Archangel's Consort

22

The next day, having received a message early that morning, Elena found herself flying down to land in front of a gated home in the Palisades area. Set back from the street and shaded with perfectly manicured greenery, it shrieked of money. Even the architecture—old, elegant, timeless—told her she was looking at something that had cost in the millions.

I could afford this.

It was a startling thought. She kept forgetting that she was rich now, that the Cadre—through Raphael—had paid her the fee they’d agreed on when she had “accepted” the Uram mission. Snorting at the memory of exactly how she’d been dragged into the whole bloody mess, she folded back her wings and stared at the glossy black door of the home only a few feet away.

Narrow. Too narrow for angelic wings.

It was stupid to feel rejected. Her sister Beth had lived here with her husband, Harrison, since the day they had married—both had been human at the time. Then Harrison had applied to be Made a vampire, been accepted . . . and broken the century-long contract of service he’d signed on for as a condition of being Made. Elena was the hunter who’d brought him back to face his punishment. Harrison didn’t understand that he couldn’t hide for eternity, that the longer it took for his angel to track him down, the worse the price he’d have had to pay.

As a result of Harrison’s antipathy, Elena had never been invited inside Beth’s home. She didn’t begrudge her sister for standing by her husband, had done her best to make sure Beth knew that. However, by the same token, she refused to disappear from Beth’s life. No matter what, her sister knew she could pick up the phone and Elena would come.

The door flew open at that instant, revealing a gorgeous strawberry blonde dressed in what appeared to be a cashmere sweater in cream paired with a polka-dotted knee-length skirt, the shape full and feminine. “Ellie!” Her sister ran. “Ellie!”

As she caught Beth’s smaller, softer body, Elena felt time unravel, scrolling backward until they were children again. Beth had always been the baby, and she’d toddled around after Elena as Elena had in her turn toddled around after Ari and Belle. Now, of the four children Marguerite had borne, only two remained—and Elena had become the big sister. “Hey, Bethie.”

Beth’s arms remained locked around Elena, her face damp against Elena’s neck. “You didn’t come see me first. You’re supposed to come see me first!”

Another bittersweet reminder of childhood, Beth’s insistence that she come first in Elena’s life. “I thought you just got back today? Weren’t you in the Caymans?”

A sniffle. “You have wings. You could’ve flown to me.” Pulling away at last, Beth reached out and touched the upper curve of Elena’s wing.

It was a sensitive spot, a place she allowed Raphael alone to caress. “Lower, Beth,” she said with conscious gentleness.

Beth shifted her hold at once—forever the younger sister, used to taking orders. “They’re so pretty, Ellie.” Sweet words, shining eyes of a translucent turquoise that had come from Marguerite, a single moment uncolored by the choices they’d both made. “I’m glad you have wings. You always wanted to fly.”

A flash of memory, Elena in her homemade cape, “flying” after a giggling Beth. It was impossible not to smile. “How are you?”

A shrug, her hand falling away. “Okay.”

Worried by the muted response from a sister who’d always been vibrant, if not a little high-strung, Elena brushed Beth’s hair away from her face. “You know you can talk to me. Have I ever let you down?”

“You turned my husband in to his angel.” Open petulance.

“Beth.” Harry had chosen his fate when he asked to be Made—and unlike Vivek, he’d been healthy as a human, could well have lived the full span of a mortal life. If the servitude he’d signed on for now grated, he had no one to blame but himself.

Beth’s sullen expression broke, her face seeming to collapse in on itself as she began to cry in great, gulping sobs. Shattered by her sister’s pain, Elena took Beth into her arms and rocked her. “Talk to me, Bethie. Tell me what’s wrong.” So I can fix it.

It was what she did, a self-imposed duty.

Even after Jeffrey had thrown her out of the Big House, Elena had checked in every week with Beth, made sure her sister was okay. Beth, too, had stuck by Elena in her own way. When Jeffrey had dumped Elena’s things out on the street, it had been sweet, compliant Beth who’d gone out and saved Elena’s most important treasures from the elements. She’d done it in secret, but she had done it.

“I’m not as strong as you, Ellie.” Whispered words as they stood hidden in the shadow of the Big House. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t cry, sweetheart.” Taking her sister into her arms, holding her tight. “It’s okay. I’m strong enough for both of us.”

Now, Elena pressed her lips to her sister’s temple. “Beth?”

“Oh, Ellie.” Beth pulled away with a hiccup. Using a handkerchief to dab at her face, she managed to look beautiful even with eyes rimmed in red and a nose that had gone raw at the tip. “They won’t Make me, Ellie. That was always the plan, that Harry and I, we’d both become immortal and then we’d be together forever, but they said they won’t Make me.”

