by Nalini Singh
It turned out that Keir had, in his records, designs for pair upon pair of prosthetic wings that he’d worked on as a young man in an effort to find something to help his friend Jessamy take flight. None had proved suitable for the historian’s congenital malformation . . . but one pair, when modified, extended and supported Laric’s devastated wings enough to give him back the sky.
He couldn’t fly for long, but he could fly.
And from afar, his wings looked like any other angel’s.
“Can you make it to my sister’s home?” Elena asked, telling him the distance. “You’ll be dealing with a severely wounded vampire.” Laric was in training under Keir, with Nisia his tutor while he was in New York.
His hands flowed rapidly in the silent tongue he used nearly all the time and that Elena had learned after he came to the Tower. Most of the other senior staff already knew it, and the ones who didn’t had learned alongside Elena; Laric would not be isolated here as he’d been in the place where he’d spent more than a thousand years.
I have this knowledge, he was saying. Flight possible. A short pause before his hands formed another word. Witnesses?
“Only my father and sister will see you, and they know never to speak immortal secrets.” As with Jessamy, Laric was careful never to be really seen by mortals; humanity needed to believe angelkind too powerful to be hurt. It kept the balance of the world and stopped mortals from trying to pick fights with immortals they could never hope to win.
Nodding, Laric took a moment to grab his kit, then the two of them stepped off the closest balcony. Today, Elena didn’t see the glittering winter-draped beauty of her city, and she barely felt the ache in her left wing.
All she heard was that tone in her father’s voice.
Cold, controlled, clipped.
Harrison had to be critical.
12
Elena would never like her brother-in-law—he was a weak man, weak enough that he’d gotten himself Made into a vampire while Beth was still waiting to hear back if she’d been accepted. It turned out Elena’s younger sister was incompatible with the toxin that turned a mortal into a near-immortal. She couldn’t be Made. Harrison would have to watch his wife grow old and die. He might well have to bury his daughter, too.
But Beth loved him and that was what mattered.
“There!” She pointed out the house to Laric.
Landing on the pathway swept clear of snow, Elena dropped a knife into her palm before running into the house, Laric following . . . to be greeted by a scene of horror. A choking, gurgling sound filled the air, and on the sofa, Jeffrey had both hands clamped around Harrison’s neck. The wound was spurting blood, the dark red liquid flowing over her father’s hands, macabre ink that smelled of iron.
Red splattered Jeffrey’s wire-framed glasses.
More blood smeared the space on either side of Harrison’s mouth, and at first glance Elena thought his mouth was twisted into a rictus of a smile. But no—Christ—his assailant had slit open the sides of his mouth.
She took in the rest of the room in that same initial glance.
A gaily wrapped box lay on the fog-gray carpet, while Elena’s half sister, Eve, a petite Valkyrie, stood in an offensive posture, her eyes huge and her newly issued long blade held out with guild hunter precision.
Muddy boot prints led from the back of the sofa to the kitchen.
The strides were long. Running. Whoever had left those prints had been running.
“Ellie.” Eve lowered her arm, her breath a touch uneven but her stance solid. “I think we interrupted the robber. I was afraid they’d come back.”
Elena wasn’t sure this had anything to do with robbery, not when she could see Harrison’s wallet sitting right there where even a fleeing robber could’ve grabbed it. “You did good, Eve.” Striding to the kitchen door while Eve continued to stand guard in the living area and Laric worked on Harrison, she nudged it open with care—if the assailant was a vampire in the throes of bloodlust, she couldn’t expect him to act rationally.
But the kitchen proved empty.
She swept the entire space inch by inch regardless, to make sure no one was hiding in a cupboard or under the island at the center.
The back door lock was broken.
After jury-rigging it with a piece of twine from Beth’s junk drawer then reinforcing that with a fork bent to block the mechanism, Elena returned to the living room and told Eve she was going to clear the rest of the house. “I’ll lock the front door on my way. Keep an eye on the entrance from the kitchen.”
Eve nodded jerkily as Elena left. She moved quickly and was able to confirm the house was free of intruders within minutes.
She returned to find Laric motioning for Jeffrey to remove his hands. Blood began to gush out the instant Jeffrey obeyed . . . only it was slow.
Too slow.
Harrison had lost most of the blood in his body. Replacing Jeffrey’s hands with his own, Laric began to do whatever it was that healers did to encourage healing in immortal and semi-immortal bodies. Keir had once told her it felt like coaxing a flame in the wind, or waking a sluggish sleeper.
Their job was to lead the body to heal itself.
It was wholly unlike Raphael’s ability to heal without any involvement from the injured’s own body.
Laric’s hands were a stark and icy-white ridged with fine pink lines that quickly became streaked with viscous red. The lines had been much thicker when Elena first met him, and Laric had said they were impossible to cut through.
Of course, buried as he’d been in the isolated stronghold of Lumia, he hadn’t ever tried lasers.
His body remained badly damaged within, but he was getting regular treatments to shave away the worst ridges so that he had better movement and flexibility.
“You must stop panicking and start trying to conserve your energy,” he said aloud; his voice was crushed gravel, so rough and broken and painful to the ear that it was rare for him to use it.
