Archangel's Consort

13

There was only pleasure, no assault of nightmare that night, but Elena was still in no mood to speak to Jeffrey the next morning. “When am I ever in the mood?” she muttered as she landed in front of the tony town house guarded by metal gates on the eastern side of Central Park. She’d expected the meeting to be at his office at Deveraux Enterprises but had received a message an hour earlier moving things to this location.

It was a lovely home, as genteel and elegant as the woman who was Jeffrey’s second wife. The small area of greenery around it—an incredible luxury in the middle of Manhattan—was landscaped with a graceful perfection that somehow didn’t cross the line into severity. Elena couldn’t fault Gwendolyn’s taste, for all that some small part of her resented the woman for taking Marguerite’s place at Jeffrey’s side. But then, Marguerite wouldn’t have recognized the man her husband had become, so it was just as well.

Walking up three shallow marble steps with that hollow realization ringing in her skull, she pressed the doorbell to her father’s home, a home she’d never been invited to, never been welcome in, until this moment. The bell echoed inside, as if the house was empty. A minute, then two, passed without footsteps. Fully capable of believing Jeffrey had decided to leave her standing on the doorstep, she’d turned to head back down when the door was pulled open.

She glanced over her shoulder, a cutting retort ready on her lips. It died the instant she met the composed blue eyes of the society beauty twenty years his junior whom her father had married one fall while Elena had been at boarding school. “Gwendolyn,” she said with a politeness Marguerite had drummed into her. She’d run into her father’s second wife once or twice over the years, but neither of them had made the effort to strengthen the relationship beyond a cool formality.

“Elena. Come in.”

Glad that Gwendolyn at least didn’t seem to insist on using her full name, Elena walked in, conscious of the fact the other woman was studiously not staring at her wings. “I expected a maid,” she said, looking down the long foyer lined with small, softly lighted cubbies that held what were no doubt priceless objects d’art.

“This is family business,” Gwendolyn said, tugging at the sleeve of her jewel green silk shirt.

Elena frowned, not at the words, but at the restless movement—Gwendolyn was one of the most “together” people Elena had ever come across. But now that she was paying attention, she saw that the other woman’s eyes were shadowed, smudges of purple marring the rich cream of her skin. “What’s wrong?” she asked, suddenly realizing this might not be about Jeffrey playing power games after all.

Gwendolyn glanced down the corridor, stepped closer. “I know you don’t think of them as your sisters,” she said in a low, intense tone, “but I need you to stand up for my baby.”

Elena went to ask what the hell was going on when a door opened down the hall. Jeffrey’s tall form appeared a moment later. Dressed in charcoal pants bearing a faint navy pinstripe paired with a white shirt, the buttons undone at the collar, he was as casual as she’d seen him in the years of her adulthood.

Before ... She remembered the dreams, remembered the laughing paint-covered man who’d thrown her into the air and caught her on a sunny day flavored with the mingled scents of freshly cut grass, ice cream, and burgers. Long before the blood, before the death. Before the silence . . . and the shadow on the wall.

Steeling her spine against the devastating impact of the memories, she met his gaze, shielded as always by the clear glass of his metal-rimmed spectacles. “Why am I here, Jeffrey?” She knew Gwendolyn would say nothing now. Having seen them in public, she understood very well who held the reins.

It was nothing like the marriage Jeffrey had had with Elena’s mother—a woman who’d teased her husband as often as she’d kissed him. A woman whose body might have survived, but whose spirit had broken under the hands of the serial killer drawn to their small family home because of Elena. That was a guilt that threatened to turn her feet to lead, leave her defenseless in the face of what was almost certainly going to be a knock-down, drag-out confrontation—her meetings with her father never ended any other way.

“I’m glad to see you have some sense of family obligation,” Jeffrey said in that razor blade of a voice. “I suppose you have had more important people to visit in the days since your return to the city.”

Anger, wild and hurting, slammed through the guilt. “They cared when you threw me out onto the street,” she said, glad to see him flinch. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand that kind of loyalty.” She didn’t know what she’d expected—that her father would be taken aback by her wings to the extent of dropping that glacial mask? That he’d look at her with wonder and awe? If she had, she was a fool.

“Jeffrey.” Gwendolyn’s mellifluous voice.

Jeffrey’s jaw was tight, his eyes glittering behind those thin metal frames, but he gave a jerky nod, said, “Come into the study. The girls?” The latter words were directed at his wife.

“In Amy’s room, with strict instructions not to come out.”

The tendons along Jeffrey’s neck went white with strain, but he said nothing as he walked into the study. Elena followed at a slower pace, wondering at the undercurrents she could sense. Maybe she’d been wrong about Gwendolyn. It certainly seemed like the other woman was flexing her claws.

