The Unforgiven Read online

  A tremor ran through her. One last doubt, urging her to turn away, sounded like a bell in her mind. But then he touched her again, so softly, so lovingly, and something inside her broke.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And your mind? Will you also entrust that to me?”

  “If . . . if you wish it.”

  He left her. She felt bereft. But he returned swiftly, the disc in his hand. He pressed the gold to the bare skin just below the base of her throat and warmth seeped into her chest.

  “Will you give me your magic also, Lilith? To use as I see fit?”

  She hesitated but a heartbeat before surrendering. “All that I am is yours.”

  The whispered answer increased Azazel’s smile. “The magic of the Seed, Lilith—your magic—is stronger than death. With it, together, we will live forever.”

  The magic of the talisman flowed over her. Lilith’s body softened, then tensed when a knife appeared in Azazel’s hand; with a deft motion he slashed his right palm. A trickle of crimson oozed free. He placed his palm over the amulet, pressing it into Lilith’s skin, sealing their union with his blood.

  It was as if lightning had struck. Lilith jerked; her body sizzled with sensation. A cry burst from her lips. Dark waves of magic filled her being, entranced her mind. But she remained aware—acutely aware—of what was happening.

  Azazel untied the braided cord at his waist, stripped off his robes. This is wrong,she thought one last time. Wrong, but inevitable. She had come from his body. Now she would take him into hers. The circle would be complete, and they would live forever.

  Together.

  They would live forever. Together. Maddie’s feet touched down silently on cold sand. The beach was narrow and strewn with rocks. The sea churned and eddied. Cade, still in flight, circled above Maddie’s head. Testing his leash, perhaps? With a thought, she jerked him down.

  He landed beside her, panting and angry. She was aware of his body, was acutely aware of his aura, burning an angry crimson. It crackled, and sizzling sparks burst across his skin.

  He took up an unwilling position at her left elbow. She didn’t turn her head to look at him but kept her gaze riveted on the horizon. He was coming.

  A small shadow appeared upon the dark water. Maddie’s heart leaped. In the breathless moments that followed, the blur resolved into solid form: a small boat slicing through the waves. It cast no light on its landward journey; it generated no sound. And yet it passed, deftly and surely, through treacherous water and around deadly rocks to finally reach shore.

  A man stood at the bow. When the boat halted, he stepped easily out. His feet seemed to skim the surface of the water as he walked the short distance to the hard-packed sand. His face and form were familiar. The red glow of his eyes was new, as was the dark crimson aura about his head and shoulders. Maddie thought her joy might burst out of her skin.

  Cade rasped a sharp inhalation. “Impossible,” he muttered. “That is not Simon Ben-Meir. Ben-Meir is dead.”

  “Yes,” Maddie heard herself say. “He is.”

  The man who approached had only borrowed Ben-Meir’s body. The cadaver, now bathed with its crimson aura, pulsed with a life that could not die.

  She’d seen him, Maddie realized now, below the window of the hotel where Cade had briefly imprisoned her. At the time, she hadn’t understood. Now she did.

  Cade’s angry hiss seared her ear. “This is evil, Maddie. Pure evil. You must know that.”

  She shrugged, never once taking her eyes from the man who approached. “Good and evil. Life and death. Angel and demon. There’s really no difference. You told me that yourself, Cade.”

  “You twist my words. Not all power is subjective. Some powers are evil.”

  “And some,” she replied, “cannot be denied.”

  He was almost upon her. The awareness of his presence was wonderful and unbearable. He had returned to her.

  No. Not to her. To Lilith.

  But . . . Lilith was gone. Dead. Maddie frowned. How could that be? Lilith had created the Seed of Life. Azazel had vowed she would live with him forever.

  The moment of Lilith’s death hovered at the edges of Maddie’s memory. When she reached for it, it receded. But, did it really matter? In a very real way, Lilith was still alive in Maddie.

  “Is eternity worth your honor? Is it worth your self-respect?” Cade’s cold rage deepened the twinge of unease in Maddie’s gut.

  “Quiet,” she hissed, and he fell silent.