Elena’s blood ran cold. She’d asked Raphael about Beth, been told that her sister wasn’t biologically compatible. If they tried to infuse her with the toxin that turned human to vampire, she’d either die or go incurably insane. “I’m sorry—”

“You’re an angel now, Ellie.” Beth gripped her upper arms, hope a shining beacon in her eyes. “You can Make me. Or you can ask your archangel to. Please, Ellie. Please.”

Feeling bruised and battered after the argument that had resulted when she told Beth there was nothing she could do, Elena was in no frame of mind to undertake the next task on her list. But—“I’ve been a coward long enough.” She put the key into the heavy yellow lock and twisted. The first time she’d seen that key, she’d assumed Jeffrey had hired a small locker to store the pieces of her childhood . . . of her mother—but this was the size of an entire room, complete with a metal rolling door.

Sara, leaning against the neighboring storage unit, arms crossed over the rich plum of her trim suit, shook her head. “It’s not about being a coward, Ellie. You know that. This has to hurt like hell.”

Yeah, it hurt. So bad.

“Forgive me, my babies.”

Anger and sadness and love mixed in a caustic brew inside of her. It was a familiar feeling—her emotions toward Marguerite would never be simple. “Thanks for coming with me. I know how busy you are.”

“Thank me again, and I’ll have to kick your ass.” Sara reached down to fix the thin strap that arched over the top of her three-inch heels. “Though I’m surprised tall, omnipotent, and dangerous isn’t with you.”

“I needed you.” The woman who’d become more family to her than the people with whom she shared blood. “Raphael understands friendship, even if he doesn’t think so.” He’d forged bonds of steel with his Seven, Dmitri in particular.

Lock undone, she held it in one hand as she reached down to push up the door. Light hit the floor within, and then the box nearest the door.

A frayed orange blanket hung over the edge.

Heart in her throat, she tried to continue pushing up the door, but she couldn’t. Her entire body just froze. “Sara.”

Her best friend put her hand on the door. “Which way, Ellie? Up or down?”

“Come on, bébé.” Laughing words in that husky voice with its pretty accent. “Climb on board.”

Struggling onto the big bed, her blanket around her shoulders, she squirmed between Ari and her mom.

“Hey!” Ari’s protesting voice before she peppered Elena’s giggling face with kisses. “Little grease monkey.”

“Ellie.”

Jerking herself back into the present, Elena pushed down the door, relocking it with fingers that trembled. “I can’t do it.” Her heart was thunder in her throat, her palms damp. “God, I can’t.” She collapsed onto the ground, back to the door.

Sara sank down beside her, uncaring of the damage to her hose. “It’s waited all this time. It’ll wait a while longer.” Putting her hand on Elena’s arm, she squeezed. “You’ve had a hell of a lot to process over the past year and a half. Nothing says you have to rush this.”

“I don’t know why it’s affecting me like this. There are good memories in there.” Except sometimes, she suddenly realized, even the best memories could cut like knives. “Sara,” she said, the words tumbling out, “I need to tell you something about my past.”

“I’m here.”

At that simple statement of support, Elena took a deep breath ... and finally told her best friend about the monster who had broken Ari and Belle until they were macabre dolls in a blood-soaked kitchen; until her mother was a woman who screamed and screamed and screamed; until her father was a stranger who hated his eldest surviving daughter. “I couldn’t tell you before,” she whispered. “I couldn’t even bring myself to think about it.”

Tears streaked Sara’s face. “This is why you used to wake up screaming.”

They’d been roommates at Guild Academy, and after they graduated. “Yes.” Some part of her hadn’t stopped screaming since that murderous day almost two decades in the past.

In spite of Sara’s rock-solid friendship, in spite of the physical release of the intense flying drills she did later that day, Elena couldn’t shake the melancholy that draped her in emotional black. As she stood in the shower prior to getting dressed for dinner, the events of the day came crashing down on her, an unforgiving rain. Even worse than her effective breakdown at the storage unit was the memory of the look of betrayal on Beth’s face as her sister turned away from her.

“I’ll die, Ellie. I’ll die and you’ll still be alive.”

She tried to wash away the pain that twisted through her heart, but it refused to leave. When her eyes smarted, she told herself she’d gotten some shampoo into them and turned her face into the spray. She couldn’t so easily ignore the knowledge that as the years passed, she’d have to watch wrinkles mark a face that had always been younger, and one day, she’d stand over Beth’s grave.

Unable to bear the thought, she wrenched off the water and stepped out . . . into the arms of an archangel. “I’m wet.” The words were snapped out.

He tugged her water-slick body even closer to his. I feel the echo of your pain, Elena.

Distressed as she was, she knew he could’ve taken the reason for that pain from her mind without her being aware of it, was likely battling the compulsion to do exactly that. “It’s nothing,” she said, the hurt too raw to share. “Nothing new.”

A wave of rain and wind inside her mind, the fury of a leashed storm. Your father again?

