Rebel (6 page)

I hurried along the hallways, keeping an eye out for Cain. The last thing I wanted was to march in at the same moment he did, like a bonded couple. With any luck he’d forget how to get there and spend dinner wandering the labyrinthine passageways. Not charitable of me, but I was desperate for any kind of reprieve from his mercurial presence. It disturbed me in ways I couldn’t begin to fathom.

People were already seating themselves when I skidded into the assembly hall. This had been Allie’s idea, that the Fallen and their mates should share a daily meal. It fostered their skills when working together, fighting together, and only those newly bonded were excused. I dashed to my seat beside Tory, keeping my head down.

It was then I noticed how damnably low-cut my dress was, even if the scarring was hidden, and I moaned in despair. I couldn’t very well drape a napkin over my front, much as I wanted to.

“What’s wrong?” Tory whispered.

“I left the room in my underwear,” I muttered.

“I can fix that,” she said cheerfully, pulling the shawl from around her own shoulders and draping it over me. It was soft wool, fine as silk, and I covered myself gratefully.

“Now, that’s a crying shame,” came
an all-too-familiar voice on my left, and I turned to watch Cain slip into the seat that had once been Asbel’s.

Before I realized what I was doing I groaned out loud, then at least had the presence of mind to keep from clapping my hands over my traitorous mouth. Averting my gaze didn’t help—I could feel him, the heat of his body; I could smell him, the scent of leather and sea air and indefinable male like no other. “Are you feeling sick, Miss Mary?” he inquired solicitously. “I heard you groan—are you in need of a healer?”

I had no choice but to look up at him, and I wanted to bang my forehead on the table in front of me in frustration. I met his strange silver-gray gaze, keeping my emotions hidden.

“I’m perfectly fine,” I said politely. “Thanks for asking.”

His mobile mouth curved in a smile.
“De nada,”
he murmured. “Though I take it you have a chill.”

“A chill?” I echoed, momentarily confused.

He nodded toward my shoulders draped in Tory’s shawl. “You’re swathed like a mummy. Maybe I should see about getting the heat turned up in our rooms.”

I managed to hide my reaction to that one. He made it sound like we were sharing a room, and for some reason I felt my body warm. Presumably in embarrassment. “The heat in my separate room will
be just fine for me,” I said. Bad phrasing, but it was too late.

I should have known he wouldn’t let it slide. “The heat in your
separate room
?” he echoed, amused. “Did you think we were going to share?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped, turning my back on him, by now thoroughly irritated, still gripping the shawl around me. It was too hot, but I was damned if I was going to let go.

Tory was watching all this with great interest in her green eyes. She was the newest addition to Sheol, not counting the albatross on my left, and after a rough beginning we had become good friends. It had been my stupid vision that had thrown her entire life into upheaval, and the half-assed nature of my prophecy hadn’t helped, but Tory wasn’t one to blame me for something that was out of my control. Besides, she’d managed to pluck a ridiculously happy ending out of death and disaster, and her happiness washed over everyone.

“Interesting,” she murmured in an undertone as the conversation around the table rose and Cain forgot about taunting me, caught up in a conversation with Tamlel. “I’ve never seen you so rattled.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” I said, equally quiet. “He’s trying to get my goat and I don’t know why.”

Her grin was sly. “I don’t think it’s your goat he’s interested in.”

I felt color suffuse my face. “Don’t be ridiculous. He strikes me as the sort who wants to cause trouble wherever he can, and he sees me as a likely victim. With luck he’ll find someone else to torment. That, or he’ll go away. Soon.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think he’s an interesting addition. He’ll shake things up a bit.”

“I don’t like things shaken up. I like stability.”

“I know you do, sweetness,” Tory said soothingly. “But we’re at war. That’s hardly stable.”

“All the more reason for the Fallen to remain constant. Having an outsider come in and disturb everyone—”

“Who’s disturbing everyone?” A silken voice was at my ear, and I could have kicked myself. I angled my body just slightly toward him, giving him as little of my attention as possible.

“We were having a private discussion,” I said in what I hoped was a suitably chilling voice.

