by Nalini Singh
Gaze focused outside, she used her free hand to push the gauzy curtains aside, one at a time. The balcony came into full view. No pissed-off vampire stood there. The fuckers couldn’t fly but she’d once seen three of them scale a high-rise building like a pack of four-legged spiders. That bunch had done it as a joke, but if they could do it, so could others.
She double-checked.
No vampire. No angel, either.
Her arm was starting to ache a little from holding the gun in position but she didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. Instead, she started scanning the edges of the balcony—she had a lot of plants out there, including creepers that hung down from the curved “roof” she’d had added—but she made damn sure nothing ever blocked her view of the balcony rim. If someone was clinging out there, she’d be able to see their fingertips.
More importantly, any intruder would’ve left streaks on the gel she sprayed out there every week. The stuff was made specially for hunters and cost an arm, a leg, and a kidney, but it was a highly effective way to detect intrusion. When inactive, it blended into any surface, but once touched by either vampire, human, or angel, it turned a vivid, unmissable red.
The gel was undisturbed and her senses didn’t detect vampire.
Relaxing only slightly, she shot a quick look downward. Her eyebrows rose. A plastic message tube lay next to her lush red begonias. She scowled. The begonia stalks were easily breakable. If whoever had dropped this had so much as bruised the plants she’d babied to blooming health despite the cool kiss of summer’s end, there’d be hell to pay. Finally convinced the area was secure, she lowered the gun and clicked open the door.
The breeze brought her the vibrant living pulse of the city but nothing else.
Even then, she was very, very careful as she edged out her body and rolled the tube toward her using her foot. She’d almost gotten it inside when she saw the feather drifting down to land gently on a curling fern. Kicking the tube inside, she lifted her gun and pointed it to the balcony roof—the guy who’d built it for her had told her she was crazy to block even part of the view, but he’d obviously never thought of danger coming from above.
Sure, she’d lost some visibility, but no one could ambush her from above without warning—though obviously she was getting too reliant on that shield if she’d missed her uninvited guest. That wouldn’t happen again.
“This ammo goes through stone, much less the fake stuff you’re sitting on,” she called out. “Get the hell off there before you break it!”
The flap of wings sounded immediately. A second later, a flushed angelic face peered at her upside down. Her eyes rounded. She hadn’t known angels could do that. “You the delivery boy? Straighten up—you’re giving me vertigo.”
The angel nodded then righted himself. He looked like one of those mythical cherubs the Renaissance artists had liked to paint, his face round and sweet, his hair all golden curls. “Sorry! I never saw a hunter before. I was curious.” His eyes went huge as his gaze drifted south. His wings had already been beating fast as he tried to keep position, but now they went hyper.
“Eyes up or I’ll shoot a hole in your wing.”
His head snapped up, cheeks red. He dipped slightly to the left before righting himself. “Sorry! Sorry! I just got out of the Refuge. I—” He gulped. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that! Please don’t tell Raphael.”
Since the angel looked like he was about to cry, Elena nodded. “Relax, kid. And next time you have a delivery, come to the front door.”
He winced. “Raphael said I had to do it this way.”
Elena sighed and waved at him. “Shoo. I’ll take care of Raphael.”
The young angel looked terrified. “No, it’s okay. Please don’t. He might . . . hurt you.” The last two words were less than whispers.
“No, he won’t.” Elena was going to make the archangel swear an oath. Though she had no idea how. “Now go—Dmitri gets jealous.”
The boy paled and took off so fast she barely saw him. Well now, that was interesting. As far as anyone knew, angels controlled vampires. But what if power was much more fluid? It was something she’d have to consider.
Later.
After she’d made Raphael promise not to kill, maim, or torture her.
Locking the doors after checking on and watering her precious begonias—the yellow one was blooming like full summer wasn’t a month past, which put a smile on her face—she pulled the curtains shut and slid the gun back under the pillow. Only then did she pick up the message tube and unscrew it.
