by Nalini Singh
He was waiting with a huge towel when she stepped out, and as he wrapped it around her, the tenderness of the gesture threatened to break her. She looked up, met his eyes as he pushed damp strands of hair off her face. His words were quiet as he said, “The violence of our life shocks you.”
Under her palm, his heart beat strong and sure. It was such a human sound, so honest, so real. “It’s not the violence.” She’d killed her own mentor when he went mad, butchering young boys like they were so much meat. “It’s the inhumanity of it all.”
Raphael stroked his hand over her hair, his wings unfolding to surround her. “Michaela came after you for a very human motive—she’s jealous. You’re now the center of attention, and she cannot stand it.”
“But the cruelty in her eyes.” Elena shivered at the memory. “She enjoyed hurting me, enjoyed it in a way that reminded me of Uram.” The bloodborn angel had kicked at her broken ankle, sent her screaming. And then he’d smiled.
“They were mates for a reason.” Another stroke, his heart so warm and vibrant under the cheek she’d pressed to his chest. But he was also the man who’d punished a vampire with such icy practicality that New Yorkers avoided that once bloodstained patch of Times Square even now.
“What did you do to Michaela?” she asked, her skin going cold with the realization that humiliation alone would have never been enough for Raphael. He didn’t act capriciously, but when he did act, the world shivered.
A midnight breeze in her mind. I told you once, Elena. Never feel sorry for Michaela. She’ll use that to rip out your heart while it is still beating.
The heart he’d referred to gave a panicked beat of memory, the muscle bruised, painful. “How was she able to do that, reach inside me that way?”
“It seems Michaela has been hiding a new power.” His voice dropped. “It’s no coincidence that she gained it so soon after coming close to death with Uram.”
“He had her alone for long enough,” Elena said, remembering the raw fear in Michaela’s eyes when they’d rescued her. It had been the first time she’d seen an archangel afraid, and it had rocked her. “Do you think he changed her somehow?”
“His blood changed the woman, Holly Chang. She’s neither vampire nor mortal now. It remains to be seen what becomes of Michaela.”
Elena was ashamed to realize she’d forgotten about the only surviving victim of Uram’s attacks. “Holly? How is she?” The last glimpse Elena had had of her, she’d been naked, her skin caked with blood, her mind half broken.
“Alive.”
“Her mind?”
“Dmitri tells me she’ll never again be who she was, but she isn’t lost to madness.”
It was far more than Elena had expected, but she caught the things he didn’t say. “Dmitri’s still got people watching her, hasn’t he?”
“Uram’s poison altered her on a fundamental level—we must know what she’s become.”
And, Elena understood without asking, if Holly proved too much Uram’s creature, Dmitri would slit her throat without hesitation. Instinct warred with harsh reality—Uram’s evil could not be allowed to spread. “You never answered my question,” she said, hoping Holly Chang would spit in her attacker’s face, that she’d save herself. “What did you do to Michaela?”
“I left her in a public place with your dagger in her eye. The eye had already healed around it.”
“What does that mean?”
“Pain for Michaela when she pulls it back out, when she reheals.” There was no mercy in him. “It’s why Noel’s attackers drove shards of glass into his flesh.”
She knew he’d linked the vicious beating and his own actions on purpose. Another reminder of who he was, what he was capable of. Did he expect her to run? If he did, he had a lot to learn about his hunter. “You did something else.”
You think you know me so well, Guild Hunter.
At that moment, he sounded like the archangel she’d first met, the one who’d made her close her hand over a knife blade, his eyes devoid of mercy. “I know you well enough to figure out you’d never let an insult pass unanswered.” She’d seen that in his relentless search for Noel’s attackers—his resolute determination likely the reason the angel behind it had gone to ground.
“In your travels around the Refuge, did you ever see a rock that reaches toward the sky on the other side of the gorge?”
“I think so. It’s very thin, sharp . . .” Her mind made the connection with sickening ease. “You dropped her on that rock, didn’t you?”