  The newcomer halted on the sand, close enough to touch her, though he did not. She looked up into his eyes. The red glow of his irises went on forever. They were like flames inside her skull, licking at her thoughts, gently erasing her doubts. Cade was her enemy; she had defeated him. Of course he would try to turn her from her destiny.

  He reached out and clasped her hands. His touch was warm. Somehow, she hadn’t expected that. He wore a dead man’s body; she’d expected him to carry a chill.

  “I greet you, Daughter. With pride.” His eyes fell to the Seed of Life nestled between her bare breasts. “You have pleased me well. Again.”

  A flush stole into Maddie’s cheeks. “Father,” she said. “I thank you.”

  “He is not,” Cade hissed, “your father. He is Azazel.”

  But he was wrong. Azazel was her father—the father she’d never known. He brought with him worlds of possibility when just a short time ago she was convinced her life was at an end. She couldn’t turn away from that.

  The ancient Watcher regarded Cade through Simon Ben-Meir’s eyes. “You, slave. You are a son of Samyaza.”

  Cade did not flinch. “I am.”

  “I once told my foolish brother that my children would conquer his.” Azazel’s gaze swept Cade from head to toe. “I am pleased to know I spoke the truth. On your knees, slave.”

  The command washed through Maddie on its way to Cade. She didn’t resist. Her father’s will was her own.

  Cade tried to rebel. Foolish man. She watched dispassionately as his face contorted and colored with effort. As his big body strained against the compulsion to throw himself onto the muddy sand. It was a battle he couldn’t win. Didn’t he realize that?

  His crimson aura became a deep, dismal brown. He dropped to his hands and knees, barely able to hold up his head. Even his wings bowed, the tips kissing the sand.

  “Very good.”

  Azazel advanced and swung a leg over Cade’s back. He settled his borrowed human body atop his enemy’s back as he might settle into a horse’s saddle. With one hand, he gripped Cade’s hair and pulled back his head almost to the point of snapping his neck.

  Cade’s teeth bared in a snarl. His body shook with fury even as he obeyed Maddie’s command to spread his wings. Azazel just smiled and gestured to Maddie with his free hand.

  “Come.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  His aura glowed darkly. “Where you lead,” he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will. When you look inside and remember.”

  The words were cryptic, but she accepted them without question. Nodding, she unfurled her wings and, with a graceful leap, took to the air.

  Vaclav Dusek surveyed the deserted hut. The untouched order of Dr. Simon Ben-Meir’s workroom was deceiving, he thought. A distinct residue of blood magic lingered in the air. Blood magic and death.

  He turned to his guide. “You say you found nothing to indicate where Ben-Meir and the woman might have gone?”

  The woman twisted her hands together. “Nothing, Professor. Only an overturned chair here in the workroom. But Dr. Ben-Meir’s computer, it is still here, as you can see. None of his clothes or belongings seem to be missing. Maddie’s purse and passport are on the shelf in our hut, just as they have been for weeks. I do not understand it. Surely if there had been some kind of attack or struggle, the rest of us would have heard it.”

  She drew an unsteady breath and continued. “The jeep is mis
sing—we noticed that when we rose in the morning. Ari and I thought Maddie and Dr. Ben-Meir might have driven to town for supplies. Though, it was odd that they would leave without telling someone. Then Gil noticed his Vespa was missing and the new laborer was also nowhere to be found. And the earth at the bottom of the Watcher well had been disturbed.”

  Dusek laid a hand on the back of a chair. “This one?”

  The woman blinked. “What?”

  “Was this the chair you found overturned?”

  “Oh. Yes. Yes, it was.”

  He ran his hand over the wood. An image sprang into his brain of a man and a woman facing each other. Arguing.

  Ben-Meir’s assistant stumbled on in her heavily accented English. Hadara Stern was a particularly annoying human, Dusek decided. In a rare fit of charity he stifled the urge to kill her. A public death would not serve his purpose.

  “It has been two days.” The woman wrung her hands so hard it was a wonder her fingers didn’t twist completely off. “I think, Professor, we really must call the police. I delayed until your arrival, as you asked, but now—”

  “Of course.” Dusek waved a hand. “Two days with no word is certainly troubling. And the missing British laborer besides. By all means, notify the authorities.”