Aodhan had told Elena it actually hurt Laric to talk.
Shifting into Harrison’s line of sight, Elena took one of his hands so that Laric could get on with his work without having to deal with her brother-in-law’s desperate attempts to cover his wound with his own hands. Bloody and sticky, Harrison’s fingers gripped weakly at hers.
She squeezed back. Whatever Harrison’s faults, he didn’t deserve this. Beth and Maggie didn’t deserve this.
“If you’re going to survive,” she told him, “you need to stay calm and let Laric help you.” Beth’s husband was fewer than ten years old in vampiric terms. He couldn’t have survived even a partial decapitation. Thankfully, Eve and Jeffrey’s interruption had stopped the blade from transecting his spine. Add in the rapid arrival of a healer and he might have a fighting chance.
She damn well hoped so. Beth loved him, and, to Harrison’s credit, he treated both Beth and their daughter, Maggie, like princesses.
“Think of Beth.” It was the one topic guaranteed to get his attention. “You know what she’s like. If I tell her you’re bleeding out, she’ll have a panic attack. But if I tell her the healer has things under control and you’re handling it without worry, she’ll do fine.”
That wasn’t quite true—the youngest of Marguerite’s four daughters had far more depth to her than most people realized. Even Elena hadn’t understood that for a long time. Beth might prefer to live in a bubble of joy, but she understood the harsh realities of life. And when it counted, she’d always been there for Elena.
It was Beth who’d gathered up Elena’s things after Jeffrey threw them out in the rain and the snow.
I have no desire to house an abomination under my roof.
Her oh-so-loving father’s words to his eldest surviving child. Elena might’ve spent her life hating him for them if she hadn’t figured out that her father was as fucked up as she�
�d once been. Jeffrey Parker Deveraux had watched his hunter mother be beaten and decapitated by vampires, then lost two cherished daughters and the woman he loved beyond life to another killer, only to discover that one of his surviving children was the reason the monster had come to their door. Elena’s hunter-born scent had been the irresistible lure; Ari, Belle, and Marguerite the casualties.
Yes, Elena had a certain amount of sympathy for her father.
Forgiveness for his rejection, however, that would take a lifetime.
All the years when Elena had walked alone but for her friendship with Sara, it was Beth who’d held out a hand and kept her connected to their shattered and ruined family. Her younger sister had become lost in trying to please Jeffrey for far too many years, but no matter how bad their sibling relationship had become at times, Beth had refused to cut the bond or just ignore it. She had a quiet stubbornness most people never realized.
But the mention of Beth didn’t calm Harrison. Eyelids blinking rapidly, he pulled even more desperately at her hand.
Elena froze. “Is Beth in danger? Maggie?”
Jagged nods.
Fuck. She considered the time of day, where her sister might’ve gone. “Has Beth taken Maggie to visit our grandparents?”
Another nod.
Relief rocked her. Jean-Baptiste was a far older vampire than Harrison, and ruthless with it. Elena didn’t know who he’d been before surviving decades of torture, but the Jean-Baptiste she knew wouldn’t hesitate to summarily execute anyone who threatened to harm his own.
She dug out her phone and sent through a warning regardless: Beth and Maggie at risk. Stay alert.
Jean-Baptiste acknowledged her message with a single word: Understood.
“They’re safe,” Elena told Harrison. “Now focus on staying calm so Laric can help you.”
Harrison gave as much of a nod as was now possible for him to give. His breathing seemed to have improved, but his olive-toned skin was deathly pale. He’d lost an exponential amount of blood before Laric arrived.
“Will my blood make any difference?” she asked the healer—consort to an archangel or not, she was a baby immortal who had a flicker of wildfire in her blood. That wildfire was a weapon capable of wounding Lijuan. Who knew what it’d do to Harrison? But if there was no choice . . .
“I don’t want to use your blood when I cannot judge the impact it might have,” the healer said in his broken voice.
“I can donate,” Jeffrey said, stiff but resolute, while frowning at Eve.
Elena’s youngest sister closed her mouth.
A headshake from Laric.
Understanding, Elena translated: “Harrison’s injury is beyond the rejuvenating capacity of human blood.”
She knew Laric himself couldn’t donate without losing the energy he needed to help Harrison—and Laric was young, too. Not in years, but in development. He’d been in a kind of stasis for the hundreds of years he’d spent hidden from the world, his growth stunted.
Thinking quickly, she pulled out her phone again and called Dmitri. “We need strong blood to save a vampire’s life,” she said the instant he answered. “My brother-in-law.” She rattled off the address, though she was sure Dmitri already knew it. It was his job to know anything and everything that could impact Raphael.
“I’ve got someone nearby,” was the response before he hung up.
Only three minutes later, Harrison’s eyelids trapping birds as he fought to lift them and failed, another angel walked into the room. He was the night, his wings an inky black and his clothing obsidian. The intricate tribal tattoo that covered one half of his face only added to the impression of danger and darkness and a man who walked his own path.
Elena hadn’t even known that Raphael’s spymaster was in the city. Not an unusual circumstance with Jason. He came and went like the wind. Which was why it caused her no surprise whatsoever that he’d made his way through a locked door without a whisper of warning noise.