She would’ve ripped out your heart. I simply returned the favor.
Goose bumps crawled over her skin at the ice in his tone. Crushing the fabric of his shirt under her hand, she took a deep breath. “What would you do to me if I ever did something to make you that angry?”
“The only thing you could do to make me that angry would be to lie with another man.” A quiet statement against her ear. “And you would not do that to me, Elena.”
Her heart clenched. Not at the darkness in his words. At the vulnerability. Again, she was shaken by the power she had over this magnificent being, this archangel. “No,” she agreed. “I would never betray you.”
A kiss pressed to her cheek. “Your hair is damp. Let me dry it.”
She stood motionless as he stepped back and picked up another towel, drying her hair with the careful gentleness of a man who knew his own strength far too well. “You closed your mind to me.”
“I might not be human any longer, but I’m still the woman who stood against you on the Tower roof that first day.” Now that terrifying male she’d met was her lover, and she knew if she gave in to his demands, the relationship between them would be irrevocably, unalterably damaged. “I can’t accept your right to invade my mind as you please.”
“It is said Hannah and Elijah share a mental bond,” he told her, putting the towel down and tugging her hand to lead her into the bedroom. “They are always with each other.”
“But I’m betting their link goes both ways.” She stroked the arched line of his right wing—rising gracefully from his back. His shirt draped easily over his muscular frame, the back designed to accommodate wings. “Doesn’t it?”
“In time,” Raphael said, his voice changing, becoming deeper, “we will have that.”
She stroked the ridge again, dropped a kiss to the center of his back. “Why do you sound so certain when so many things about angelic power seem to depend on the angel?”
You speak to me with the ease of a two-hundred-year-old already. You’ll gain the power.
“That’s good to know.” She walked around to face him. “But until I do, I won’t allow one-way traffic.”
His eyes were arctic, so very, very blue she knew the color would follow her into her dreams. “If your mind had been open,” he said, “I would’ve known of Michaela’s arrival the moment you did.”
Okay, he had her there. But—“If you let me have my privacy, then I won’t mind calling out to you when I need you.”
His hand on her cheek, a protective, possessive touch. “You didn’t call today.”
“I was taken by surprise.” She shook her head, took a deep breath. “No, I’ll be honest. I haven’t yet learned to rely on you. I’m used to dealing with things alone.”
“That’s a lie, Elena.” He brushed her cheekbone with his thumb. “You’d call Sara for help in a heartbeat.”
“Sara’s been my friend since I was eighteen. She’s more my sister than my friend.” Reaching up, she put her hand over his. “I don’t know you like I know Sara.”
“Then ask, Guild Hunter.” An order from the Archangel of New York. “Ask what you would know.”
13
Raphael was angry. But, Elena thought, this clean, bright anger, she could deal with. When he became as he had earlier with Michaela, then she was fearful for his very soul. “Tell me about your childhood,” she said. “Tell me what it’s like to grow up a child in an angelic world.”
“I wil
l, but first, you’ll get into bed, and I’ll bring you something to eat.”
Realizing that was one battle she didn’t particularly want to fight, she shucked off the towel as he went to the other room to get the food, and shimmied into one of Raphael’s shirts. The slots in the back flowed around her wings, but she could find nothing with which to secure them at the bottom. Deciding she couldn’t really be bothered searching for the illusive closures, she was sitting quietly in bed when he returned.
He halted for a second. “I’m surprised to find that you obeyed an order.”
“I’m not unreasonable . . . so long as the order is reasonable.”
A gleam of amusement lit the arctic blue as he placed the plate of bite-sized treats on the mattress between them, the glasses of water on the bedside table, and came to sit on the bed diagonally opposite her. They’d taken this position before, but that time, he’d been on her side of the bed.
Very conscious of the subtle distance, she picked up a tiny sandwich filled with what looked like thin slices of cucumber. “So?”
