by Nalini Singh
Page 5
She had the strangest feeling he was seeking comfort. It was such an odd thought to have about a being who held within him a power so vast, she could scarcely comprehend it, but she didnt hesitate to put her arms around his, trusting him to hold her upright in the water. "Im sorry if I opened old wounds. "
Old wounds.
Yes, Raphael thought, breathing in the scent of his hunter, the wildness barely contained beneath her skin. Hed wondered what Elena would do to a race of immortals - this mortal whod made him a little bit human even as she became immortal. But hed never stopped to wonder what shed do to him.
"My father," he said, surprising himself with the words, "died a long time ago. "
Flames everywhere, his fathers scream of rage, his mothers tears. Salt on his lips. His own tears. Hed watched his mother kill his father and hed cried. Hed been a boy, a true child, even among angelkind.
"Im sorry. "
"It was an eternity ago. " And it was only in those rare moments when his shields fell that he remembered. Today, Elena had caught him unawares. His mind had flooded with the last images he had, not of his father but of his mother, her delicate feet walking lightly over grass stained with her own sons life-blood. Shed been so beautiful, so gifted that angels had fought and died for her. Even at the end, as she crooned over Raphaels fallen, broken body, her beauty had outshone the sun itself.
"Shh, my darling. Shh. "
"Raphael?"
Two feminine voices, one pulling him into the past, the other into the present.
If there had been a choice, hed made it a year ago in the skies above New York, as the city lay in ruins around him. Now, he pressed his lips to the curve of Elenas shoulder and soaked in her warmth, warmth that was distinctly mortal, melting the ice of memory.
"Youve been in this water long enough I think. "
"I dont ever want to move. "
"Ill fly you back. "
Her protest was weak as he lifted her out of the water, her body still so breakable.
"Dont move, hunter. " Drying her wings with care, he pulled on his pants, then watched her dress, his heart overflowing with a mix of possession, satisfaction, and a terror unlike any hed ever known before. If Elena fell from the sky, if she was thrown onto the unyielding earth, she wouldnt survive. She was too young, an immortal just born.
When she came into his embrace, her arms going around his neck, her lips pressing to his pectorals, he shuddered and, closing his own arms around her, rose into the orange red glow of a sky skillfully painted by the rays of the slowly setting sun. Instead of going high, above the cloud layer, he stayed low, mindful that she felt the cold. If hed known what theyd find, hed have made a far different choice, but as it was, Elena saw the nightmare first.
"Raphael! Stop!"
He halted at the urgency in her tone, hovering just over the border that delineated where his territory ended and Elijahs began. Even in the Refuge, there were lines - unmarked, unspoken, but existent all the same. One power could not stand too close to another. Not without destruction of a magnitude that would savage their kind. "What is it?"
"Look. "
Following the line of her arm, he saw a body colored in a hundred shades of copper by the sun. It lay in a small, silent square on his side of the border. His vision was acute, better than a raptors, yet he could see no movement, nothing that spoke of life. But he did see what had been done to the male. Fury ignited.
"Take me down, Raphael. " Distracted words, her eyes on the body that had curved in on itself as if in a desperate attempt to lessen the brutality of its injuries. "Even if there isnt a vampiric trail to follow, I know how to track. "
He stayed in place. "Youre still recovering. "
Her head snapped up, those silver eyes liquid mercury. "Dont you dare stop me from being what I am. Dont you dare. " There was something very old in those words, in that anger, as if it had aged within her.
Hed taken her mind twice since shed woken, both times to protect her from hurting herself. Today, those same primal drives urged him to disregard her orders - she mightve been hunter-born, but she wasnt yet anywhere near strong enough to handle this.
"I know what youre thinking," Elena said, taut pain in every word, "but if you take my mind, if you force me to go against my instincts, Ill never forgive you. "
"I wont watch you die again, Elena. " The Cadre had chosen her because she was the best, relentless in her pursuit of her prey. But then, shed been disposable. Now, she was integral to his existence.
"For eighteen years" - somber words, a haunted expression - "I tried to be what my father wanted. I tried not to be hunter-born. It killed me a little more each day. "
He knew what he was. He knew what he was capable of. He also knew that if he broke her, hed despise himself for all eternity. "Youll do exactly as I say. "
An immediate nod. "This is unfamiliar territory - Im not going to go off half-cocked. "
Descending in a gentle dive, he came to an easy landing a few feet from the body - in the shadow of a dual-level home that bore the soft patina of age. Elena held onto him for a couple of seconds, as if getting her muscles under control before turning to kneel beside the badly beaten vampire. He crouched beside her, reaching out to place his fingers on the vampires temple. A pulse wasnt always a good indicator of life when it came to the Made.
It took him several seconds to sense the dull echo of the vampires mind, a sign of how close the male was to true death. "He lives. "
Elena blew out a breath. "Dear God, someone really wanted to hurt him. " The vampire had been beaten so severely he was nothing much more than ground meat over bone. He mightve been handsome, probably had been from the sense of age pressing against Elenas skin, but there wasnt enough left of his face to tell.