“Then you shouldn’t be having it at the dinner table.” He was too close to me. The tables in the assembly hall were massive—there was plenty of room for all of us. Tory wasn’t practically in my lap, and when Tam had been on my left side, he hadn’t pushed his energy all over me like a blanket of nettles. Not like this man.

“Point taken,” I said, turning back to the watchful Tory. He’d chosen that moment to move as well,
and my shoulder brushed against him. It was as if I’d been hit by the mother of all static-electric shocks—I jumped back with a muffled curse, almost landing on Tory.

He’d done it on purpose, I knew it, and I was about to give in to temptation and snap at him when I saw his eyes. He was looking as startled as I felt. A moment later that expression was gone, and he was smiling down at me. “You’re a dangerous woman, Martha.”

Enough was enough. I needed time to compose myself. This man had disrupted my life in a few short hours, with nothing more than a wicked smile and an accidental touch, and I needed to put it in perspective.

I started to push back from the table, searching for an excuse to leave, when Tory put a restraining hand on my arm. The shake of her head was almost imperceptible, and as she leaned forward to help herself to the mounds of buttery mashed potatoes in front of us, she whispered, “Don’t let him get away with it. You’re tougher than that. Grow a pair.”

I froze. She was right—I was being a coward. Then again, I had no delusions that I was a warrior like most of the Fallen and their mates. I had been trained to fight—everyone in Sheol had—but I’d spent the first battle with Uriel’s armies in the infirmary, tending to the wounded. I had already barely
survived one horrific skirmish with the Nephilim, and even if my wounds were now scars, the ones inside had never quite healed. I could fight if I had to. But I would rather run and cower, much as it shamed me.

Cain couldn’t hurt me, I reminded myself. He was an arrogant little boy tugging on my braids to make me react, wanting to cause mischief wherever he could. I had no idea why—maybe it was simply his nature, which would explain why Raziel and Azazel had welcomed his reappearance with a singular lack of enthusiasm.

“You’re right,” I said to Tory. “Pass me the potatoes.” There was nothing like buttery carbs to make a girl feel better.

Somehow I made it through dinner, with Tory’s help and plenty of comfort food. Cain must have decided he’d had enough fun tormenting me; for the rest of the meal, his attention was elsewhere. I held myself stiffly, making certain I didn’t accidentally brush against him, but he was turned partly away, talking with Tam, and instinctively I knew I was safe. For now.

W
HAT THE HELL
had happened? If there’d been a carpet beneath the banquet tables, Cain would have thought she’d been rubbing her shoes against it simply to give him the mother of all shocks. But they
were by the ocean, the air was moist and light, and static electricity was unlikely.

His plan had been simple—start to move in on her. All that had gone sideways with a spark that zapped him so hard he’d almost cursed out loud. He had no idea how she’d done it or why, but he’d be a fool if he didn’t respect her power. She’d wanted to keep him away, and she didn’t mind using magic to do so.

It surprised him. Magic existed in this world as well as the ordinary one, but most people avoided any outward use of it. Of course, he’d used it to herald his arrival, and she was probably fighting back on his terms. He was impressed.

Impressed enough to change tacks. Advance and retreat was the best way to stalk a victim, which was how he saw her. He was a predator, and he had decided she was just what he needed, particularly after checking out the other choices during the endless dinner. He would have her, but right now she was too wary, just about ready to jump out of her skin.

He would give her a little time to lull her fears. And then, when she least expected it, he would pounce.

But first he had to figure out how the hell she’d done that.

R
AZIEL SLID INTO BED BESIDE HIS
wife, pulling her into his arms and absently stroking her rounded belly. The babe inside leapt at his touch, a fact that always shocked him, but he continued the caress, for her, for him, for whatever lay inside her.

It was a fear he’d shared with no one. He didn’t trust fate, didn’t trust Uriel. This miracle had been granted them, due in no small part to the demon patron of women and fertility, Lilith—who was now the perfectly normal Rachel—but he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. He was deeply, secretly afraid that Allie would die, that the babe would be some kind of horror, or, if it was normal, that it too would die. No way would Uriel allow a child of the Fallen to be born. No way he’d allow any part of their curse to be broken.

