Samael (12 page)

“Would you really like me to tell you something you don’t know, Angel?” he asked. He stepped toward her, closing the distance between them. His power washed over her like a tide, as electric as the gale in his irises. She felt stifled and alive at the same time, and she reeled back a little. But his arm snaked around her waist, holding her in place, and the world suddenly felt like a Faraday cage, surrounded by Tesla’s deadly magic.

“Ignorance is bliss,” he said, and his eyes flicked to her lips as she licked them. There in his arms, she felt even stranger than before. Dizzier. Her fingers and toes were tingling, and her tongue felt bigger than it had moments ago. Strangely, she also felt at ease and uninhibited. In fact, if she didn’t know any better, she’d say the beer she’d just downed had gotten her buzzed. Or even drunk. Which was impossible, of course because she was an archess. Her powers kept her from getting drunk.

“Ignorance is bliss, but it’s also ignorant,” she replied, feigning strength.

“Very well,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. He leaned in, and she could feel his words as they floated from his lips to hers. “You
are
inebriated, Angel. Yes, I know what you were thinking. And this time, you’re right. The beer I just gave you is working on you the way it would a mortal.”

That made no sense. What did he just say?

“Would you like to know why?” he asked, as if he hadn’t just told her something completely nuts.

“Why?” she asked, like a monkey right on cue.

“Because your powers are waning as we speak. Soon they will run out completely.”

Angel frowned. Her stomach seemed to drop out from her midsection and land on her feet. That electric world closed in around her cage, and her chest grew tight. Her mouth went dry. There was no duplicity in his gaze. There were no lies coming from his tongue.

Lightning struck not more than a mile away, and its riotous twin announced its arrival noisily upon the air.

But he wasn’t finished. “When the spell I’ve cast on you has run its course, you will be as human as those around you.” His sad smile held as many secrets as his eyes, and his hand on her back pressed tighter. “And so will I.”

Chapter Nineteen

Storms outside, in nature, are nothing compared to the ones that take place on the inside of a person. Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, hail stones, tidal waves… you wouldn’t know it to watch the news and see the devastation. But that was just it. People were always so much more impressed by what they could
see
.

If they could see what was going on inside a person in turmoil, they’d run for cover. And if they could witness what was happening within Angel in that moment, it would have made the evening broadcast.

“You…
what
?”

All traces of numbness were leaving her system. She suddenly felt uncomfortably grounded, as if gravity had reached up and taken hold of her ankles to anchor her in place. “What are you talking about?”

She stepped back, and though his grip at her back temporarily tightened, he allowed her to leave his embrace. He was clearly unworried that she would escape, and she should have wondered why.

“What spell?” The tongue that had been a little large in her mouth just moments earlier was now dry as a bone.

Sam lifted his chin a touch, the ravishingly handsome man filled with pride. His eyes flashed. “The spell I’ve had cast upon us both,” he replied coolly. “To level the playing field and put an end to this ceaseless game.”

“You leveled the playing field, alright,” came a new voice. They both looked to see that Hesperos had returned and was standing beside them. The rain was falling steadily now, and she hadn’t even noticed it. The archery range behind Hesperos was being shut down, and there was no sign of the woman Hesperos had come to the faire to meet.

Angel was a little shocked to find him suddenly standing there beside them, and from the look of it, Sam was surprised too. Which was strange.
Nothing
took him by surprise.

He does seem more mortal now.

Oh God.

“If you really did what you just said you did, Fallen One,” Hesperos continued, “then how exactly do you intend to deal with
them
?” He was looking over Sam’s shoulder at something in the distance.

Angel followed his gaze. A group of men was entering the field. They were as beautiful as the incubi, but there was something very, very wrong about them. They were pale. Their hair was unkempt. Their eyes shone far too brightly.

If there was ever such a thing as a fallen angel, Samael was not it. The Adarians were.

“Abraxos,” Angel whispered, her chest filling with cold dread.

“We need to get out of here,” Sam said, taking hold of her arm in a firm grip.

But Abraxos must have heard her – must have
sensed
her – because even from across the field, his head swiveled, and his eyes zeroed in. His gaze locked on hers.

He smiled.

“Oh God.”

“Right,” Sam said, pulling her swiftly from the area in front of the booths to an alley behind them. It was muddy from all the rain, and the storm was picking up in fury. She stumbled a little, as her legs were heavy and still being held back by those long arms of gravity. But Sam lifted her easily, and as soon as he saw an opening in the wall surrounding the faire, he took it.

They shot out into the parking lot beside the festival grounds, and Sam continued to pull her, picking up speed until they were diving head-first into the forest lining the lot. Wet leaves left their moisture on her face, and their pace left her breathless. She’d never become breathless from running before.

“Where are we going?” she asked, feeling a lot like a character in a movie or book.

“Somewhere they won’t think to look for us,” Samuel Lambent replied. That’s who he was to her in that moment, large and in charge, and so much more capable of handling things than she was.

He stopped once they’d gone around a hundred feet and were surrounded by the thick green of woods on all sides. “Come here,” he commanded, pulling her toward him so hard, she fell against his chest, her arms barely managing to come up in time to lessen the impact.

New warmth moved through her when her fingers brushed the obvious hardness of the muscle beneath his black thermal shirt. He slid his arm around her, holding her in place, and she had no time to recover before a portal was opening up around them. A transport spell.

Apparently, he had enough magic left for
that
. Or maybe he was lying to her about the spell he claimed to have cast on them.

She closed her eyes as the transport took hold. She opened them again a moment later, when the ground felt once more solid beneath her feet.

The air felt strange here. She smelled something slightly metallic, and also caught the pleasant scent of well-oiled leather. She shoved herself out of Sam’s grip, fueled by confusion and anger and uncertainty, and turned a slow circle where they’d landed.

