by Nalini Singh
Sara thought rapidly. “Kenji’s in the Cellars. So is Rose. Just downtime, so they can come out.”
“Call them up. I’ll get the wire kit.”
An hour later, she found herself crouching beside Ransom in the gardens around the heavily guarded Tower. Incoming and outgoing traffic in the area surrounding it was now so restricted that no one had managed to get this close since the night the city went dark. Sara saw a possible entry point, signaled the information to Ransom, and moved. They were inside the unlit expanse of the ground floor a few seconds later.
“I expected you days ago,” a smooth voice said from somewhere on the other side of the room. Soft light filled the lobby, as if a switch had been thrown.
Sara recognized that voice at once. “Dmitri.”
A small nod. “At your service.” His gaze shifted. “Ransom, I presume.”
“Cut the crap.” Ransom lifted a crossbow loaded with some very illegal control chip-embedded bolts, Sara’s current weapon of choice.
“I wouldn’t,” Dmitri said evenly. “You’d be overwhelmed by my men within seconds, and I’d be in a much worse mood.”
Putting her hand on Ransom’s arm, Sara met Dmitri’s eyes. “We’ve got no fight with you—we just want to know about Ellie.”
The vampire straightened. “Follow me. Leave the cross-bows on the floor. You’re safe here.”
Maybe it was stupid but they decided to trust him, both of them. The vampire got into an elevator. As they went to enter, Sara realized Ellie would probably haunt her if she put herself in harm’s way and deprived Zoe of a mother, Deacon of a wife. But Ellie was family, too. Jaw set, she got into the elevator.
The wire—actually a high-tech transmitter nestled inside her ear, with backups in her wristwatch and collar—vibrated just a fraction. Enough to tell her that Deacon had her, that he was with her. The tightness in her stomach loosened. You can be mad with us later, Ellie. After we know you’re okay. We love you too much not to do this.
Dmitri said nothing as they shot skyward, exiting the elevator on a floor that gleamed black in every direction. Still silent, their guide led them into a small room and closed the door, enclosing them in darkness but for the glittering spread of the city outside. Even at half strength, Manhattan shone diamond bright. “What I tell you tonight can’t leave this room. Do you understand?”
Ransom bristled but let Sara answer. “All we care about is what you’ve done with Ellie.” Sara couldn’t say “body.” Until she saw Ellie dead with her own eyes, she couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe.
“You’re her family.” Dmitri’s eyes met hers. “Chosen, not born.”
“Yes.” Sara saw a depth of understanding in the vampire’s gaze that she hadn’t expected. The old ones—and Dmitri was very old—seemed to forget they’d once been human, with human dreams and fears. “We need to see her.” Even then, part of her, a stubborn, irrational part, hoped for a miracle.
“You can’t,” Dmitri said, then raised a hand when Ransom snapped out a curse. “But this I can tell you—she lives. Perhaps not as she would’ve wished, but she lives.”
Sara was so relieved, she almost didn’t hear the last sentence. Ransom was the first to understand. “Aw, Jesus. Ellie’s going to be so pissed if you’ve turned her into a vamp.”
Dmitri raised an eyebrow. “You won’t castigate us for taking the choice from her?”
Sara answered for both of them. “We’re selfish. We want her to live.” Her throat was so thick with emotion, she had to concentrate to form the next word. “When . . . ?”
“The recovery will be slow. Her back was broken, most of her bones shattered,” the vampire said with a blunt honesty that was far easier to hear than vague platitudes. “There are those who would use that vulnerability to harm her. Until she can defend herself, we protect her.”
“Even from us?” Ransom asked, pain held so fiercely to his heart that Sara hurt for him. “That what Ellie wants?”
“She’s in a coma,” Dmitri told them. “I’m making the decision and I’d rather be too cautious than chance her life.”
Sara sucked in a breath but nodded. “I’d do the same. If I pack a bag of her things, will you have it taken to her? For when she wakes.” Because Ellie would wake. She was too damn stubborn not to.
