by Nalini Singh
The young children playing in the New Jersey park looked up with open mouths as he flew over them. Their awe turned into screams of delight as he landed on the grassy verge that surrounded the playground equipment. He watched as mothers, and a few fathers, tried to contain their children’s excitement, afraid of giving offense to an archangel. Fear whispered in their eyes and he knew it would always be so. To rule, he could not appear weak.
Small hands touched his wing. He glanced down to see a tiny child with tightly curled black hair and skin that spoke of distant lands of sunshine and warmth. As he bent to lift the child in his arms, he heard a woman’s cry of panic. But the child looked at him with innocent eyes. “Angel,” he said.
“Yes.” Raphael felt the warm beat of the boy’s humanity and it gave him solace. “Where is your mother?”
The boy pointed to a terrified-looking young female. Walking across, Raphael handed over her child. “Your son has courage. He’ll grow up into a strong man.”
The woman’s panic disappeared under a wave of burgeoning pride.
As Raphael walked through the children, several others dared pat his wings. And when their tiny, soft hands came away shimmering with angel dust, they laughed in innocent joy. Sara raised an eyebrow when he reached her. “Showing off, Archangel?” Her hands squeezed the handles of the baby carriage in which a small girl-child slept, peaceful, unaware of monsters and blood.
“Uram never walked among humans,” he said instead of answering.
She began to push the carriage along a narrow path powdered with the barest layer of snow, the first caress of winter. No one interrupted them, though four intrepid children dared follow a few feet behind—until their parents called them back. In Sara’s carriage, her child raised fisted hands, fighting dream battles. It was fitting, he thought. After all, Zoe Elena bore the name of a warrior.
“Did Dmitri lie?” she asked after several minutes of silence. “Is Ellie dead?”
“No,” he said, “Elena lives.”
Sara’s hands tightened until her bones pushed white against skin the color of smooth, dark honey. “It doesn’t take this long for the transition from human to vampire. Once you do whatever it is you do, most vamps are up and functioning—well, walking around at least—within a couple of months at most.”
Raphael chose his words carefully. “Most vampires don’t start off with broken backs.”
Sara nodded jerkily. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m just—I miss her, damn it!”
Zoe woke at the sound of her mother’s distress, her forehead beginning to crinkle with angry lines.
“Sleep, little one,” Raphael said, “sleep.”
The child smiled, her lashes closing to create half-moon crescents against plump cheeks.
“What did you do?” Sara asked, shooting him a suspicious look.
Raphael shook his head. “Nothing. Children have always liked my voice.” Once, at the dawn of his existence, he’d guarded the nursery, guarded their most precious treasures. Angelic births were rare, so rare. It was logical, their healers and learned ones said. A race of immortals didn’t need a very high replacement rate. But being immortal didn’t shield one from the need to create a child.
Sara’s face softened. “I can see that. When you spoke to her . . . it was different from how you usually sound.”
He shrugged, sensing the world begin to sigh with the coming of night. “Sara, Elena wouldn’t want you worrying.”
“Then why the hell won’t she even give me a call?” Sara demanded. “We all know something’s wrong! Look, if she’s paralyzed”—she swallowed—“it doesn’t matter to us! Tell her to stop being a prideful bitch and give me a call.” A sob caught in her throat but she refused to shed it. Another warrior. Kin to his own.
“She cannot speak to you,” he told her. “She sleeps.”
Sara’s eyes were wild with grief when she looked at him. “She’s still in a coma?”
“In a sense.” He stopped, held her gaze. “Trust me to care for her.”
“You’re an archangel,” she said, as if that explained everything. “Don’t you dare keep Ellie alive on machines. She’d hate that.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Stepping back, he flared out his wings. “Trust me.”
The Guild Director shook her head. “Not until I see Elena with my own eyes.”
“I’m sorry, Sara, but no.”
“I’m her best friend, her sister in every sense of the word bar one.” She reached down to tuck Zoe’s blanket more firmly before turning her head. “What right do you have to keep her from me?”
