Angel of Darkness Read Free

when the wind hit him with the force of an avalanche, slamming into his body, lifting him up, and tossing him in the air, higher, higher. The wind took him away from the woman who fought so valiantly below.
    The night sky whipped past him as the whisper of a thousand voices filled his ears. A dim light appeared, growing brighter, brighter—beckoning him upward, then blinding him when he got too close.
    Darkness.
    Keenan blinked and found himself on his knees. He’d been tossed onto a gleaming marble floor. Keenan knew who would stand before him even before he allowed his gaze to lift.
    Azrael. The leader of the angels of death.
    “What have you done?” Azrael— Az —demanded.
    Keenan closed his eyes and saw a woman bleeding out in an empty alley. Shivering with cold. “She still lives.” He rose to his feet, letting his wings spread behind his back.
    Az shook his head. “No.”
    Fear gripped him. “What? I didn’t touch her, I didn’t—”
    “You confess to disobeying your orders.” Az’s face tensed. “You disobey—”
    She was dead? Determined to get back to Nicole, Keenan spun away from Az. No one else would take her over, not after what he’d risked.
    “You knew the penalty for such an act.” Az’s words froze him.
    Yes, he knew he had to answer for taking the vampire’s soul, but—
    “I’m sorry, Keenan. You ... you were a good angel.”
    Wait. Keenan whirled back around to face the blond angel. “I didn’t—”
    “No, you did not . That’s the problem.” And there was sadness cloaking the words, when there was never any emotion in the angel’s voice. Never much emotion in any of them.
    No love. No fear. No hate. Only duty. That was the way it should have been.
    Except when I looked at her, I ... felt.
    “Temptation can destroy us all.” Az’s all-seeing bright blue gaze raked him. “You had the chance to obey. You knew when the moment of her death was at hand, but you killed one not on your list.”
    “He was a vampire!” The rage was new—something that had developed only when he saw the pain Nicole suffered. “He was torturing, killing, he deserved—”
    “We all get what we deserve.” Az’s chin lifted. “Beware, my friend, this will hurt.”
    What?
    “I’ve heard it’s the fire that makes you scream the loudest.”
    There was no fire—
    The wind hit Keenan again, wrapping around him, but this time, its grasp felt like the edge of a hundred blades.
    Az watched him with a hard stare. No more emotion. Maybe it had never been there. “Did you think we did not know the lust you held in your heart?”
    What would angels know of lust? What would they know of anything but following orders, protecting the weak, living in that vast, blank world of nothing?
    “Why do you think she was given to you?” Az asked.
    And he finally understood. A test. One he’d failed because he hadn’t been able to watch Nicole slip away.
    “You broke our rules. You took a life not yours to extinguish.” Az’s cold voice floated to him. “And you failed in your duty.”
    To take Nicole’s life. But, no, Az had told him that she didn’t live; he’d said—“ Where is she ?” He’d had to shout to be heard over the fury of the wind.
    But there was no answer. Nothing but the wind howling. And then the fire came.
    The fire ripped through his body, starting at his feet, burning up, up, even as Keenan fell, plummeting from the sky.
    Expelled from my home.
    He flapped his wings as he tried to fight that controlling wind, but—
    He cried out in agony as the fire spread to his wings. This was no phantom fire—real flames ate at his skin and burned his flesh. Burned his wings, his wings—No!
    He’d never known pain, but after this day, he would never forget it.
    The wind stopped. His body hovered in the air, his shoulders hunched and his wings burning. He tried to move his wings, tried—
    He dropped, falling straight for the earth below, and he burned as he fell. Burned and burned.
    Az had