Velvet Haven (27 page)

“You never told anyone because you knew no one would believe you. How could they?” he asked as he continued to brush his thumb along the old wounds. “Did you know what they were, Mairi? Did you know that these marks were stigmata? That you had taken someone else’s pain and desperation and saved them from it?”

Mairi looked down at her wrist. She had not inflicted those wounds. They had been someone else’s marks, someone else’s pain. And yet her own blood had spilled, coloring the bathwater crimson. It had been her flesh that had to be sewn shut. But she had never tried to kill herself. And no one knew that, except now. Except Suriel. Somehow, Suriel had discovered the truth.

“When Rowan . . .” Mairi took a breath. “Were you there that night?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

His mouth curved into a humorless smile. “Because I am the Angel of Death.”

She cried out in a strangled voice that was part fear, part pity.

“I was supposed to take her, after that bastard was done with her. But then I saw you, saw you in pain.”

“It was
your
voice,” Mairi whispered. “I heard it that night. I heard it the night at the club. You told me to . . . cut myself.”

“To save your friend. To show you your gift. But you ran from it. You fear it.”

“What gift?”

“The gift He had me bestow upon you with my breath. You are a healer, Mairi.”

She shook her head, unable to believe. “Why are you telling me this now when I’m dead?”

“You have a great power, Mairi; you’ve only to understand how to use it.”

“I won’t have a chance for that, will I?”

Suriel bent over and Mairi found herself being pulled into his dark, bottomless gaze. “You
will
use this power. When the time comes you will know what to do. You will realize how you can use it to your advantage. Remember that, Mairi. It is within you to save those you love.”

She felt the warmth of tears spill from her eyes and trickle down her cheeks. “What are you doing now?”

“Saving you.”

He leaned over and captured her mouth with his. In a foreign tongue he murmured something over her, then breathed deeply into her mouth. When he pulled away, Mairi felt a strange shuddering flicker along her nerves. Her heart began to pound, slowly, erratically, then quicker, gaining strength.

“Do not forget what you saw in your dream last night. The time is close for your vision to come to fruition. Remember, not everything is as it seems. Think, Mairi, of our powers. Trust. Believe. Have faith.”

He turned to leave, and Mairi reached for him, feeling a strange connection to him. Someplace deep inside her, she felt his aura protecting her.

She clutched him. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered. “I’m scared.”

He peered down at her, and Mairi noticed that his eyes had changed. They were no longer black, but white. The iris opened up, like some kind of portal, drawing her in to the bright light. When he spoke, it wasn’t with his usual voice. “You don’t know what I am.”

“Suriel, I don’t fear you.”

“To touch me, to care about me, is the path to destruction. You wouldn’t want to follow me, Mairi. You wouldn’t want me to let you inside. What is inside me is beyond your imagining, beyond what you could endure.”

Jesus, she couldn’t stop looking at those eyes, at the seductive light where his pupil had been. She felt her body being pulled, slowly, as if she had a rope wrapped around her, and he was pulling her in, inch by inch. “You saved me at the moment of my birth. You’ve saved me now. Stay with me. I . . . I want to know you. To have you as my guide.”

Her gaze darted to the left side of his neck. Below his ear, branded into his flesh, was his angelic symbol, Ψ: the symbol for the Angel of Death. She stared at it, and shivered.

“My path is not your path, Mairi.” He pressed her fist to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. He closed his eyes and just held her hand to his mouth. His lashes, long and thick, grazed the high bones of his cheeks. “Don’t follow me. Please . . .”

“What is your path, Suriel? Why do you walk the Earth alone?”

“My destiny is to live with my memories, my sins. My purpose on this earth is redemption.”

Mairi felt her body being lifted, felt her breasts press against his hard chest and that strange tingling tickled her wherever her skin touched his body.

“I will give you now to the one whose path you will follow,” he whispered against her ear.

Thrusting the curtain back so hard the cloth tore from the metal rings, Bran stepped into the cubicle, his Doc Martens clanging on the terrazzo floor. Female gasps registered in his brain, but he spared them no notice. Every sense he possessed was focused on the limp body of Mairi lying on the stretcher before him. Her jeans and T-shirt had been replaced with a sheet. Her black hair was fanned out on the white pillow. Sooty lashes lay still against her cheek, shielding her incredible dark eyes.

“What the bloody hell is the meaning of this?” snapped the short, balding man holding a clipboard in his meaty fists.

Bran looked in the corner, saw Suriel leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. Suriel was invisible to all except Bran. With a nod, he indicated Mairi.

She was alive. His to take.

“Don’t forget our deal,” Suriel murmured as he passed him on the way out of the cubicle.

Like a robot set on a mission, Bran ignored the demands of the doctor and quelled the nurses with a glare as they reached for the red call light button.

