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 fall?

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 hell, the same hell to which I’d taken the lawyers and stockbrokers. This was no temporary glitch. I knew Uriel too well. Hell 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 fallen in the first place. And I had done more than question—I had just contravened the word. I was in deep shit.

Night was falling around us. The woman rolled 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 scream, and she could see my elongated fangs.

“What in God’s name are you?” Her voice was little more than a choked gasp of horror.

I ignored her question—I had more important things to deal with. I had to gather my self-control or I was doomed. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to save myself at this point, and I couldn’t save her either, not that I particularly cared. She had gotten me into this mess in the first place.

She was going to have to help get me out of it, whether she wanted to or not. I shuddered, forcing the agony back down my throat. In a few minutes I wouldn’t be able to do even that much; a few minutes longer and I would be unconscious. By morning I would probably be dead.

Did I care? I wasn’t sure it mattered one way or the other. But I didn’t want to leave her behind, where the Nephilim could get her. I’d rather finish her myself before they tore her body into pieces while she screamed for help that would never come.

I sucked in a deep bite of air, steeling myself. “Need . . . to make a . . . fire,” I managed, feeling the dizziness pressing against my brain, feeling the darkness closing in. I could hear the monsters out in the night forest, the low, guttural growling of the Nephilim. They would rip her apart in front of me, and I would be paralyzed, unable to do anything but listen to her screams as they ate her alive.

Things were beginning to fade, and the nothingness called to me, a siren song so tempting that I wanted to let go, to drift into that lovely place, the warm, sweet place where the pain stopped. I managed to look over at her—she was curled in on herself, unmoving. Probably whimpering, I thought dizzily.

Useless human, who probably belonged in hell anyway.

And then she lifted her head, staring at me, and I could read her thoughts easily. She was going to make a run for it, and I couldn’t blame her. She wouldn’t last five minutes out there in the darkness, but with luck I’d be unconscious by the time they began ripping her flesh from her bones. I didn’t want to hear the sounds of her screams as she died.

One more try, and then I’d let go. I tried to rise, to pull the last ounce of strength from my poisoned body, struggling to warn her. “Do not . . .” I said. “You need a fire . . . to scare them away.”

She rose, first to her knees, then to her bare feet, and I sank back. There was nothing else I could do. She was frightened, and she would run—

“And how am I supposed to start a fire?” she said, her voice caustic. “I don’t have any matches and I’m not exactly the camping type.”

I could just manage to choke out the words. “Leaves,” I gasped. “Twigs. Branches.”

To my glazed surprise, she began gathering the fuel from nearby, and within a few minutes she had a neat little pile, with branches and logs on the side.

The last of the twilight was slowly fading, and I could hear them beyond the clearing, the odd, shuffling noise they made, the terrible reek of decaying flesh and old blood.

She was looking at me, expectant, impatient. “Fire?” she prompted.

“My . . . arm,” I barely choked out. The last ounce of energy faded, and blessed darkness rushed in. And my last thought was now it was up to her. I had done everything I could.

And the night closed down around us.

CHAPTER THREE

HE’D PASSED OUT. I STARED down at him, torn. I should leave him, I thought. I didn’t owe him anything, and if I had any sense at all I’d get the hell out of there and leave him to fend for himself.

But I could hear those noises out in the darkness, and they made my blood run cold. They sounded like some kind of wild animal, and in truth I’d never been Outdoors Girl. My idea of roughing it was going without makeup. If those creatures out there liked to eat meat, then they had dinner stretched out on the ground, waiting for them. It even smelled as if he were already slightly charbroiled. I didn’t owe him anything. So what if he’d pulled me back from the jaws of hell . . . or whatever it was? He was the one who’d pushed me there in the first place. Besides, he’d only gotten slightly singed, and he was acting like it was third-degree burns over most of his body. He was a drama queen, and after my mother and my last boyfriend, I’d had enough of those to last me a lifetime.

Hell, who was I kidding? Whether he deserved it or not, I wasn’t going to leave him as food for wolves or whatever they were. I couldn’t do that to a fellow human being—if that was what he was. Though I still didn’t have the faintest idea how I was going to start the damned fire.

I edged closer, looking down at him. He was unconscious, and in the stillness the unearthly beauty of his face was almost as disturbing as the unmistakable evidence of fangs his grimace of pain had exposed. Was he a vampire? An angel? A fiend from hell or a creature of God?

“Shit,” I muttered, kneeling beside him to get a closer look at the burn on his arm. The skin was smooth, glowing slightly, but there were no blisters, no burned flesh. He was nothing more than a big baby. I reached out to shake him, then yanked my arm back with another “Shit,” as I realized that beneath the smooth skin fire burned.