Archangel's Consort gh-3

by Nalini Singh

  “Had to be fucking what’s-his-name? The guy in the red and blue suit with the spider thing.”

  “Not a movie buff, Santiago?”

  “I’m a man. I watch football and hockey as I should.”

  Even as she responded to his dry humor, Elena thought of the vampires she’d seen skittering over walls with the strength and speed of arachnids, and knew the answer had to be both more prosaic than a comic-book superhero—and possibly more terrifying, if the hint of scent Elena could taste in the air was to be believed.

  Lush. Sensual. Exotic. Whispers of a rain-dark forest, a hidden glade.

  Keeping her wings tight to her back in an effort to avoid the rusted metal all around, she shifted along her perch until she was directly above the first vampire. It wasn’t so bad from that position, she realized, because she’d never been on the mezzanine when her mother had chosen to—

  Slamming the door shut on that memory, she took a deep, steady breath, drawing in the scents. Salt, the sea, it was a constant, so she took that out of the equation straight away. She also put aside the puzzlingly pristine fragrance of Caliane’s signature black orchids.

  Sweetgrass, cut on a summer’s day.

  It was one of the most delicate scents she’d ever sensed on a vampire, and it belonged to the one who hung on this rope. Which meant the killer’s scent was either much more faint or not present. Knowing she had to get closer to the victim, she twisted, managing to drop down into a hanging position with both arms hooked over the metal beam for support, her wings spread wide for balance.

  The body was only inches away ... but too far down.

  Gritting her teeth, she shifted her hold until she was gripping the metal with her fingers. Still not close enough. “There’s nothing I can do here,” she said at last, frustration gnawing at her temper. “I’ll have to do the final scent track when the bodies are—Fuck!”

  “Elena! Talk to me!”

  Heart thudding triple-time, she reached out and managed to just graze the vampire’s forehead with her fingertips. Plasticky, frigid from the air. Except... “Oh God.” She’d definitely seen it this time—the flicker of an eyelid, as if he was struggling to raise it. “He’s alive! Get Rescue down here now!”

  “Shit! I’m on it.”

  Santiago was efficient but she knew it would take time. If this vampire—Jesus, maybe all the vamps—were in any way conscious, then what they were suffering right now had to be torture. Dropping and sweeping out from under the bridge, she rose into the air, twisting her head in every direction.

  “Looking for someone, Ellie?”

  Startled, she fell several feet before getting her momentum under control. Illium came to hover beside her when she rose back up and caught the edge of the bridge once again, holding herself in place so she could talk to him. “At least one of them is alive. Can you get them down?” He was the single angel she knew who might have a hope of maneuvering in the cramped conditions.

  He held out a hand. “Dagger.”

  Glad he no longer looked as tormented as he had the previous evening, she slapped one of her knives in his hand and watched as he flew in, somehow executing the tightest of turns before reaching over and cutting the rope. The vampire dropped. But Illium was faster. He scooped the male up before the vampire’s dead weight of a body could touch the water. Elena followed him up onto the bridge itself—which the cops had cordoned off at both ends, making themselves real popular with commuters—and landed.

  Soon as Illium placed the male on the road and dove off to get the rest of the victims, she took out another knife and began to cut through the vampire’s shirt, pulling away the matted fabric and wincing at the chunks of skin that came with it. But she had to see the damage. Santiago, having come down on his haunches beside her, watched in silence as she succeeded in revealing the ruin of the vampire’s chest.

  It sure as hell looked like he’d suffered major damage to the region around his heart, but there was so much dried blood tangled up in thick curls of black chest hair that she couldn’t tell for sure. Unhooking the wireless device over her ear, she gave it to Santiago before reaching into one of the pockets of the fleece-lined vest she’d put on as protection against the wind, and pulling out a pair of latex gloves.

  Santiago took the chance to lean forward and hold the screen of his cell phone a scant inch from the vampire’s mouth. “Shit,” he muttered when the screen began to mist with steam. “For a minute, I thought you’d lost it down there. But shit.” He glanced over her shoulder to where Illium was landing a second time.

  Elena was ninety-nine-percent certain she might actually have lost it if she hadn’t been so fucking shocked out of her mind. “I need something with which to wash off the blood.” The irony of the fact that the East River churned below wasn’t lost on her.

  “Wait.” Santiago returned moments later with two water bottles as well as a pack of tissues. “From the squad cars. Medics are on their way.”

  Vampires didn’t need medics to heal, but during the regeneration process, their bodies hurt the same as a mortal’s. The paramedics could at least give them drugs, knock them out for a while. “Good.” Dampening a wad of tissue, she cleaned the male’s chest with quick, careful motions as Santiago went to check the other bodies.

  Great gouges marked the vampire’s flesh beneath the clotted black of his blood, as if someone had tried to dig through his skin.

  A flash of memory, Raphael’s hand punching through a vampire’s sternum to remove his still-beating heart.

  “But that,” she muttered, trying to keep things practical, logical, “was a single strike.” Quick, brutal, efficient. This, by contrast, had been done by someone who didn’t have Raphael’s strength—because while the male’s chest looked as if it had been through the shredder, his heart beat safe behind his rib cage.

