Текст книги "Raziel"

Автор книги: Kristina Douglas

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

We landed hard on the side of the mountain, and he released me as if my touch were something unclean. I landed on my butt, and as I looked up into his face I managed to muster clear disdain. “So where’s Raziel? Did you kill him already? And what are you going to do about all the others?” It wasn’t over until it was over, and if I could get him to do the Evil Warlord shtick and reveal his wicked plans, I might just possibly have a chance to stop him.

Particularly if he turned into a snake, which, according to Number 666 of the Evil Overlord Rules, never helps.

No, he couldn’t do that. I was getting a little giddy—too many things had happened to me, and I was tired of being buffeted around.

“The others will be no problem. Their women are dead or dying. If there is no Source, they will weaken and die. The next time I let the Nephilim in, they will devour the rest, and I will ascend to heaven.”

“Unless they devour you too,” I pointed out, trying to be practical. “So I get to die because I’m the Source. Lucky me. Why kill Raziel? Why not let him weaken and die like the others?” It would take a hell of a long time for Raziel to weaken enough that Sammael or a whole host of Nephilim could take him, and before that happened he’d figure out who the traitor was. I had absolutely no doubt about that.

I’d be dead, though. And I didn’t want to die. I wanted to spend as long as I could with Raziel, no matter how bossy he was.

“I can’t kill you without killing Raziel. If he loses his mate too soon, he’ll be very dangerous.”

Yeah, right. For some reason I couldn’t picture Raziel losing it over my untimely demise. For him, I was simply a matter of destiny. It wasn’t as if he really wanted a mate. If I died, he’d have a get-out-of-jail-free pass.

I got to my feet slowly, feeling bruised and cold. He’d flown me up high, where the air was thin and icy, and I still felt chilled. “You know,” I said in a conversational tone, “I don’t want to die. Couldn’t we work something out?” If Raziel wasn’t dead yet, there was still hope. I couldn’t believe that Raziel could be bested by a little shit like Sammael.

“What you want means nothing to me,” he said.

I ignored him. “I spent the first part of my life with a religious crackpot. I’d rather not be killed by one.”

Sammael was unmoved. “He’s waiting for you. And I have things to do. Start walking.”

I looked at the great yawning maw of the cave, and a cold sweat broke over me. “Is he still alive?” Because if he wasn’t, I decided I’d just as soon die outside, beneath the clear night sky, as down in some dark hole.

“He lives,” Sammael said grudgingly. “He waits.”

“I go,” I said, matching his terse language. And I started up the pathway.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

HE WAS LYING ON HIS BACK AT the far side of the huge stone cavern, and for a moment I thought he was dead. Raziel’s color was always a pale golden, but right now he looked ashen, and he was absolutely still. He looked like he had that first night in the forest when he was dying from the poisoned burn.

“What have you done to him?” I whispered to the man whose hand was clamped onto my arm. I yanked at it, but I was no longer trying to escape. I was desperate to get to Raziel.

He released me, and I stumbled forward, almost falling to my knees. I ran across the hard rock floor, ignoring everything in my haste to reach my mate. I sank down on my knees, throwing my arms around him in a way I would never have dared to if he’d been conscious. I could hear his heart beating, more faintly than usual but still steady, and his skin was cool. I wanted to hide my face against his chest, but it would do no good. Sammael wasn’t going to change his mind, walk away. God save me from zealots.

I rose, looking down into Raziel’s still face. His tawny hair had fallen back, and he looked starkly beautiful, from his high cheekbones, his chiseled features, to his pale mouth that could do such lovely, wicked things. I let my hand brush his hair back from his high forehead, gently. “What did you do to him?” I whispered, unable to keep the anguish out of my voice.

“I thought you didn’t care for him,” Sammael said. “Why are you mourning him?”

I looked back at him. “You know perfectly well why,” I said, irritation breaking through my despair. “I’m in love with him. I’m his bonded mate, his soul, whether either of us likes it or not.”

“You both like it,” Sammael said with an ugly twist to his mouth. “I know these things. You rut like animals. You are what caused them to fall in the first place.”