  “Do you think . . . ?” The woman’s throat bulged with a thick swallow. Most unpleasant. Dusek imagined her naked and bloody, begging for her miserable human life. It was a mildly amusing thought. Perhaps . . .

  “Do you think the laborer abducted them?”

  “It is possible,” Dusek said. “Or perhaps this Cade Leucetius stole something of value and Dr. Ben-Meir and his companion gave pursuit.”

  Relief flooded Hadara Stern’s face. “I had not thought of that. It is very possible, is it not?”

  “No doubt the police will have more theories. Please. Go and make the call. I will look about a bit more.”

  On the verge of tears, the assistant bit her lip and hurried away—a good thing for her, because Dusek had been perilously close to snuffing her life, consequences be damned. He lifted his hand from the back of the chair and rubbed the palm with his opposite thumb. Interesting. Just that small contact had caused his muscles to clench.

  He closed his eyes briefly, reviewing his vision of Ben-Meir and Ms. Durant. The two had stood just so. The woman had stood between the table and the door; Ben-Meir had been positioned on a small, handwoven square of carpeting. There had been something in the archeologist’s hand. An artifact, gold but dirty. No doubt it was whatever had emerged from the hastily dug hole at the bottom of the Watcher well.

  Dusek drew a steady breath, steeling himself for the coming ordeal. His hand was steady when, crouching, he placed it palm down on the rug.

  It was as if someone inserted a hot poker into his left eye. The pain was so intense that he couldn’t suppress a sharp hiss of inhaled air. It was a struggle to look past the turmoil to the scene beyond. But he did. A body was lying on the ground, neck bent sharply: Ben-Meir, dead. The woman crouched nearby.

  Dusek sucked in a breath; for an instant he felt as though he’d been struck in the chest. The missing assistant was Nephilim. Watcher magic glowed wild and red about her head. He sensed the unformed nature of her power; she was unaware but in transition.

  The magic emanating from her presence was that of Azazel. Madeline Durant was a descendent of Azazel. She was Dusek’s own kin.

  He uttered a curse. Clan Samyaza did not possess the power of remote vision and discernment. How had Artur Camulus learned of this dormant’s existence? Surely he had, if he’d sent one of his own to retrieve her. Enslaved to Clan Samyaza, the woman could prove a formidable challenge to Dusek’s plans. Artur Camulus was changing the game.

  A slow smile cracked Dusek’s features. A challenge? He’d almost begun to think life had none left to offer.

  He narrowed his concentration on the relic in the dormant’s hands. The piece was bent and scorched, the central stone damaged, but the mesmerizing pattern of circles was clear to Dusek’s questing mind. The Seed of Life. Lilith’s slice of immortality, the weapon that had killed Dusek’s ancestor Ezreth. The Seed of Life was the goal of Dusek’s long existence. He had diverted DAMN funds into Ben-Meir’s coffers in the hope the archeologist would unearth information relevant to this very amulet. It seemed the archeologist had far exceeded expectations.

  The Seed’s design contained the secrets of Heaven’s creative power transmuted into earthly form. Dusek had often traced the pattern while creating alchemical potions and gems, but it was the elusive magic of the demonic bloodstone, the carrier of the true spark of immortality, that had over the centuries become the obsession of all Clan Azazel alchemists. The quest had even passed into human lore, where the bloodstone had assumed a deceptively innocent name: the Philosopher’s Stone. For centuries Dusek’s ancestors—the sons of Ezreth—had tried to create a duplicate of the stone. For centuries, they had failed.

  By whatever name the gem was known, its magic was vast. And deadly. It had sent Dusek’s ancestor Ezreth into Oblivion. The final moments of Ezreth’s death lurked as a shadow in Dusek’s ancestral memory. The first son of Azazel had been murdered by his Nephilim half sister, Lilith.

  Dusek imagined the Seed in his hands. He imagined the power. The glory. And then he remembered the talisman was gone.