“She’s mine, too.” He tensed his muscles in readiness for flight. “Take care of yourself and those you call your own, Director. Elena will not be happy if she wakes to find you a worn shadow of yourself.”
Then he flew, and the silence was so huge, it crushed him. Wake up, Elena.
Still, she slept.
40
Wake up, Elena.
Elena frowned, batting away the sound. Every time she tried to sleep, he told her to wake. Dratted man. Didn’t he know she needed to rest?
Elena, Sara has set her hunters on me.
As if he had anything to worry about from even the toughest vampire hunter.
She’s threatening to tell the media I’m doing unnatural things with your body.
A smile in her mind, in her soul. The archangel had a sense of humor. Who knew?
Ellie?
He never called her Ellie, she thought, yawning. The first thing she saw when she blinked open her eyes was blue. Endless, fathomless, brilliant blue. Raphael’s eyes. And that quickly, she remembered. The blood, the pain, the shattered bones. “Damn it, Raphael. If I have to drink blood, I’m going to suck your gorgeous body dry.” Her voice was husky, her anger absolute.
The archangel smiled and it held such fierce joy that she wanted to grab on to him and never let go. “You’re very welcome to suck any part of my body you wish.”
She wouldn’t laugh, wouldn’t surrender to the hunger she saw in those immortal eyes. “I told you I didn’t want to be a vampire.”
He fed her chips of ice, cooling her parched throat. “Are you not at least a little glad to be alive?”
She was a lot glad. Being with Raphael . . . oh, well, how bad could blood taste? But—“I’m not doing any vampire lackey stuff.”
“Fine.”
“I’m only drinking your blood.”
That made his smile widen. “Fine.”
“That means you’re stuck with me.” She jutted out her chin. “Try to throw me off for some bimbo and we’ll see who’s immortal.”
“Fine.”
“I expect—” That was when she felt the weird lumps under her back. “Whoever made this bed did a shit job. It’s all lumpy.”
Blue, blue eyes laughed at her. “Really?”
“Hey, it’s not fun—” Her words ended on a choked breath as she turned her head and saw what she was lying on. Wings. Such beautiful wings. A rich, evocative black that swept gracefully outward in subtle increments of indigo, deepest blue, and dawn until the primaries were a vivid, shimmering white gold. Midnight wings. Incredible wings. And she was squashing them. “Oh, my God! I’m crushing an angel. Let me up!”
Raphael helped her rise when she held out her hand. The tube stuck into her arm hindered her movement. “What?”
“To keep you alive.”
“How long?” she asked, shifting to look over her shoulder. His answer was lost in the rush of white noise that crashed across her brain. Because she hadn’t been squashing anyone . . . but herself. “I have wings.”
“A warrior’s wings.” He brushed his finger over one edge and the sensation rocketed through her entire body. “Wings like blades.”
“Oh,” she said when she could speak again, “I guess I really am dead then.” That made sense. She’d always wanted wings and now she had them. Ergo, she was dead and in heaven. She turned. “You look just like Raphael.” H
e smelled of the sea, a clean, fresh bite that made her body sing.
He kissed her.
And he tasted far too real, far too earthy, to be a figment of her imagination. When he drew back, she was stunned to see the emotion in his eyes. It was shocking enough to make her forget the magic of the wings at her back. “Raphael?”
That blue glittered fever bright, the skin pulled taut over his cheekbones. “I’m very angry at you, Elena.”
“So what else is new?” she quipped, but found herself stroking the arch of his wing.
“I am immortal and you tried to save my life by endangering your own?”
“Stupid, huh?” Leaning close, she rubbed her nose over his. Stress-touches, she thought stupidly, they were called stress-touches, the little things that lovers did to anchor each other, the things that were their secret language. Her and Raphael’s language had barely begun, but it held a promise so raw, so rich, her heart twisted inside her chest, almost afraid of the fury of it. “I couldn’t let you be hurt. You belong to me.” Such an arrogant thing to say to an archangel.
