the blood of the girl she’d just saved.

None of this was a dream. All of it had been real.

With a start, Sophie realized that some of the blood staining the cuff was actually her own. It streamed in two thin rivulets down the meat of her palm to the wrist of her sleeve. Sophie blinked and uncurled her clenched fist. She’d been squeezing so tightly, her short nails had carved scarlet moons into her lifeline. She fully expected the dandelion she’d been holding to be squashed and lifeless now.

However, the dandelion was gone.

Lying within the rising crescents of blood on her palm was an artfully painted tattoo. At first glance, it looked like the black dandelion with a host of perfect petals. But as Sophie opened her palm and looked more closely, she realized she’d seen this shape before. It was a many-pointed star, as black and bottomless as Gregori’s fathomless pupils.

* * *

There was no telling where the mansion would leave them in the labyrinth that was Alcatraz the prison. The best they could do was hope to open a door that didn’t lead them directly into an ambush.

The portal swirled to life before them, waiting for them to step through. Michael turned back to glance over his shoulder at his brothers and their wives. Eleanore’s deep indigo eyes had never been more serious. She was dressed as usual, which meant she was ready for battle in jeans, a black sweatshirt, and combat boots. Uriel’s left hand was wrapped around her waist. In his right fist was a gun with gold bullets. None of them knew how much of an effect the gold was going to have on the Adarians now that they were becoming vampires. But the archangels were going to try every tactic they could think of.

Gabriel and Max both had black bags slung over their shoulders; the bags contained everything from gold grenades to cartridges with more gold bullets. Michael turned to Juliette, who met his gaze unflinchingly. The green in her hazel eyes was more pronounced when she was angry, and right now they were more green than he’d ever seen them. There was also a darkness beneath them that hadn’t been there before. In the beautiful frame of her lovely face, it made her look like a Luis Royo painting: angry and frightened, but tough as nails.

Sophie Bryce was Juliette’s best friend. Michael’s gut clenched at the thought. Juliette stood to lose too much here. Azrael stood to lose everything. This was a waking hell.

He turned back to face the portal and stepped through. At once, he was enveloped by the twisted light that manipulated space and time. He was used to it, so he knew to adjust his step as he moved through the magic and exited into the cold and damp of Alcatraz’s inner sanctums.

Michael stepped to the side to make room for the others even as he took a moment to look around. One of the few vampires Azrael had created that Michael really got along with had actually put a few men on the Rock himself. Randall McFarlan had traversed the passageways of Alcatraz many times. It was one of the things he and Michael spoke about on the very rare occasions when they both possessed the leisure time and proper mind-set for casual conversation about law enforcement. Cop talk. San Francisco’s cop talk somehow always found its way back to the Rock.

Now the dawn light cast dusty beams through the filthy windows of the large open chamber in which Michael stood. A chain-link fence painted a dull beige caged the room in on two sides. Up against the other two walls were the remains of wooden bookshelves. This was the Alcatraz library. If the bookshelves hadn’t made it obvious, the signage would have. A poster-sized photograph on one of the chain-link walls showed what the room had looked like fifty years ago, complete with the portable bookshelves that had once filled its now empty space. And on the support beam at the center of the room hung a single yellow sign that read
LIBRARY
.

At this time of morning, before the arrival of the first tourism ferries, the silence in the prison seemed amplified by the sounds of sea life beyond its walls. There were no footsteps and no voices, but the halls were nonetheless filled with echoes of the past.

There were three exits from the library. But only one of these had a trail of stark red blood.

That blood stained the floor in splotches and left grisly designs along the walls and gate, reminding Michael of the scene in the missing girl’s bedroom. A hard, cold chill began to settle deep inside the Warrior Archangel.

Once Michael’s brothers, the archesses, and Max came through the portal and it closed behind them, Michael made his way toward the winding chain-link fence that would take him out of the library and into what was once the D Block of the prison. This was where Alcatraz’s more infamous and violent prisoners had spent their hard time. As he moved down the corridor, the blood became more plentiful.

“Oh my God,” whispered Eleanore.

“This bodes ill,” Gabriel muttered. Michael glanced at him to see that the former Messenger Angel had pulled out his own firearm and his body language was rather more protective of the archess beside him than it had been moments ago.

Michael turned back to face the row of open cells to his right. There were two kinds of rooms on D Block. Those to his right were isolation rooms.

These doors were never closed any longer, not unless a tour guide was jokingly locking some tourist in just for the fun of it. These were the roomiest, most state-of-the-art cells in Alcatraz and always had been. They were also the most miserable.

Though their occupants would have had twice the space they would have had in A, B, or C Block, the rooms were so cold and damp that life within their walls had been unbearable. The wind whipped through the windows and across the cells with a moaning, whistling vengeance, tearing through the inmates’ thin clothing and chilling them to the bone. It was never quiet here, not even on the calmest of days. The wind always sang its eerie song.

To make matters worse, though regulations stated that the lights were to be kept on, they often weren’t. The prisoners were left in the dark for endless hours. Day upon day, night upon night. Alone.

Michael stopped at the entrance to the final isolation cell on the right. At one time, it had housed a single unlucky soul. Now it housed three.

“Jesus,” Uriel muttered.

“What happened to them?” Juliette asked, her voice a monotone. Michael glanced at her, noting her pale complexion and widened eyes. She was staring fixedly at the mess that waited beyond the large metal door and sliding metal bars of room number nine.

Three Adarians lay dead on the damp, bloodstained floor. Their bodies were mangled, their clothes drenched with red. So much blood had been spilled, it pooled beneath them and dripped through the drain at the center of the room. Michael could hear it hitting the sewage pipes in the corridors below them.
Drip. Drip. Drip
.

Michael recognized the men inside, though barely. Having gone up against the Adarians a number of times before, the archangels were now familiar with each one and his abilities. One of the dead had been capable of creating ice. Michael was fairly certain he’d also been able to fly. Another had possessed odd abilities such as creating magnetic force fields and the like. Azrael seemed to think that it was this same Adarian’s ability to find people that had helped Abraxos locate Sophie. Michael believed the third one went by the name Astaeroth and had been the most powerful of the three, capable of creating and using fire against his enemies. Azrael had feared this Adarian a little more than the others. But he wouldn’t be fearing him now.