The Fallen 03 - Warrior (5 page)

I figured I had nothing to lose. “Why do you want to kill me, Pedersen? You were my mentor, my teacher. Why would you want to destroy all that?”

The bastard hit me again, and I stumbled, then
righted myself. He was even using his left hand. The right hand would have smashed my face in. “No one will have you,” he said, and dragged me away from the sheltering wall.

“Not even you?”

It worked. He froze, the words so shocking that he couldn’t move. But I could.

I kicked up, hard, hitting the soft place between his legs, and he screamed, releasing me, sinking to his knees on the narrow ledge. He was more resilient than I’d thought. I had barely taken two steps toward the rocks when his hand caught my ankle and I went down. He tried to pin me, but I’d been holding a few tricks in reserve. I moved, lightning-fast, bucking against his heavy weight, and I threw him off with all my strength.

He screamed all the way down to the jagged rocks below, and I heard the thud as he landed.

I lay perfectly still. It was too dark to see that far, and Pedersen was no longer making any noise. He was dead, and the thought was odd, unsettling. I had just killed a man. Someone who deserved it a hundred times over—but still, it was unnerving.

My face was numb from his blows. I’d sport some magnificent bruises for a few short hours, and then they’d be gone, thanks to my restorative powers. Not that I cared what I looked like. I scrambled up, stepped back from the edge of the cliff, and turned.

The man stood there, watching me. Michael.

“How long have you been there?” I demanded.

“For a while. You did a good job with that cretin. Did he train you?” His rich, golden voice sounded no more than faintly curious.

He’d been watching as I fought for my life? I managed to keep my voice cool. “Yes. He didn’t realize I’d come up with a few tricks of my own.”

“He did a decent job with you. We will continue when we reach Sheol.”

I stared at him. “Why didn’t you help me?”

“There was no need. You were more than capable of dealing with him.”

I looked at him in disbelief. “What if he’d thrown me over the cliff before you could stop him?”

“Then I would have caught you.”

Madman,
I thought again, starting to edge away. I wasn’t sure whether I appreciated the faint note of approval or resented it. “Look, we don’t even know each other. You don’t really want me to . . . to go away with you, do you?”

“No, I don’t. It is, however, my duty.” His voice was flat, uncompromising. “Whether I like it or not, you are the chosen one.”

“I could fight you.”

The crazy man laughed. “Do not waste my time, Victoria Bellona. The sooner we are back in Sheol, the better.”

“Exactly where is this Sheol?”

“In the mist.”

Oh, Christ. Not only was he insane, he was also cryptic. “Great. How do we get there?”

“We fly.”

“And just which airline takes you into the mist?”

“No airline.” He moved so quickly I barely had time to register what he was doing. He caught my shoulders, turned me, and pulled me back against him, snaking one powerful arm around my stomach to hold me against him. I had a momentary impression of overpowering strength, hard muscle and bone and heat all along my back, causing a strange, temporary weakness. And then, to my horror, he leapt off the cliff.

I closed my eyes, not wanting to see death looming up at me, but I didn’t scream. The rush of wind was deafening, the darkness all around, but there was no sudden, sickening end on the jagged rocks below. We simply kept on falling.

Though it didn’t feel as if we were moving down, as gravity dictated, but up, up into the sky, and I tried to open my eyes, to check the strange sensation, but my lids felt as if they were glued shut. I began to struggle, when I heard his voice growl low in my ear, “Stay still, you idiot.”

Some stray bit of common sense compelled me to obey. The world had turned upside down, Alice through the looking glass, but if I wasn’t dead yet I could wait until I was on solid ground before I started fighting again. It was getting cold, very cold, and it felt like ice was forming over my skin, my face. The air was thin, and I struggled to breathe, a little desperate in the cold, inky darkness. Maybe this was
death after all, I thought dizzily. Maybe you didn’t actually feel the impact, you simply slipped into some black, icy chasm where you were trapped for the rest of your life.

But didn’t most people go to hell? I couldn’t remember. Rational thought was becoming more and more difficult, and no wonder. I seemed to be moving through a bitterly cold night sky, without air to breathe. The lack of oxygen would kill me, that or the cold. I didn’t need to smash my body against the rocks.

I stopped struggling for breath. Stopped breathing entirely. I could feel hot tears seep from beneath my closed eyelids. I had always avoided self-pity, but if I was dying I could allow myself this much. The tears ran down on my face, melting rivulets that froze over again. My eyes were frozen shut, my body rigid, the only warmth running all along my back.

I gave in.

I
CAME TO
with a sudden swoop of motion as the ground was jarringly beneath us, and I realized I was no longer cold. The arm around my waist released me, and the man stepped back, leaving me swaying slightly.

I opened my eyes. We were on a beach, surrounded by a soft ocean mist, and I sank to my knees in the sand and promptly threw up.

“It takes some people that way,” that beautiful, hated voice said from above me. “I would have
warned you, but you weren’t in any mood to listen.”

I hated to throw up. Even worse, I hated having an audience, and I tried to will myself to calm. Bile burned my throat, and I shut my eyes again. What had he done to me?

“Get up,” he said. “They’re coming.”

Who’s coming?
I thought dazedly.
And who the hell cares?
I managed to look up at him, then saw a huge house behind him. On my other side was the ocean, the first time I’d ever seen it, and I stared in wonder, my misery temporarily forgotten.

I took a deep breath, inhaling the rich, salt smell of it. I could taste it on my lips, feel it on my skin, and for the first time in my life I fell completely and desperately in love. When I got away from here, I was heading toward a coast. The look and the sound of the ocean, coupled with its hypnotizing scent, was beyond seductive—it was downright addictive.

