Samael (24 page)

There goes my home,
Angel thought wistfully as she dodged a fireball. She was forced to leap over a scrambling form as several leeches shuffled toward the new hole in her floor and peeked over, obviously wondering whether they should go down after the gargoyle. It may be dead, but it was still a dead magical beast, and there were always yummy remnants of magic to suckle from.

Angel slipped on something and went to one knee. Looking over her shoulder as she hurried back to her feet, she caught sight of a puddle of what looked like black-blue goo. It was wraith blood maybe. Or dragon. It didn’t matter.

Only one thing mattered. She turned back around and pushed on. Out on the balcony, Sam dropped to his stomach, flattening himself out to avoid the swoop of a blue dragon’s barbed tail. He rolled and shot once more to his feet to avoid the dragon’s teeth as the animal then dove for him. A roar of frustration shook the building just as Angel was gingerly pushing through a broken pane in her glass ceiling.

The shaking caused her to lose her footing, and she reached up to grab hold of one of the structural frames of the dome to catch her balance. The broken glass still embedded in the frame sliced through her palm, but she gritted her teeth and ignored that too. The wind threw her hair in her face, confusing matters further, and she could feel it standing on end as well, signifying that the air was charging for another lightning strike.

Fear thrummed through her veins, pushed along by her rapidly pounding heart. She stepped over the frame and onto the outer walkway.

Then she froze.

Her vision, her attention, everything focused on one single point. A man stood before her. A tall, black-haired man dressed all in white.

“Angel. We meet at long last.”

The noises of the world around her, the fighting, the chaos all faded. The wind died down. The electric heat in the air calmed. She gazed up into irises that looked like dandelions of black, and felt well and truly lost.

She knew who he was. “Gregori.”

He smiled. “I’m so pleased you’ve heard of me.” He moved toward her, and she lost track of Sam. She had no idea what the rest of the universe was doing. It didn’t seem to be connected to the two of them. “I’ve heard of you as well. Though no one told me you were so….” He stopped and blinked, and Angel felt a hiccup in his power over her. His expression was unreadable for a fraction of a moment.

Angel took a step back. She was amazed she could move.

But then the intensity was back, she was terrified again, and she froze in place, trapped in the pull of that dark gaze.

He continued to draw closer. “Tell me Angel, have I made an impression on you?”

“Oh yeah.” She nodded, her heart banging so hard, she thought it might just get tired of her shit and give up on her. “You could say that.”

His smile was back, and his eerie eyes sparkled. “Good.” He nodded. “Very good.”

“You’re going to kill me.”

He cocked his head to one side, considering her with painful keenness. “I had planned to, it’s true.” He paused for a long time, and Angel had no idea what to think. “But honestly, I would rather not.”

She waited.

“However, I’m uncertain you are going to leave me a choice.”

“I…” Angel swallowed hard. Her voice was trembling too much. “I’m open to suggestions,” she finally said. Her whole body was shaking now.

“I’m sure you are.” Another step forward. And she tried to move back, but couldn’t. He was closing in. “I can’t allow the Culmination to take place,” he told her frankly.

The air was charging up again around her; she could feel the humid electricity building. It felt like tiny snakes writhing along and nipping at her skin.

“I can’t allow the Old Man to return to the angel realm. And I’m afraid you and the Fallen One here,” he said as he stepped to the side and turned slightly so Angel was afforded a clear view of Samael. “Have the power to bring it about.”

Gregori seemed to have literally almost
stopped
time
. Everything was moving in slow motion, including Samael. Angel tasted the metal of horror in her mouth, and her legs went numb. A heavy weight settled in the pit of her stomach like a brick. Was such a thing even possible
?
By any supernatural creature at all?

“However.” He turned back to her, once more blocking her view of Sam. His presence filled her world and blocked out eternity. He towered over her, less than two inches away.

Her breath stilled. Everything stopped as he leaned in.

