The Fallen 01 - Raziel Read online

  I was getting closer to Lucifer’s burial ground. I could sit and listen and hear him deep in the earth, feel his call vibrate through my body, and I was close, so close. I didn’t need to get distracted by a woman with a mouth that wouldn’t stop moving and erotic images invading my mind.

  Why the hell had Sammael brought her up to the cave in the first place? He knew better than anybody that place should be off-limits, particularly to an interloper like Allie Watson. It was the closest we’d come to Lucifer, the Light, and to have her bumbling around with her incessant questions was close to blasphemy.

  Not that I believed in blasphemy. That was part of why I was here, wasn’t it? Because I, like the others, refused to follow the rules, to kill without question, to wipe out generations and scourge the land. I had looked on a human woman and fallen in love, and for that I was forever cursed.

  Surely there was something wrong with an ethos that equated love with death. It was so long ago I wasn’t sure I could remember what we’d been thinking, could barely remember her. But I couldn’t forget the emotion, the passion that had driven me, the certainty that choosing life, choosing human love, was the right thing to do. It had been worth it, worth everything, and I had never regretted it.

  I could regret the vulnerability, the need that had driven me to such a desperate act, but it no longer mattered. I had done what I had done, and I wouldn’t wish it changed. But it would never happen again.

  Uriel knew how to use vulnerabilities. He knew how to torture, even with the rules that kept him from wiping us out. I wasn’t going to let him use me again.

  So perhaps there were times when I wished I could still feel that innocent, powerful love. Hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of years, millennia, piling up, and I’d never been able to recapture that pure, essential passion that had made me destroy everything.

  But I still would have done it. Chosen to fall. We’d been taught that the humans were like cattle—you trained them, destroyed them if they disobeyed, never answered their questions, and, most of all, never looked upon them with lust.

  We’d been sent to earth with our appointed tasks. Azazel had been sent to teach the people metalwork; his job had been to train and to pass on the magic. The first twenty each had jobs, and we’d done well enough at first. But the longer we remained on earth, the more human we became. The hungers started, hunger for food, for life, for sex. And we started thinking that we could make this benighted world a better place. We could bring our wisdom and power, we could experience love and dedication. We would intermarry and our children would grow strong and there would be no more wars and God would smile.

  God didn’t smile. There were no children—the curse was swift and vicious. We were damned for eternity. Because of love.

  No wonder the woman wandering around my rooms annoyed me. It wasn’t just her prattle—she was right, it was a pleasant voice. But after all these years I had no use for humankind, for women in particular. And this woman, of all women. A moment of unexpected sentimentality, and I’d complicated my existence and that of the Fallen. No woman was worth it.

  Still, it was my choice, my mistake, and my only option was to fix it, even if I wanted to pass her off. There had to be someplace we could send her where she wouldn’t cause trouble. And then we could deal with Uriel’s wrath.

  I was the keeper of secrets, the lord of magic. Within me resided all the wisdom of the ages, and I had been sent to earth to give that knowledge to its hapless inhabitants. So how could I be so fucking stupid?

  I glanced down, adjusted myself, and followed her into the living room. She was sprawled on one sofa, barefoot. My clothes fit her too damned well—I was going to have to see about something loose that covered up all the curves but was colorful enough to keep her happy.

  God, why did I have to start worrying about keeping a woman happy? Especially a woman like Allie Watson.

  Her long, thick brown hair was much better than the short bleached cut she’d had when I found her. Her face was prettier without makeup. She shifted, turning to look at me without getting up.

  I walked over to one end of the sofa. “Where do you want to live?”

  She’d been looking both annoyed and slightly downcast, but at this she brightened. “I’ve got a choice where I go?”

  I didn’t think so, but I was grasping at straws. The one thing I knew, it couldn’t be hell. It was nothing personal. I hadn’t come this far to let Uriel win. “Maybe,” I said, not exactly a lie. “I imagine it depends on your talents, where you can make yourself useful. What can you do?”

