Death's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels (2 page)

Prologue

Two thousand years ago . . .

M
ichael gripped the rock in his right hand so hard that his fingers left imprints in the stone. Azrael heard it crack. Michael’s jaw was clenched tight, his eyes shut fast against the pain Az knew to be coursing through his veins.

Azrael could feel that pain as if it were his own. It was there because of him.

The woods were sparse this far north and Az knew that the ground beneath his brother grew colder and harder for him as the strength was sapped from his inhuman body. Azrael’s fangs were embedded deep in the side of Michael’s throat, and with each pull and swallow, Michael experienced a new and deeper agony.

“Az . . . that’s enough,” Michael ground out, hissing the words through gritted teeth.

I’m sorry
, thought Az. He didn’t speak the words, but whispered them into his brother’s mind. They were laced with genuine regret. Az had yet to pull out and stop drinking Michael down. He
couldn’t
stop.

For not the first time in the two weeks since they’d come to Earth, Az felt his brother’s mounting fear and knew that Michael would soon have to use force against him. It was an inevitable tragedy.

Az watched through eyes that glowed bright gold beneath half-closed lids as Michael raised the rock he tightly clutched, and after another grimace and wince of pain, slammed the stone into the side of Azrael’s head. Az knew it was coming; he’d registered his brother’s thought long seconds before the deed had been done. But he still hadn’t been able to pull away. He needed the blood so badly.

At the impact, Az was knocked to the side and his teeth were ripped from Michael’s throat, tearing long gashes in his brother’s flesh. Az toppled sideways, catching himself on strong but shaking arms.

Across from him, Michael dropped the rock to cup his hand to the side of his neck. “Az,” he gasped, “I’m sorry.” He slowly rolled over, propping himself on one elbow as he attempted to heal the damage Az had done. That was Michael’s gift—the ability to heal.

Azrael’s gift? The ability to harm. It seemed that was all he would ever be able to do.

Light and warmth grew beneath Michael’s palm, sending curative energy into his wound. Az watched him in silence, his head lowered, his long sable hair concealing his features from Michael’s sight.

“Az?” Michael let his hand drop from his neck, his wound obviously healed.

“Stop, Michael,” said Az. “I can’t bear it.”

The blond archangel closed his eyes as the otherworldly sound of Azrael’s voice infiltrated his mind and body. Az scraped his brother’s mind, reading his surface thoughts. He was desperate for some fleeting word or phrase that might distract him from the endless torture his existence had become.

Michael was thinking that Azrael had a beautiful voice.

It almost made Az laugh. He had always had an incredible voice. But now, in this bizarre and horrible form he had taken on Earth, it was more powerful than it had ever been. This much Azrael had to admit. He had become a monster—but a monster with a voice like no other.

Michael was also thinking that he could hear the despair in that voice.

Of course he could. It was plainly evident. How could it not be? Az was desperate. He despaired as no living creature ever had.

Michael opened his eyes again and looked upon his brother’s bent form. “This pain you’re going through can’t last much longer,” he said softly.

“A single moment longer is too long,” Az whispered. Slowly, and with great effort, he straightened. He raised his head so that his brother could see his stark, unnatural gaze, and Michael stilled beneath the weight of it. “Kill me,” Azrael said.

Michael steeled himself and shook his head. “Never.”

Az didn’t know why he’d bothered asking. If any one of the four archangel brothers could have summoned the will to kill the other, it would not have been Michael or even Azrael, but rather Uriel. He was the Angel of Vengeance. Only Uriel would be capable of comprehending what it would take to smother reason long enough to deal the final blow Azrael begged for.

But Uriel was not with them. He and their other brother, Gabriel, had been lost in their plummet to Earth. The four archangels had been separated and scattered, like dried and dead leaves on a hurricane wind. Azrael had no idea where the others were, much less what they might be going through. He didn’t care.

He only knew that he had gone through a transformation as he’d taken on this human form. Both he and Michael had, and he assumed the other two had as well—wherever they were.

