by Nalini Singh
She thought he flinched and was almost certain he was about to say something, but then he got in the squad car, slamming the door shut. Only after he’d driven off did she double over, feeling as if she’d taken a punch to the gut. Breathing past it, she rose back to her full height and walked into the house to call Venom. She needed to pound her aggression out on someone, and the vampire had a way of provoking her past all reason—it was exactly what she needed today.
Venom wasn’t only free, he was in a hell of a temper. As a result, she fell into bed that night bruised and battered and exhausted. Raphael raised an eyebrow at her condition when he came to join her. “Why was the mortal here?”
Of course he knew. “He wanted to talk about the case.”
An ominous silence that spoke louder than words.
Thumping her fist into the pillow, she turned onto her side. “It’s not important, not with everything else that’s going on.”
“I could always ask the mortal.”
She scowled and turned to stare down at him where he lay on his back on the bed. “Blackmail doesn’t work well with me.”
Arms folded behind his head, he looked at her with blue eyes gone dangerously quiet. “I’m not making a threat.”
Her hands curled into tight, bloodless fists. “It’s nothing!”
An unblinking gaze.
“Fine.” Slamming down on her back, she stared at the ceiling. “It’s just ... hard being torn between two worlds.” With the words out, her anger disappeared, to be replaced by a far more hurtful emotion—tight and hot and abrasive in her chest.
Raphael rose up to lean on his elbow beside her, his hair falling over his forehead. It was impossible to resist the temptation to lift her hand, run her fingers through the midnight silk of it. “I didn’t tell you before,” she said, the words wanting out, “but Beth, she said something to me. That she’d die and I’d still be alive.” Emotion burned at the backs of her eyes. “I’m not supposed to outlive my baby sister, Raphael.”
“No.” A solemn answer. “But would you change this? Would you change us?”
“No. Never.” An absolute truth. “It still hurts to know that I’ll stand over her grave one day.” A single tear escaped her control to trickle down the side of her face.
Raphael leaned down until their lips brushed. “Your mortal heart causes you much pain, Elena—but it makes you who you are.” A kiss that stole her breath. “It will give you the strength to bear the costs of immortality.”
He had touched her in so many ways, but that night, he touched her with a tenderness that broke her heart. He kissed the salt of her tears away, his lips so firm, so gentle on her cheek, her jaw, her mouth. And his hands, those powerful, dangerous hands ...
Never had she been handled with such exquisite care. Never had she felt so cherished.
Yet, at the end, he called her, “Warrior mine,” this archangel who had seen her at her weakest. Those were the words she took into a deep, dreamless sleep, Raphael’s heartbeat strong and steady beneath her palm.
Raphael.
Elena jerked awake at the whisper, glancing over to see her archangel asleep on his front, his magnificent wings spread out until they covered her, too. He had a habit of doing that in bed, she thought, heart aching at the memory of his tenderness earlier. But even as she stroked the white-gold of his feathers with one hand, she retrieved the dagger she’d secreted down the side of the bed with the other.
If that was Lijuan whispering into the inky dark of the bedroom, then a dagger wouldn’t do much good, but Elena felt better with the kiss of steel against her skin. Pushing tangled hair off her face with her free hand, she searched the room with her gaze. There were no intruders, nothing that shouldn’t be there. But her heart continued to pound, as if—
Raphael.
Ice in her bloodstream, her eyes arrowed toward a rippling pocket of air at the bottom of the bed. Almost a mirage, but not quite. It was as if the fabric of the world itself was being twisted as something tried to take shape and failed. Throat dry, she reached out without taking her eyes off that thing and shook Raphael’s muscular shoulder. It amazed her that he’d slept through this—he tended to wake the instant she did, because the fact was, he didn’t need to sleep.
Solid muscle under her hand. But Raphael didn’t wake.
Archangel, she said into his mind, wake up. There’s something in the room.
Silence. Emptiness.
Her entire body went stiff, hand clenching on his shoulder. Nothing, but nothing, had ever stopped Raphael from responding to a mental plea from her. He’d found her in the middle of New York when Uram had held her captive in a charnel house of a room. He’d tracked her across the Refuge when Michaela went nuclear at the Medica. He’d broken a meeting of the Cadre itself to save her life in Beijing. There was no way he’d sleep through a call from her when she was sitting right next to him.
Staring at the strange near mirage, she set her jaw and lifted the steel in her hand. “Go to hell.” A soft whisper as she threw.
25
The knife sliced through the air to dig home in the opposite wall, the hilt quivering at the impact. The mirage, though it didn’t disappear . . . sort of fractured. That was when she caught the whisper of a scent that shouldn’t have been there.
Lush, sensual, exotic.
Black orchids, but it was somehow different from what she’d sensed on the murdered girl’s body, on the men hanging from the bridge.
But there was no time for her to process the notes, because a split second after the fracture, a wing was rising under her touch. Moving so fast she couldn’t track him with her eyes, Raphael was up and standing beside the bed, the white-hot glow of him so vivid as to erase the lines of his form, to turn him into a blazing torch. Stunned, Elena threw a hand over her eyes and ducked her head in preparation for crawling out of bed so she could retrieve the weapons she’d hidden underneath, do what she could to assist.
