“Not dead, thank goodness.”
A constant honking car horn effectively cleared her foggy brain. Other vehicles had been involved in the crash—two more, she saw from her kneeling position.
Fore in Eden’s mind remained the strange man. He’d literally been hell-bent on getting to her. Was he still in pursuit? Had he been hit by one of the cars that had collided in the accident?
She slid shaky fingers along her forearm. It itched where he had licked her. She scratched, but a drop of blood on the seat distracted her. Where had that—? She touched her head. A gash across her eyebrow bled. Didn’t feel deep. It didn’t hurt at all, which could be a good thing, or very bad.
A slide of fingers under her skirt and along her thigh verified the small blade still there. She could have been poked with it. She’d been fortunate.
“Have to …” If the punk found her what would he do? Heart racing toward a cliff, she couldn’t think beyond the insanity her pursuer had instilled in her. “Hide.”
Shuffling backward, Eden scrambled along the curb until she stopped at a spinning tire attached to a battered SUV. The radio inside the car blasted a Jimmy Hendrix tune.
Bent over, she crept-walked around the front of the SUV and spied a magazine stand on the sidewalk. She dove to the ground behind the wooden rack, her position hidden from the accident scene.
The sound of a new crash, like rubber-soled boots landing on a trunk, set her rigid. Already her heart beat maniacally. She couldn’t get more alert or tense.
“Here, pretty, pretty.”
It was the punk. Clasping her arms about her legs, she winced when her forearm crushed another cut below her knee. She would not cry. She must not make noise.
What would a man who had followed her through traffic, been thrown off a moving vehicle and was sorting through the scene of a wreckage want with her? No answer was good.
And any answer tested the boundaries of what was real and what could only be supernatural. Eden believed in beings not like herself. She had to, because she believed in angels.
The boots stomped the sidewalk not twenty feet from where Eden hid. She heard a snorting noise, like some kind of animal. He was … sniffing. It was as if he were a wild cat stalking its prey.
She didn’t like thinking that word—prey. Her gut clenched and she tried to stifle the uncontrollable need to sob.
Boot steps slowly approached. They paused and she heard a sniffing sound, as if he were testing the air. Then the boots jumped onto a vehicle and she heard metal crunch beneath them.
In the distance an ambulance siren wailed. Eden realized people from nearby shops had begun to step out and were gathering near the crashed cars.
“Not here,” the punk growled under his breath. “Bitch got away.” He landed on the asphalt. It sounded like he was walking away.
The back of Eden’s head fell against the boards behind her. She could be injured but she didn’t care. It was a relief to know the creep had given up. Finally.
She scratched the itch on her forearm. As if a wasp sting, it burned worse than any of her cuts.
The crowd exhaled a coltective gasp, as if they’d witnessed something strange or horrible.
A pair of heavy leather biker boots landed on the sidewalk right next to Eden.
Chapter 2
The punk leaned over Eden, extending his hand for her to grasp. She fixated on the shiny steel bar pierced through his nose as if a bullring waiting for tether. His smile was wrinkled. It didn’t meet his kaleidoscope eye. Nothing on his face was cohesive.
He did not speak, yet the eye not covered with the patch screamed at her. The promise of something vast and unfamiliar shouted from that eye. It frightened her.
And it compelled her.
She’d almost touched that feeling once. A year ago. Joy.
The crowd again gasped in unison as rubber peeled across the asphalt. Out of the corner of her eye, Eden saw a motorcycle do a one-eighty. The rumbling steel bike approached the accident too quickly. Surely it would crash—
The rear tire stopped two feet from her legs.
The white-haired punk snarled and leaped away from her. It was a physically impossible move, because he soared straight up through the air, flipped in a backward somersault and landed on the other side of the crashed cab.
“My lady, take my hand,” commanded the black-leather-clad motorcyclist. “If you want to be safe.”
Too much happening. So much to register. But Eden heard safe and scrambled to her feet.
Yet she looked to the punk, standing poised to leap upon the hood of a stalled car. Still, his eye beckoned.
I can give you what you seek. If you dare to take it.
“Now, my lady!” the rider insisted.