“If you come with me, I’ll let you both live, Angel. Forsake the Fallen One. Be mine forever and you don’t have to die.” He glanced up at the frozen-in-time tree house with its menagerie of destruction. “None of them do. I will spare them all.” He looked back down again, his black-star gaze searching hers. “Even the little red dragon.”

The air around Angel was now so hot with held-back lightning, it was starting to burn.

“Angel,” he said, almost conversationally. But his tone was too low, his voice too smooth. “Have you never wondered why the Old Man would even bother to create an archess for the Fallen One? Has it always simply made perfect sense to you that he would give an angel who betrayed him something as precious as a perfect mate?”

Angel felt the dread in her stomach spread outward to her limbs. The truth was, it
had
occurred to her. She
had
wondered why the Old Man would create her for Samael when he’d cast Sam out of the angel realm the way he had. Why would he bother, when Michael had taken his place as favored? But she’d just figured the Old Man had made her
before
Sam betrayed him. And in a fit of anger, he’d simply thrown them
all
out at once. Nothing else made any sense.

“Maybe the answer is quite simple,” Gregori said. “Maybe… you
weren’t
made for him.”

Was he telling her… what? Was he actually saying that… she was made for him instead? For
Gregori
?

His smile was like spider’s silk in the dew, so beautiful and so deadly. “Join me, Angel. And you don’t have to wonder about any of it anymore.”

“W-why?” She meant to ask why he would choose her, why he would let her live all of a sudden, but it was too hard to speak. He was paralyzing her. Her mind was closing down.

He must have understood though, because his hand came up, fingers curled. “Because you remind me of someone.” She winced as he brushed the backs of his knuckles across her cheek. It was tender.

Almost –
loving.

The touch hurt. It was unnatural. It was so painful, in fact, it felt as though she’d stuck a fork in a light socket. Her soul screamed, and the universe heard her.

Time lurched forward, the sky opened up, and at long last, the bolt of lightning that had been held back was set free. Gregori looked up just as the white-hot column encompassed him like a searing cocoon.

Angel went deaf as she tore herself from her spot, and in the eerie, painful silence of the blast’s aftermath, she ran to Samael, took hold of the locket in her right hand, and grabbed his arm with her left. He looked down at her, understanding and recognition of the situation dawning on his face. Sam pulled her into his arms, freeing up her hands. She pried the locket open and grabbed one of the transport orbs, curling it into her fist before she snapped the locket shut again.

She closed her eyes and concentrated amidst the wind and rain that pelted her. And the Brazilian rainforest and its monsters melted around them.

Chapter Forty-One

Max hit the floor hard in the wake of the lightning blast that had speared directly through the top of Angel’s tree house and into the middle of her living room. It engulfed the space where Gregori had been standing moments before. Max had seen him appear before Angel, but his presence had come and gone blinkingly fast, as if he’d been there for a split second and nothing more.

The lightning bolt was too close and too massive. It sent the tree house inhabitants sprawling to the wood floor, rolling in opposite directions like leaves tossed on the wind. As the archangels’ Guardian, he was used to keeping track of several people at once, and from the corners of his eyes, he’d watched his charges go their separate ways.

Rhiannon covered Mimi’s body with her own, shoving her down behind an overturned coffee table. Michael, ever the strategizing warrior, used the confusion of the lightning to outsmart his green dragon opponent. As he was knocked back by the blast, he turned and sliced across the dragon’s exposed stomach with the edge of his shimmering long sword.

Uriel and Eleanore had been standing back-to-back, Eleanore using her telekinesis to toss large objects into her enemies, Uriel using his archangel ability to transmorph immaterial objects at a molecular level. Eleanore would pick up a piece of wood with her mind and toss it at a Phantom – and Uriel would turn that wood into lead or gold half way there so that it slammed like a freight train into the monster, taking him down at once.

Juliette preferred to run her fight from above, and she had sprouted a pair of glorious eagle-colored wings at the beginning of the fight, which she used with tremendous expertise to weave under, over, and around her enemies as she, too, utilized both telekinesis and lightning to her advantage.