  She appeared to consider this for a moment. “I can write. My style is slightly sarcastic, but I’m sharp and literate.”

  “We have no use for writing.”

  “So I’m in hell after all,” she said glumly. “No books?”

  “What would we read? We’ve lived millennia.” “What about your wives?” “I have no wives.”

  “I don’t mean you specifically, I mean all the women here. Sarah and the others. Don’t they want to read? Or do you guys give them such a fulfilling life, trapped here in the mist, that they don’t need any kind of escape?”

  “If they wanted to escape, they wouldn’t be here,” I said in the voice I used to shut down arguments.

  I should have known it wouldn’t do any good. She didn’t seem to realize that was what my voice signified. “I’m not talking about physical escape,” she argued. “Just those times when you want to curl up in bed and read about crazy make-believe worlds. About pirates and aliens and vampires . . .” Her voice trailed off beneath my steady gaze.

  “What else can you do?”

  She sighed. “Not much. I’m useless at Excel. I type fast, but I gather you don’t have computers here.” For a moment she looked horrified as she understood everything that meant. “No Internet,” she said in a voice of doom. “How am I going to live?”

  “You’re not alive.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” she said grimly. “So clearly you don’t need Excel. Let’s see—I’m a demon at trivia, particularly when it comes to old movies. I’m actually quite a wonderful cook. I kill plants, so I’d be no good in a garden. Maybe you could find me some commune-type thing? Without the Kool-Aid.”

  I remembered Jonestown far too well. “You don’t need the Kool-Aid, you’re already dead,” I said.

  “Lovely,” she said sarcastically. “So do I get married? Have kids? For God’s sake, at least have sex again?”

  “Again?” It always managed to startle me, the way women of the current times simply gave their bodies when and where they wished. Two thousand years ago they would have been stoned to death. A hundred years ago they would have been outcasts. The human women who came to Sheol had been the same over the ages. They had never known anyone but their bonded mates. Azazel had seen Sarah when she was a child and known she was going to be his, and he’d watched over her, keeping her safe, until she was old enough to be his bride. The same was true for all the others.

  She was looking at me, clearly annoyed. “Yes, again,” she said. “Women have sex, you know. They find a man, or a woman if they prefer, and if they’re attractive and there’s no reason not to, they have sex. Are you totally unconnected with modern reality?”

  “I know people have indiscriminate sex,” I said irritably, feeling foolish. I didn’t like the idea of her with another man. I wasn’t about to consider why; I just didn’t. “And I should have known you’d be one of them.”

  “Yes, I’m the Whore of Babylon.”

  “Not even close,” I drawled.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Are you always so literal?”

  “What other choice is there?”

  She was fuming. This was good—I was annoying her as much as she annoyed me. I could keep this up for a while without any difficulty. We struck sparks off each other.

  I decided to sum things up. “All right, we’ve decided you can cook, which might be a valuable skill elsewhere. Anything else?�
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  She looked at me as if considering something, and I had no intention of trying to divine what. That brief glimpse of her sex fantasies had been disturbing enough. And then she smiled, a slow, wicked smile. “You don’t want to know,” she said in a lazy, totally sensuous drawl.

  This was a waste of time. In a short while the Council would convene, and they would decide what would happen to her. I could argue, but in the end there wasn’t much I could do to save her. I knew what their decision would be.

  It shouldn’t bother me. But it did. And the sooner I got away from her, the easier it would be.

  “You’re right,” I said. And I ran.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  I WAS ALONE AGAIN IN THE STARK white apartment. The relief mingled with anxiety—it was easier being alone. I knew I’d basically driven him away; all I had to do was mention sex and he ran like a terrified virgin. Though if anyone was a virgin around here, it was me.

  No, not literally. I’d had tons of lovers. Well, four, but you couldn’t really count Charlie, who had performance issues, and the one-night stand with what’s-his-name was more the result of too many cosmopolitans and a fit of self-pity. It hadn’t been a pretty sight.

