Free Rebel by Kristina Douglas

centuries of détente, and then the war would flare up again, as it had when Allie first came to Sheol.
    But something had snapped inside Azazel when his beloved wife Sarah fell in the same battle that took Thomas, and he’d disappeared, leaving everything to Raziel. It wasn’t until he’d returned, bringing with him the embodiment of what had once been the most powerful female entity in the universe, that it became clear everything was about to change.
    But it wasn’t Raziel up there, overseeing his people. It was Cain, the dark angel. Watching us.
    I glanced up at him. What was he looking at, so far out to sea?
    I could feel his gaze slide over me, and I jerked my eyes away and started walking. He was probably looking right through me, not realizing or caring who the lone woman on the beach was.
    Allie was on temporary bed rest after some minor cramping had paralyzed her with fear. She shouldn’t have gotten up yesterday, but the curiosity had been too much for her to withstand.
    I wasn’t the slightest bit worried about her. At least in this one matter, my vision was completely clear. Allie would deliver a strong, healthy baby, and she would be fine.
    There wasn’t much I could do to calm Raziel’sfears. It was his choice to believe in the best or the worst, and I couldn’t help him. I would work in my garden, visit with Allie, put in my time training. I would follow my usual peaceful routine and forget all about the dark angel who watched me.
    Work in Sheol was optional—there was no need for me to tend the patch of earth filled with healing plants and flowers, but putting my hands in the rich, warm earth grounded me, calmed me, just as the ocean did. One of my mother’s friends had been obsessed with astrology, and I still remembered her words from when I was seven years old. She’d insisted on doing my chart, and after much prodding it turned out my mother actually remembered what time I’d been born. The beginning of the end of her freedom, she’d said, so she’d paid attention, but this time her apathy brought results. According to Latierra, I was Taurus with Cancer rising and too much Scorpio in my chart. Being told I was sensuous was an unsettling concept when I was seven, and in a high-rise tenement in a concrete jungle, I couldn’t understand what she meant by a connection to the earth. In the ugly Midwestern city, there was no ocean to call to me, and I’d ignored Latierra’s insistence that I was destined for great and wonderful things.
    I liked to think I’d had no visions back then, trapped in that dark, chaotic life, but that wasn’ttrue. I had known I’d be rescued. I knew someone would come for me, and in fact, I’d known it would be an angel. When I was younger I thought that simply meant I would die, and I viewed that future with the calm acceptance of a morbidly romantic adolescent. I read everything I could find, escaping into the world of novels, and I pictured myself as Beth from Little Women, calm and sweet and doomed.
    So when my angel had appeared, I’d gone willingly, not even questioning. I’d left my siblings behind, secure in the knowledge that the latest man in my mother’s life was clean and sober and responsible. He would look after them and love them as best he could, protect them from the worst of our mother’s choices. I could go live my life now, with my dark angel.
    But he hadn’t been a dark angel. I’d been wrong about that part. Thomas had been angelically fair, sweet and open, generous and loving, and he’d gone a long way in the task of healing my heart and soul. I’d been like a tightly curled bud, hiding from the world, and I flowered under Thomas’s gentle coaxing. I’d given him everything I could, moving closer and closer to the kind of bond others took for granted and I longed for.
    And then the Nephilim had attacked.
    It had taken me so long to heal I’d barely had time to mourn him. I’d been delirious with pain anddrugs, and I’d accepted