The phone rang.
She considered ignoring it. Her curiosity was killing her. But a quick glance at the caller ID showed it was Sara. “Hey. What’s up, Ms. Director?”
“I was going to ask you the same question. I had a really weird report last night.”
Elena bit her lip. “From who?”
“Ransom.”
“Figures,” she muttered. The other hunter had the strangest hobby, considering his fascination with guns and weaponry. The fact that they lived in a major metropolitan city full of light pollution didn’t seem to faze him. “He was stargazing, wasn’t he?”
Sara blew out a breath. “With his super-duper high-powered gee-whiz telescope. And he told me you were, um, flying?” The last word was an incredulous question.
“I’ll have to thank Ransom for calling me a star.”
“I don’t believe this,” Sara whispered. “Oh, my—You were up there? Flying?”
“Yep.”
“With an angel?”
“Archangel.”
Pure silence for several long seconds. Then, “Holy shit.”
“Uh-huh.” She started unscrewing the lid again.
“What are you doing? I can hear you breathing.”
Elena grinned. “You’re such a nosy friend.”
“It’s in the best-friend rule book. Spill while I try to get over my shock.”
“I had a delivery by angel a few minutes ago.”
“What is it?”
“I’m just trying to . . .” Her voice trailed off as she succeeded in removing the lid. Fingers trembling, she stared at the contents of the tube, a tube that was lined several times over with cushioning material. She had a feeling baby-angel had been meant to make his drop with far more care. “Oh.”
“Ellie? You’re killing me.”
Heart in her throat, she extracted the exquisitely crafted sculpture with careful fingers. “He sent me a rose.”
A disappointed snort came through the telephone line. “I know you don’t date much, sweet pea, but you can get those for five bucks at the corner store.”
“It’s made of crystal.” Even as she spoke, light reflected off the rose in a distinctive fashion and her mouth fell open. “No way.”
“No way, what?”
Disbelieving, she opened a nearby drawer, found a high-tensile cut-through-anything blade she didn’t use much because the weighting was slightly off, and tried to gently scratch a tiny part of the stalk. The knife made no impact. But when she tried it in reverse, the rose scratched the blade’s “scratch-proof” surface. “Oh, shit.”
“Ellie, I swear I’m going to beat you to a pulp if you don’t tell me what’s going on. What is it? A mutant blood-sucking rose?”
Biting back a laugh, she stared at the indescribably lovely thing in her hand. “It’s not crystal.”
“Cubic zirconia?” Sara asked dryly. “Oh, wait, plastic.”
“Diamond.”
Absolute silence.
A cough.
“Could you please repeat that word?”
Elena held up the rose to catch the light. “Diamond. Flawless, one piece.”
“That’s impossible. Do you know how big it would have to be to carve out a rose? Is it microscopic?”
“Width of my palm.”
“Impossible, like I said. Diamonds aren’t carved. Really, it’s impossible.” Except Sara sounded a little breathless. “The man sent you a diamond ros
e?”
“He’s not a man,” Elena said, trying to stop the quintessentially female part of her from reacting in sheer delight at the wonder of the gift. “He’s an archangel. A very dangerous archangel.”
“Who’s either besotted with you or tips his employees really well.”
Elena laughed again. “Nah, he just wants to get in my pants.” She waited until Sara had stopped choking on the other end to continue. “I said no last night. I don’t think the archangel likes the word ‘no.’ ”
“Ellie, my darling, please tell me you’re messing with me.” Sara’s tone was a plea. “If the archangel wants you, he will have you. And—” She cut herself off.
“It’s okay, Sara,” Elena said softly. “If he takes me, he’ll break me.” Archangels weren’t human, weren’t close to human. When they were done with their pleasures, they cared nothing for their toys. “Which is why he’ll never have me.”
“How do you plan to ensure he doesn’t come after you later?”
“I’m going to make him swear an oath.”