Her mate, the Messenger Angel preferred to simply use his fists for his fights. That was Gabriel, ever the brawler. The only thing that could have been more perfect for him would be to fight with a beer in one hand.

Sophie Bryce had learned very early on that her greatest strength as an archess was in her ability to heal. All of the archesses could do this, but Sophie seemed capable of going deeper and for longer periods of time when it came to mending wounds. So, probably partly due to this talent and partly due to the fact that she was a little gun-shy from having just been brutally attacked, she ran interference for the fight. She ran between the brawlers, drawing monster attention and dodging out of the way so others could take the monster by surprise. Then she would return, and in “tag” style, she would speed by an archess or archangel and touch them to heal whatever wounds they’d sustained.

Azrael…. Well, Az was clearly still angry about what had happened to his mate. All it took was that single glance for Max to see the fangs, claws, and pile of dead guys at the vampire king’s booted feet. He was knocking them over like a bowling champion on a perfect night, and his eyes burned like two rampaging suns.

But each of them caught the lightning blast in their own way and dispersed in the interrupted battle. When the blast cleared and the buzzing took over in Max’s ear drums, he propped himself up on straight arms to find the Man in White was gone.

In his place was a circle of black dandelions.

The spot of blooming black was obliterated the next second, when a wraith trampled it just before being caught mid-stride by a spinning ball of fire. Max followed the trail of fire to find Rhiannon and Mimi again working together to take the bad guys down.

Max did a quick head-count.

Ten of them. Eight archangels and archesses, Mimi, and Max.

Flash, flash, flash….

No fewer than three dozen enemies, and more approaching with every open and close of a portal. They seemed to be waiting in a line somewhere, an entire army on some rise, each rank moving forward when its time came to take the place of comrades that had fallen before it.

They failed to let it show, but he could sense his charges weakening. He could
feel
them, deep down.
We can’t win this fight,
he thought. Gregori had the upper hand.

Max glanced down at the forest he could see through the scorched holes in the floor of the tree house. It was frankly amazing that the structure was still standing at this point – or rather, floating. It was some major magic that had put the home together. It had been
Angel’s
magic.

But down below, the unprotected natural world was beginning to look like one of the nine circles of Hell. A batch of trees had been somehow frozen, and the tops of their leaves crackled like chandelier chimes. Animals took to flight in large flocks and screamed in unnatural fear as they ran away down below. Another copse of trees was on fire. A third portion, yet, was warping, going from wood to stone and back again. The magic of Gregori’s army was colliding with that of the archangels and archesses, and before long, nothing would be in its natural state any longer.

The Man in White was going to take down the entire Brazilian Rainforest as he whittled away at the archangels and their mates.

Mimi shouldn’t be here,
Max thought desperately, turning back to look at the child where she stood in the midst of it all. She was so small – but with her feet planted firmly apart, and a look of fearless determination on her youthful face, she was also not small.
Little dragon
, he thought.

Then he blinked. Mimi! She was a red dragon! She could contact the other dragons!

Christ, why didn’t I think of this sooner?
Az could have called upon his vampires for help, but there were no shadows up here for the vampires to use for transport, and only the oldest of them possessed that ability anyway.

But Mimi’s brethren could help them! Dragons were capable of flying with unparalleled speed – he’d seen it himself! If she could contact them, and they agreed to help, they might be there in time to tip the scales in the archangels’ favor!

Max scrambled to his feet, ducked under a wyvern, and dove with an arched back under a swipe by a Phantom’s outstretched claw. He felt its cold race over his spine as it passed by, sending chills throughout his entire body. He hit the ground, rolled to his side, and once more got his feet under him. Somehow, he made it all the way across the room without injury, and finally slid into first base in front of Mimi.

“Mimi, call the dragons!”

He suddenly felt odd asking her to do this. He’d once seen a movie called The Labyrinth, in which the main female character at one point asks her friend to “call the rocks.” This image for some reason flashed through his mind as he gave his order.