by Nalini Singh
“No arguments here.” Tugging at the belt of her robe, she said, “I should put on proper clothes.”
“This’ll do.” Raphael, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, ran his knuckles down the side of her face. “Keir is one of the few men whom I will allow to see my consort naked of her armor.”
Because, Elena thought, the healer had seen every part of her broken body—and he’d helped bring her back.
“As for your Bluebell, his heart is already yours.”
Her fingers clenched on the belt. “Raphael, he’s not truly . . . not that way, is he?” She couldn’t bear to hurt Illium.
“I think,” Raphael said, as the night wind brought with it the whispering promise of snow, “Illium needs to heal and you are safe.”
Elena rubbed her face. “I hope that’s all it is.” Regardless, she did change into jeans and a simple green-and-white-checked shirt, Raphael doing up the buttons on the wing slits for her before they walked down to open the library doors and step out onto the lawn.
The two angels made a quiet landing a minute later.
Keir’s face was solemn, his face showing a strain Elena had never before seen on him, certainly not when she’d left the infirmary earlier that night. Gut twisting, she took his arm and led him inside to find the fire lit and the table by the windows set with coffee and tea, as well as a tray of fruit, nuts, and a rich, creamy cheese. Crackers lay neatly on a different platter, alongside a thin flatbread flavored with herbs.
Thank God for Montgomery.
Nudging Keir into an armchair in front of the crackling flames, she poured the healer the tea she knew he liked, as Illium fixed him a plate. “You have to eat,” she said, when he would’ve waved off the food.
Expression drained, eyes devoid of their natural warmth, he didn’t respond.
Elena wasn’t ready to admit defeat. Taking the plate from Illium after setting the tea on the little side table beside the healer, she nodded at the blue-winged angel to go speak to Raphael, while she took a seat in the armchair opposite Keir. Putting a piece of cheese on a cracker, she held it out. “Please, Keir.”
Gaze flicking to her, he took the morsel. “So, the patient looks after the healer.”
“The patient knows that if she gets herself damaged again, she’s going to need you, so it’s self-serving.”
A glimmer of light in his expression. “And if I don’t eat?”
“This healer once told me I had the unbreakable will of a mule.” It had been a compliment, Keir’s delight at her progress unhidden.
His beautiful lips curved slightly at last and he ate the cracker, took the next one. She managed to get that and some flatbread into him, as well as a peach she sliced into pieces. “You did this for me once, remember? When I was bored and grumpy after you told me I had to stay in bed.” It had been in the aftermath of Lijuan’s ball. “Stupid balls. They should be banned.”
Soft laughter, the peach eaten quarter by quarter while Illium and Raphael stood at Raphael’s desk, talking quietly about the ongoing holes in their defensive line. The firelight glinted off the white-gold of Raphael’s feathers, and since he was right next to Illium, the filaments of silver in Bluebell’s wings also catching the light, the difference in effect was crystalline.
“White fire.” Keir’s intrigued expression told her he was back. “Extraordinary.”
It was, Elena thought in wonder, a resonance to the shifting fire that gave Raphael’s wings a sense of movement though he stood in place.
Settling back in his chair, Keir said, “I haven’t seen such an effect in the others who are Cadre.”
Elena forced herself to look away from Raphael, her antennae on alert. “Do you know anything of what’s happening with Michaela’s abilities?”
Keir shook his head. “She doesn’t trust me, though she knows I would never break my vows as healer. It is also true that I have always favored Raphael.” Putting down his tea, he looked at her with his old, wise eyes. “As I favor the consort who has brought him back from the cruel edge of immortality.”
Elena set aside the plate on which she’d cut the peach, and leaned forward after a quick glance to ensure Raphael remained absorbed in his conversation with Illium. “Lijuan warned Raphael I’d make him a little bit mortal.”
“You have.” Quiet equanimity. “And you worry you’ve weakened him. You have.”
Elena flinched.