  “They’re all alive.” Santiago sounded shaken. “Christ, it’s like someone fucking clawed this guy.”

  That was what Elena was thinking. “The question is, who?”

  A strange silence.

  Following the detective’s gaze as he came down on his haunches again, the wind flipping his tie over his shoulder, she watched as he put a gloved hand under the victim’s. The vampire’s fingers and nails were encrusted with blood and what might well have been bits of flesh. “He did it to himself.” A cold far deeper than the winds that buffeted the bridge slid through her veins.

  Santiago glanced at the row of bodies Illium had laid out. “They all did.”

  Elena knew from her lessons at the Refuge that very, very few angels had the power to compel a man to savage himself. To kill, yes. But to mutilate and torture? No, that power was reserved for the Cadre ... and the Sleepers who had once been Cadre.

  24

  Having been away from the city when he received Elena’s call, Raphael now landed beside the Central Park pond where she stood watching the ducks. “We have been here before.” She’d been mortal then, a hunter he intended to bend to his will.

  No smile on that expressive face; the rustle of the leaves were secret whispers in the air. “I wondered if you’d remember.”

  “Tell me what you found.”

  Elena glanced around the quiet but not deserted area. “Not here.”

  Taking her into his arms, he rose up into the sky. The flight across the Hudson took only minutes, and then he was landing near the house of glass his consort so loved, his gaze on her as she flared out her wings to descend. Your control is improving.

  “I’m nowhere near the level I need to be if I’m going to be effective in a hunt.” Tucking her hair behind her ears, she walked into the warm humidity of the greenhouse. “I sensed black orchids. It’s such a unique scent, it’s impossible to mistake.” Touching her fingers to a blush pink bloom, she shook her head. “The purity of it bothers me for some reason—my perfumes contact is trying to get me a sample so I can figure out why.” Gray eyes solemn with concern met his as he closed the door behind them.

&
nbsp; Instinct and experience told him to reject her worry, her care. An archangel did not survive by being weak. He survived by being more lethal than any other. Come here, Elena.

  When she shifted to stand bare inches from him, he curved his hand around the back of her neck, rubbing his thumb over her pulse. “Not many know of this particular punishment.” But he did. He’d been there, a young child who’d understood even then that justice had to be served. “My mother did not wish to be a goddess like Lijuan or Neha. Neither did she wish to rule empires like my father.”

  Elena’s hair fell in a silken waterfall over his arm as she raised her head so she could watch him as he spoke. She didn’t ask questions, but every part of her stood with him, unflinching against the darkness coming inexorably closer.

  “But she was treated as a goddess, and she did rule,” he murmured, “as I rule.” He had learned about ruling from his mother, learned that there was a way to do it that would inspire both respect and awe without the debilitating fear that surrounded so many archangels. “She ruled Sumeria, but there was one particular city she treated as home. It was called Amanat.”

  His hunter’s hand came to rest on his waist as lines formed on her brow. “I’ve heard about it. On a TV special about lost cities.”

  “Amanat and its people disappeared when Caliane vanished.” Some say she took her people into Sleep with her, so that they would be there to welcome her when she woke. Most believe she murdered them all before she took her own life, for she loved them too well to leave them under another’s rule, and that Amanat is her grave.

  Elena brushed the fingers of her free hand over the edge of one of his wings. He spread them wider, giving her easier access. A drop of water from a disturbed cluster of tiny white blossoms trickled along his feathers as, taking the invitation, she touched him with a firmer stroke. “Which do you believe?”

  He settled her into the vee of his thighs, bracing her so both her hands would be free. “My mother,” he said, “loved things of beauty. Do you recall the ruby on the shelf in my Tower office?” The priceless gemstone was flawless in its faceted splendor. “She gave it to me for my tenth birthday.”

  “She had impeccable taste.”

  “Amanat,” Raphael continued, “was her jewel of jewels. She loved that city, truly loved it. I spent many of the happiest years of my childhood running wild above its paved streets.”

  “Angels are so protective of their young,” Elena murmured, continuing to caress the insides of his wings with those hands that bore calluses from weapons training—a warrior’s hands. He wanted none other on him.

  “My mother,” he began, speaking of the dawn of his existence, “trusted the people of Amanat in a way an archangel seldom trusts anyone.” Memories of hot summer days spent flying above ancient buildings carved out of rock; of playing with mortal friends and being petted and adored by adults. “And they loved her. It was not the kind of worship Lijuan or even Neha inspires. It was ... untainted in a way I cannot describe.”

  “You just did,” Elena murmured. “Love. What they felt was love.”

  He bent his head a fraction, bringing one hand up to play with the curling tendrils of hair that licked at her temple. “She was a good ruler. Before the madness, she was what an archangel should be.”

  His consort’s eyes softened to a warm, liquid mercury. “The histories Jessamy gave me to read, they said the same. That she was the most beloved of the archangels, that even the rest of the Cadre gave her their respect.”

  He widened his stance, tucking her close enough that she nuzzled her face into his neck, one hand closing around his nape, the other continuing to caress the sensitive arch of his left wing. “The reason the people of Amanat loved her so”—he breathed in the spring and steel scent of his hunter—“was that she loved them in turn.”