Michael was not as powerful as he’d been before their descent. The nature of his supernatural powers was the same, more or less. He was still the most accomplished fighter Azrael had ever known—and, most likely, the most accomplished that had ever been created. He was also still capable of healing. But the
scope
of his powers had diminished greatly. He was able to affect only what was immediately around him, and only for a relatively short period of time. His body grew weary. He knew hunger. He often felt weak. He had changed drastically.

But not as much as Azrael.

As the former Angel of Death, Azrael experienced a change that was different from Michael’s. It was darker. It was painful. It was as if this new form were steeped in the negative energy he had collected during his endless prior existence. As the reaper in the field of mortal spirits, Azrael had ushered away so very many lives. There was a weight to that many souls, and they carried him down with them now. His altered form bore the fangs of a monster, a sensitivity to sunlight that forced him to hide in the shadows of night, and worst of all, a demand for blood.

Always blood.

“Please, Michael.” Azrael’s broad shoulders shook slightly as he curled his hands into fists and the powerful muscles in his upper body drew taut and pronounced. He glanced down at his hands, slim-fingered and perfect, and marveled at his pale skin. He knew what it looked like against the midnight color of his hair. He was a study in contradiction. Even his eyes were wrong. The sun was caustic to him—and yet his irises glowed like the very same star.

He was a living joke, cruel and merciless. Vicious anger now joined the pain-induced adrenaline flooding his inhuman blood. He gritted his teeth, baring his blood-soaked fangs.
“Don’t make me beg.”

Michael got his legs beneath him and stood. He backed up against one of the few trees in the area and opened his mouth to once more refuse his brother’s request . . . when Azrael suddenly blurred into motion.

Michael’s body slammed hard against the tree’s trunk and the living wood splintered behind him. He was weaker than he’d been several minutes before; Azrael had seen to that. Blood loss drained precious momentum from the former Warrior Archangel’s reflexes. Though Michael was still able to heal his wounds on Earth, for some reason he was not able to replace missing blood. It was a new weakness, especially in the face of Azrael’s bloodthirsty new form.

Az and his brother had been here before, locked in combat as they now were. They had been here every night for weeks.

Azrael didn’t know how long Michael would be able to engage in this nightly battle with him. Az was very strong. Even half-crazed with pain, he was most likely the strongest of the four of them. The monster that he had become was eating him up inside. It was devouring the core of his being, leaving him an empty shell.

Life was different on Earth. There had been no discomfort before this. No hunger. No thirst. These sensations were novel to them both, but whatever discomfort Michael might be suffering in his human form, Azrael was suffering a thousandfold.

Az knew now that pain had not existed before this. Not in any form. Not for anyone. As far as he was concerned,
suffering
, in and of itself, had been conceived the moment his soul had touched down and solidified into the tall, dark shape it was now.

But he knew that despite what he was putting his brother through, Michael wouldn’t give up on him. Not now—not ever. The foolish archangel would probably die first.

With great effort, Michael shoved Azrael off of him, and Az managed to hold himself back long enough to allow his brother to prepare for another senseless fight. Somewhere, Uriel and Gabriel were most likely struggling as well; either with themselves or with each other. If Az and his brother survived this—if Azrael didn’t simply walk into the sun the following morning—they had to find them.

They were on Earth for a reason, though it was nearly impossible for Azrael to contemplate that reason while under the spell of the tormenting affliction of his transformation. The Four Favored archangels had come in order to find their other halves. They’d come for the soul mates that the Old Man had created for them. They’d come to Earth to find their archesses.

If the lacerating chaos that now engulfed him was any indication of how their quest would play out, Azrael was certain they didn’t stand a chance of finding their archesses until they found one another first. If even then.

And at the moment he couldn’t have cared less.

Michael gritted his teeth, narrowed his gaze, and rolled up his sleeves. Azrael came at him like lightning, and like thunder, Michael met him halfway.

Eleven years ago . . .

* * *

Sophie gritted her teeth, grimaced at the sharp pain that shot through her knee, and hurriedly pushed herself back up. When she did, the wildflowers she carried in her right hand were once more crushed. She’d lost several petals the last time she’d fallen, but this fall was what really did the damage. The sweat from her palm was wilting the stems of the buttercups, sweet dame’s rockets, and star-of-Bethlehems. The second fall had almost entirely mulched the highly delicate sweet white violets.