Mentally, he forced the wiring to short-circuit, rendering it useless. Shutting off the power to the cardiac monitor, Bran watched as the line tracing her heart rhythm suddenly went flat. With a whine of an alarm the machine shut down, the screen growing blank.

“Security,” the physician shouted, thrusting his round body between the stretcher and Bran. Shouldering the man aside, Bran systematically pulled off the cardiac leads. Next came the probe on her finger that was monitoring the oxygen in her blood. After that, he moved on to the IVs. With one steady tug, he had the tape and plastic tube pulled free and the bleeding staunched with the pressure of his thumb.

In a moment of undeniable need, he bent forward, broadening his already massive back as he loomed over Mairi’s delicate hand. Shielding his actions from everyone in the cubicle, he removed his thumb from the bleeding wound and set his lips to her skin, dragging his tongue across her flesh, tasting her, drawing her into his body. Inside, his body hummed with pleasure, energy, and gratitude that she was alive.

Next, he carefully pulled at the tapes that anchored the white plastic tube in her mouth. He pulled it slowly, freeing her from the device. A machine alarmed, but he ignored it, watching instead the sudden expansion of Mairi’s chest, followed by the slow exhalation of air.

She stirred and moaned, and he closed his eyes in relief. She was alive.

“You can’t just take her,” the doctor yelled as Bran straightened and lifted her limp body from the gurney. “For the love of God, we’ve just resuscitated her. She’ll die.”

Waving his palm over the doctor, he placed the room under a spell. They were frozen, no longer able to interfere. Without a word, Bran turned around in the small space and shifted her weight in his arms, heading for the exit of the emergency room, where he stopped and once more raised his palm, releasing the humans from his magical bond.

“You will remember none of this. Nor will any of you remember Mairi.”

Then he left with Mairi in his arms. She was his now. For better or worse, as the humans liked to say.

Bran placed Mairi on his bed and ran his hand through her silky hair so that it lay fanned out on his pillow. He had lit the candles in the room and closed the velvet draperies on the windows. Pulling up a chair, he rested his booted foot on the frame of the mattress, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest beneath the black sheets.

He had brought her back to Velvet Haven. He couldn’t leave her alone in her apartment and he was not strong enough to fight in the mortal realm, if the Soul Stealer were to come after her again. If he couldn’t be in Annwyn, then Velvet Haven was the next best thing.

He palmed his pec, rubbing his hand back and forth over his heart. There was a god-awful pain there. One he had never felt before. Sighing, he closed his eyes and saw her as he had that first time standing outside the club, her white aura luring him. He remembered how it was between them in the hall. She’d been afraid of him—his size, his eyes. He’d tasted her fear and he’d felt as though his heart had been carved out of his chest. He didn’t want her fear. He wanted her warmth. He wanted her body. He wanted
her
. Not just her sex.

He barely knew her, but somehow he felt that he had to have her in his life.

Disrobing, he studied her face in the candlelight, the way her chest rose and fell softly, making certain that every breath she took was easy and painless. She was alive. He still couldn’t believe it. Suriel had resurrected her tonight.

Slipping beneath the sheets, Bran pulled her to him, curving her body into his. He played with her hair, grazed his fingertips along her cheek, and hoped like he had never hoped before that she would come to understand him and accept him in her life.

Maybe Sanchez really was more than a hot bod and a dose of male arrogance. The scent of the bacon and eggs he was cooking for her certainly made Mairi think otherwise.

“She’s waking.”

That was not Sanchez’ voice.
Bran.
She stirred, trying to open her lids, which felt swollen and heavy. No one else had such a dark, velvety voice.

“About time,” said another. This voice was deep as well, but not nearly as sensual to her ears as Bran’s was.

“You do recall what your end of this bargain is, don’t you?”

There was a masculine growl and movement on the mattress beside her. “The damn book is there on the nightstand. Take it.”

“It means nothing to me until it’s been deciphered. The Scribe has written it as a fable of what may come to pass. It’s riddled with clues that I don’t understand. But Mairi has the ability to understand it.”

“I don’t care about the book,” Bran growled.

“You should. The Soul Stealer is morphing, Raven. Changing into something more dangerous than he was before. The fact that he is also looking for the book is warning enough. We must find that flame and amulet.”

“What the hell are you after, Suriel?”

Suriel
. His image swam before her and Mairi felt his presence—and a host of conflicts swirling in him.

“The book decoded,” she heard him reply. “And I will have it.”

The door slammed shut, jarring against the wood frame. Mairi jumped, struggled to sit up, but her body was weak.

“Here, let me help you.” Mairi felt big hands on her arms as they tenderly pulled her up. Behind her, she heard pillows being plumped before she was carefully laid back. A warm cloth scented with lavender was placed over her eyes. “This will help with the swelling.”