Sara made a hmming sound. “Okay, I have the files up. Angels take oaths seriously. As in dead seriously. But you have to word it exactly right. And it’s give-and-take. He’ll want his pound of flesh. In your case, probably literally.”
Elena shivered, the idea no longer wholly unappealing. And it wasn’t the diamond. It was the eroticism of the night before. Dark, stroked with badness, but also the most potent sexual flirtation she’d ever experienced. Her body had sung for him and he’d barely touched her. What would happen if he drove himself inside of her, hot and hard . . . and again?
Her cheeks flushed, her thighs pressed together, and her heart was suddenly a drumbeat in her mouth. “I’ll return the rose.” It was extraordinary, a remarkable creation, but she couldn’t keep it.
Sara misunderstood. “That won’t be enough. You have to have something to bargain with.”
“Leave that up to me.” Elena tried to sound confident when the truth was, she had no idea of how she was going to bargain with an archangel.
He’ll want his pound of flesh.
Her mind hiccuped without warning, and Sara’s words mixed with the reawakened memory of Mirabelle’s violated body. Her soul chilled. What if Raphael’s price was something worse than death?
11
She put the message tube on Raphael’s desk. “I can’t accept this.”
He lifted a finger, keeping his back to her as he stood by the windows, phone to his ear. It seemed odd to see an archangel with such a modern device, but her reaction made no logical sense—they were masters of technology, no matter that they looked like something out of fairy tale and legend.
How much truth was in those legends, no one knew. For all that angels had been part of mankind’s history since the earliest cave paintings, they remained shrouded in mystery. Since man, as always, hated a vacuum, those of her kind had spun a thousand myths to explain the existence of angelkind. Some called them the scions of the gods, others saw them as simply a more advanced species. Only one thing was certain—they were the rulers of the world, and they knew it.
Now His Highness kept talking in a low murmur. Irritated, she started prowling around the room. The deep shelves on the side wall caught her attention. Made of a wood that was either a true ebony or had been treated to appear that way, they displayed treasure after treasure.
An ancient Japanese mask of an oni, a demon. But this one held an edge of mischief, as if it had been made for a children’s festival. The artwork was precise, the colors brilliant, though she felt the age of it like a heavy weight in her bones. On the shelf next to it sat a single feather.
It was an extraordinary color—a deep, pure blue. She’d heard rumors of a blue-winged angel in the city over the past couple of months, but surely those rumors couldn’t be true? “Natural or synthetic?” she whispered almost to herself.
“Oh, very much natural,” came Raphael’s smooth voice. “Illium was most distressed at being stripped of his prized feathers.”
She turned, lines marring her forehead. “Why did you damage someone so beautiful? Jealous?”
Something sparked in his eyes, hot and certainly lethal if let out. “You would have little interest in Illium. He likes his women submissive.”
“So? Why take his feathers?”
“He needed to be punished.” Raphael shrugged, walking to stand less than a foot from her. “It was being grounded that really hurt him—the feathers grew back within a year.”
“A blink of time.”
The danger level seemed to lessen at her sarcasm. “For an angel, yes.”
“So, were his new feathers like before?” She told herself to stop staring into those eyes, that no matter what he said, such contact had to make it easier for him to invade her mind. But she couldn’t look away, not even when those flames turned into what looked like tiny whirling blades. “Were they?” she repeated, her voice rough with sudden hunger.
“No,” he responded, reaching out to trace the shell of her ear. “They grew back even more beautiful. Blue edged with silver.”
Elena laughed at the scowl in his voice. “That’s the color scheme of my bedroom.”
Naked heat sizzled between them. Powerful. Vibrant. His eyes still locked with hers, Raphael trailed his finger down her jaw to her neck. “Are you sure you don’t want to invite me in?”
He was so utterly beautiful.
But male, very male.
Just one taste.