  Faded echoes of his mother laughing with the maidens who served in her temple, the sunshine of her smile as she gifted a maid about to marry with a dowry of gold and precious silks. “So when a group of vampires from outside came in and hurt two of Amanat’s women, she did not look the other way because the women were mortal and the vampires over four hundred years old.”

  Elena’s body turned rigid, her breath warm against the hollow of his neck.

  He tightened his hold against the nightmare memories that stalked her. Elena.

  “It’s okay, Archangel. Tell me.”

  He had never spoken of these events, but they had shaped him as much as Caliane’s disappearance. “The vampires kept the women for three days. Three days in the span of a mortal lifetime can feel like three decades.” His mother’s words. “Since the women were returned alive, she decided not to execute the vampires. Instead, she sentenced them to the same kind of terror they’d inflicted.”

  Elena sucked in a breath. “She hung them, in a way calculated to ensure they wouldn’t die.”

  “No, Elena. She did not hang them. She made them hang themselves.”

  Elena flexed her hand on his nape, the bite of her nails tiny kisses. “That explains why I couldn’t pick up any other scents on the rope or on the bodies on the bridge. They were compelled to do what they did.”

  “Yes.”

  “Those vampires in Amanat, the three days must’ve—”

  “No, Guild Hunter. Remember ... three days of terror in a mortal lifetime can feel like three decades.” He spoke with his lips against her skin, the warmth of her, the life of her, shoving away the cold that had been inside him for so long. “Vampires live far beyond a human lifetime.”

  “Three decades?” A disbelieving whisper. “How did they stay alive?”

  “They were fed enough to ensure they lived, and left hanging from a specially constructed gallows in a field where crows liked to rest.”

  Elena shuddered at the image that bloomed fully formed in her mind. “The birds would’ve plucked out the eyes, other soft flesh,” she whispered. “The parts would have grown back, and the crows would’ve come again.” An endless cycle. “How long did they survive?”

  “The entire three decades. My mother made sure of it.”

  “Your mother was a scary-ass woman,” she said. “But if those men did what I’m guessing they did, then the sentence was just.” Three days would’ve meant nothing to a four-hundred-year-old vampire. Sure, it would’ve hurt at the time but it would’ve been soon forgotten. Those women would’ve been scarred forever.

  “Yes. They became as they’d left their victims.”

  She nuzzled at him, realizing they were completely intertwined, her arms around his neck, his legs on either side of hers, one of his hands in her hair, the other on her lower back, his mouth against her temple, his chest hard and solid and real against hers. She’d never felt more centered, more safe, though they were speaking of a cold, deadly horror. “I understand justice. The vampires on the bridge today—do you know anything about them?”

  “Dmitri tells me they are young, less than seventy. Not one has done anything that would merit such a punishment—two are steady family men, one is a writer who prefers his own company when not in service as part of his Contract, while two work in the lowest level of Tower business.”

  “Under a hundred—weak, easy to control.” Especially for an archangel rising from a millennia of Sleep. She didn’t say that last aloud, couldn’t hurt him in that way.

  It is all right, Elena. If my mother did this, and there is every reason to believe that she did, she has lost all that made her the once beloved ruler of Amanat.

  A bleak silence.

  Elena held him to her, close enough that their heartbeats melded. It was the only thing she knew to do, the only thing she could give him. If he had to draw his mother’s blood, she’d stand with him, no matter if he ordered her to keep her distance. Because they were linked, she and her archangel, two parts slowly become a whole.

  The rest of the day passed by without incident, with Elena spending a good chunk of time with Evelyn. Her sister’s innocent enthusiasm, her grow
ing confidence in her skills, was a welcome respite against the darkness on the horizon. She was feeling pretty good about things—until an out of the blue run-in with Santiago back at the house.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” the cop asked her. “That, on the bridge this morning?”

  Gut going tight, Elena folded her arms. “You already know I can’t tell you everything.”

  Eyes shrewd, Santiago echoed her stance, leaning back against the squad car that had brought him over the bridge and into the Angel Enclave. “So you’re not one of us now, Ellie?”

  “That’s a low blow.” She’d known it would come, just hadn’t expected it so soon and from him. Never from Santiago. “But yeah, if you want to draw a line in the sand—I’m not simply a hunter anymore. I’m an archangel’s consort.” It felt strange to hear the words fall from her lips, but she’d made her choices, would stand by them.

  Straightening from his slouched position, the detective dropped his arms. “Guess that puts me in my place.”

  She wanted to shake him. “Why are you being so unreasonable? You’ve always been happy to let the Guild handle vampiric incidents.”

  “Something about this smells.” A stubborn line to his jaw, that salt-and-pepper stubble catching the light. “I don’t want the city to become a battleground like it did last time.”

  “You think I do?”

  “You’re not human anymore, Ellie. I don’t know your priorities.”

  It hurt worse not just because they’d been friends for years, but because he’d been so accepting of her since her return. Clenching her fists, she gave him a deliberately expressionless face. “I guess that makes us even—I don’t know who you are anymore either.”