“Hey, I wasn’t even there,” I protested, looking around me for any kind of weapon.

“Silence!” he thundered, like some kind of cartoon monarch.

Raziel stirred next to me, his arm twitching for a moment, and I wondered if he was waking up. As long as he was unconscious, there was little I could do. The cavern was devoid of weapons.

I looked down at him, and he opened his eyes, his vision sharp and clear. His hand caught mine, out of the sight of Sammael’s mad eyes, and squeezed it tightly in reassurance.

I wasn’t reassured.

He was lying on a strange sort of dais—bedding made of twigs and grasses and larger branches—and I looked down at him in confusion at first, then in dawning horror as I realized what Sammael had planned.

I whirled around, trying to shield Raziel from his view. “You—you can’t! You can’t be planning on burning him!”

“He will die by fire,” Sammael said placidly.

I felt Raziel move behind me, and I tried to stay between him and Sammael, vainly trying to protect him. “Over my dead body.” Yes, it was melodramatic, but I was past trying to be cool. I wasn’t going to let him die.

But Raziel had struggled to his feet behind me, and I felt his hands clamp on my arms. “Stay out of this, wife,” he said in a rough voice, trying to push me out of the way.

I wasn’t moving. I did my best to dig in my heels, but of course my strength was pitiful next to Raziel’s, even moments after he’d regained consciousness.

He shoved me, hard, and I went sprawling onto the ground, the breath knocked out of me. I lay there for a moment, pissed off enough to forget the danger we were both in. You couldn’t breathe when you were dead, could you? Was it going to be like this? I didn’t want to die.

“Leave her alone.” Raziel’s voice sounded almost bored. “She has nothing to do with this—it’s between you and me.”

“It isn’t,” Sammael said. There was a brief softening in his face. “I do not wish you ill, Raziel. But if I am to regain redemption, the Fallen must be vanquished.”

“She’s not one of us.”

Sammael’s brief smile was almost sorrowful. “She is the Source.”

“If you kill us all, she’ll be no threat.”

“She must be punished. All the Fallen and their human whores must die.”

“She’s not human.”

My breath came back with a sudden, gulping whoosh. “Don’t,” I managed to choke out. “You don’t want to do this.” I was ignoring Raziel by this point, just as he was ignoring me.

But Sammael had drawn a huge sword, a weapon that looked like it had come from some medieval painting of an avenging angel. It had appeared out of nowhere, like some damned Star Warslight saber, and I ground my teeth. How could you fight a supernatural being, when the rules didn’t apply to them?

“You have to give him a weapon as well if you’re going to fight,” I protested, slowly getting to my feet. If I survived this, I thought, I’d be battered and bruised. Right now I could only wonder why it was taking me so long to rise to my full, fairly insignificant height.

“He’s not going to fight me,” Raziel said. “There are only two ways he can kill me—he can burn me, or he can cut off my head. But he’s too much of a coward to come close enough to strike me. Therefore it must be fire, and he has the right weapon.”

“But how—” I demanded, then saw Sammael raise the sword over his head, more like a medieval avenging angel than ever, with a—

Christ, a flaming sword of vengeance. Flames were licking along the blade, kept from Sammael by the broad hilt and nothing more.

“You know that whoever wields the sword will die by the flames as well,” Raziel said, seemingly unmoved by his imminent demise.

Sammael shook his head slowly. “Uriel has granted me redemption. I have followed his orders, and I will ascend to the heavens once more, cleansed of sin and the stench of mortals.”

“Don’t be a fool, Sammael. We are cursed by God. Even Uriel can’t change that.”

“I have faith,” Sammael said simply, and he slowly lowered the sword, pointing it toward Raziel and the funeral pyre.

It was enough. All I knew was that I couldn’t let this happen, couldn’t let the forces of ignorance win, not this time. “No!” I shrieked, diving across the floor, throwing myself at Sammael to stop him.

At the sound of my voice he automatically turned, the flaming sword between us. I felt it slice into me, and it was curiously painless, just heat and pressure as I stared into Sammael’s startled face. The flames were licking toward me along the shining metal of the sword that impaled my chest, and I reached up, grasping the blade, and pushed the fire back at him.

