Messenger's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels Read Online Free

hazelnuts as his father and grandfather—and great-grandfather—had done, when Edeen, herself, stood up and waved for everyone’s silence.
    “Listen up!” She got on her chair and then, with the help of a few men around her, stood on the table next to her. “Ye’ve all had yer fun!” she said, putting her hands on her hips and eyeing the men dead-on. “Now enough’s enough! This is tae be a Samhain tradition, not a March tradition, and I fer one don’t take kindly to yae suggestin’ I marry a man based on what a fecking nut decides tae do!”
    There was laughter throughout the pub then, some of it nervous, as women didn’t generally swear a lot on the Outer Hebrides. But Edeen Dougal was a force unto herself and they knew enough to accept it when she did.
    Angus Dougal pushed through the crowd and came to stand before her. On the table, Edeen stood a half foot above her brother’s mass of brown hair. She glared down at him, daring him to say something. He dared. “Edeen, get yerself down from there an’ don’t interfere—”
    “Och, shut up, Angus. Ye’re no’ me da’.” She made a dismissive gesture toward her older brother and rolled her eyes. “Awa’ with ye an’ bile yer heid.” She jumped down from the table and sauntered toward the front door, tossing a lock of her blond hair over her shoulder as she did so. “I’ll no’ take part in this; I’ll have nothin’ of it.” She turned and addressed the patrons of the pub, in general. “Ye’re all a wee bit childish, don’t ye think?”
    Her friends joined her at the front door a moment later, one pulling her jacket on over her sweater, the other adjusting the strap of her purse. Both looked highly amused and a touch embarrassed. But they were obviously used to Edeen’s shenanigans.
    With one more farewell nod to the pub owner and bartender, who nodded back with a knowing smile, Edeen Dougal and her companions left the pub.
    Gabriel could have wept with relief.
    “Ye’re saved, Black.” Stuart grinned, shaking his head admonishingly. “And by a girl, no less.”
    “Aye.” Gabriel raised his glass, a lopsided smile on his handsome face. “God bless the womenfolk.”

CHAPTER TWO
    “W hat do you think the other archesses will look like?” Eleanore was seated on Uriel’s lap, her finger idly twirling a lock of her long blue-black hair as she stared into the fireplace in the massive living room of the archangels’ mansion.
    “I don’t know. But you look exactly how I’d always imagined you,” Uriel said. “So probably they’ll look like whatever my brothers have in mind.”
    Eleanore turned to face her mate. Uriel was as handsome as ever with his jade green eyes and mass of dark brown wavy hair, but she frowned at him nonetheless, unable to hide her irritation with what he’d just said. Why should what a woman looked like be dependent upon what a man wanted?
    As if he could sense her irritation, Uriel smiled one of his devastating smiles and chuckled softly. “Of course, it’s also possible that it’s the other way around,” he said. “What you look like could very well determine what we want and expect.”
    She liked the sound of that a little better and offered Uriel a smile that said as much. She took in his thick hair and the impossibly handsome lines of his chiseled face and then peered into the green of his gorgeous eyes. She’d never said so, but he was her idea of perfection, too. He had been since the first time she’d seen him in a movie poster for
Comeuppance
, in which he played the main character, a vampire named Jonathan Brakes. Like Gabriel, all the brothers maintained a human identity, some more visible than others. Uriel went by the name of Christopher Daniels, an A-list Hollywood actor.
    Slowly, she cupped the side of his stubble-shadowed face and ran her thumb over his strong cheekbone. He narrowed his gaze questioningly. “You know, one thing I’ll always miss about that vampire curse Sam put on me