One eye was swollen shut. The other . . . the eye socket had been shattered with such vicious thoroughness that if you didnt know he was meant to have an eye there, youd never guess where his cheek ended and his eye began. Oddly, his lips had been left untouched. Below the neck, his clothing was driven into his flesh, evidence of a sustained and repeated kicking. And his bones . . . they stuck out - bloody, broken branches through what had once been a pair of jeans.
It hurt to see him, to know what he mustve suffered. Vampires didnt lose consciousness easily - and, given the savagery of the attack, shed bet his attackers had kicked his head last. That way, he wouldve been conscious for almost the entirety of the ordeal. "Do you know who he is?"
"No. His brain is too bruised. " Raphael slid his arms under the vampire, a carefulness to his movements that made her heart squeeze. "I need to get him to a physician. "
"Ill wait and - " She froze as he shifted the body to get a better hold. "Raphael. "
The air was suddenly kissed by frost. "I see it. "
There was a square of jarringly unbruised skin on the vampires breastbone, as if it had been left specifically unharmed. The cold-blooded nature of the beating made her stomach curdle. These peoplewould have attacked his brain last. "What is that?" Because while the vampires skin wasnt bruised, it wasnt unmarked. A symbol had been burned into his flesh. An elongated rectangle, slightly flared at the bottom, sat atop an inverted curve, which in turn covered a small bowl. Holding it all up was a long, thin line.
"Its asekhem , a symbol of power from a time when archangels ruled as pharaohs and were called the scions of the gods. "
Elena felt her face flush hot and cold. "Someone wants to take Urams place. "
Raphael didnt tell her not to jump to conclusions. "Do your track. Illium will watch over you until I return. "
She looked up as Raphael rose but couldnt isolate Illiums blue wings even against the light show of the approaching sunset. Thankfully, her legs waited to tremble until after Raphael had left. Her archangel had finally seemed to hear her today - she had a feeling hed think long and hard before ever again forcing her to act against her will.
But there was not
hing to stop him from picking her up bodily and dumping her in bed if he realized the extent of her exhaustion. Her wings felt like hundred-pound weights on her back, her calf muscles so much jelly. Blowing out a breath, she dug up a fraction more stamina from somewhere and started circling out from the spot where theyd found the body, glad that this area, while not abandoned, appeared shut up.
As a result, there werent a lot of scents to muddy the trail. The tree in the corner, some kind of a cedar, its branches bowed with the weight of its foliage, didnt trump the smell of pine trees in autumn, their needles littering the earth. And that scent belonged to the vampire whod been beaten into an unrecognizable pulp. No matter how hard she tried, she couldnt find a single other new scent.
There was also no evidence of activity on the ground, the paving stones clean, but for a few stray leaves and some clearly delineated spots of blood near the dark smudge where theyd discovered the body. Examining the scene with extreme care so as not to compromise any trace evidence, she confirmed the splatter was contained within a radius of about one foot.
"Dumped from a low height," she said to Raphael when he landed beside her. "And since this place is rife with wings . . . " Her body swayed.
Raphael had her in the iron of his embrace before she could even register the lapse.
"Then you can do nothing. Well speak to the vampire when he wakes. "
"The site? Needs to be processed, just in case. "
"Dmitris on the way with a team. "
It went against the grain to give up without a fight, but her body was shutting down on her, her wings threatening to drag their way through the blood. "I want to know what the victim says. " The words came out slurred, her last thought that anyone cold-blooded enough to brand a living being as a message was probably not going to be an improvement on Uram.
Sire.
Easing quietly from bed less than an hour after hed placed Elena on the sheets, her wings spread out in a caress of midnight and dawn as she lay on her stomach, Raphael pulled on a pair of pants and met Dmitri in the hallway outside. The vampires face was expressionless, but Raphael had known him for hundreds of years. "What did you discover?"
"Illium recognized him. "
"How?"
"Apparently the male was wearing a ring he won from Illium in a game of poker. "
Raphael had seen the vampires fingers. Most had been shattered so badly theyd been nothing more than crushed pebbles in a sack of skin. And yet, that skin hadnt been broken. That level of brutality took both time and an emotionless kind of focus. "Who?"
"His name is Noel. Hes one of ours. "
Raphael felt his anger turn granite-hard. Hed allow no one to butcher his people. Before he could speak, Dmitri said, "Why didnt you tell me hed been branded?" The words fell like mines between them, a scab hiding still raw wounds.
Chapter 5
"The burn will fade. " Raphael held the vampires gaze. "It will fade. "
Dmitri said nothing for several moments before drawing in a long breath. "The healers found something stuffed in Noels chest cavity. The ones who took him broke him open, then allowed him to heal enough to conceal it. "