Shaking from shoulders to legs, wanting to scream, and wondering why she could not physically make a sound, Eden was tugged onto the motorcycle behind the imposing man.
She recorded sensations only. The rough slide of leather under her palms as she groped to wrap her arms about his waist. The burn of the exhaust cylinder when she initially put her shoeless foot right on it.
The intense realization that the man was solid, hard and all muscle. Yes, safe.
The rider gripped her by the ankle and pulled her foot higher to hook behind his booted foot. She sucked in a gasp as his fingers clasped about her bare flesh. At this frantic moment it was too strange to feel desire, yet she did.
The command he projected with the protective move melted her resistance. The world wobbled and skinned her face with brisk air as the motorcycle sped away from the scene of the crash. She clung desperately, crushing her cheek to the supple plane of his leather-clad back.
She didn’t know who this man was, but he’d taken her away from the other man who had looked like a junkie. A man whose hand she had almost taken because the unspoken promise in his gaze had reached inside and touched a part of her she’d thought buried.
Had she heard him say, “I can give you what you seek"?
How could he know what she wanted? Half the time she didn’t know what she wanted.
Safety was fore on that unknown list, and she grasped it, if only for the moment.
“Stop ahead on Eleventh Avenue,” she yelled. Eden could barely hear her voice. She doubted he could hear her over the roar of the motor. “Please!”
He reached back to slide a hand along her thigh. Her skirt road up high and his palm burnished her flesh. It wasn’t a suggestive move, but more to ensure she was still there. Safe. The tingling desire she’d felt when he’d touched her ankle returned. The touch ignited beneath her skin, shimmying adrenaline and a frenzy of want to her belly.
So this was what the damsel felt like when rescued by the knight?
She’d take it.
Guilt reared up too quickly. They’d ridden away from those injured at the scene. But she’d heard the ambulance. The driver, and any others who may be injured, would be taken to the hospital.
And what of her? Beyond a few cuts she hadn’t a more serious injury. What hurt was that damned spot on her arm where the man had licked her. If she were not clinging for life to her rescuer, she’d be scratching.
The motorcycle veered right sharply. Squeezing her thighs against his to hang on, Eden recognized the Chelsea Piers. The area boasted a lot of new developments, but as well, many unoccupied warehouses and storage facilities were badly in need of restoration.
They drove through a narrow warehouse door and into a dark, empty storage room three stories high.
The motorcycle stopped and tilted left as the driver let down the kickstand. Eden slid off. Before the man could speak, she rushed him, threading her arms about his chest and squeezing.
“Thank you,” she said. She pushed away and stepped back, sliding her palms down her hips.
“Sorry.”
“No need for apologies, my lady.”
“It was a reaction to being rescued. I don’t normally hug strangers. I’m just so thankful.”
“This is not a rescue.”
“Seriously? What is it? You got me away from that freaky guy.”
“He will come to you. I will be waiting.”
She scratched her forearm. Cautious to keep the man in view, she scanned her surroundings. The door they’d rolled through was her only way out.
She noticed his curiosity as she scratched. Eden tugged down her sleeve, embarrassed when she should only be thankful she was safe. But was she? He’d said this wasn’t a rescue. So what did he intend to do with her, alone in this abandoned building?
She wasn’t about to stick around to find out. Reaching up under her skirt, she claimed the blade tucked against her thigh.
Eden dashed toward the open doorway bursting with a shock of orange from the setting sun.
Just as she slapped a palm against the rough wood door frame, a huge body slid before her. Eden’s entire body slammed into the unmoving force of man. He was a head taller than she, and twice as wide.
“I prefer you remain in here, my lady.”
“Yeah? That’s what scares me.”
Pushing from his solid chest, Eden stepped away, knife held before her in warning. She’d taken a self-defense course and was prepared to stab if necessary.
But how big could a man be? He filled the doorway.
The low sun behind him glowed about his figure, giving him a remarkable aura, almost heavenly. Black tousled hair shimmered blue and swept low near a square jaw. A line of dark beard, trimmed thin, framed his jaw and lips. A sexy soul patch marked a smudge from his thick lower lip down his chin. His flesh was pale—no sun-worshipper, he—yet his eyes and everything else were so dark. The contrast was exquisite. Handsome was an insufficient term for his beauty.
