My eyes flew open with a gasp. I jerked up against the wall in the empty lot. The twilight’s shadows had thickened as the sun sank. I’d lost at least an hour to…what?
A dream. It was all a dream…
Whatever it was, it was quickly slipping away from me—I couldn’t hold on to it. A temple? And so much blood…
“About time,” a deep voice muttered tiredly. “I was about to give up and find someone else.”
Another little cry tore out of me, and I pushed myself tighter to the wall. The man was still there, slumped against a wooden moving pallet, his legs drawn up to hide his nakedness.
At least, I thought it was the same man.
He wasn’t as tall but built more solidly and packed with lean muscle. The wings were gone, and the black-on-black eyes were now deep amber, watching me. Intense. His skin wasn’t a bloodless white but a healthy olive tone…except for the scars that scored his body. So many scars. Slashes across his torso. A gash on one bicep. Another at his neck. And a circle the size of a silver dollar square over the left side of his chest. Over his heart.
I scrambled to my feet. “What’s happening?”
“What is happening is the beginning.” The man squinted into the sky, toward the setting sun. “And an end.”
“I don’t understand. How long have I been…?”
“Unconscious? About an hour.”
I shuddered at the idea that I’d been passed out for that long with a naked man sitting across from me. He seemed to read my thoughts and put his hand over that terrible scar on his chest.
“Gek pro’ma-ra-kuungd-eh. A sacred vow. I will not harm you. Not in this life or any other.”
I had no idea what he’d said—or even what language he’d said it in—but the conviction in his deep voice calmed me a little.
I eased a breath. “Who are you?”
“I am Casziel.”
Like Caz-EE-ell but with a hiss in the middle. The sound sent half-frightening, half-electric tingles down my spine. I wanted to say it. I wanted to taste it on my tongue…
“What kind of name is…that?”
“An old one,” he said. “And what do they call you?”
“Lucy.”
“Lucy is from the Latin, meaning ‘born of light.’” Casziel smirked. “How fitting.”
He looked to be about twenty-five or so but spoke as if he were older. A jaded, sarcastic tint colored his every word, and I couldn’t place his faint accent.
“How did you get here?” I asked. “Were you mugged?”
I hoped that was all it was and not what it looked like—that he’d been stripped naked, assaulted, and left for dead.
Casziel cocked his head. “Are you concerned about my welfare already? That bodes well. But save your pity; no one hurt me. Crossing Over is always difficult.”
I nodded as if that made sense and inched for the wooden stairs that led to my place. “Okay…well, then I’ll just call the police—”
“No police.”
“But you’ve been robbed…haven’t you?”
“I have been robbed, yes. But what was taken no longer belongs to me.”
“Um, okay.” He spoke in riddles, but the pain in his voice was real. “Is there someone else I can call for you? Family—?”