  Still, two relatively decent relationships hardly made me a virgin. But compared to Raziel’s thousands of years of sex and marriage, I most assuredly came up short. So how dared he have that “You’ve had sex” attitude? Typical of this patriarchal place, but I had no intention of putting up with it.

  At least sex was a weapon I could use when I was feeling far too defenseless. I could get rid of Raziel simply by envisioning having sex with him, and he wouldn’t linger to see the truth behind the erotic fantasy, see just how pathetic a lover I really was. Not that it mattered—I was getting the feeling that I was looking on an eternity of celibacy, just like Raziel. Except in my case, it wouldn’t be by choice.

  Who would I have here if I could have anyone? That was a no-brainer. Azazel was nasty, and I’d learned to avoid self-destructive relationships. Sammael was too young, even if he was millennia older than I was. I just got a wrong feeling from him. There was Tamlel, who seemed quite sweet, but I didn’t want him either. If I was forced to have sex with anybody I’d met so far, I’d choose Raziel. Like it or not, I felt bonded to him, even if it only went one way. He was my man, the only connection with my old world, and I was holding on for dear life.

  That bond was going to break, of course. It was temporary, just long enough to get me through to the other side. Hey, maybe I’d get to go to heaven after all, despite what he’d said, a sunny, happy place with angels who actually played harps. I could live among the clouds, visit my dead relatives, and look down on the poor foolish mortals with compassion.

  Though an eternity of that could get old pretty fast. This was no trip to Hollywood, but the alternatives weren’t that appealing. As long as I could keep Raziel out of my brain, I’d be able to figure out a way to deal with all this. Or a way to get out of it. There was always some kind of loophole. These things weren’t written in stone.

  Well, come to think of it, they probably were, literally, somewhere. And my efforts to keep Raziel out of my brain had only resulted in his abandoning me, which wasn’t particularly helpful. I was probably going to need him if I wanted to get out of here, and making him crazy might not be the smartest thing to do. He might get pissed off enough to agree to the Grace, which was more like a curse. If he was really motivated, he might be able to return me to the one place he said he couldn’t. Home.

  Oh, I wasn’t picky. It didn’t have to be the same life, the same job, the same face. I could go back as anyone. I just wanted, needed, to go back.

  On the other hand, my only defense was thinking about having sex with Raziel, and I found it . . . distracting. Disturbing. Arousing. Okay, I had to admit it. He was inspiring some wickedly lustful thoughts, whether he was around or not. I could spend a perfectly delightful afternoon doing absolutely nothing but indulging in sex fantasies about my beautiful, angry kidnapper and enjoy myself tremendously.

  Unfortunately, that might leave me a bit too vulnerable, and I couldn’t afford to let him see that. If he saw weakness, he’d exploit it without hesitation.

  At least I was alone, with no one watching me. I didn’t have to make conversation, be perky, put on a cheery face. All I had to do was try to make sense of what had happened to me. I didn’t need to be distracted by a blood-sucking angel with the face of a . . . well, of an angel and the personality of a puff adder. Whom I somehow, inexplicably, longed for.

  There, I’d admitted it. The 12-step groups were right—admitting it was the first and hardest part of owning a problem. Raziel was most definitely a problem, as far as I was concerned.

  He didn’t like me. I shouldn’t find that particularly distressing. Yes, I was counting on him to protect me when my case was brought before the tribunal or whatever the hell it was, and he’d promised he wouldn’t let them Grace me. Still, he’d made it clear that he thought women should be seen and not heard. Fat chance of that. I’d never been the silent, docile type and even the fear of God, or Uriel, wasn’t going to get me started now.

  If it weren’t for Sarah, I’d be feeling completely defeated. I liked her, even if her husband seemed like an even bigger asshole than Raziel. Azazel was tall, dark, and grumpy, his body radiating a kind of bleak disapproval that made Raziel seem warm and fuzzy in comparison. Even Sammael hadn’t been a barrel of laughs. I didn’t know the names of the others, except Tamlel, of course, though I’d seen several of them. There had been at least a dozen men in the room where I’d seen Raziel at Sarah’s wrist. Would Sarah and Raziel and maybe Tamlel be enough to sway them?