Walking up to Harrison, he used a small blade to slit his own wrist. The scent of blood—powerful blood—had Harrison’s eyelids flickering again, but he was too weak to even angle his head toward the source of the life-giving fluid. Jason pressed his bleeding wrist against Harrison’s lips after tugging back Harrison’s head just enough that he could drip the blood directly into Harrison’s mutilated mouth.
Elena couldn’t tell if her brother-in-law had enough of his throat left to swallow, and she could see no sign he was trying to suck in the blood. Jason had to remove his wrist and cut it again multiple times before Laric signed, He has had enough.
Harrison’s fingers went limp on Elena’s hand at the same time, dropping heavily to the sofa. No blood dripped from his throat, though the gash was wet and red. As if he’d run dry. “Is he still alive?” She did not want to have to tell Beth that Harrison was dead.
Yes. I’ve put him in a deep sleep. Blood as powerful as Jason’s may have otherwise caused a seizure.
“Here.” It was Eve, holding out a slightly damp dish towel toward Jason and doing an excellent job of hiding her awe at being in his presence. “I went into the kitchen and got these.” A glance at Elena as she gave her a towel, too, before putting one on the coffee table for Laric. “I was careful even though you’d cleared it.”
“Good girl,” Elena said, as Jason inclined his head in a silent thank-you. He wiped the cloth over his wrist to remove the smears of blood. His warm brown skin, she saw, had already sealed up again. Jason was at least seven hundred years old; more important, he was seven hundred years old and powerful with it.
Prior to her fall into the immortal world, Elena hadn’t understood that power and age didn’t always correlate. Some of the difference had to do with inborn strength—immortal genetics, if you would. But some of it had to do with dedication and persistence. The two elements—inborn strength and a resolute will—combined in angels like Jason and the other members of Raphael’s Seven.
“Thank you,” she said to an angel she might never truly know, he was so contained and private.
“There is no need,” was the quiet response. “He is your family.” Putting the dirty dish towel in a pocket instead of giving it back, likely an automatic reaction from a man used to being a spy and leaving behind no traces, Jason held Elena’s gaze with the bitter chocolate of his own. “I will continue on my way. I must speak to the sire, then I will head homeward. Mahiya was not able to come with me on this last journey.”
And he missed her, Elena thought, happy for this dark angel that he’d found a lover to whom he did show all of himself. “I’ll see you both when you’re next in the city.”
The door closed behind Jason seconds later.
When she looked to her father again, she saw Jeffrey had already finished cleaning his hands and was now polishing the glass of his spectacles using a handkerchief he must’ve pulled from his pocket.
She put her used dish towel onto the coffee table, then caught Jeffrey’s eyes, angling her head. He, Elena, and Eve moved closer to the front door, leaving Laric to work in peace. There probably wasn’t much more he could do at this stage. Vampires were creatures of blood, and Jason’s blood was the biggest piece of first aid that could’ve been offered.
“Tell me how this happened,” she said to the man who’d once blown bubbles with her in a sunny backyard. The same man who had thrown her out of the family home when she’d been only eighteen.
For a long time, she’d believed he hated her because she was the reason the monster had come to their door. It had taken her more than ten years to understand that in her sophisticated, intelligent father lived both a forever-broken-hearted man who loved his children too much . . . and a scared four-year-old boy.
Do you know what it’s like to watch a woman get her head torn off? The blood spurts hot and dark and it gets in your mouth, in your eyes, in your nose, until it’s the o
nly thing you can see, all you can smell!
Jeffrey Parker Deveraux had lost too many loves. He was never going to be whole again, never going to be her playful papa again.
13
It was Eve who spoke first.
“I wanted to drop off my gift for Beth’s birthday,” she said, her hand clenched to bone-white tightness around the hilt of the long blade. “I’m going away tomorrow for two weeks for that out-of-town Guild training session. I won’t be here for her actual birthday.”
Elena broke contact with the gray of Jeffrey’s eyes, eyes he’d bequeathed her and Eve both. “Yes, I remember.” The two-week camp would teach her sister tactics she couldn’t learn in the city.
It would also be a time of friendship and freedom.
She half expected Jeffrey to comment on Eve’s plans—their father could barely deal with having one hunter for a daughter, and in a few short years he’d have two. But all he said was, “I have a key to this home.” He pulled the key out of the right pocket of his suit pants then slid it back in. “When Evelyn received no response to her knock, I decided we should leave the gift inside. That way, even if we were unable to track Beth down, she’d have the gift and card.”
That sounded like her father: decisive and coolly rational. He’d always been that way, except when it came to the butterfly of a woman who’d been his first wife—and the four daughters she’d given him.
Only Elena truly remembered Marguerite’s Jeffrey. Beth had been so young when they buried Belle and Ari. What they hadn’t known until it was too late was that they were also burying Marguerite. Jeffrey’s butterfly and Elena’s beloved mama, the lovely, soft-spoken woman who’d kissed Beth’s chubby cheeks until she giggled and giggled, had never come back from the hell of so horrifically losing two of her babies.