He closed his eyes, dropping his forehead against hers. “You’ll be the death of me, Elena.”
She smiled. “You need a little excitement in that boring old life of yours.”
Those eyes opened, blinding in their intensity. “Yes. So you will not die. I’ve made certain of it.”
She was half convinced she’d imagined the wings, but the beautiful sweep of midnight hadn’t disappeared when she checked out of the corner of her eye. “How the hell did you attach prosthetic wings to my back in the course of a . . .” She paused. “Okay, no soreness from the wounds so, what, it’s been a week? No, longer.” She frowned, trying to reorder splintered pieces of memory. “I had broken bones . . . my back?”
The archangel smiled again, his forehead still touching hers, his wings arching over to shadow them in their own private world. “The wings aren’t prosthetic and you’ve been asleep for a year.”
Elena swallowed. Blinked. Tried to breathe. “Angels Make vampires, not other angels.”
“There is one—how would you put it—loophole.”
“Loophole? More like a giant cavern if I have wings.” She held on to him, the only solid thing in a shifting universe.
“No, it is the tiniest of holes, barely a pinprick. You’re the first angel to have been Made in all the years of my existence.”
“Lucky me,” she whispered, brushing her fingers along his nape and drinking in his sigh of pleasure. This moment, it felt frozen out of time. Here, she was simply a woman, and he was simply a man. But like all moments, it had to pass. “What are the requirements?”
“Nothing we’ve ever been able to manipulate, though angels have tried for millennia.” Those incredible, unearthly eyes held her prisoner. “The one and only time an archangel can Make another angel is when our bodies produce a substance known as ambrosia.”
A snapshot of memory—the golden, melting heat of his kiss, the delicate sweetness, the lush sensuality, the taste that was an erotic sensation and whispered caress in one. “The mythical food of the gods?”
“Every myth holds a grain of truth.”
She couldn’t help it, she kissed him again. And the taste of him rushed over her in a tumultuous wave. He was the one who broke the kiss.
You were very badly injured, Elena.
The aches inside her were a testament to that truth. That didn’t mean she had to like it. “Tell me about ambrosia then.” A bad-tempered command.
“Ambrosia,” he said against her mouth, “is produced instinctively at a single point in an archangel’s life.”
Images of his shredded wings, the living burn of angelfire. “Near death?” She touched him, checking, exploring, convincing herself he was alive.
“We’ve all been near death more than once.” He shook his head. “No one has ever been able to pinpoint the trigger.”
“But?”
“But it is legend that ambrosia only rises when—”
She held her breath.
“—an archangel loves true.”
The world stopped. The air particles seemed to still above her, the molecules suspended as she stared at the magnificence of the man who held her in his arms. “Maybe I was just biologically compatible.” It came out a ragged whisper.
“Perhaps.” The possession of lips against her neck. “We have eternity to discover the truth. And in that eternity, you will be mine.”
She thrust her hands into his hair, feeling heat spread through her body in a rolling wave. But she couldn’t surrender. Not until they got one thing straight. “Fine—so long as you don’t think that gives you the right to rule my life.”
He came over her as she lay back down. “Why not?”
She blinked at the cool arrogance of that question, and realized that her existence had just become a whole lot more interesting. Forget about hunting an archangel, she was about to learn how to dance with one without losing herself in the process. Exhilaration spiked through her bloodstream. “This is going to be some ride, Archangel.”
Epilogue
Elena had had visions of flying in through Sara’s window and startling the heck out of her best friend, but that was before she realized that while she might be awake, actual movement was a whole other story. Which was why she was still in bed when a blindfolded Sara was shown into her room at the Refuge.
Raphael had moved her to the angelic stronghold soon after his own recovery, but had managed to keep her hidden. Only the Seven and trusted healing and medical personnel knew about her. However, he hadn’t even tried to argue when she asked to see Sara.