Dmitri inclined his head in acquiescence. “Elena is lucky to have such a family.”
After making sure the hunters—all of them—had left Tower territory, Dmitri returned to the room where they’d held the meeting and walked out onto the high balcony. There was a rustle of feathers and then Jason emerged from the shadows that had cloaked him till then. “You lied.”
“A simple misdirection,” Dmitri responded, staring out at the lights of a city still shaken by the death of an archangel. “They’re not ready for the truth.”
“What will you tell them when she doesn’t appear within the next few months?”
“Nothing.” His hands clenched on the railing. “Raphael will have healed by then.”
A gust of wind swept across the balcony, bringing with it the familiar scents of a city that had been nothing much more than a few ramshackle buildings when Raphael first claimed it as his territory.
“I’ve never seen an archangel that badly injured,” Jason said. “The angelfire ate through his bones far faster than it should have.”
Dmitri thought back to the gunshot wound Raphael had sustained from Elena’s gun. “He’s changed.” But whether that change would prove fatal, they’d have to wait and see.
“Some of the Cadre are starting to turn covetous eyes toward Raphael’s domain.”
Dmitri set his jaw. “We will hold it for him. Until it is certain.”
39
Three months later, when Raphael walked in to take his place at a meeting of the Cadre, the gasps of surprise were genuine. Even immortals, it seemed, had written him off. He slid into his chair and placed his hands loosely on the arms. “I hear you’re debating how to divide my territory.”
Neha was the first to recover. “No, of course not. We were speaking of Uram’s successor.”
He smiled, let the lie pass. “Of course.”
“You did well in halting him,” Elijah said.
Charisemnon nodded. “Pity it came to such a public end. For a while, the mortals speculated that he was the cause of the disappearances in your region—how did you turn the tide?”
“I have good men around me.” It had apparently been Venom’s idea to frame Robert “Bobby” Syles. He’d made the perfect fall guy—and given his sickening predilection toward children, no one had felt any guilt in blackening his name. A few judicial hints, some rumors of Bobby’s depraved leanings, and proof of his having entered the United States was all it had taken.
The world, humans, vampires, and angels alike, didn’t want to believe that an archangel had turned murderous. A battle between two archangels was something they could accept—most thought it had been a fight for control of the area, were happy with that understanding. To see Uram as a killer would’ve been too much, a fundamental shift in the fabric of the universe as they understood it.
Charisemnon humphed while Titus nodded. It was Favashi who spoke next. “We are glad to see you, Raphael.”
He thought she might truly mean it. So he gave a small nod. She smiled, her face beautiful in a way that had made kingdoms fall. But he felt nothing, his heart given to a mortal. “So, you are discussing successors?”
“More accurately,” Astaad pointed out, “the lack of them. There is one, as we all know, who may soon become an archangel. But he isn’t yet.”
“And Uram’s territory needs guidance now.” Michaela’s gaze met Raphael’s across the circle, a malicious delight in it that he understood too well. But all she said was, “I can undertake some of the work, but I have enough to handle in my own lands.”
“Very magnanimous of you, Michaela,” Neha murmured with an elegant trace of sarcasm. “Does your landlust know no end?”
/> Michaela’s eyes flashed. “And I suppose you have no interest in it?”
So it began, the rounds of propositions and rebuttals, alliances and oppositions. Only Raphael and Lijuan, sitting next to him, took no part. Instead, Lijuan touched his arm with pale, delicate fingers. “Did you and Uram speak much before he died?”
“No. He was beyond speech.”
“A pity.” She moved her hand back to the arm of her own chair. “I would’ve liked to learn more about the subtle effects of long-term exposure to the toxin.”
Raphael raised an eyebrow. “Surely you’re not considering it?”
A soft laugh hidden in the sounds of the argument going on around them. “No, I value my sanity.”