I could feel the heat but the blaze didn’t burn my hands as it moved back over the protective hilt, onto Sammael, onto the rough fabric of his clothing, erupting in flames.

He screamed, and yanked the sword free. I collapsed like a marionette whose strings had been cut. I was lying in a river of blood, and if I’d been able to speak I would have told Raziel to find something in which to bottle it. I was dying, and there would be nothing for the Fallen who counted on the Source for sustenance.

But I couldn’t speak. I was so tired. It seemed as if I’d been battling forever, and I needed to rest, but there was too much primal satisfaction in watching Sammael thrash and struggle in a conflagration. He was dying in hideous pain, and I guess there was enough Old Testament in me after all that I reveled in it.

“Allie. Beloved.” It was Raziel’s voice. I was probably already dead—there was no way he would call me beloved. After all, I’d been speared by a sword the size of Excalibur—even if it had missed my heart, it had to have done irreparable damage.

I felt him pull me into his arms, and I struggled, able to summon up a dying panic. “No,” I said. “There are sparks. . . .”

He ignored me, pulling me against him, and he put his hand over the gaping wound in my chest. I saw the last remaining spark jump to him, and I moaned in despair, even as the pressure in my chest grew harder, sharper. “This is ridiculous,” I said weakly. “Now we’re both going to die, and we aren’t cut out for Romeo and Juliet—”

“We’re not going to die.” I heard the pain in his voice, and I wanted to scream at him.

He pressed his hand against my chest, and the sudden pain was blinding, so powerful that my body arched, jerked, and then collapsed in his arms again. The bleeding had stopped, and I knew he’d healed me—somehow managed to close the wound, seal the tear.

But I was dying. He couldn’t stop that.

“No,” he said. “I won’t lose you. I can’t.” He pulled me against him, and his face was hard, cold, bleak. He reached out a hand and stroked my face gently, and I knew he was saying good-bye. And then he yanked his own shirt open and tore into his skin, ripping across the flesh so that blood spurted out.

I knew what he was going to do the moment before he did it, and I opened my mouth to protest. Opened my mouth as he pressed it against his wound, and the blood ran into my mouth, hot and rich, and my cold, cold body turned to fire as I drank from him, deep gulps of the sweetness of life, his life’s blood becoming mine.

He was trembling, his arm burning beneath my head. He pulled me away, and I could feel the wetness of his blood on my mouth. He leaned down and kissed me, full and hard and deep, the blood mingling between us, and the last barrier dropped away. “I love you,” he said, the words torn out of him.

“I know.”

He rose then, in one fluid movement, but I could see the weakness in him. “If I don’t make it,” he said in a low growl, “promise me you’ll live. The Fallen will need you. You’re the Source, even without me.”

“No. You live or I won’t,” I said, stubborn and angry.

He didn’t argue. His wings spread out, a gloriously iridescent blue-black, and a moment later we were soaring out of the cave, up and up into the night sky. I could feel his strength failing as he carried me. The ocean was ahead—he just had to make it that far, but heat was spreading, much faster than it had that first night, and I knew that giving me his blood had quickened the poisoning, and I wanted to hit him.

I did the only thing I could. “Don’t you dare drop me,” I warned him. “We didn’t go through all this to have me splattered on the cliffs like a drunken seagull.”

He laughed. It was only the faintest tremor of sound, but it was enough. He pushed, managing to rise higher, and then the last of his strength left him, as well as consciousness, and I knew we were too far from the ocean, we were going to crash like a modern Icarus.

I wanted to die kissing his beautiful mouth. His arms had gone limp, and I clung to him, turning my mouth to his, and the movement angled his winged body into the wind.

A breeze caught us, slid underneath us, and suddenly we were gliding, moving ever faster on the wind, crossing the night sky at a nightmare speed, and then falling, falling, spinning, my arms wrapped around him, my mouth on his, the blood between us, as we plummeted . . .