It was the darkness in her, the small core conceived on a blood-soaked kitchen floor the day she lost her childhood.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
“Come here, little hunter. Taste.”
“No.” She jerked away, palms damp with a thin sheen of fear. “I just came to return the rose and ask you if you had any more information about Uram’s whereabouts.”
Raphael lowered his hand, his face contemplative when she would’ve expected fury at being denied. “I’m good at vanquishing nightmares.”
She stiffened. “And creating them. You left that vampire out in Times Square for hours.” Stop, Elena, her mind ordered. For God’s sake, stop! You have to make him give you an oath of safety—but her mouth wouldn’t listen. “You tortured him!”
“Yes.” Not even a tinge of remorse.
She waited. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”
“Did you expect guilt?” His expression stilled, became cold as frost. “I’m not human, Elena. Those I rule are not human. Your laws don’t apply.”
She clenched her hands painfully hard. “The laws of common decency, of conscience?”
“Call it what you will but remember this”—he leaned in, speaking in an icy whisper that cut across her skin with whip-lash cruelty—“if I fall, if I fail, the vampires go completely free, and New York drowns in the blood of innocents.”
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
She reeled under the impact of those brutal images. One a memory. One a possible future. “Vampires aren’t all evil. Only a small percentage of them ever lose control, same as the human population.”
His hand cupped her cheek. “But they’re not human, are they?”
She remained silent.
His hand was hot, his voice glacial. “Answer me, Elena.” The arrogance he displayed was breathtaking, but what made it worse was that he had every right to it. The power of him . . . it was beyond staggering.
“No,” she admitted. “Bloodlust-ridden vampires kill with a viciousness that’s unique—and they never stop. The death toll has the potential to reach thousands.”
“So you see, iron control is necessary.” He came even closer, until the fronts of their bodies touched and his hand slid down to her waist. She could no longer see his face without tilting back her head. It seemed like too much effort at that moment. All she wanted was to melt. Melt and take him with her, so he could do erotic, luscious things to her aching b
ody.
“Enough of vampires,” he said, his lips on the shell of her ear.
“Yes,” she whispered, her hands stroking up his arms. “Yes.”
He kissed his way down past her ear, along her jaw, before answering. “Yes.”
Ecstasy laced her bloodstream, a biting pleasure she had no desire to resist. She wanted to peel off his clothing and find out if an archangel really was built like a man, to lick his skin, mark him with her nails, to ride him, possess him . . . be possessed by him. Nothing else mattered.
His lips touched hers and she moaned. The hands on her hips tightened as he lifted her without apparent effort and began to kiss her in earnest. Fire traveled through the raw eroticism of the openmouthed kiss to curl her toes, coming to pool in the vee between her thighs. “Hot,” she whispered when he let her breathe. “Too hot.”
Ice silvered the air and it was a cool mist that surrounded her, seeping into her pores in a stroke of possession. “Better?” He kissed her again before she could answer, his tongue inside her, his body hard and perfect and—
Nothing else mattered.
The words were wrong. The thoughts were wrong.
Sara mattered.
Beth mattered.
She mattered.
Raphael’s lips traveled down her neck and to the flesh exposed by the open buttons of her shirt. “Beautiful.”
I have not taken a human lover in eons. But you taste . . . intriguing.
She was a plaything.
To be toyed with and discarded.
Raphael could control her mind.
Giving a scream of pure rage, she kicked off him hard enough to send herself sprawling. The shock of pain as her tailbone connected with the floor snapped the final tendrils of a desire so visceral, so addictive, it made a fool out of her even now. “You bastard! Is rape what turns you on?”
For a single fleeting second, she thought she saw shock shadow his expression, but then that familiar arrogance looked back at her. “It was worth a try.” He shrugged. “You can’t say you didn’t enjoy it.”
She was so mad she didn’t stop to think, to consider why she’d come here. Giving another scream, she rushed him. To her surprise, she got in a few good licks before he grabbed her arms and forced her against a wall.