“Great,” I said. “No wonder he doesn’t like me. My thoughts have been less than charitable.” And less than pure. So he knew absolutely everything. If he wanted. He was also capable of turning off the one-way radio. I allowed myself a brief flash of how I’d looked in the racy underwear Jason had bought me in the hopes of rekindling our love affair. I’d really looked quite luscious, but it had been too little, too late.

At least it might help to keep Raziel out of my mind.

Carrie suddenly stiffened. “We need to go,” she said, rising in one fluid motion, more graceful than I’d ever managed.

Sarah nodded, her serene expression replaced with a worried frown, and the dank, anxious feeling that had been slithering around inside me hit with full force.

I was on my feet before I realized it. “Is it time for the meeting?”

Sarah nodded. “Just stay put. If there’s a problem, Raziel will come for you.”

“Fat chance,” I started to say, but they were already gone, abandoning me in the sterile apartment as darkness closed down around me.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I MANAGED TO STAY PUT FOR APPROXIMATELY fifteen minutes. Patience had never been one of my particular virtues. Considering that I spent the time pacing from the window in the kitchen to the living room and back, sitting down and jumping up again, I would have considered five minutes to be quite remarkable. Fifteen was a world record, as far as I was concerned.

But if the Nephilim were coming, I was damned if I was going to stay in these rooms like a sitting duck, waiting to be someone’s dessert. I headed for the door, steeling myself for the endless flights of stairs. At least it was downhill, and if I didn’t end up as stew meat I’d make Raziel fly me back up. The thought sent little prickles down my spine.

The door was locked.

The knob turned—it wasn’t a simple matter of picking a lock. Not that I’d ever picked a lock, but I’d watched enough caper movies that I figured I could probably handle it if I had a bobby pin. Did they even make bobby pins anymore? Probably not in Sheol.

No, the door was sealed, as if there were no separation between the thick walls and the door at all.

I wasted far too much time pounding on it, kicking it, cursing Raziel, since I knew he, not Sarah, was to blame for this particular heinousness. I didn’t waste any time calling for help—no one would pay any attention, even if they heard me. For a very brief moment I considered sitting back down on the sofa and coming up with the most scorchingly torrid sexual fantasy my imagination could create, and I had one hell of an imagination, especially with Raziel for inspiration. But that was a double-edged sword. The more I fantasized, the more vulnerable I felt. The longer I was around him, the more I was drawn to him. And that was far too dangerous.

Maybe they were still arguing over what to do with me. Maybe if the Nephilim breached the walls, my future would be moot.

I wasn’t about to give up without a fight. I looked over at the windows. Sammael had pushed out a section when he’d taken me up to the mountain—

surely there must be some kind of emergency exit from the top floor of this place? I wasn’t sure just how vulnerable the Fallen were, but their wives were certainly mortal.

I moved along the bank of glass, pushing gently, but nothing seemed to shift. I leaned out one window, peering into the darkening night, and shivered, even though the night was warm. In the distance I thought I could hear the muffled sounds of animals, strange growls and strangled screams. The Nephilim, still outside the gates of Sheol. But for how long?

There was a narrow balcony directly below the windows, no more than a yard deep, with a low wall beyond it, the only barrier between the house and a free fall to the ground far below. The lower floors of the building were cantilevered out—surely there was a way to climb down if I was careful. I’d always been relatively sure-footed, at least before I’d taken a header in front of a city bus. I pushed the window open, swung one leg over the sill, and climbed out into the night air.

The sounds in the darkness were louder, the animal howls and cries of the lost souls filling the night, and I almost changed my mind. But the ocean breeze came through, calming my nervousness, and I concentrated on that, trying to shut the other noise out of my mind. I moved down to one end of the narrow balcony, peering over the edge.

It didn’t look promising. I could try sliding down the smooth expanse of what might be concrete and hope I landed on the balcony one flight down, but that would get me down only one floor, and there were multiple flights below that.

I found the perfect spot and climbed onto the ledge atop the retaining wall, then sat, staring up into the inky sky, watching as the stars came out, breathing in the night air and the tang of the ocean as a slow, decisive calm began to fill me. Nothing would get to me. No creature was going to rip me into pieces. At least, not now. I was safe here. I had absolutely no idea how I knew it, but I did. This was where I belonged.

Raziel would see to it. If nothing else, I could trust him. Nothing would happen to me. He was down there arguing my case, and he had Sarah for backup. I knew he would keep me safe.

I leaned back, lying down on the ledge to stare at the sky overhead. I wasn’t used to counting on someone else to look after me—I treasured being selfsufficient, needing nothing and no one. My crazy-ass mother had brought me up practically isolated from a normal environment, awash in her extremist religion that was a combination of fundamentalist Christianity and survivalism, seasoned with an odd touch of anti-Semitism. Odd, because my mother had been born Hildegarde Steinberg, of devoutly Orthodox Jewish parents. I never knew who my father was, though she’d insisted they’d been married. I always figured she’d bitten his head off after mating.

It was little wonder I had always considered myself an atheist. I had firmly consigned gods, angels, and demons to the ranks of mythology.

Wrong. I could imagine who was having the last laugh now. Trust me to have found an afterlife ruled by vampires instead of cherubic babies with bare bottoms and tiny harps. I suppose it was better than no afterlife at all, but the Elysian fields would have been preferable.

The animal howls were fading—the walls of Sheol must have held, at least for now. Raziel was on his way back—I seemed to know that as well. Was his annoying mind-fuck a two-way street? Or was it some kind of cosmic GPS? He was coming back to me, and I felt my skin heat beneath the clothing.

His clothing. I should take it off.

I did nothing, lying there on the ledge. I kicked off one loose shoe, letting it drop onto the balcony, then the other. It slipped and went over the edge, and I could hear it, bouncing, hitting against things as it fell, it fell—