Into the sea. We plunged deep, the icy water a shock, tearing me away from him. It was so dark, so cold, and I’d lost him, gliding downward through the churning water. You could only cheat death so many times, I thought dazedly, and this time I closed my eyes against the saltwater sting, let my breath out, knowing I had nothing left to fight with. Raziel would survive; the ocean water would heal him, and he would find what he needed.

Full fathom five thy father lies:

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.

This time I would drown. I had already suffered a sea-change of such magnitude that there was nothing left, and my bones would be coral, my eyes pearls. Shakespeare in my ear.

Someone was there, a hand brushing mine as I floated, and I opened my eyes to see Sarah, serene and beautiful, smiling at me. All I needed was a bright light, I thought, smiling back at her. There was no one else I wanted to meet on the other side, and I reached out for her.

She shook her head. Her mouth didn’t move, but I heard her words clearly. “Not yet,” she said. “Not for a long time.”

I shook my head. I was so tired of fighting.

“Wait for him,” she said. “He’s worth waiting for.”

A strong hand grasped my wrist, yanking me upward, and I went, bursting up into the cold air endless moments later, coughing and choking in Raziel’s arms as he struck out toward shore.

We collapsed on the beach, exhausted, both of us gasping for breath. Raziel rolled onto his back, and I could see the blood on his wet clothes. My blood.

I was face down in the sand, and I knew I should roll over, but I didn’t have the strength to do anything but lie there and struggle for breath.

His hands on my shoulders were gentle as he turned me over to face him. He brushed the wet sand from my face, my hair, and looked down at me with impatience, with annoyance. With love.

“The first thing you do,” he said in a rough voice, “is learn how to swim.”

And he kissed me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

FIVE YEARS LATER SARAH LIED. I SWEAR TO GOD I somehow did the impossible and managed to gain ten pounds since living in Sheol, most of it in my ass. Fortunately, Raziel had a weakness for Renaissance women, and he still found my slightly overripe body irresistible.

The Nephilim were gone, vanquished, at least from this continent. A few were scattered into the wild, but since they survived on small animals and the flesh of the Fallen they would eventually starve. Unfortunately, Raziel told me they could live centuries without feeding, so this would take a while. I refused to consider the idea that that explained their foul, ravening hunger.

Small groups would remain on other continents—a handful in Asia, a larger group in Australia, sent there by Uriel in search of renegade Fallen and then abandoned. That wasn’t my worry. I had no intention of ever leaving Sheol again.

Raziel taught me to swim. Of course, with Sammael gone and the Nephilim effectively routed, there was no need for me to get into the icy-cold ocean, but Raziel had a bossy streak. Not that I put up with it, but if I could see common sense behind his autocratic announcements, I tended to give in, after as much delaying as I could manage, even if it was my idea in the first place. Raziel did better when people weren’t kowtowing to him, and I considered it my duty to keep him off balance.

He didn’t like being Alpha. And he hated me being the Source, though after the first few bloodings he managed to keep his jealousy in check. Tamlel and Gadrael sat on him the first two times, just to make sure he didn’t tear anyone’s head off. I could read his thoughts, and knew it was a close call.

I have no idea whether the fact that I loved being the Source made things easier or harder for him. If I was to have no children, I could at least nourish and nurture the Fallen, and I welcomed the chance as a way to alleviate some of my mourning. I never spoke of my longing for children to Raziel, and he never spoke of it to me. But we knew each other’s thoughts, and shared the pain.

There was no word from Azazel. Most thought he was dead, including me, but Raziel believed otherwise. He would return, Raziel said, when the time was right. There would be a sign, and he would be back.

I might have been getting fatter but I wasn’t getting any older. My face was unchanged—no crow’s-feet forming at the corners of my eyes, no laugh lines, though I found I could laugh a lot in the hidden mists of Sheol. I never fed from Raziel again, even though he knew I wanted it. Instead I gave him my body, my blood, and he gave me ecstasy, annoyance, and the deep abiding love that I’m not sure exists in ordinary life.

I had no idea how long I would live, and I didn’t worry about it. In the timeless world of Sheol, you had no choice but to live in the moment; and if I couldn’t live up to Sarah’s gentle example, I did well enough.

Until the day she turned up. Lilith, the demon wife.

And all hell broke loose.

The End