“Elena.” Shaking his head, Keir waited until she met his gaze again. “Even an archangel needs a weakness—absolute power is a corruption. Of that, Lijuan is the perfect example.”
A rustle of wings, Illium and Raphael walking across to join them before she could point out that while the latter might be true, Raphael needed to be at full strength to beat Lijuan and her ilk.
Raphael wasted no time or words. “What did you discover, Keir?”
“The disease that killed the vampire, it is akin to the pox.”
Elena sucked in a breath as Illium came to lean against her armchair, his eyes liquid gold in the firelight and his wing warm against her own. “The disease that has so often killed tens of thousands of mortals?”
“Yes.” Keir held up a hand when they would’ve spoken again. “It isn’t identical—it has a more virulent effect on the internal organs, turning them to liquid, yet doesn’t appear to be as infectious. It requires more than a speck or two of blood to transfer. A few droplets, perhaps even a small feed, though I cannot be certain on that last point.”
Raphael shook his head. “You wouldn’t fly to us when you are so clearly exhausted if you had good news.”
“You’ve known me too long.” The healer took a deep breath. “My tests show the disease has an incubation period of six hours. After that, it appears to progress at vicious speed—the victim would’ve been too debilitated to go for help by the time he understood he was ill. Terrible as that was for him, it’s good in the wider scheme of things.”
“So there’s a very high chance he wouldn’t have had an opportunity to infect others.”
Keir nodded at Illium’s words. “The bad news is the pox shows every indication of being designed to attack vampires.” Turning to Raphael, he said, “Your instincts led you true—I detect an intelligence behind the disease. It is no natural thing.”
“First my angels fall from the sky, and now this.” Raphael’s expression was brutal. “There is no longer any question the city is under attack.”
Illium said something in a language Elena didn’t understand, but his last word was cuttingly identifiable and the same one on the tip of Elena’s tongue. “Cowards.”
“Agreed,” Raphael said, his voice ice. “We’ve focused on Lijuan because she’s a known enemy, but we must not wear blinders.”
They all nodded.
“Such cowardice eliminates Titus,” Raphael continued. “He’s a warrior in the oldest sense and unless there are indications he’s been touched by madness”—a glance at Keir, the healer shaking his head—“then he wouldn’t stoop to stratagems that skate so close to the line of what is permitted in a war.”
“Astaad,” Keir said softly, “despite his occasionally secretive ways, believes absolutely in honor, and I think such actions would stain it. He continues to feel a deep shame over his violent actions toward his concubine during your mother’s waking, though we all know he wasn’t in his right mind at the time.”
“Neha’s too busy holding off her twin to bother about us.” Worried what the Archangel of India would do in her continued grief about the execution of her daughter, Elena had read every one of Jason’s reports as they came in. “Is Elijah two-faced enough to offer friendship with one hand and stab us in the back with the other?”
“Eli has a noble heart and the inclination not to cause you or yours harm,” Keir said to Raphael, then glanced at Elena. Obviously noting her surprise, the healer smiled. “He is the rarest of archangels, one who didn’t show signs of such violent power as a youth or as a young male.”
From the way Raphael was staring at the healer, he didn’t know this particular story, either. “You will not stop now, Keir.”
Laughing, the healer said, “Eli was a seasoned and loyal general in another archangel’s army on the day of a great battle against—” Cutting himself off, Keir shook his head. “I will tell you that tale another time. It is far too long and interesting to shorten so precipitously.”
Fascinated, Elena waited for him to continue.
“Eli,” Keir said into the silence, “had just cut down the last of the enemy and raised his sword to declare victory when it hit: a sudden and total ascension that sent him screaming into the skies. It was extraordinary, as all ascensions are extraordinary, but what is most important is that when he returned from the sky to the earth, he was no longer a general but one of the Cadre.”
Raphael said what Elena was thinking. “He was Caliane’s general.”
