Kristina Douglas - The Fallen 1 - Raziel Read Online Free

rich brown eyes. I could have reassured her, but I’d never been tempted to intervene before, and I wasn’t about to make an exception for this woman. I wanted to, which bothered me. I wanted to do more than that. My hands shook with need.
    I looked down into her panicked face and I wanted to comfort, and I wanted to feed, and I wanted to fuck. Al of the needs I kept locked away. She didn’t need anything from me. If she did, she’d have to make do without.
    But the stronger her panic, the stronger my hunger, and I gave in to the safest of my urges. “Don’t be afraid,” I said, using the voice given to me to soothe frightened creatures. “It wil be fine.” And I pul ed her forward, spinning her out into the darkness and releasing her as I stepped back.
    It was only at the last minute I saw the flames. I heard her scream, and I grabbed for her without thinking, dragging her back. I felt the deadly fire sear my flesh, and I knew then what had been waiting for me, out there in the darkness. Fire was death to my kind, and the flame had leapt to my flesh like a hungry lover. I pul ed the woman out of the dark and hungry maw that should have been what humans referred to as heaven, and I sealed my own trip to a hel that would have no end.
    We tumbled backward, onto the ground with her soft body sprawled on top of mine, and I was instantly hard, my rebel ious flesh overruling everything I’d been trying to tel it for decades, overshadowing the pain as a pure, unspeakable lust flamed through me, only to be banished a moment later.
    An inhuman howl of rage echoed up from the flames. A moment later the rocks slid closed with a hideous grinding noise, and there was nothing but silence.
    I couldn’t move. The agony in my arm was unspeakable, wiping out my momentary reaction to the woman’s soft body sprawled across mine, and I could almost be glad. The flames were out, but I knew what fire did to my kind. A slow, agonizing death.
    It was one of the few things that could kil us, that and the traditional ways of disposing of blood-eaters. Beheading could kil us as surely as it would kil a human.
    So would the minor burn on my arm.
    If I’d only stopped to think, I would have let her go. Who knew how she’d spent her short life, what crimes she’d committed, what misery she’d inflicted on others? It wasn’t my place to judge, merely to transport. Why hadn’t I remembered that and let her fal ?
    But even as I felt the pain leaching away any semblance of common sense, I couldn’t help but remember I’d brought any number of innocent souls to this very place, seemingly good people, cast them forth, assured them that they were going to the place of peace they’d earned. Instead it had been hel , the same hel to which I’d taken the lawyers and stockbrokers. This was no temporary glitch. I knew Uriel too wel . Hel and its fiery pit were Uriel’s constructions, and I knew, instinctively, that we’d been offered no alternative when we’d delivered our charges. I had been dooming the innocent ones to eternal damnation, unknowing.
    The sin of pride, Uriel would have said placidly, with great sorrow.
    The cosmic hypocrite would shake his head over me and my many failings. To question the word of the Supreme Being and the emissary he’d chosen to enforce it was an act of paramount sacrilege.
    In other words, do what you’re told and don’t ask questions. Our failure to do that was why we had fal en in the first place. And I had done more than question—I had just contravened the word. I was in deep shit.
    Night was fal ing around us. The woman rol ed off me, scrambling away as if I were Uriel himself. I tried to find my voice, to say something to reassure her, but the pain was too fierce. The best I could do was grit my teeth to keep from screaming in agony.
    She was halfway across the clearing, huddled on the ground, watching me in dawning disbelief and horror. Too late I realized my lips were drawn back in a silent