“No.” That was all she could say without breaking into a thousand splintered pieces. “I can’t talk about it yet, Raphael.”

A pause, heavy with power.

It was an unintended reminder that the man she called her lover, her consort, was nothing even close to human. Still, she didn’t move away, didn’t raise her guard. That, too, was hard ... but Raphael had held her when she fell, prepared to give up his immortal life for her, a hunter, an unwanted daughter . . . and right now, a hated sister.

The stroke of a big, warm hand on her lower back. “Then we will talk at another time. But we will be talking.”

Feeling her instincts shake off the pain that had gutted her, she raised her head. “I thought we discussed the whole you-giving-me-orders thing?”

Endless, relentless blue. “Did we?” Plush softness around her as he wrapped her in a towel, wings and all. “I had a visitor today.”

“You’re changing the subject.” And he looked so very un-apologetic doing it that she knew she was about to let herself get suckered.

A slow smile. “Lijuan.”

Steel-edged worry wiped away every other emotion. “Again?” Ice crawled up her spine at the memory of the devotion and pain she’d seen on the face of one of the reborn who had loved his mistress, thought, too, of how he’d torn a man apart with his bare hands, until the viscera steamed in the open air.

“I knew she remained in my territory,” Raphael said, “but it was still an unexpected visit.”

Letting him rub at her hair with a second towel while she gripped the first between her breasts, she touched her fingers to the warmth of his chest. “So? What did she want this time?”

Raphael dropped the other towel to the floor and ran his fingers through the damp strands of her hair, his gaze turning a deep, impenetrable cobalt. “The same—to convince me to murder my mother.”

Still blinking in shock half an hour later as she finished drying her hair and turned to pick up the dress that had appeared on the bed, she stared at Raphael. “We have to find your mother before she does, don’t we?”

“Yes.” Wearing nothing but black dress pants, he leaned against the wall, arms folded, his eyes taking a leisurely tour of her body. “You do not ask the obvious question, Elena. You did not ask after Lijuan’s previous visit, either.”

She’d shrugged off her robe in preparation for putting on the dress—in a brilliant shade of blue, of course—and was wearing only a pair of gossamer panties in mint green, a small white silk flower sitting below one hip. It was clear what her archangel thought of her current state of undress. “I think,” she murmured, “you need to turn up the air-conditioning.”

A slow smile laced with pure seduction. “Come here, Hunter.”

Shaking her head, she picked up the dress and stepped into it. Unlike the gown she’d worn for Lijuan’s ball, this one wasn’t ankle-length but came to a few inches above the knee, the material fitting snugly over her hips before flaring out in a playful skirt. The pretty halter neck not only provided adequate support for her breasts—always a consideration for a hunter—but closed with a glittering crystal button.

She’d never, in a million years, have chosen the dress for herself, but had to admit it looked both elegant and sexy. “What obvious question?” she asked after slipping the button into its hole.

“Whether it would not be better to join with Lijuan to find Caliane, execute her in her Sleep.”

“She’s your mother, Raphael. Of course you can’t destroy her without knowing if she has healed, become sane.” Turning to the vanity, she raised her hair off her neck and twisted it up into a sleek knot Sara had taught her. “Your laws exist for a reason—other angels must’ve come out of the Sleep in better condition than when they went in.”

Looking down to grab a hairpin, she wasn’t ready for the burn of an archangel’s kiss on her nape, the heavy weight of his hands on her hips. “Most of me is convinced she’ll rise as viciously insane as when she went to ground. But—”

“She is your mother.” Elena, more than anyone, understood the opposing emotions that had to be tearing him apart.

“Yes.”

Teeth scraped over her skin, making her shiver. “We’ll be late.”

Stroking up with his hands, he cupped her breasts. Squeezed. Another kiss on that sensitive spot along the curve of her neck before he drew back. “You are right to remind me, Elena. I owe the Hummingbird my respect.”

Hair done, she put on some lipstick, then turned to watch Raphael as he picked up his shirt. A pure white, the fabric on either side of the wing slots embroidered with curling designs in black that echoed the pattern of his wings, it threw the harsh purity of his masculine beauty into cutting focus.

“I know the Hummingbird was the one who eventually found you,” she said, heart twisting at the thought of him lying hurt and broken on that desolate field where his mother had left him. “But the ties between you ... there’s more to it, isn’t there?”

The evening sunlight turned his wings to amber as he answered. “She didn’t only save me, she mothered me as much as I would allow.”

Elena walked over to finish buttoning his shirt. “You didn’t allow her much did you?”

“No.”

The earth trembled at that instant, just enough to make her close her hand over his shoulder to steady herself.

“A minor quake,” Raphael said when it passed. “Reports indicate weather is calming across the world.”

She fell into the wild blue of his eyes when he lifted his head from his unhidden visual exploration of her skin, her body. “Is that good news or bad?”

“It means she is almost awake.”