“Yes, so unless you betray him, he will not first betray you. He would’ve hunted your mother in her madness had she not disappeared into Sleep, but he would’ve taken no pleasure in it, for he has never forsaken the vows he took to cause no harm to her and those of her blood.”
“Caliane’s never mentioned him.”
“Did you ask her?” An arch question. “You know her age. It’s very possible she hasn’t quite assimilated that you are now Eli’s peer, for he was an archangel before you were born, and in her eyes . . .”
“I’m a child still.” Raphael thrust his hand through his hair. “I wish you’d shared Elijah’s past with me earlier. It would’ve made certain negotiations much less fraught.”
Keir stood to pour himself a fresh cup of tea. “You are your mother’s son, Raphael. Until you had judged and decided to accept Eli’s friendship for yourself, it would’ve done no good.”
“There isn’t,” Illium said into the thoughtful pause that followed, “much difference between death and disease. Lijuan remains a prime candidate.”
Raphael stared into the flames. “Not for the Falling,” he said at last. “I cannot believe such a large-scale act didn’t need a closer hand, and Jason confirmed she was in her own territory at the time, busy with her reborn. For the vampire pox, however, she could’ve simply sent in a carrier of the disease.”
“It could even be a mortal.” Keir retook his seat, his expression intent. “My gifts tell me the disease is passed through blood, and a donor would be in the best position to infect many.” Frowning, he shook his head. “Yet if it is thus, we should have more bodies—the dead vampire had been so two days at least.”
“If the victims die at such speed,” Illium said quietly, “they might be locked up rotting in their homes.”
It was a horrible image, and Elena was glad for the distraction when Montgomery appeared in the doorway, his eyes sending her a silent message. “Guild Hunter,” he said when she excused herself to walk over to him. “There is an urgent call for you from the Guild Director.”
Taking the portable house phone, she said, “Thank you.”
Ten seconds into that call, and her gut churned. Because Ransom had just found those other bodies, and Illium had been right: they were locked up inside their home, rotting slowly from a malicious disease that had ended their chance at immortality.
• • •
All four of them landed on the tiny drive of a run-down house in a dingy part of the Bronx within the hour. Having been waiting outside, Ransom led them into the building without anything more than a nod, his cheekbones slicing against his skin from the way he clenched his jaw. She smelled the reason for his rigid self-control as soon as she stepped inside the house, the air putrid with disease and heavy with a warmth that told her the central heating had been on for the duration.
“How many?” Raphael asked, wings limned in a lethal glow.
“Five, and they’ve been dead a couple of days at least.” Ransom went left, heading toward what was probably a bedroom, while Keir and Illium broke off toward the other side of the house. “I turned off the heat and opened the windows to release the worst of the smell.”
Why is it always Ransom who shows up with these bodies?
Hearing the deadly supposition in Raphael’s tone, Elena locked eyes with the man who was her lover . . . but who she knew didn’t see other mortals the same way she did. Don’t get any ideas. Ransom grew up on the streets and still has all his old contacts. The people who talk to him, tell him things, wouldn’t ever talk to anyone from the Tower—or even most of the other hunters in the Guild.
“Who discovered the bodies?’ Raphael asked aloud.
Ransom’s answer was immediate. “I did. Got a tip about the smell, broke in when I recognized it.”
He is lying.
He’s protecting someone. It was what Ransom did when it came to the street people, who were as much family to him as his fellow hunters.
I can’t permit news of this to spread, Elena. It would incite a panic. Either Ransom talks or I’ll have to take the information from his mind.
Stomach tight, her hand clenched on the blade she’d dropped into her palm when they entered the house. He’s my friend.
I trust Ransom to keep his mouth shut. The sea, clean and bright, the wind an icy blast. I do not trust those he trusts.
And if I ask you to let it go?
I won’t.
13
Jerking at the vicious bluntness of Raphael’s response, at the realization that she was helpless to protect someone she cared for deeply, she stopped Ransom in the bedroom doorway. “You need to tell the truth,” she said, each word a razor in her throat. “Who found the bodies?”