Yes, she actually thought the man beautiful, like a rock star or an actor pumped up for the role of warrior. Yet she also sensed danger from him.
“My lady.” He shook his head at her in pity. “I wouldn’t use that little stick to pick my teeth.”
Suddenly the knife jerked from her fingers and flew toward his. He caught it and tucked it in the waistband of his pants.
“Who—What? How did you do that?” Eden asked.
She took another step back and clasped her arms across her chest. “You ripped me away from the scene of an accident. I thought you were rescuing me. And who was that man? The punk guy. He chased me through the city on foot! He ran so fast it was like he wasn’t human. And he flew away from me when you arrived.”
“That was Zaqiel, and he’s come for you.”
Eden didn’t know how to respond to that statement. The name was weird, but the second part of what he’d said was weirder.
“Come for me? Who are you?”
“I am … Ashur.” He glanced toward the motorcycle and added, “Ashur Man … Yes, Manning. I won’t harm you. I require you to draw Zaqiel here so I can slay him.”
“Slay?”
Nausea wavered through Eden. She spread out her hands in the event she toppled, which was looking probable. But she had to stay strong and keep a clear head. All her instincts screamed danger. And the rescuing knight was beginning to sound more villainous. He had made up the name he’d given her, surely.
“A Fallen one is on your trail,” the man—Ashur—said.
“Fallen?”
“Or Grigori, if you prefer.”
The oddness of recognition straightened her posture and she found a clear thought. For someone who had been painting angels since she was a teenager, she’d spent a lot of time sorting through books about them. She’d read parts of the Hebrew bible and the pseudepigraphal book of Enoch.
“Do you know what a Grigori is?” she asked, hoping he’d grabbed the wrong term.
“I do.” He bowed closer to her, his massive frame shadowing her and making her feel so small. “And you, my lady, do you know what a Grigori is?”
“I most certainly do.” She squeezed her forearm because if she scratched any more she’d tear skin. “Next you’ll be telling me you carry a flaming sword and—”
Glass crackled from above. A row of windows along the second story shattered. A rain of glass shards poured downward.
Ashur slammed into Eden. Her breath gasped out. He shoved her into the darkness near the far wall, away from the falling slivers of deadly glass.
“He’s here. Stay put,” he said in a low command. “Don’t get in the way.”
If he was speaking about the punk being here, Eden didn’t see him.
“Where is he?” she called nervously. “How could he have possibly followed us?”
Ashur tilted his head aside and lifted a hand to silence her. She could sense his anxious alertness. But he wasn’t half as tense as her muscles were. They felt ready to snap.
She scratched her forearm.
Suddenly Ashur approached her. He gripped her wrist and looked at the red skin right below the birthmark. “This is how he follows. The angelkiss. It is a beacon. Scratch again, my lady. Lure him to me.”
“But he just—” A beacon? Scratching where he had licked her lured the crazy druggie to her? No way was she going to continue. “No, I—”
What sounded like wings, yet sharp and cutting as if metal, sliced the air. Eden searched the broken window frames overhead. She could only huff and try futilely to settle her frantic heartbeat.
“This is not proving successful. He will not approach when he knows I am guarding you.” Ashur twisted to look at her. “I must lead him to believe I’ve left you to your own devices.”
“No! Don’t leave me alone.”
Her outburst caused him to pause. Had he intended to leave her here? Obviously he was weighing it in his mind right now. And had she just asked for help from a man who scared the crap out of her?
All her life she’d wondered about things like angels and the fallen and what they might look like, and now. This could not be happening.
Finally Ashur nodded. “I will not leave you. But my intentions cannot be fulfilled here and now. Give me your hand.”
She tucked her hands behind her hips.
Ashur lunged and gripped her wrist, roughly forcing her hand forward. And then he bent and dragged his tongue over her skin, right over the itchy spot where Zaqiel had licked her.
“What the hell?”
“It counteracts the angelkiss,” he said. “For a while. Don’t scratch until I tell you to do so.”
