by Nalini Singh
“I think some of that has to do with Maggie.” She rubbed the back of her neck to ease the stiffness without taking her eyes off the endless snow-draped white of the footage. “I know motherhood’s changed Beth.”
“Your niece might be the making of her father,” Illium agreed. “Andreas can be harsh, but he doesn’t ruin the vampires who work under him.”
Elena thought of the punishments she knew the angel in question had meted out over the years: the precisely flayed skin and vicious whippings, the enclosure in coffin-sized boxes, the removal of a fucking eye with a rusty blade. “Are you sure about that?”
“Vampires can be blood-hungry monsters, Ellie. Normal punishments mean nothing to them.”
In Elena’s mind ran the images from one particular hunt: she’d found her target with his face burrowed in the torn open body of a young woman, her viscera—slick and gleaming—clutched in his greedy fingers. He’d been so glutted on his victim’s blood that Elena’d had no trouble removing his head from his body.
His angel had sighed when she reported the circumstances and her decision to execute the vampire rather than bring him in. “I suppose I should be angry,” Nazarach had said, his piercing amber eyes lit from within and his power bruising her skin. “But Richard was eighty years old. If he could not maintain a hold on his blood hunger at such an age . . .”
Wings of burnished amber in her vision and the ebony of his skin taut over fluid muscle as he turned to walk to a large arched window that offered a view of his gracious and lush estate full of magnolia and cypress trees. “It is a shame to lose one of mine, but Richard chose to run rather than come to me with his unacceptable urges. He dug his own grave.” Age and death lived in Nazarach’s voice, ancient and cold as the darkness of a crypt.
To this day, Elena found Nazarach as disturbing as fuck. But Andreas wasn’t far behind Nazarach in the disturbing stakes. “What else have you heard about Harrison?” she asked Illium.
His shoulder brushing hers, he said, “Turns out he has a gift for administration. Andreas is training him to run a household.”
“Like Montgomery does ours?” The Enclave home would be a shambles without him; Elena certainly would have no idea what to do.
“No one will ever be a Montgomery,” Illium said, “but Harrison could deal with a more standard household. Trained that way and with Andreas as a reference once he finishes his Contract, he’ll never have to fear being out of work and unable to support his own household.”
But Beth would be gone by then, perhaps Maggie, too.
Her heart twisted.
“So if he hasn’t pissed off Andreas,” she said through the screaming wrench of it, “and he’s walking the straight and narrow, what could he have done that got him targeted for murder?”
“Andreas mentioned Harrison broke away from his previous friend group a while ago.”
Pausing the recording, Elena turned to face Illium. “Since when are you and Andreas such good buddies?” she asked suspiciously. “He’s not taking advantage of you while Aodhan is gone, is he?”
Illium’s shoulders shook before he threw back his head and laughed. If Nazarach’s voice was death and age and pain, Illium’s was golden light and a playful joie de vivre that had the others in the room looking up with smiles. No one liked it when he wasn’t himself. Once he finally calmed down—and after wiping tears from his eyes—he picked up one of her hands and brought it to his mouth for a kiss.
“I love you, Ellie.” Solemn words, but his eyes were dancing.
“I have a crossbow, Bluebell, and I won’t hesitate to use it.”
An unrepentant grin. “Andreas and I have known each other for centuries. In battle, he leads one of the other elite squadrons.” He pointed to the recording and she started it up again, both their eyes on the unmoving scene as they spoke. “We’ve had more contact recently because the squadrons are in the process of evaluating our total fighting capacity and ability to work with one another.”
She’d known Andreas led a squadron but hadn’t realized it was one of the elite ones that held their deadliest angelic fighters. “Tell me what your buddy Andreas had to say about Harrison’s old friends.” In spite of Illium’s perfectly rational explanation, she remained leery of this relationship she’d never known had existed. “Why were you talking about Harry in the first place?”
Illium reached over to tug at her braid. “Because he’s your sister’s husband, of course. I knew you’d want to know if there was a problem.” Still playing with her braid, he told her the rest of what he’d discovered. “In short, Harrison is on an upward trajectory, but the others—all post-Contract—were heading in the opposite direction last Andreas heard. Drugs, lack of ambition, the usual.”
Elena’s instincts prickled. Eric Acosta had been a junkie. So were hundreds of other vamps in Manhattan. But deadbeat former friends were a better lead than anything else she had right now. “You know the names of the post-Contract vamps?”
A shake of his head she caught out of the corner of her eye. “Andreas will, but he’s out of the city tonight. He should be back tomorrow.” A pause. “We show each other our diaries—then make playdates.”
“Ha-ha.” She poked him in the side while continuing to watch the footage.
She’d been looking at the whiteness of Beth’s snow-draped home and yard for so long that when the movement came and the video slowed to normal speed, she stared disbelieving at it.
20
The same long coat Elena had seen in the footage when the intruder fled through the back door, the same hat, the same scarf wrapped around the face. Her heart pounded. “Can you skip through until you find the initial entry?” she said to Illium. “I want to watch this in the right order, from arrival to exit.”