A shake of his head, his jaw stiff. “If I do, I make that person a target.”
“I will take this memory alone and do the witness no harm.” Raphael came to stand beside Elena. “He or she will live and remember nothing of this night.”
Ransom’s eyes slid to Elena and in them she saw the harsh realization that if he didn’t answer the question, Raphael would take the information anyway.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, ready for anger.
But Ransom shrugged. “He’s an archangel, Ellie. We’re just rats to him.”
She knew he hadn’t meant anything by it, had in fact been trying to comfort her, but Ransom’s words brought home how little power she had in this relationship. Raphael could override her in so many ways, but she’d become used to having him listen to her, to being able to argue her points. Never had she expected to hear a flat negative, with no room for negotiation.
“You won’t touch her other memories?” Ransom asked Raphael, while she was still reeling under the force of the cruel emotional slap.
“Questioning the word of an archangel is a good way to end up dead.”
Raphael! Stop it. Furious, she met Ransom’s green eyes. “He doesn’t want anything but this particular memory.” Don’t make me a liar, she said mind to mind at the same instant.
A dangerous pause. You question my word, too, Elena?
Ransom is right. We are rats to you.
You aren’t part of any other group. You are my consort.
Ransom spoke before she could respond and it was just as well, since what she wanted to say would probably only have thrown fuel on the ugly fight brewing between her and Raphael.
“Cici lives down the street,” he said. “She came to buddy-watch the latest episode of Hunter’s Prey like she does every week, and when no one answered, she used the key they gave her a while back when she needed a place to hide out from a violent ex. She knew something was wrong as soon as she got a whiff of the smell, but she figured maybe the cat had dragged in a dead rat or something while everyone was out.”
Running a hand through his hair, he messed it up, tugged off the rawhide tie to put it back in order. “She’s a tough working girl, has come up against knife-wielding assailants and walked out the winner, but I found her curled up in a ball sobbing when I arrived.” A look at Raphael. “Janvier is with her. We were out ridin
g together when I got the call.”
That explained the unfamiliar red motorcycle out front, parked next to Ransom’s black one. As for how Ransom knew the vampire who held the trust of senior Tower personnel, Janvier had some kind of a relationship—no one quite understood what—with one of their fellow hunters.
“Which house?”
“It’s an apartment. I’ll show you.”
Remaining behind after Raphael left with Ransom, Elena forced herself to go through the house, while Keir focused on the victims and Illium stood watch outside to make sure no one decided to get curious.
Three males and two females lay dead. Five more lives snuffed out. Two couples, judging from the photos she could see in the bedrooms. One couple was in bed, the two men spooned together as if they’d held on to each other as the sickness became too much to bear. The male half of the other couple was slumped on the couch, his girlfriend on the floor, and to Elena, it looked as if the girl had fallen in a spasm and been unable to get back up. The second girl was in a tiny room at the back, the petite prettiness evident in the photos tucked under the edges of her vanity obliterated by the pox.
This victim’s room might have been the smallest in the house, but it was well kept and made individual by the framed Broadway posters on the walls and the glittering masks hung around the same vanity mirror that held the photos. A dancer, Elena realized, seeing the costumes in the doorless cupboard. She recognized one of them from an off-Broadway show that had closed six months ago, after a respectable run.
Since the dead vampire was living in this part of town, she must’ve been a backup dancer and not yet a lead . . . had probably embraced the near-immortality of vampirism so as to have more time to pursue her dream of the stage. Elena understood why someone would sign on for a hundred years of slavery on the back of such overwhelming desire; dreams could be a commanding force.
Belle had been a dancer. Long legged and with a thousand dreams in her eyes as she practiced in the backyard. She’d laughed when Elena tried to copy her, but it had been the affectionate laughter of a big sister, and many times, she’d stopped her own practice to teach Elena how to do the moves.