I pulled my eyes away reluctantly and saw a small group of people approaching us. The most beautiful men I had ever seen in my life—and, apart from my three years of semicloistered freedom, I was used to movie-star handsome. These creatures were like the one who had brought me here, almost eerily exquisite. There were three or four women as well, but they were ordinary women, not ethereal beauties. I racked my brain for an explanation, but none was forthcoming. The closer they got, the more glorious the men seemed, though none of them were quite
as beautiful as the crazy man who’d kidnapped me. Surely these people would help me.

“Get up,” the supposed Archangel Michael snapped in an angry whisper.

I would have, but I wasn’t sure my shaking legs would hold me. Best to stay on my knees rather than topple over on my face in front of them.

I managed to look up hopefully as they stopped before me, and the gorgeous man in front, presumably the leader, with a soft, slightly rounded woman by his side, smiled at me.

“Victoria Bellona, Goddess of War,” he said, “welcome to Sheol, the home of the fallen angels, and to your life as consort to the Archangel Michael.”

I promptly threw up again.

M
ICHAEL LOOKED DOWN AT
his bride for a moment, then met Raziel’s steely gaze. “I told you this wasn’t a good idea.”

Allie was already kneeling by Victoria Bellona, holding his consort’s black hair away from her face and murmuring to her. The girl was definitely not happy, and if he were the sort to feel guilt, he might let a trace of it bother him. He could have warned her. Could even have done things to mitigate the unpleasant effects flight often had on humans. The goddess of war wasn’t exactly human, but right now her body was most definitely a frail, human vessel, and speed and altitude had had their expected effects.

“You should have warned her.” Allie looked at up him with disapproval. The Source wasn’t the type to mince words, and she’d been against this idea from
the very beginning, which should have made them allies. But she’d caved first, and he hadn’t been able to hold out against both her and her husband. Not when he knew they were right.

“She will be facing too many things to warn her about all of them,” he replied coolly. “Are we ready for the ritual?”

The girl’s head shot up. “What?”

Raziel gave him a fiercely disapproving look before approaching her. “Welcome to Sheol, Victoria Bellona,” he said with great formality. “Welcome to the home of the Fallen, to membership in our family, to alliance in our war against the Armies of Heaven, to marriage with our brother Michael.”

“Oh, hell, no,” said his blushing bride, stumbling to her feet with Allie’s help. “Nobody asked me whether I wanted to sign up for all this. I’m leaving.”

Raziel didn’t blink. “And where exactly do you wish to go?”

“Anywhere but here.”

“Unfortunately, here is your only option. Sheol, or back with your mother and guardian for the few days remaining until you are twenty-five, at which point she will have you terminated.”

“Pedersen is dead. She can’t very well toss me over the cliff herself,” the girl snapped.

“There is more than one way to kill you. The contessa likes ritual and enjoys the cliff, but she can just as effectively shoot you and have the servants dispose of your corpse.”

She glared at Raziel, taking some of the onus off Michael. Now that she was here in Sheol, he had no choice but to accept the unpleasant circumstance that Martha’s vision had saddled him with, and he had never been a man to waste time fighting the inevitable. There were more important battles in his future.

“I am ready,” he said. “Though I believe the goddess must agree to this.”

“What goddess?” the girl said.

“He’s talking about you,” Allie said soothingly. “Victoria Bellona, incarnation of the ancient Roman goddess of war.”

Victoria Bellona was glaring at Allie now. “Not you too,” she said in disgust. “What kind of Kool-Aid did you guys drink?”

Her question made no sense to Michael, though Allie laughed. “You’ll see,” she said. “It takes time, but sooner or later you’ll realize this crazy world of ours is real.”

“And you’re an archangel?”

Allie grinned. “Hardly. In this sexist society, only men are angels, and most of them aren’t archangels. You’ve got the last one who’s single. The Archangel Michael, warrior of God.”

The girl looked back at him. She didn’t look like a Victoria Bellona, not with her slender frame and far-too-pretty face. Victoria Bellona should be a sturdy, almost masculine figure dressed in Roman armor.

What had she instructed him to call her? Tory? He would avoid it if he could, simply because it would
annoy her. He planned to annoy her every chance he got.

Annoyance would keep her at a distance, and he needed that. He could say he was only human, but that wasn’t true, and he could hardly blame his weaknesses on his fall from grace more than two hundred years ago, a snap of the fingers to these immortals. To him.

She was a liability, a temptation he didn’t want to consider. He could already feel things that he didn’t want to feel. If she’d been a whiner, he could have handed her over to someone capable like Allie or Rachel and ignored her. But there was something about the way she faced things, something about her bright green eyes, that called to him. And he couldn’t afford to listen. He’d already wasted too much time on her.

“Make up your mind,” he said. “Life with us and a formal marriage with me, or death with your mother. The contessa has never been disposed to be merciful and she was fond of Pedersen, at least as fond as she is capable of being. I do not expect your demise will be particularly pleasant.”

She was looking at him with profound annoyance. Excellent. It would suit their marriage perfectly. “A formal marriage,” she repeated thoughtfully. “I assume that means no . . . marital relations.”

“I told you—I am celibate.” Raziel started to say something, but Michael simply overrode him. “You won’t even need to see me.”

“Good.”

“That’s not precisely true,” Allie broke in. “Granted, according to Martha this doesn’t have to be a true marriage in our sense, but you’ll still—”

“What my wife is saying is that you’ll share quarters with Michael, but there will be plenty of room to keep your distance from each other if that is what you wish,” Raziel cut in smoothly. “We can work out the other details later. In the meantime, we are ready for the ceremony.”

Michael’s unwilling bride was looking mutinous. “So soon? I’m still jet-lagged. Wing-lagged. Whatever.”