It only took Illium a minute to cue up the recording to the intruder’s first appearance in the yard.
* * *
• • •
The unknown individual walked with quiet purpose, scoping out the house with intense attention to detail.
It was nighttime in the video, the resolution grainy, but . . .
“He moves like a man.” She didn’t know how else to explain it, but the gait, the way he held his body, the breadth of his shoulders, it all said male to her mind.
“Agreed.”
Though they watched with unblinking focus, they could discern nothing of the man’s face.
He walked out of camera view as stealthily as he’d arrived.
Elena had already seen that there would be snow later on that night, which would have hidden all signs of his passage. No way was that a stroke of luck. The assailant was too well-organized to have left such a thing to chance. He’d checked the weather, known that more snow would fall after his visit.
“Go backward again?”
Elena nodded at Illium’s question. “Let’s run this recording down to the final second. Our intruder might’ve been by earlier.”
But that proved a false hope. Not about to give up, Elena cut ahead to the first glimpse of him, trying to glean even a minor detail. But it was Illium, leaning forward with his forearms braced on his thighs, who said, “A man—and one who moves like us. Like you. Trained.”
“You’re right.” It was there in the fluidity of his walk, in his watchfulness, in the ease with which he pulled himself up to look through a window. “Could be military, ex or present. A mercenary. Even a guild hunter.” Bill James had taught her that hunters weren’t immune from going bad.
“Could also be off-grid,” Illium pointed out. “A lot of old vampires who were once soldiers have kept up their skills, and not all work for the Tower.” A shrug. “We can’t eliminate every single Tower vampire, either.”
Elena nodded; the suspect pool was huge. “About the only thing we can be sure of is that he isn’t an angel.”
Noting down the times of the relevan
t sections of footage, Elena sent off an e-mail to Vivek asking him to have a look. “Maybe he can spot something or zoom in further.”
Stiff after such a long vigil, she and Illium both rose to stretch out their bodies. Tiredness lingered in her shoulders, but it didn’t feel as if she had any new damage there. As for the cuts on her arm, she made a conscious decision to ignore them.
She would look, but only when her archangel was home.
Because she was fucking terrified the second barely-there scratch was actually starting to hurt.
“What are you doing the rest of the night?” she asked Illium after surreptitiously scratching that itchy spot on the left side of her chest. It was only a half hour till midnight, but Illium needed far less sleep than she did.
“I was thinking of flying down to the clubs, watching the entertainment.”
Ordinary enough words, but Elena knew Illium. As he spoke, the last echoes of their shared laughter drained away from his face, his wings stiffer against his back. Nudging her shoulder against his, she said, “What is it?”
He linked one hand with hers, the warmth of his skin imbued with a power she felt as a prickle against her palm, a tiny lightning bolt that would’ve disconcerted if she didn’t sleep skin-to-skin with an archangel.
“Today is the anniversary of the day she forgot me.” A lopsided smile. “It seems all my loves leave me in the winter snow.”
She. Illium’s mortal lover to whom he’d spoken angelic secrets. Secrets she’d then spoken to others—it’d be easy to judge them, but there had been no malice on her part or his. They’d both just been young and a little foolish. Unfortunately, in their case it had equaled a far bigger consequence than waking up hungover with a bad tattoo, or with your wallet gone.
Caught by angelic law that left him no other recourse, Raphael had been forced to wipe the mortal woman’s mind. Illium, in turn, had been stripped of his feathers and forbidden from contacting her again. He’d watched her live out her life without ever remembering that she’d once been the cherished love of a young angel with wings of astonishing blue.
Illium hadn’t had the silver filaments then.
Those had come when his feathers regenerated.
At times, Elena thought Illium was over that long-ago heartbreak, and then there were days like today, when he’d say something and she’d be reminded all over again of how much he’d loved that unknown young woman. It would’ve been different had she died after spending her life with him. He’d still have mourned her, but he’d have also had a lifetime of memories to balance the sorrow.
Raphael had said something interesting once when they’d spoken about Illium’s past. “He mourns a dream. He was so young, and in his mind, their love was perfection. Life is rarely perfect, however.” But Illium only had the dream, the bittersweet poignancy of a first love lost in a way that had scored a permanent mark on his psyche.
“I’ll come with you.” She grabbed her jacket from where she’d hung it on the back of her chair. “There isn’t much I can do on Harrison’s case at the moment.”
“You don’t have to babysit me, Ellie.”
“In that case, you can babysit me.” Shrugging into the jacket, she met his eyes. “I’ve got a few ghosts whispering to me today, too.” Only Raphael knew the whole of her blood-soaked history, but Illium knew enough to know that she was haunted as he was haunted. “I don’t want to go home without Raphael.”
He helped her find the right strap to snap her jacket closed over the wing slits. “Let’s go paint the town red.”
First, however, she drank two glasses of Nisia’s energy supplement then stopped by to see the healer. Nisia cleared her to continue flying—with conditions. “If you experience the heavy tiredness you’ve described, you land.” No give in her voice. “Even if you’re over water. Your wings will keep you afloat after a controlled landing, but a crash into the water from a high enough height could tear you to pieces. Much like when the flying machines hit the water at speed. It may as well be concrete.”