A long, long moment passed before he spoke. “Being a child among angels is a joy. Children are petted and generally spoiled. Even Michaela wouldn’t harm a child’s heart.”
Elena found that hard to believe. But then again, Michaela had once gotten out of bed to let what she’d believed was a trapped bird out of her room. The archangel wasn’t pure Wicked Witch of the West, for all that Elena would’ve liked to typecast her in that role.
“My childhood was ordinary, except that my father was Nadiel, my mother, Caliane.”
The breath rushed out of her. “You’re the son of two archangels?”
“Yes.” He turned, looking toward the mountains, but she knew it wasn’t the snow-capped peaks, the starlit sky, that he saw. “It’s not the gift it seems.”
Elena stayed silent, waiting.
“Nadiel was a contemporary of Lijuan’s. Older by only a thousand years.”
A thousand years. And Raphael spoke of it so very easily. How old did that make Lijuan? “He was one of your ancients.”
“Yes.” Raphael turned back to her. “I remember listening to him talk of sieges and battles long past, but mostly, I remember watching him die.”
“Raphael.”
“And now you feel sorrow for me.” Raphael shook his head. “It was at the dawn of my existence.”
“But he was your father.”
“Yes.”
Tracing her eyes over that harshly masculine, impossibly beautiful face, she moved the tray of food to the floor. He watched, silent, as she pushed aside the blankets and came to sit in front of him, her hand braced on his thigh. “Fathers and mothers,” she found herself saying, “leave their mark, no matter if we’ve known them a lifetime or only a day.”
He raised his hand to her wings, stroking one hand down the sweep of black and indigo. “Raphael.” It came out husky, a censure.
“I haven’t spoken of my parents in centuries.” Another lingering stroke along her wings. “My mother executed my father.”
The words cut through the haze of pleasure with ruthless precision. “Executed?” Images of broken, decaying bodies filled her mind as she was catapulted back into Uram’s depraved playground.
“No,” Raphael said, “he didn’t turn bloodborn.”
There was no scent of the wind, of the rain, in her mind. “How did you know?”
“The horror is painted across your face.” His eyes shifted to a color that had no name, it was so heavy with memory. “Uram revered what my father was.”
“Why?”
“Can you not guess, Elena?”
It wasn’t hard, not when she thought back to what she knew about Uram. “Your father thought angels should be worshipped as gods,” she said slowly. “That mortals and vampires should bow down before you.”
“Yes.”
There was a knock on the balcony doors before she could formulate a reply. Glancing over, she saw only darkness. “Is it Jason?”
“Yes,” Raphael said, rising off the bed, his expression grim. “And Naasir awaits below.”
She watched him step out onto the balcony, and though she knew Jason was there, she still couldn’t make out anything of the black-winged angel’s form.
Elena, get dressed.
Caught by the urgency of the command, she got out of bed and pulled on a pair of cotton panties, ignoring the bruises that had already begun to turn a nice putrid purple on her back and thighs. Over the panties, she donned a pair of black pants made of some kind of tough, leatherlike material, and—after shedding the shirt—a top that wrapped around her in a complicated pattern of straps, but ended up covering her chest while leaving her arms and most of her back bare. The fit was snug, leaving her free to move without worrying about extraneous material getting in her way.
Having felt the approaching cold front, she slipped on long, tight sleeves that fit securely just below her shoulders—they’d provide warmth while ensuring her arms remained unrestricted. As she grabbed her boots, she arrowed her thoughts to Raphael, aware he was no longer on the balcony. Where?
Dmitri will escort you.
The vampire was waiting for her in the hallway, and for once, there was no hint of sex about him—unless you liked your sex lethal. Wearing black leather pants, a black T-shirt that hugged his leanly muscled frame, and a long black coat that swept around his ankles, he was death honed to a gleaming edge. Straps crisscrossed his chest and she recognized them as a dual holster.
“Weapons?” he asked.