But one blink and the blinding heat of his power was gone.
Looking up, hand itching for a weapon, she saw that the thing in the center of the room had disappeared, no hint of black orchids in the air. But she didn’t drop her guard until Raphael said, “My mother is no longer here, Elena.” There was a remoteness to his voice she didn’t like.
Pushing off the blankets, she began to slide out.
Raphael was already pulling on a pair of pants over that magnificent body. “I’ll be back before dawn. She will not return tonight.”
“Wait!”
He didn’t even pause at the balcony doors, pushing them wide open. She managed to cover the distance just in time to see him disappear into the starry night sky, flying so far and fast that she lost track of him in the space of a few piercing seconds. Anger stabbed through her, hot and determined. Damn if he was going to do this—especially after the intimacy of the moments they’d shared not only tonight, but since she’d woken from the coma, after the bonds they’d forged.
Stalking back into the bedroom, she pulled on her own pants, slapped on one of the supportive tank tops that had been designed to fit around her wings using straps, then slid on the warm, lined sleeves that fit snugly over her upper arms and left her hands free. She was back on the balcony bare minutes after he’d taken off, very conscious of the tendrils of dark chocolate and fur curling beneath the bedroom door as the male behind the scents got ever closer—Dmitri had come over for a late meeting with Raphael, opted to stay the night in one of the rooms reserved for the Seven.
Now, it was clear Raphael had told him to watch over Elena.
That, too, she thought with teeth-gritting focus, was going to stop.
Looking down, she realized she had no hope of making a flight from her current position, not with her concentration shot to smithereens. So instead, she jumped over the balcony, using her wings to slow her descent. Then she ran through the trees at the edge of the cliff to dive out over the Hudson, beating her wings—stronger, more resilient—hard and fast
to sweep herself up off the choppy water and into the clear beauty of the night sky, the stars sparkling ice on black velvet.
The wind was cool against her skin, liquid soft over her wings. Below her, Manhattan was a midnight sea scattered with glittering jewels. New York. It could be a hard place, a hard city. Just like the archangel who ruled it.
But it was home.
As the archangel was hers.
Raphael.
She made the effort to arrow the thought only to him, having worked with him over the past few days to fine-tune what mental abilities she already seemed to have. According to Raphael, she’d gain other abilities with time, and she was happy with that—she had more than enough on her plate right now without having to deal with some unexpected superpower.
No response, but some tug in her soul made her turn, head roughly in the direction of Camden, New Jersey. Raphael had bonded to her on some level deeper than the heart. The hunter she’d once been would’ve scoffed at such thoughts, but that was before she’d tasted the golden pleasure of ambrosia as Raphael fed it into her mouth, as he kissed immortal life into her dying body.
Who was to say that such an act wouldn’t have even deeper consequences?
Go home, Elena.
Startled, she dipped and glanced over her shoulder to see Raphael in the sky high above her. We’ll be going home together.
You can’t hope to keep up with me. Such arrogance in those words, but that made them no less true.
Instead of answering, she continued to fly, riding the night winds to give herself a break when she could. Some time later, they left the last edges of the cityscape behind, the streetlights below them speaking of quiet neighborhoods locked up in the arms of sleep.
A sweep of air against her face as her archangel shot down in front of her before rising with heart-stopping speed. He’d shown off for her before. But this wasn’t play. This was an archangel pointing out how very puny she was in the scheme of things. Newsflash, Archangel. I already know I’m as weak as a baby compared to you. Hasn’t stopped me from dancing with you anytime yet.
As the words left her mouth, she remembered something else, a sensual promise he’d made to her at the Refuge. You said you would show me how angels dance.
I am in no mood to be gentle, Guild Hunter.
She raised an eyebrow. Consort.
You’re tiring. I can see your wings beginning to falter.
Cursing under her breath because he was right, she looked for a place to land. When her eyes lit on a thick branch high above the ground, the tree situated in what looked like a deserted local park, she dropped without hesitation. Maybe she’d break some bones, but hell, she was training so freaking hard for a reason—playing it safe wasn’t it.
At the last minute, right when she knew she was assuredly going to break some bones, Raphael slipped into her mind and corrected her angle of descent so that she was able to grab the branch and pull herself up to straddle it without damage. She glared in his direction. Stop taking over whenever you feel like it.
A dangerous pause. Would you have preferred to spend the next few weeks in a cast?
I’d prefer to learn to do this myself.
Yet you attempt to pierce the clouds when you can barely fly in a straight line.
Anger bubbled through her bloodstream. Come down here and say that to my face.
Her hair whipped back in a gust of wind an instant later, and then Raphael was hovering next to her branch, the angles of his face starkly masculine, his eyes blazing that metallic chrome that never augured anything good. “You shouldn’t be flying such long distances, much less hunting,” he said with the arrogance of an immortal who had lived well over a thousand years. “You need to spend another few years at the Refuge at the very least.”
She snorted. “Angels spend that time at the Refuge because they’re literally babies. I’m very much an adult.”