Raphael wondered if Lijuan could truly be called sane anymore. Jason had managed to gain more details of the other archangel’s court—half her “courtiers” were the reborn, creatures who followed her commands with unswerving obedience. “I’m happy to hear that. Ending the life of an angel as powerful as Uram was difficult enough. I dare not think about what it would be to have you turn bloodborn.”
Lijuan’s eyes sparked with eerily girlish mischief. “Oh, such flattery will go to my head.” She leaned back in her seat. “I was curious only because Uram seemed to have better control over his impulses than the young ones who turn. Is it not possible that he was right, that if we could traverse the problematic period, we might come out of it with enormous power on the other side?”
“The problematic period, as you put it,” he said, watching the byplay between Neha and Titus, sweet poison against granite will, “turns us into killers without compare. Our most recent investigations indicate that, counting his servants, Uram killed close to two hundred people in less than ten days.”
“But he was thinking.”
“Only of more death.” Raphael kept his tone temperate through sheer force of will. That Lijuan was considering this even on a peripheral level was a very bad sign. “Had we given him a year, he would’ve torn apart thousands, glutting himself each time. That is what makes an angel bloodborn, the inability to stop, to fight the lust for blood and power.”
“I killed the last one, did you know? The one the humans call the father of all vampires.” She laughed at the idea. “He was highly intelligent, evaded me for years, even ruled a sector.”
“He bled the sector dry,” Raphael reminded her. “He had no control over his instinct to kill—a puppet of his own desire. Is that what you would call power?”
Lijuan gave him an inscrutable look, a look filled with things such as he’d never seen and never wished to see. “You are a clever one, Raphael. Have no fear, I will not turn. It holds little interest for me now. As you well know.”
He didn’t apologize. “Only stupidity excuses ignorance.”
That made Lijuan giggle again. “Now you are being cruel to the others.”
He wondered over that. If the others truly didn’t know about Lijuan’s evolution, then they were going to get an extremely unpleasant surprise one of these days. “I believe they’ve reached a consensus.”
The others had split Uram’s territory to their satisfaction, rearranging the boundaries of their own lands to satisfy their landlust. Raphael let them do so. His territory was already one of the largest, and even more important, one of the most productive and profitable. He had no desire to haggle over land Uram had beaten into submission. Weakness had never interested Raphael.
No, he was drawn to warriors.
Michaela smiled at him again as the meeting ended, lingering behind with Elijah. “It’s a pity, is it not, Raphael,” she said after the room cleared of all but the three of them, “that your hunter died?”
He didn’t say a word, just watched her.
Her smile widened. “She’d outlived her usefulness in any case.” She flicked her hand, brushing aside Elena’s life as one would a fly. “I was rather disappointed I didn’t get to hunt her, but it’s as well—I’ll be very busy now that I have part of Uram’s land to govern along with my own.”
Elijah looked at Raphael. “You liked the hunter?”
It was Michaela who answered. “Oh, he was quite possessive over the mortal. He warned me off from hurting her.” A deeply vicious smile. “But now she is dead and you must court me. Perhaps I will accept you.”
Raphael raised an eyebrow. “You’re not the only female angel.”
“But I am the most beautiful.” Giving him another smile edged with broken glass, she swept out.
Elijah stared after her. “I’m very glad I never dipped in that particular pond.”
“You surprise me,” Raphael said. “I thought I was the only one.”
“I had been with Hannah for over a century by the time Michaela found me.” He shrugged. “I’m not her type in any case, as the mortals say.”
“Everyone is her type. And no one.” The only person Michaela cared about was herself. “Do you think she ever attempted to seduce Lijuan?”
Elijah choked on his laugh. “Careful, old friend. You will give me a heart attack.”
Raphael didn’t return the laugh. “What is it you want to say, Eli?”
The other archangel’s laughter faded. “Lijuan. She raises the dead.”
“We can’t yet say if the power is good or evil.” Though Raphael knew what he believed. “She’s the oldest of us all—we have no template to judge her evolution.”
“True. But, Raphael”—Elijah paused, sighed—“you’re old enough to know that the powers we achieve with age are tied intrinsically to who we are. That Lijuan should manifest an ability associated with death, it tells us a great deal about her.”