Chewing on that, she found herself in a large room with mahogany bookshelves lined with leather-bound tomes, a solid desk of the same wood taking center stage. That still left plenty of room for the deep armchairs set to one side, near the French doors. It wasn’t only a masculine room, it was devoid of even the slightest feminine touch.

Snick.

The sound of the lock clicking into place as Gwendolyn closed the door was loud in the silence. Needing space, Elena walked to the French doors and swung them open, shifting to lean against the doorjamb, one of her wings exposed to the crisp spring air, the other to the emotional chill inside the library.

Jeffrey stood on the other side of the room, against a bookshelf, his arms folded. “So, you’re an angel.”

“I’m afraid asking me to whore myself for you isn’t going to work any better this time than it did the last,” Elena snapped out, her calm disappearing in the face of that judgmental gaze.

White lines bracketed Jeffrey’s mouth. “You’re my daughter. I shouldn’t have had to go through your Guild to find out if you were alive.”

“Please.” Elena gave a bitter laugh. “When have you cared whether I lived or died?” Not once in the ten years of their estrangement had he bothered to check up on her, even when she’d been badly injured in a hunt, hospitalized for weeks. “Just tell me why I’m here so I can get back to my life.”

It was Gwendolyn who spoke from her position by the door, her body held in a way Elena would’ve never expected from Jeffrey’s perfect society wife. “It’s Evelyn,” she said in a quiet, determined tone. “She’s like you.”

“No.” The single word was gritted out by Jeffrey.

“Stop it.” Gwendolyn turned on her husband. “Denying it won’t make it any less true!”

Jeffrey’s response was lost in the buzz of noise inside Elena’s head as she tried to make sense of the curveball Gwendolyn had just thrown her. “Like me? How?” She wasn’t going to make any assumptions, not here.

Gwendolyn’s lips pursed tight, her hands fisted at her sides as she stared at her husband. When Jeffrey didn’t speak, the black-haired woman turned to Elena. “Hunter-born,” she said. “My baby is hunter-born.”

If Elena hadn’t been braced against the doorjamb, she’d have collapsed—her body felt as if it had taken a tremendous blow. Disbelief had her saying, “That’s not possible.” Hunter-born were rare, very rare, being birthed with the ability to scent-track vampires. However, it did run in families—Elena had always believed her ability came from her mother’s unknown bloodline.

“We’ve run tests,” Jeffrey snapped out. “Using Harrison and some of his friends. She can track them.”

Harrison was a vampire, and Elena’s brother-in-law, married to Marguerite’s only other surviving daughter—Beth. The fact that Evelyn could track him ... “You,” Elena whispered, staring at Jeffrey. “It comes from you.” He’d known, she thought, glimpsing the flash of some unnamable emotion in his eyes. All this time, when he’d been rejecting her for her “base, inhuman” occupation, he’d known it was his blood that had given it to her.

A muscle pulsed along Jeffrey’s temple, his skin pulled taut over that aristocratic bone structure. “That has no place in this conversation.”

Elena laughed. Harsh, jagged. She couldn’t help it. “You hypocrite.”

His head snapped toward her. “Be quiet, Elieanora. I’m still your father.”

The hell of it was that part of her was still the little girl who’d once adored him, and that part wanted to obey. Fighting the urge, she was about to retort when she glimpsed Gwendolyn’s face. The other woman looked shattered, and all at once, Elena’s anger with her father, his fury at her, wasn’t the most important thing. It would keep. It had kept for over a decade.

“She’ll need training,” she said, speaking to Gwendolyn. “Without it, she’ll find it difficult to focus and concentrate.” The cacophony of scents in the air, especially in a city as full of vampires as New York, could severely impact one of the hunter-born. Elena had taught herself to filter out the endless “noise” in the years before she grew old enough to join the Guild without parental permission, but it had been a painful, lonely road. One Evelyn didn’t have to take. “You need to register her at Guild Academ—”

“No!” Jeffrey’s voice was rigid with withheld rage. “I will not have another daughter of mine tainted by that place.”

“It’s a school,” Elena said, keeping a white-knuckled grip on a temper that pulled aggressively at the reins. “It has specialized teachers.”

“She will not be a hunter.”

“She already is, you bastard!” Elena yelled, the reasoned adult falling apart under the echoes of childhood. “If you’re not careful, you’ll lose her the same way you lost me!”

The blow hit. She saw it.

For herself, she wouldn’t have fought. But for Evelyn, she pushed forward, using the advantage. “Being hunter-born isn’t a choice. It’s part of our very makeup. If you ask her to make a choice, she’ll probably choose you.” Before Jeffrey could pounce on that, she added, “And she’ll go mad if not in the next few years, then in the next decade.” The urge to hunt was a pulse in the blood, a hunger that could consume if caged.