“Are you certain?” A cold question. “Attempting to break bones making a landing you couldn’t hope to realize sounds like something a five-year-old would do.”
Changing position so that she sat with both legs hanging over the branch, her wings spread out behind her for balance, she curled her fingers around the living wood in an effort to calm herself. “You know something, Raphael?” she said, fingernails digging into the bark, “I think you’re spoiling for a fight.”
No words from the immortal in front of her, his face so austere she could almost believe they’d never loved, never laughed together.
“So,” she said, leaning forward, “am I.”
A glow around his wings, something she’d learned to expect when he was pissed. She held her ground. Because this was who he was, and she either took all of him or she walked away. The latter was not an option.
“You’re going home. I’ll call Illium to guide you there.”
“No more babysitters,” she said, her anger a honed blade. “I won’t allow it. Neither am I about to toddle off home like a good little girl.”
You will do as I say.
“Yeah, how’s that working for you so far?”
Shifting forward, he braced his hands on the branch on either side of her, his big body pushing between her thighs. You obey very sweetly.
Oooh, she thought, he didn’t only want a fight, he wanted a fight. “I am,” she said, trying to remain rational, “one of the strongest hunters in the Guild. Not only that, I survived an archangel and a psycho-would-be-archangel. I’ve earned my stripes.”
Anoushka almost killed you.
She thought of the poison Neha’s daughter had pumped into her body, of the panic that had made her heart stutter, her blood run cold. “Do you know how many people have ‘almost’ killed me over the years?” When his eyes iced over with a blue so pure it was unlike any color seen on this earth, she realized that might not have been the best thing to bring up. Then again ... “I take you as you are,” she said, unwilling—unable—to back down. “I do that.”
The fierce intensity of that statement cut through the storm of fury riding Raphael, and he heard her, heard, too, the words she didn’t say.
I take you as you are. Take me as I am.
“I’ve never seen you as anything but a warrior.” Even when she came into his arms, he never forgot that it was a very conscious surrender on her part, a choice she made to let herself be vulnerable.
Her lips tightened, and she shook her head, the fine strands of her hair sliding wild over her shoulders. “It’s not enough, Raphael. Just the words aren’t enough.”
In the Refuge, she’d asked him to stop shadowing her mind. That had been a difficult choice for an archangel to make when keeping a mental watch on her was the best way he had to ensure her safety. “I have given you unparalleled freedom.”
“Who are you comparing us with, Archangel?” she asked, watching him with those pale eyes that glimmered witch-bright in the darkness.
A sign of her growing immortality, he realized, wondering if she’d noticed an improvement in her night-vision yet. That would be a trait a hunter would value—for the kiss of immortality could only build on the bones of what was already present.
“We’re making our own rules,” she continued. “There is no template for us to follow.”
His mind flashed to her broken in his arms, her life bleeding out of her a drop at a time. Then had come the silence. Endless, merciless silence as she slept. “Elijah and Hannah have been together hundreds of years,” he said. “She follows his lead.”
A shaky smile from his hunter with her mortal heart. “Is that what you truly want?” It was a husky whisper.
He knew then that he could hurt her terribly at this moment. Like her father, he could tell her that she wasn’t what she should be, that who and what she was, was a cause for shame. In doing so, he’d hit at her biggest vulnerability and win this war between them.
He was an archangel. He’d made ruthless decision after ruthless decision.
“No,” he said, for she was exactly wh
o she should be. His mate, his consort. “But it would be easier if you were like Hannah.”
A laugh that sounded wet. “And it would be easier if you followed my every command.”
They looked at each other for a long, long moment ... then Raphael reached forward, cupped her cheek. “I will give you your freedom,” he said, fighting every instinct he had, “on one condition.”
Lines formed between her brows. “What condition?”
“Do you not trust me, hunter?”
“Not a bit, not when you’re trying to get your own way.” But she leaned her cheek into his touch, stroking her own fingers through his hair.
He shifted his grip to her jaw, firmed his hold. “You will call me. No hesitations, no thinking, no waiting until the last possible moment. If you’re in danger, you will call me.”
“Within reason,” she bargained. “A vamp hopped up on bloodlust coming after me is a different case from a power-crazed angel.”
“I’m not used to negotiating.” Most people gave him everything he demanded.
A slow, slow smile that melted away the lingering tendrils of the cold rage within him. “I guess the next several hundred years are going to be an education then, huh?”
He could not help it. He kissed her, took that warmth, that laughter inside of him, where it could warm him, too. You tease an archangel at your peril.
Strong arms around his neck, fingers playing over the arches of his wings. I dunno, I kinda like what it gets me.
Her lips parted beneath his, and he surged in, claiming her with a hunger that no longer startled him. It was as if the bond between them grew ever deeper with every hour that passed. You will call me.
Within reason.
He considered it, smiled in satisfaction. Very well. But you will explain each and every injury each time you do not call me.
Breaking the openmouthed intimacy of the kiss, she glared at him. “That is a ridiculous stipulation for a hunter!”
He put his arms around her and pulled her off the branch, using his power and strength to take them high up into the star-studded skies.