But she didn’t have time to pick more. With a worried glance over her shoulder, Sophie pushed off once again. At fourteen years of age, she had legs that were suddenly longer than they should be. Normally that made her look like a doll on stilts, but this afternoon she was incredibly grateful for the added height. Her stilts carried her on a mad dash through Greenwood Cemetery, toward the headstone and empty flower vase she knew waited just over the next hill.

He was close behind. She could hear him grunting. He couldn’t move fast without grunting. He made noises when he ran, just like he made noises doing everything else. He snored when he slept and wheezed when he ate and seemed to be enveloped in a permanent whistling, which was caused by the extra thickness around his neck and nasal passages.

Sophie heard those sounds in her nightmares. But right now, they served as a warning. She could hear him clearly over the fog-dampened hills. Each sloppy crunch of his tennis shoes and each subsequent
humph, humph, humph
was an alarm bell warning of his pending arrival.

She had a hundred yards to go. She felt it like a magnet on her blood. Her heart raced and her eyes watered and the grass’s unevenness jarred her joints, but she pushed harder. Faster. Seventy yards to go. She could almost see it now. Mom would be there, waiting. She would be wearing an orange zip-up hoodie, like she always did. Dad would be sitting on the stone, gesturing animatedly as he talked to his wife—who wouldn’t be listening because she was looking for her daughter. She was always looking out for Sophie, waiting for her to come over that last rise.

Fifty yards to go—

“Sophie! Get back here, you fucking little cunt!” Her pursuer’s voice cut through the fog, slicing through her reveries like a chain saw through flesh. It was brutish and out of breath and utterly cruel. He was mad now. Madder than she’d ever heard him. “I swear to God I’m gonna kill you, you little bitch!” he yelled. She heard him slip and slide on a wet spot at the bottom of the hill and she pushed harder.

Faster.

Thirty yards to go, and there it was, its rounded top peeking through the swirling mists like a lighthouse in a fog. It had several small stones atop it—left there from Sophie’s previous visits.

“Stop!” he bellowed, each extra foot he was forced to run making him that much angrier. But Sophie didn’t stop.

Her mother was waiting.

There she was, in her favorite color, smiling warmly at Sophie as Sophie ran from the monster, tears streaming down her cheeks, her jeans torn, her knees bloodied. There she was, waving in welcome, her caramel-colored hair shining in sunlight that came from nowhere.

Sophie called out to her. She wanted her mother to hear her. She wanted her to know that Sophie had tried. The rim of the metal vase at her mother’s feet peeked out of the mist, beckoning.

But the beast was gaining and her mother didn’t seem to hear. The crunching was too close now.
Humph, humph, humph
—

No!

The back of Sophie’s shirt ripped, nearly choking her into instant unconsciousness as her foster father grabbed her by the garment and jerked her to a violent stop, spinning her around with the momentum. The two of them went down hard, Sophie landing on her arm and destroying what remained of the wildflowers she had picked for her mother’s birthday. She wanted to cry out with the pain of the impact, but she had learned long ago not to appear hurt in front of the predator.

Never let them smell your blood.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? I’ll teach you—” He was up and pulling her with him before Sophie could see past the stars that swam in front of her eyes. “Disgusting little troublemaking whore. You aren’t worth a shit.”

His fingers bruised the flesh of her arm as he began to make his way back across the cemetery, dragging Sophie with him. She ignored the pain and looked back at the waiting headstone. Her mother was gone. For the first time in eight years, there was no shot of orange above the stone. It stood empty and alone. Even the pebbles Sophie had left seemed smaller than before.

The graveyard mists turned red, shrouding the cemetery in scarlet contrasts. “No!” Sophie screamed. She didn’t even realize she was the one yelling. Before either of them knew what she was doing, Sophie had jerked out of her foster father’s grip. His grubby fingernails dug furrows in her upper arm as she pulled free and stumbled backward. “No!” she cried out again, fury boiling her blood and painting the landscape crimson. “Get away from me!” She took a shaky step back, rage causing her to tremble uncontrollably.