  His scowl returned as the scene from the near past continued to unfold: The door to the hut opened, admitting Cade Leucetius. Dusek’s fingers clenched. The Nephilim woman, caught in her trance, stared. She and Leucetius exchanged words. Dusek could not hear what was said, but whatever it was caused the woman to turn violent. She struck out; the Seed of Life flew from her hand. The relic hit the floor and traced an erratic, rolling line across the ground. The edge of a small rug sent the disc lurching into the air . . .

  It landed atop Ben-Meir’s body, and something alive passed from metal to flesh. Simply the echo of that magic caused Dusek’s mouth to gape.

  Leucetius, apelike fool that he was, had been consumed with settling the woman’s outburst; he had not even been aware of the transfer. Having rendered the woman senseless, he approached the corpse and pocketed the amulet. Leaving the archeologist’s body where it lay, he hoisted her into his arms and fled. Leucetius did not see the corpse’s ribs expand, nor its eyes flutter open.

  Dusek straightened. He had seen enough. The game had indeed changed.

  Maddie took to the air. Azazel, carried on Cade’s broad back, glided beside her. But which direction to take? She looked uncertainly in Azazel’s direction. Look inside and remember, he’d said. The answer lay, then, in her ancestral memory. In the memory of one ancestor in particular . . .

  Chartres, France

  AD 1200

  The architect known only as Scarlet, descendant of an unholy union of Watcher father and Nephilim daughter motioned his litter forward, into the shadow of the rising cathedral.

  A lifetime he had devoted to the re-creation of Lilith’s power. Her tools had been fire and gold; his were stone, mortar, and glass. Guided by his own magic and his ancestor’s memory, he worked combinations of form, color, and light. Such ethereal elements would, he believed, reveal the path to immortality. He was prepared to sacrifice everything—fortune, renown, wealth—if only he could discover a way to cheat Oblivion. So many years he’d labored. Yet, the time was a pitiful span, a mere heartbeat in the scheme of the universe. And he had yet to uncover the secret. But his goal was close. He sensed it. Perhaps in this time, in this place, with this masterpiece, he would gain the ultimate prize.

  Sacred geometry, he was convinced, held the key. He’d seen Lilith’s amulet, the Seed of Life, in his dreams; he’d used his own magic to expand the vision. He’d added twelve circles to her seven, creating a pattern of nineteen overlapping rings. Into that design he’d introduced a magical, winding path. Now, at last, he would add his birthright: Lilith’s bloodstone.

  He had spent years exploring the mysteries of the damaged gem.
Lilith’s blood and magic lived in the stone. As did Azazel’s will. The merged power hung suspended in the crimson shard, but the stone was incomplete. Flawed. This Scarlet knew.

  And yet he’d carried it on his person since his father delivered it into his hand with his dying breath. Scarlet did not expect to pass the gem to his own daughter, however. There would be no need. Not if he succeeded in his quest. Not if he and his progeny achieved immortality.

  His litter threaded its way through the piles of stone and mounds of sand and lime surrounding the building site. Masons and apprentices scurried like mice to clear a path. The lead litter-bearer cried the approach of the master builder.

  Scarlet’s chair did not halt until it reached the cathedral’s great western towers. Parting the curtains, he alighted. The asymmetrical spires were the only portions of the old church left standing after the devastating fire of six years earlier. Scarlet might have had the towers pulled down, but their charred facades reminded him strongly of his own damaged birthright. He thought it fitting that they remain as sentinels guarding his new creation. He envisioned a great circular window in shades of deep red and blue spanning the space between them. But that glory would require some years yet to achieve. He smiled. If all went according to plan, he would have an eternity in which to perfect his magnum opus.

  Tucking a scroll under his arm, Scarlet strode through the scaffolding that separated the towers, the peak of his hat brushing a cross timber as he passed beneath. The cathedral nave extended before him, as yet unroofed. The perimeter walls and the bases of the columns were not yet risen to shoulder height. But to Scarlet’s eye, the graceful proportions of the design and the magical properties of the space were already evident. There was but one element to complete it.

  Dusty lime misted the air and clung to the embroidered hem of his robe, but Scarlet took no notice. The mason directing the day’s work hurried up. Upon a plank supported by two large blocks, the man unrolled the scroll Scarlet proffered. He had inked his masterpiece—the sacred labyrinth, a maze of tiles—in dark lines upon the parchment.