“Gun and knives.” The knives sat on either side of her thighs, but the gun she’d tucked into her boot after debating whether to put it in the curve of her lower back and deciding she wasn’t yet confident enough in terms of getting her wings out of the way fast enough.
“Let’s go.” Dmitri was already walking.
The sky was a brilliant, exotic black when they exited, the stars so clear it felt as if she could reach out and touch them. The first snow to hit the Refuge glittered underfoot, having fallen with stealthy silence in the interval since she’d gone inside.
“How bad are your injuries?” A cool glance, his eyes assessing her as nothing but another tool.
“I’m functional,” she said, knowing she could work through the muscle stiffness, the dull ache in her chest. “Nothing’s broken.”
“You may need to track.”
“That part of me never stopped working. As you know very well.”
“Wouldn’t want you to get out of practice.” Casual words, but his eyes were those of a predator on the hunt, his strides eating up the ground as they walked toward a section of the Refuge that seemed made up of midsized family dwellings.
Lights blazed in every window they passed, but the world was eerily hushed.
“Here.” Dmitri headed down a narrow pathway lit with lamps that appeared as if they’d been transported from mid-nineteenth-century England. Mind swirling with possibilities, she kept her eyes firmly on the path as it twisted this way and that, leading finally to a small home on the very edge of a cliff.
A perfect location.
The cliff would provide for easy takeoffs, and there was plenty of space in front when it came to landings. But, given the terrain, there appeared to be only one way out for those on foot—the path they’d just traversed. A stupidly easy trail. So why would Raphael need a scent-tracker?
Elena.
Following Raphael’s mental voice, she headed to the house . . . to the smell of iron turning to rust. Her body froze on the doorstep, her foot refusing to step over the threshold.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
“Come here, little hunter. Taste.”
It was a shock of memory, shoving her into the past with such brutal swiftness that she couldn’t fight the descent.
Belle, still alive when she walked in. But only for a fragment of a moment, her eyes filming over with death even as Elena reached out—
Waves of scent, the most decadent chocolate and champagne, promises of pleasure and pain. Arousal uncurled, and it was so wrong for this moment that it snapped the loop of nightmare. Taking a shallow breath, she stepped over the threshold, forcing herself to walk into another home stained with the kiss of malice.
Dmitri’s scent began to fade almost immediately and at rapid speed. He was leaving, she realized, aware she couldn’t track effectively with his intense scent bleeding into the air. But he’d remained long enough to give her that mental slap when she hesitated on the doorstep.
It put her in his debt.
Scowling at the idea, she concentrated on her surroundings. This was clearly the main living area, with a vaulted ceiling and an overall impression of space. Books filled the shelves that lined the walls, and there was a handwoven rug in Persian blue beneath her feet. On her left she saw a cup sitting atop a small, intricately carved table, while underneath it lay what appeared to be a stuffed toy of some kind. The sight of the raggedy thing made her heart chill. Angels, as she now knew, did have children.
Setting her shoulders against the horror she might find, she ignored the doors on either side and walked straight down the hallway to the room at the very back.
White walls splashed with red.
The sound of a woman’s sobs.
A tumbled glass, the scarlet of an apple on the counter.
Fragments of thought, images coming in like splinters of glass. Her throat locked, her spine went rigid, but she forced herself to stay, to see. The first thing she registered was Raphael kneeling before another angel, a tiny woman with tumbling curls of glossy blue black, her wings a dusty brown streaked with white. Raphael’s own wings spread on the floor, uncaring of the fluid that turned the gold to mottled umber.
Find him. A command laced with a violence of emotion.
Nodding, she took a deep breath . . . and was hit by an avalanche of scents.
Fresh apples.
Melting snow.
A whisper of oranges dipped in chocolate.
Unsurprised at what vampires smelled like to her hunter senses by now, she drew in that last scent, stripping it down to its very basics—until she could isolate that particular combination of notes even in the midst of a crowd of thousands.