He grabbed her, sweeping her into his arms as effortlessly as if she were a doll. He deposited her on the back of the motorcycle again. Tears rolled down Eden’s face as he kicked the bike into gear and they rolled over the litter of glass.
“Tell me where you live. I want the angel to think you are alone and waiting.”
“Oh, hell. An angel? A real …? This can’t be happening.”
“Your address, my lady.”
If she had known the address for the police station, Eden would have rambled that one off. Yet the idea of being dropped off at home, where she felt most safe and could lock the doors and keep out all the crazy men after her, sounded too good to be true.
She gave him her address, and the motorcycle picked up speed.
He’d spoken of Fallen angels, and kisses from angels, which made her think he was talking about real angels. She believed in angels. They weren’t all glowy and peaceful and full of grace as modern media would have a person believe. Some were positively evil—the fallen ones.
Something the cabbie had said returned to her. When they were in the tunnel, the cab had slowed and he said he saw an angel.
Had Zaqiel been that angel?
But why would an angel be after her? Had it something to do with the dreams she’d been having all her life?
As they sped down the pier, Eden glanced over her shoulder and saw Zaqiel keeping track with them on foot.
Chapter 3
Bruce speed-dialed Antonio in Paris, then checked his watch only after he’d done so. It was 6:00 p.m. in New York. That made it something like midnight in Paris.
The receiver clicked. “What?”
“Er, sir, hey. I’m here in New York.”
“Obviously. What do you have for me, Bruce?”
“I tracked the Fallen to an art gallery.”
“You tag him?”
The GPS injection gun Bruce wore in a holster was still loaded with a cartridge. “No. But I did discover something very interesting.” He turned and eyed the gallery, still swarming with mortals oohing and aahing over its contents.
“No tagged vamp? What the hell are you doing? Traipsing through Times Square?”
“Listen, Antonio, I found some paintings you’ll want to see.”
“Paintings?”
“Yes, they were painted by a chick named Eden Campbell. They are all of angels. I think she knows something. They are remarkable.”
“You’ve never seen an angel, Bruce, what the hell makes you think some woman painting fluffy-winged angels knows something? I’m very disappointed—”
“In each painting the angel wears a sigil,” Bruce hastened out. “And I know I’ve never seen an angel, but I have seen those symbols in that ancient book you used to summon Zaqiel and the other. They are the same. I know it.”
He heard shuffling. Antonio must be sitting behind his desk in the cavern. Bruce called the guy’s home a cavern because seventy percent of it was located underground. Five hundred years old and sunlight had never touched his skin. Holy water burned him and he seriously could not see his reflection in a mirror. He was old world all the way.
“You swear this is serious?” Antonio asked. “I’m sure of it, boss.”
“Who is the woman? How does she know this?”
“I have no idea. Some society chick. I missed her. I guess she left before I got here. The gallery closes in a few minutes.”
“Buy them all,” Antonio ordered. “Ship them to me overnight.”
“Will do, boss.”
A thousand years sitting Beneath, doing nothing more than contemplating emptiness, tends to steal a demon’s energy, if not his sense of what is.
What is, is the world had changed, Ashur told himself. Drastically. He hadn’t afforded the time to look at his surroundings upon arrival here on earth. Immediately he focused on tracking Zaqiel. It was what he did; nothing else concerned him.
So why was he cruising through an overcrowded city on a strange two-wheeled vehicle with a muse clinging to his back?
He never got involved with the muse. The woman was merely bait, a necessary lure to bring the Fallen into its half angel/half human form—the only form in which it could be killed. As well, the form it assumed to impregnate the muse.
Generally Ashur arrived just as the Fallen was going to attempt the muse. Then he slayed the angel.
His timing was irritatingly off. He should not have been summoned until the very moment of the attempt. Had the rules been altered? And why were the Fallen walking earth again? Hadn’t their ranks been swept away with the great flood?
He had no concept of how much time had passed since the flood, or since he’d been banished Beneath. Millennia, surely, for the world had changed drastically.
“Take a left!” the woman yelled over the roar of the motor.
