Kristina Douglas - The Fallen 1 - Raziel Read Online Free PDF Page A

over my meager five foot three, and I’d felt the crushing strength in his hand as he’d propel ed me toward the . . .
    I couldn’t remember. Five minutes later, and I couldn’t remember a damned thing. I didn’t know how he’d managed to get burned, or what he’d been trying to do. It was a blank. Everything was a blank.
    The last thing I remembered was stepping off the curb outside the office building on my way to meet with my editors.
    They were going to be pissed as hel that I’d stood them up again.
    How much time had passed since then? Days, weeks, months?
    The short, sassy hairstyle I’d spent a fortune on was now an unruly mane hanging down to my shoulders, and I could see that it was its original mousy brown instead of the tawny, streaked blond I’d gone for. That certainly couldn’t have happened in a matter of hours. How long had I been gone?
    His heavy body final y began to budge, and I dragged him as far as I could until he let out a piercing cry of pain. I let him be, squatting beside him, staring at his burned flesh. It was the weirdest thing—it seemed like he had flames beneath his skin, as if his bones were made of burning coals.
    His entire body was radiating heat, but apart from his arm he wasn’t painful to touch. The night had grown sharply colder, and the shapeless thing I was wearing wasn’t made for late autumn nights.
    My patient shivered as I put more wood on the fire. Thank God I’d grabbed an armload. The nighttime marauders seemed to have gone, but there was no guarantee they wouldn’t return if I were fool enough to let the fire go out. Wolves didn’t actual y attack people, did they? But who said they were wolves?
    It was going to be a long night.
    I sat back on my heels, studying him. Who was he, and what the hel had he done to me? There had to be a reasonable explanation for what had appeared to be fangs. There were crazies out there who filed their teeth to points so they could resemble vampires—I’d seen it on one of the rotting-corpse television shows like CSI or Bones.
    I could certainly see why some people would want to dress up like vampires. After al , bloodsuckers were hot and elegant; they dressed wel and clearly had a lot of sex, if al the fiction was to be believed. They also didn’t exist.
    But this particular man didn’t need to dress up or pretend to be anything he wasn’t. He was hot, in every sense of the word. I snickered at the notion. No one was around to appreciate my feeble wit, but I’d always managed to amuse myself.
    “So what’s up with you?” I demanded of his unconscious figure.
    “What are we doing here? Did you abduct me?” Wishful thinking on my part. This was a man who clearly had no need to kidnap women.
    Al he had to do was snap his fingers, and they’d be lining up around the block.
    I had no il usions about my own charms. I was no trol , and I cleaned up pretty wel , but next to this man I was clearly only ordinary. Al the gym memberships in the world couldn’t seem to get rid of the unwanted ten pounds that hugged my hips. With the right clothes, hair, and makeup I was someone to reckon with, but even so I’d never be in this man’s league. Right now, dressed in sackcloth and ashes, I probably looked like a bag lady.
    Not that I cared. My only company was passed out, presumably for the night. I leaned back, stretching my legs out in front of me, then realized I was leaning against the stone wal . I scrambled away from it, thoroughly creeped out. Hadn’t it split open, revealing some kind of horror . . . ? No, that was impossible.
    And yet, where had the fire come from? It seemed to me I could remember flames, like the flames of hel , before he pul ed me back again—no, the night must be sending my imagination into overdrive.
    Smoke bil owed up into the inky-blue sky, and I shivered again, wrapping my arms around my body in a useless attempt to warm myself. I could feel the thin, loose clothing beneath my fingers—it was