Her friend folded her arms and gritted her teeth as she was led across the carpet by Dmitri, who seemed to take perverse pleasure in wrapping his scent around Elena while she was too weak to defend herself. To everyone’s surprise, she’d come through the transformation with both her hunter abilities and weaknesses intact.
She and Raphael were continuing to “discuss” her status as Guild Hunter.
The lush caress of liquid satin across her skin, tempting and inviting. Rubbing her arms, Elena scowled at Dmitri and was about to speak when Sara blew out a breath. “I don’t know what your boss thinks he’s going to achieve by abducting me. We’re not going to end the strike.”
Strike? That explained Raphael’s cheery mood this morning. If the hunters were refusing to do their job, vampires had to be reneging on their Contracts left, right, and center. “Now my head’s really swollen.”
Sara froze, then scrabbled to pull off her blindfold as Dmitri slipped out of the room, closing the door behind himself—but not before encasing Elena in another decadent wave of scent. She was still getting her breath back when Sara’s blindfold dropped to the floor.
Her friend’s eyes went wide. Then she turned sheet white under the exotic beauty of her skin.
“Christ, Sara, don’t faint!” Elena yelled, reaching out as if to catch her.
Sara braced her weight against a chair. “I’m hallucinating. Or that fish they fed me on the plane was laced with LSD.”
“Sara, if you don’t come and hug me, I’ll shoot you.” That gun Sara had put under her pillow had saved not only her own life, but Raphael’s as well. “It’s me, you idiot!”
Sara swallowed, then rushed to the bed. Their arms wrapped around each other so tight that breathing became optional. Elena didn’t care. Blubbering, they started to talk at the same time, laughing and crying.
“Thought you were—”
“—Raphael said—”
“I said, no way in hell—”
“Damn straight—”
“—and Ransom was ready to come up—”
“—woke up and I had wings!”
They both stopped, stared at each other, giggled, then drew back.
“Holy crap, you have wings.” Sara took the cup of coffee on Elena’s bedside table and chugged it. “Is that what I think it is?”
Destiny’s Rose glittered
from its position on her bedside table. “Raphael’s being stubborn.”
Choking, Sara put down the empty coffee cup and thumped her fist on her chest a few times before saying, “Now, explain to me why you have wings.”
“I don’t know if I can. I’m learning as I go here—but what the heck is this about a strike?”
Sara grinned. “Got me here, didn’t it?” Her smirk was very satisfied. “They’ve been keeping you from us, Ellie, telling us you were alive but nothing more. We thought you’d been paralyzed—” Her breath hitched and suddenly her hurt was a living, breathing entity between them. “Couldn’t you have called me, Ellie? A year. Didn’t you trust me?”
Elena squeezed her friend’s hands. “I woke up exactly twenty-four hours ago. The first person I asked to see was you. But don’t tell Ransom, or he’ll get jealous.”
“You were in a coma for a year?” Sara’s mouth dropped open. “How come you’re mobile? Are you? Your muscles—”
“Yes,” she said before Sara’s fears could take root all over again. “I don’t know. They said something about healers and exercise but I’m sorta stuck on the wings.”
Sara shook her head, reached out to touch, then snapped back her hand. “Angels don’t like it when—”
Elena grabbed her friend’s hand, put it on the sleek feathers that were her own. “I’m still me.”
Sara’s hand whispered over her wing, and though the sensation was nothing like when Raphael touched her, it was a kind of intimacy—the kind between friends. “Ransom still with Nyree?”
Sara nodded, laughter in her eyes as she dropped her hand back down to the sheets. “I don’t think he can believe it himself. So, you have wings.”
“Yes.”
“Angels don’t Make other angels.”
“Then what am I? Chopped liver?” A disturbing tendril of thought wormed its way into her brain. She’d said she was still the same, but was she really? Could she share everything with Sara now when to do so might be to expose the secrets of an entire race? Later, she told herself, she’d think about that later. “So, do you like my wings? Aren’t they the most exquisite things you’ve ever seen?”