Michael (The Mark) (The Airel Saga, Book 4: Part 7-8) Read Online Free PDF

should I go?” She sounded lost.
    “Back to the room. Sleep. Ellie says her man will be here with a car at 8 a.m. sharp to pick us up and take us to the airstrip. That doesn’t give you much time.”
    Airel looked very sad. “You want me to leave?” She stood off from him, hands in her back pockets.
    He looked at her perhaps a little cruelly, he thought. “Yes,” he said, hoping she would understand all that he had been through for her. For them.
    Eyes brimming with tears, she left him.
    ***
    I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT. Michael had killed a boy; demon host or not, he was a boy. And now he didn’t want me around. I felt like I didn’t even know him anymore. I didn’t know how much to attribute to the Bloodstone, how much to all the crazy circumstances of our situation, and how much was just me doing my over-thinking thing again.
    I walked alone, back to the hotel room. Back to Kim, the zombie; and Ellie, the weirdo. A little slice of hell.

CHAPTER VI
    Arabia—1232 B.C.
    “HE HAS FAVORED YOU with a glance, Uriel. I think you have found favor in his eyes,” Santura said. She smiled broadly at the young man, a little too much so for Uriel’s comfort. She turned away from the boy Santura had indicated. He was tall and strong enough, perhaps, but his piggishly small eyes were much too close together.
    “Him,” she whispered with disdain. “He’s not what I should call handsome at all.” Still, she was of age and she wanted a man of her own, if even as a plaything. Less for romantic exploits than to irritate her father, truth be told. Her uncle Yamanu gave her the kind of free reign only uncles could, the kind of liberties a father, in her experience, could not and would not ever grant a daughter.
    Santura giggled as she flirted with the young man for herself. “Uriel, stop it. He is handsome enough.” She gave him a little wave. “Besides, there’s more to a man’s eligibility than the construct of his face. There’s nobility, for instance.”
    “Oh, Santura, you can rest assured. I know all about his line. Dear Yakob shall one day inherit vast riches not only from his father’s bloodline, but also from his mother—the union of his parents was most wise and judicious.” Uriel did not say that she found it deplorable for women to marry for dowries. For expedience. Was there not more to hope for under the sun?
    “He is well liked by the elders,” Santura said, running a hand through her long blonde hair and fiddling with the pure white flower of plumeria that she had tucked behind her ear.
    “Power and lineage are not everything, Santura. I want to marry for love. I long for the embrace of the one I would breathe for.” Uriel looked out and away, across the rooftops of the city of Ke’elei to the red mountains beyond. “That is true love. I shall find him one day.” Of course she knew of whom she spoke. But she would not speak his name. Not yet.
    They stood at an upper window in her uncle’s house. Yakob, down in the street below, blew them a kiss, delighting Santura, exasperating Uriel. She turned away from the scene, leaving her friend to her work—for work it was and work it would not cease to be. “Ugh,” she couldn’t help exclaiming.
    She thought back to the strange and beautiful young man she had met not even a fortnight ago. Now he was something. There was something about him of which she could not rid herself in her mind. Indeed, in her very heart. He haunted her dreams and she found herself enwrapped within the soft, welcoming folds of self-centered fantasy. How could he capture me so, and in just one chance encounter? He was all she could think about, all she wanted to think about.
    Santura ducked back inside the stone-arched window and sighed at her with big blue lovesick eyes. “Oh, Uriel. Isn’t it wonderful? Life is amazing …”
    “Santura, you are being unbearable again.” Uriel smiled at her to soften the blow.
    “I know, I know. There is someone else you have in mind?”