She was surrounded by another world. A gentle beeping could be heard, as well as what sounded like bubbles rising somewhere. There was an odd sensation that her ears needed to pop, but she opened her mouth automatically, stretching her jaw muscles, and her ears did just that.

The light was pleasantly low, generated by low-watt bulbs and what looked like flickering gas lamps in the corners of the room. All around her, piping was visible. It appeared at intervals along the walls, and then disappeared once more behind them. The metal was copper or gold – with Sam, it could literally be either – and the “steampunk” vibe was strong.

High quality leather furniture was tastefully laid out in the recessed center of the room around a small beautifully polished round wooden table, which miraculously, was already set with a steaming teapot, cups and saucers, and all manner of cakes and cookies.

It was all so impressive. Most impressive of all, however, was the thing that Angel saw beyond the enormous floor-to-ceiling reinforced windows.

She slowly moved down the steps into the recessed area, and then up the steps on the other side to approach the windows. As if in a dream, she placed her hand against the cool, triple-paned glass. A fish swam by, close enough to make eye contact with her.

They were under water.

“Where are we?”

“Under Lake Michigan.”

Angel turned to face Sam, who was still standing in the same spot they’d reappeared in after the transport. He was just watching her.

“We’re
under
Lake Michigan?”

He smiled. “That’s right.” He pulled something out of his jeans pocket – a handful of round pea-sized objects that glowed like lit up tapioca balls, and placed them in a bowl on a nearby table.

Angel was flabbergasted. “
How
?” she asked. She blinked. “And
why
?”

Sam took the stairs down to the center of the room and proceeded to pour himself a cup of tea. It was an odd thing to see – Samuel Lambent, drinking tea while wearing worn blue jeans and a tight-fitting thermal shirt. But the dichotomy of laid back-sexy and sophisticated was surprisingly very much Sam.

“
How
is easy,” he replied calmly after his first sip. “Magic, of course. And knowledge. Not that the two are distinguishable at all times.” He shrugged pleasantly. “I built this place just under two hundred years ago.”

That explained the gas lamps and the piping, which now that she really looked, she would swear was gold. Gold didn’t rust.

“As to
why
,” he continued, pouring her a cup as well and taking it with him up the steps to the window. He stopped and handed her the second cup, which she took numbly. “That’s even simpler. I am a man with powerful enemies. The universe has been on a catastrophic collision course for so long… and I knew that one day, it might come down to me having to, for lack of a better word,
hide
.”

Okay… she could actually see that. He
was
the Fallen One. “But why under a lake? Why not under, I don’t know, the
Pacific
?”

“That’s easy too. No one would ever think of it.” He grinned and cocked his head to one side. “If one were to ask you, ‘Where in the world would Samael go with his archess to escape Gregori and the Adarians?’ would you ever, in a million years, reply, ‘Under Lake Michigan’?”

Chapter Twenty

“Rhee?”

Rhiannon stopped what she was doing and froze beside her bed. She wasn’t expecting company just then. In fact, her bedroom door had been locked, as had her apartment door. But the girl speaking behind her had never let locked doors stop her before.

Rhiannon turned slowly around to face the ten-year-old red-head. It seemed impossible, but Rhiannon could swear the girl had grown an inch overnight. Her jeans were rolled up a bit to disguise the fact that they were now a little short. It wasn’t that she didn’t have the money to buy new jeans, it was just that she just abhorred clothes shopping.

At the moment, she was wearing a T-shirt she had made herself on one of those sites where you could custom design your own top, whether it was a T-shirt or a sweatshirt. It was a light gray scoop neck that read:

If it’s gross, sniff it.

If it’s dead and gross, roll in it.

- Strike

Strike had been Mimi’s retriever-shepherd mix dog. He’d died recently… had been murdered, actually. And Mimi was dealing with the death in her own way. She had half a dozen such shirts in her dresser drawer, each with a different quote on it, and she pulled a different one out every day.

“Mimi, what is it?” Rhiannon asked, not bothering to ask the girl how she’d gotten into her apartment. Mimi had her ways.

“You guys were talking about that girl, Angel, weren’t you?” Mimi asked. She had a strange look on her face. It was sort of wary, almost distrusting.

“When?” Rhiannon asked, but she knew exactly when Mimi was talking about. Around an hour earlier, she and the other archesses and their archangels had met with Max in one of the private meeting rooms at the Swallowtail Foundation headquarters. Max had decided the Mansion might not be safe any longer for discussing truly important, private things. It was developing cracks in its walls, and earlier that day, a window had just shattered of its own accord.

So the nine of them had gathered around a long table in a sealed-off room and discussed what they were going to do about Gregori and Samael. Angel had indeed come up in the conversation, because now it was very clear that Angel was Sam’s archess, as unlikely as it seemed that Sam would have an archess in the first place. Much less that it was someone like Angel, who was clearly a good person, and the exact opposite of Samael.

“You know when.”

Rhiannon blinked. Then she sighed. She felt immediately stupid for trying to pull one over on Mimi in the first place. The girl was not only remarkably bright and talented, with the empathy and intuition of a sensitive genius – she was a dragon. Dragons could sense things humans could not; like cats, they had a sixth sense, pulling vibrations out of the atmosphere that mortals did not even know existed.

“Okay,” Rhiannon admitted calmly. “Yes, it was Angel.”

Mimi had met Angel at a Swallowtail Foundation warehouse not long ago, and the two had hit it off, and over the last few weeks, they’d exchanged emails and grown closer. The thing was, it wasn’t just Mimi who knew Angel. All four archesses knew Angel. Each of them had been conversing with the woman online or through snail mail, or had even met her face-to-face, and now they all wanted to know why. Why had Angel known all of them? How had she known them all? Why had she befriended them? And what else did she know?