  Suddenly I could see that strange scene all over again, the odd, unearthly light, the chanting, the smell of incense and something more elemental: the coppery scent of blood. I shuddered, feeling warm and slightly faint. I would have given a lot not to have walked in on that. Knowing about it would have been difficult enough; seeing it gave me a strange, edgy feeling. Like I’d watched someone having sex, or accidentally witnessed something slightly perverse but . . . arousing.

  Slightly perverse? He was drinking the blood of his friend’s wife. No wonder I was left with an unsettled feeling every time I thought of it. It felt almost as if someone had touched me.

  I wouldn’t make that mistake again. No flinging open doors—I’d knock first and wait for someone to open them. What these . . . these people did in the privacy of their own rooms was fine with me. I just wanted to get the hell away from here.

  Though not literally. Being a reasonable, twenty-first-century woman, I had never believed in hell. It seemed to me that there was enough horrific punishment meted out on earth to satisfy the most vengeful god, and why should the universe duplicate efforts? Hell was warfare, children who died before their parents, drug addiction, poverty, violence. It always seemed to me that if someone screwed up big-time, it was simpler just to send them back for another go-round.

  Then again, I’d never believed that people who suffered had brought it on themselves, so that sort of shot a hole in my cosmic theory of justice. Nevertheless, some fiery pit with a chortling devil holding a pitchfork had seemed more of a twisted Disney fantasy than anything else.

  Apparently I was wrong.

  Though no one had said anything about Satan. Come to think of it, some of the biblical propaganda posited that the first fallen angel, Lucifer, was Satan, king of hell. Which didn’t really jibe with what was going on here.

  I was curious, but truth be told, it wasn’t just intellectual curiosity that made me determined to stay right here.

  Raziel had something to do with it.

  Okay, he was way too gorgeous, and gorgeous men made me feel like a troll. I could make an exception. Whether I liked it or not, I felt drawn to him, tied to him, turned on by him; and while I was putting out a lot of energy fighting it, I was losing the battle. It didn’t matter—he was more than capabl
e of resisting me, and I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself. It wasn’t the first time I’d suffered the adolescent pangs of unrequited, er, lust.

  The sun was already setting, sinking into the dark green ocean, the golden color streaking toward me with greedy fingers. I looked down, and I could see Raziel walking on the beach, with Azazel and some of the others beside him. They were deep in conversation, and from such a distance I could barely see their expressions, much less hear what they were saying. But whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

  Of course there were no women walking and talking. No women angels. It really annoyed me—the patriarchal control extended millennia, apparently.

  I turned away. Apparently the only way to make baby fallen angels was to have female angels in the first place, and someone had neglected to create them.

  I was starving. How had he gotten that food up here last night? Was this some kind of fairy-tale world, where all I had to do was wish to make it happen? I closed my eyes and tried to visualize a quart of Ben & Jerry’s, then opened them again. Nothing on the coffee table in front of me, but on a whim I slid off the sofa and went to the freezer, looking inside to see . . . absolutely nothing. Crap.

  Maybe it needed Raziel’s magic touch.

  I started moving around the apartment, restless, trying to keep my mind off my stomach. One bedroom—his, with the king-size bed in the middle of it. Looking at it made me start thinking about points south of my stomach, and I quickly elevated my mind to purer matters. Someone had made the bed, so maybe the place came with maid service, which was a good thing. I wasn’t about to start picking up after him, though chances were he was neater than I was. Most people were.

  One closet, and not much in the way of clothing. I’d already rummaged through and borrowed the stuff most likely to fit me. The rest would be impossibly tight on my far-from-coltish figure, assuming I could even get the clothes on. Besides, the black was almost as depressing as the white.