Elena winced. “Understood.” Neither a panicked fall into suddenly unforgiving water nor a horrifying tumble into New York City traffic held any appeal.
Having waited on the balcony for her, his profile a clean line against the night sky, Illium looked over when she came out to join him. “Prognosis?”
“No new damage, but I’m going to stay at lower altitudes.” It’d make for a quicker landing if her wing began to crumple.
Frowning, Illium shook his head. “You’ll have a longer window and fewer obstacles in your path if you go high. I’m fast enough to catch you—you won’t crash.”
Raphael was the only person Elena trusted that much, but she couldn’t bruise Illium’s heart any further. Not tonight. And he was fast, the fastest angel in the city. Not only that, he was strong.
Pulse a drumbeat in her throat, she spread out her wings. “Since I have irrefutable proof that you can catch a helicopter and turn it upside down in mid-air, I suppose I’m willing to trust you with my scrawny body.”
Illium’s responding grin made the risk worth it.
Turning his back to the city, he fell back off the balcony with a “Yee-haw!”
“You’ve been watching Westerns again!” Elena called out as she glided more sedately off the edge.
The cold dug in its teeth and shook, but it was painfully beautiful to fly through the glittering color and lights of the city. Illium seemed to feel the same way, because he was in no rush to angle his wings toward the club district and Erotique, the club he frequented most often. At one point, Elena’d been sure he had something going with Dulce, one of the hostesses there, but Dulce wore a wedding ring these days and managed her own smaller club.
Illium continued to spend more time at Erotique than he probably should, especially with Aodhan gone. Elena didn’t think that environment—sophisticated and full of vampires jaded and often no longer capable of simple happiness—was the greatest for him, but she couldn’t exactly ground him. She’d done plenty of self-destructive things herself before she met Raphael. Mostly involving hunts with major hazard payouts.
Illium turned in a direction that would take them to the Catskills if they kept on going.
Sweeping closer to him, she said, “You just want to fly?”
Hair rippling in the quiet but cutting wind, he twisted down in a complicated fall before flying back up to her side. She laughed at his showing off. That was Illium. An angel of violent power who had a heart that might almost be mortal. And, these days, she could appreciate his tricks again. Not a single angel in the city had been ready to witness his acrobatics in the immediate aftermath of the day he’d crashed out of the sky.
Elena would never forget her screaming fear.
To his credit, Illium had flown with absolute discretion for months, letting the memory dull and fade.
When he returned to her side today, his face was flushed, the gold of his eyes rich. “Sky’s too beautiful to shut ourselves away in a club.”
“Just don’t forget I’m not as fast as you. Also, I’m currently lame.”
Illium lifted one cupped hand close to his shoulder, the other moving back and forth . . . and she realized he was playing a tiny violin in response to her morose tone.
“Crossbow, Bluebell.” Narrowed eyes. “Remember the crossbow.”
He dived, his wicked laughter floating up on the night air. Lips twitching, Elena continued to glide, letting the air currents sweep her along with cold but gentle hands. Illium, meanwhile, flew circles around her—but he never went far, always close enough to halt her descent should she tumble.
She landed a number of times to rest her wings, once in an isolated park, whispering and dark. A luminescent insect appeared then disappeared from sight before she could truly see it, an earthbound star. The ghostly owl sitting on a tree branch watched her with eyes even more lum
inous.
A sigh deep in her mind, an old, old presence restless in Sleep.
The hairs rose on her arms.
Then Illium shot them both up into the sky again, and together, they flew far beyond the diamond-bright skyline of the city and over the sleeping homes of ordinary people who lived in a world of vampires and angels, blood and immortality.
Another rest stop for Elena.
Another throb of pain from the cut on her forearm.
Another watchful owl, this one landing on Illium’s shoulder without his knowledge. Ashwini had told her not to be afraid of the owls, so Elena ignored the goose bumps and said, Hello, with her mind. A good night to fly.
A vein began to throb at her temple.
The answer came a long time later, after they were in the air again, the glow of the sinkhole visible from the distance.
It has been an eon since I flew.
Gritting her teeth against the devastating weight of age in that voice, Elena said, Do you plan to wake? The throbbing vein kept on pulsing.
A sense of stirring, two owls flying in languid patterns in front of her. I am tired, child of mortals. My Sleep is not yet done.
A bead of sweat running down her temple from the pain, Elena fought to hold on to the conversation, find out more about what was happening to her. Then why are you talking to me? Why are you partially awake?
I saw you once long ago, the old voice said. I felt the approach of the markers even in my Sleep, and I thought to see you again before the becoming.
Elena’s pulse spiked. The Legion had spoken about becoming, too. Who are you? Where did you see me?
But the owls were gone, the Sleeper once more at rest. Nausea churned in her stomach from the pain at her left temple, and she thought she’d have to land—but a long drink of Nisia’s concoction and the pain began to fuzz at the edges.
I love you, Nisia.
“It is a carnival,” Illium said to her with a grin.