Even the seer’s insistence that all would be well meant nothing. Martha’s visions were imperfect at best, infuriating and disruptive at worst. She’d never been precisely wrong, but the realization of those prophecies could be tangled indeed. She insisted that Allie would be delivered of a healthy baby, and that mother and child would be well.

He didn’t believe it.

“Is everything all right?” Allie said sleepily.

“Everything’s perfect,” he said, kissing the side of her neck, breathing in her sweet scent. It was different in pregnancy, and it had taken him a while to recognize the new note in her own unique fragrance. It was the sweetness of milk.

He shut his eyes, a silent prayer suffusing him. He, who never prayed, because he knew more than anyone the uselessness of it.

“Now, that’s a lie,” Allie said, and for a he moment he froze. Had she guessed his misgivings? The worst thing he could do would be to pass on his fears. She had enough of her own, the natural uncertainties of a first-time mother, Martha had told him.

And then she continued, “You’ve never told me about Cain, but I saw the way you all acted around him. You don’t like that he’s returned to Sheol. Why?”

He didn’t show his relief, simply pulled her against him, spoonlike. “He’s up to something. He’s tricky, deceitful, and troublemaking. Always has been.”

“Doesn’t sound very angelic to me,” she said, curling into him contentedly. “Why is he so different? When did he fall?”

Raziel hesitated, but only for a moment. She was the Source to his Alpha, and her insights and wisdom had been invaluable over the years. But Cain was a legacy he would have preferred to forget.

He no longer had that choice. “Cain fell when we did. There were two hundred of us, sent to earth to teach the children of men.”

“That’s right,” she murmured sleepily. “You taught them makeup.” She giggled.

“Disrespectful wench,” he said, giving her a tiny bite on the back of her neck. “Just because some deranged translation of a semideranged prophet got passed around here a few years ago . . .”

“I know, I know, the Book of Enoch is a tissue of lies.” She chuckled softly. “You taught them astrology, Azazel taught them warfare and armaments. What did Cain teach them?”

He hesitated. “He was sent to teach humans about sex.”

Allie laughed. “I thought that’s what all of you did.”

“That was an accident.”

“Having sex with a woman was an accident?” she scoffed.

“Falling in love with them was.” He always had to tread carefully with this. In his limitless existence he
had loved many women. He knew, deep inside, that Allie was different, a soul mate whose bond would never break. When she ceased to exist, so would he, but he didn’t tell her that. She would argue with him, and she would still suffer from irrational jealousy.

“I can believe that,” she said in a deceptively steady voice. “You certainly did your best not to fall in love with me.”

“And I was a lot stronger by the time you came around. Back when we were first sent to earth, we were new, unused to temptation. We didn’t even realize what we were feeling for the human women was lust—no such thing had existed. But Cain knew. He was the first to give in. He fell in love with a young girl named Tamarr, and he broke the cardinal rule. He bedded her, and got her pregnant.”

“And then
après moi le déluge
?”

He could almost laugh. Almost. “Not quite. No mass capitulation by the rest of the angels. The Supreme Power discovered what had happened. And he sent Uriel to deal with the situation.” He felt her body tense, her warm, pliant skin grown suddenly cold, and he pulled her tighter against him.

“What happened?”

“He killed her. Gutted her, then burned her while she still lived, while Cain screamed and fought and was forced to watch. She was pregnant at the time.”

There was a long silence in his bed, and his lovely,
warm, pregnant wife slowly pulled out of his arms, turning over with difficulty to look at him in the moonlight. “And what were the rest of you doing while this was going on?”

It wasn’t as if lying was even an option. They knew each other’s minds, and she already knew the answer. She was just waiting for his admission. “We did nothing. We couldn’t. Even if we had been able to move, we might not have. We thought it was God’s law. We didn’t know he’d already abandoned us to free will.”

She was silent for a long moment, and made no effort to move closer. “And then what happened? Was Cain then the first to fall after Lucifer?”

He shook his head. “Cain was taken back with Uriel. I don’t know what happened to him, what torture he went through. But once he’d given in, everything changed. You know the old myth about Adam and Eve?”