“What about you?” Raphael asked, keeping secret his own newfound gift. “What has age brought you?”
Elijah’s smile was inscrutable. “But those are the secrets we keep.” He rose as Raphael did. “The hunter, you truly cared for her?”
“Yes.”
The other archangel put his hand on Raphael’s shoulder. “Then, I’m sorry.” His sympathy seemed honest. “Mortals . . . they burn so bright, but their light goes out too quickly.”
“Yes.”
Illium was waiting for him at the Tower. “Sire.” As with Dmitri and Venom, it was a title of respect, not truth.
Elena would’ve questioned him about that had she been here. And she would’ve worried about her “Bluebell.” “How is your healing progressing?”
Flaring out the wing that had borne the worst damage, Illium winced. “It’s almost complete.” He looked at Raphael’s healed body, a body that had been eaten through with an incredible amount of angelfire. “The difference between angel and archangel.”
“Is age and experience.” Raphael went closer, looked at the wing . . . and laughed for the first time since the night he’d fallen with Elena. “Now I understand your expression.”
Illium snorted. “I look like a damned duck.” His words weren’t far off the mark. The feathers that had grown over the injured section were soft, white, and delicately . . . fluffy. “I hope to hell these baby feathers fall off and get replaced by real ones. They will, won’t they?” He sounded worried.
“Do they impede flight?” Having spoken to the healers and medics himself, he knew Illium had been permitted short bursts of flight.
“No. But they’re not as efficient.” He stared down, swallowed. “Please tell me this is only a stage of healing. I’ve never had this happen before.”
Raphael wondered what Elena would’ve done in this situation. Probably taken every opportunity to tease. His heart clenched. “They’ll shed within the month,” he said. “You lost so much of your wing when you hit the pier, including several layers of skin and muscle, that you’re effectively regrowing it from the inside out, instead of just replacing your feathers.”
Relief whispered through Illium’s eyes as he dropped his wing. “Without anshara I’d still be lying in bed, unable even to move.”
Raphael’s mind drifted back to those months when his ow
n body had lain broken. The field had been isolated, his mental abilities young. Only the birds and Caliane had known he was there. “Yes.”
“Sire . . . you’ve yet to punish me for losing Elena that day.” Illium’s features were drawn, his normally ebullient personality buried beneath the formal words. “I deserve to be censured. I am one of the Seven, one of your most experienced men, and I let her be taken.”
Raphael shook his head. “It was no fault of yours.” He was the one who’d made the fatal mistake. “I should’ve known Uram could hasten his recovery through blood.”
“Elena,” Illium began, then stopped. “No, questions are useless here. Just know that your Seven stand behind you.”
Raphael watched the other angel leave via the balcony, then, after a moment’s pause, did the same himself. The wind lifted him up, his repaired body still aching but otherwise fine. He’d be back to total strength within a few weeks. Until then, his Seven would ensure his territory remained safe from covetous eyes.
Lijuan and Michaela, likely Charisemnon and Astaad, too, would never understand that kind of loyalty. Perhaps only Elijah and, in this matter, Titus, had any hope of comprehending what the Seven had given him. Dmitri was the oldest, Venom the youngest, but together, the three vampires and four angels had been with him for a remarkable number of centuries, their allegiance unwavering—but that didn’t mean they were ciphers. No, his Seven had all fought with him at one time or another, arguing against his decisions even to the point of putting their lives on the line.
Charisemnon had cautioned him about Dmitri more than once. “That vampire has ideas above his station,” the archangel had said. “If you’re not careful, he’ll take your Tower for his own.”
And yet Dmitri had held off all challengers for the three months that Raphael lay in a healing coma. The first month, he’d gone so deep that he’d descended below anshara. Had Dmitri—or any of the six others—wanted to end his immortal life, they could’ve struck a deal with another archangel and betrayed his place of rest. Instead, they had protected him; more than that, they had protected his heart.