Gwendolyn gave a short, choked cry. “Jeffrey, I won’t lose my daughter. You might be able to walk away from your child, but I won’t.” Turning to Elena, she said, “Can you send me the information about the Academy? Perhaps ... would you speak to Eve?”

Shaken by the maternal love that had turned cool, composed Gwendolyn into a lioness, Elena nodded. “I’ll be out in the garden if you want to bring her down.” Suiting action to words, she stepped out into the small backyard and breathed in deep lungfuls of the open air. This close to Central Park, it held hints of fir and water and horses, but below that was the constant hum of the city, a touch of smoke and metal, the active press of humanity.

Rubbing at her eyes with one of her hands, she froze when she felt Jeffrey in the doorway at her back. “Is it possible the vampire who murdered the girls at the school was drawn to Evelyn?”

The question threw ice water across her senses. Because it meant he knew. Jeffrey knew Slater Patalis had been drawn to their small family home because of Elena. Part of her, the part that held the lost, hurt girl she’d once been, had hoped he didn’t, that there might yet be hope for a relationship between them, but if he knew ... “No,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “We caught the vampire who murdered Celia and Betsy. He wasn’t like Slater.”

“We don’t mention that name, Elieanora.” Words so steady, they were steel. “Do you understand?”

Elena turned this time. “Yes.” If he wanted to forget the monster, she couldn’t blame him. What she could blame him for was that he’d forgotten his daughters, his wife, as well. “Evelyn needs to be trained as fast as possible. Her skills will provide a defense against attack.” Pausing, she went to thrust a hand through her hair before remembering she’d braided it. “Amy should also be tutored in basic self-defense.”

“Because you’ve made them targets.”

She flinched, but didn’t back down. “They’re your daughters, Jeffrey,” she whispered, hitting back because that was what she did with Jeffrey. That was their endless cycle of pain and recrimination. “Unless you’ve turned over a new leaf, there’s more than one competitor out there who’d love to get his hands on your child.”

Jeffrey opened his mouth, closed it without speaking. A moment later, Evelyn squeezed past her father. She didn’t get far before Jeffrey’s hand came down on her shoulder. “Evelyn.”

The ten-year-old, her eyes an echo of the man who towered above her, lifted up her face. “Yes, Father?”

“Remember who you are. A Deveraux.” A stern reminder.

Elena wanted to say that there was no question about the fact that Eve damn well was a true Deveraux—since hunting seemed to run in the blood—but restrained herself in the face of the anxiety the girl was trying so hard to mask. “Come on, Eve,” she said instead. “Let’s talk.”

Raphael met Jason in the skies above Staten Island, the cloud layer a thick white foam below them. “I thought you’d left the country.” His spymaster was meant to be on the way to Europe.

“I had an unexpected meeting come up.” Jason didn’t explain further, and Raphael didn’t ask. Jason would have been no good to him as a spymaster if he didn’t think for himself—like the others in the Seven, the male served Raphael not out of obligation, but out of choice.

“I returned to the Tower before dawn this morning to pick up something,” Jason continued. “It is as well—I can confirm the name of the one who murdered your man last night. She calls herself Belladonna, though she has also used the name Oleander Graves.”

That name was no surprise. Neither was the gender of the killer—female vampires bore the same bloodlust as males—but the speed with which Jason had tracked her down was. “How did you find her?”

Jason braced his wings against the push of the wind. “Elena will be able to verify from the scent, but Neha’s assassin is not as clever as she believes. She said some indiscreet things to the dancers at Erotique that made it child’s play to tie the murder to her.”

Raphael raised an eyebrow. “I did not know you patronized Erotique, Jason.” The club of choice for the more high-ranked vampires, its dancers and hostesses were considered to be both accomplished and sophisticated.

“Illium,” Jason said in short explanation. “He spent some time there after helping Venom take care of the scene. When he saw me come in this morning, he asked if I could corroborate his suspicions using my contacts—I was also able to pinpoint her current residence.” He named the apartment building and number.

Making a mental note of it, Raphael put aside the matter of Neha’s pet vampire for the present. The assassin would be uncomplicated enough to dispatch now that she’d been located. “Tell me about Illium.” The visit to Erotique could’ve been nothing, a diversion to take his mind off the upcoming visit by the Hummingbird, but given the blue-winged angel’s fascination with mortals, it could augur something far more dangerous.

“There is no need for concern,” Jason said at once. “Galen would’ve warned us if there was.”

Raphael agreed on that point. The two angels were fast friends and had been for centuries. “And you, Jason? Who will warn me about you?”