Ashur liked the noise of the engine as he revved it, but he did not care to take directions from a female. However, he did turn because he had not navigated this city before, and her directions had given Zaqiel the slip many city blocks earlier.
So long as Zaqiel knew a Sinistari was with the muse, the angel would not approach her. But it was in the angel’s interest to keep his muse in sight, for he could not track her by scent but only by the identifying mark. Though the angelkiss made all senses unnecessary.
If the muse irritated the angelkiss, it acted like a beacon.
Ashur did not want to use the angelkiss until he had the woman in a space he could control.
Slender fingers gripped him tightly about the waist, clinging to the front of his shirt. He’d gained a mortal’s raiments after surfacing from Beneath. Upon arrival following his summons, Ashur had taken a look around, seen what the mortal men were wearing and had assimilated the trousers, shirt, jacket and boots.
A few minutes observing the men and their motored bikes, and he had learned the driving technique. He’d stolen a bike, leaving behind a crew of leathered bikers shouting at him as they struggled to start their own vehicles. Only one had managed to follow him, but he’d given him the slip.
He’d sacrificed valuable time gathering a few essential tools of this realm, and because of his delay the Fallen was still alive. Yet the angel would have never attempted the woman out in the open with witnesses. Or would he?
The world had changed. Ashur expected everything else—including the Fallen—had changed, as well.
“Drive under there,” she said, pointing toward a slope in the street that lunged beneath a towering cement building. “It’s my building. You can park underneath in the garage.”
Ashur took in the rows of shiny metal vehicles as he rolled slowly down into the cool, lighted garage. Man had come a long way from the horse-drawn carts he recalled. The improvement was unnecessary to judge from the huge, dense city where he suspected most could walk to and from their destinations.
And yet the motortzed vehicles were bright and loud. He must get one of those if he were to spend any amount of time here. He slowed and read the words on the back of a vehicle that appealed—Ferrari.
Concentrate, Ashuriel. Do you fall to the old sins so quickly?
Heh. Sins? He’d mastered them all. And with ease. Mortal sins were not considered evil or wrong to his kind. In fact, indulgence was a way of life.
Theft had come easily, without thought. Vanity, well, he wasn’t sure if the clothing he wore was the finest, but he was clothed.
Lust? Well, that suited him fine. He vaguely recalled that particular mortal sin now as the woman’s fingers impressed upon his chest. Though the particular elements that designed the sin had been lost to him over years of desolation. He knew it had involved touch and emotion and intense physicality. It would come to him, surely.
Violence would be granted when he shoved Dethnyht into the angel’s glass heart.
Parking the motorbike, he pulled out the key, sensing he’d need it to restart the thing. He waited for the muse to slide off behind him. He could feel her head pressed against his back and her fingers didn’t so much dig into his chest as affix themselves to it.
Touch. He pressed a palm over her narrow fingers. Yes, he’d forgotten the pressure of another person’s flesh against his own. So odd how he could feel her warmth even through the shirt. It shimmered through him and—He must stop regarding the sensation.
“We’re here,” he said. “It is safe now.”
An easy lie. One thing he did remember was the muse was always frantic and inconsolable upon learning her fate—which was usually seconds before the Fallen attempted her. “My lady?”
“Huh? Oh.” She slid off and tugged at her torn skirt. It revealed so much of her fine, long legs, Ashur had to steel the sudden desire to stroke his thumb along her thigh. “Sorry. You were … nice to hold on to.”
Ashur lingered on her smile, knowing it was a distraction, but unable to resist.
He slid from the bike and tugged off the heavy leather jacket to offer to her. “Here. Your skirt is torn. This will cover your legs.” And keep his eyes from straying.
“It’s not torn.” She dashed a finger along the hem, which upon closer inspection didn’t look torn, rather straight, but it was above her knees. “You’ve never seen a miniskirt before?” She smirked. Somewhere she’d lost her shoes and she stepped on the balls of her feet. “Would you, um, give me back my blade?”
“Why?”
“It’s mine. And if you don’t, I’m going to scream.”
She sought a show of trust. Ashur handed her the blade, and she clasped it to her chest, yet not in defense. Foolish woman.
“Thank you. So, that man. He’s a real angel?”
