Archangel's Consort

29

The storm continued to be a wild squall the next morning but was forecast to pass within two hours. “I need to go speak to Evelyn,” Elena said as they landed on the Tower roof, the rain driving their clothing into their skin. Raphael could’ve protected them using his abilities, but she’d argued for him to conserve as much of his strength as possible for the battle that might well await.

“Your sister lives at the family home,” he said, raising his wings to shelter her from the needlelike stabs of rain. “It is inevitable you’ll meet your father.”

“I know,” she said, pitching her voice so it would carry above the pounding sound of the water hitting the metal and concrete of Manhattan.

“You will not go alone.”

“I need to.” Her father would try to crush and demoralize her, and she didn’t want her archangel to see her hurt and broken.

Raphael caught the pain in his consort’s eyes before she could hide it, felt his anger turn into an unsheathed blade. “No.”

Shaking her head, Elena pressed her hand against his chest. “You’ll hurt him when he hurts me,” she said with blunt honesty, blinking the rain from her lashes. “You won’t be able to stop yourself. And no matter everything else, he’s still my father.”

Raphael closed his hand around the side of her head, tangling his fingers in the wet silk of her hair. “He doesn’t deserve your protection.” Jeffrey deserved nothing from his oldest living daughter but her contempt.

“Maybe not.” Elena acknowledged, leaning into his touch. “But he’s also Beth, Evelyn, and Amethyst’s father—and they seem to love him.”

“You ask the impossible.”

“No, I ask for what I need.” She held her ground where even other angels would’ve backed down. “What I need, Archangel.”

He had allowed her freedom beyond anything he might’ve imagined, but this he would not do. “I will come with you.” He gripped her chin when she would’ve argued. “I will not land. That is the only concession I’m willing to make.”

She folded her arms, her eyes silver in the storm-light. “It’s not much of a concession, but we don’t have time to argue.”

He spoke into her mind as they flew out into the tempest of wind and rain once more. Hear this, Elena—if he crosses the line, I will break him. I do not have that much patience.

Less than fifteen minutes later, and very aware of Raphael sweeping across the sky above, Elena turned and walked up the steps to her father’s house. Again, it wasn’t a maid who opened the door. “Gwendolyn,” she said, shaking off the rain from her wings. “I just came to have a chat with Eve before I head out of the city.” She didn’t want her youngest sister to believe she’d been forgotten. It was a hurt she’d never inflict on anyone of her own.

“Come inside,” Gwendolyn said, concern on that discreetly made-up face. “You must be so cold.”

Elena stood dripping in the hallway. “I’m sorry, I’m wet.”

“Give me a moment.” Gwendolyn disappeared and returned with a towel, handing it to her.

Elena wiped off her face and did the best she could to squeeze the water out of her ponytail. “I’ll stay in the hallway—don’t want to ruin your carpet.”

“It can be cleaned.”

Somewhere in the midst of patting down the parts of her wings she could reach, Elena became aware that Gwendolyn was staring at her. “I must look a sight,” she said with a laugh, expecting a polite response.

What she got was nothing she could’ve predicted.

“I always wondered,” the other woman said in a husky voice, “what was so wonderful about her that he couldn’t let go, that he had to keep a mistress who reminded him of her.”

Elena felt the ground open up beneath her feet. She did not want to be having this conversation with her father’s second wife. “Gw—”

“I see it now,” Gwendolyn continued, deep white grooves around her mouth. “There’s something in you, something she must’ve given you—and it’s something I’ll never have. That’s why he married me.”

Acutely uncomfortable, Elena nonetheless couldn’t just stand by in the face of such raw pain. “You know how he reacted when I wanted to attend Guild Academy.” It was her enrolling at the Academy without his permission, permission he’d never have given, that had led to the fight in which he’d called her an “abomination” before throwning her out of his life. “Yet he allows Eve to go. That’s because of you—he listens to you.”

Gwendolyn hugged herself, tiny lines flaring out at the corners of her eyes. “The worst thing is—I love him. I always have.” Turning, she began to walk down the hallway. “He’s in the study.”

“Wait, I just want to talk to Eve.”

The slender woman tucked a wing of raven hair behind her ear as she glanced back. “I’ll bring her down, but you can’t avoid speaking to him, you know that.”

Maybe not, but she could delay it as long as possible. So she waited for Eve to come down and spent a good half an hour with her sister, answering the questions on hunting that Eve had built up since their last meeting—and letting her know she could call Elena anytime.

Afterward, they spoke of other, more painful things.

“I miss Betsy,” Evelyn whispered, her hand a rigid little fist. “She was my best friend.”

“I know, baby.”

Eve’s eyes shone wet as she threw herself into Elena’s arms, seeming far younger than her years, the acknowledged baby of the family. “Mom thinks I don’t know, but I do. We looked the same. Everyone said so.”

Elena didn’t know what to say, how to heal that hurt, so she just held Evelyn tight and rocked her until the tears passed. “Shh, sweetheart. I don’t think Betsy would’ve wanted you to make yourself sick like this.”

“She was so nice, Ellie.” A gulping sob. “I miss her every day.”

Elena understood to the deepest core of her soul. She missed Ari and Belle and Marguerite every second of every day. “Why don’t you tell me about her?”

It took a while for Evelyn to find the words past her tears, but when she did, it was a dam breaking open. She spoke not only about Betsy, but about Celia, too, the girl who had “played the clarinet the best out of everyone” and who hadn’t laughed when Eve made a mistake during class.

Elena sat still and listened, coming to the sobering realization that Eve hadn’t spoken to anyone else about this, damming up her pain. She could understand why when it came to Jeffrey, but Gwendolyn’s love for her daughters was palpable. “Why didn’t you talk to your mom about Betsy and Celia?”

“She’s sad all the time anyway.” Wise words from a child with solemn gray eyes. “Do you mind if I talk to you?”

“No, of course not.”

A direct look, clear of tears now. “I used to think you must be mean, and that’s why Father didn’t ever invite you to stay with us.”

Elena’s heart stabbed with pain. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. But you’re not. You’re nice.” A fierce hug from those solid little arms. “You can come stay at my house when I have one.” It was whispered in her ear.

Elena held the unexpected emotional gift to her heart a few minutes later as she pushed through the door to her father’s study without knocking. She found him standing at the open French doors, staring out into the rain. Not knowing why she didn’t turn around and leave, she closed the door behind herself and crossed the room to stand against the opposite doorjamb, three feet of space between them.

Outside, the rain fell down in silver sheets, blotting out the world. She didn’t know if it was the conversation she’d had with Gwendolyn or something else, but she found her lips parting. “Mama loved the rain.”

“Come, chérie, dance with your mama.”

The damp, squishy feel of earth between her feet, her chest bursting with giggles as she ran outside with Beth by her side. “Mama!”

Laughter, sweet and carefree as Marguerite twirled in the rain, her skirts flying out around her in an unruliness of color.

“Mama. Pretty.” Beth’s soft voice, her hand curling into Elena’s as they jumped in the puddles around their mother’s spinning figure.

“Yes.” The word was clipped. “She was happy in the rain, but she couldn’t survive the storm.”

Stunned that Jeffrey had actually replied, she didn’t know what to do, what to say. She found herself rubbing a fisted hand over her chest, as if she could brush away the years-old hurt. “She wasn’t strong. Not like you.” Marguerite had been the light and the laughter, the wildfire in their life.

A bitter laugh. “She wouldn’t have needed to be if I’d been there that day.”

This conversation wasn’t going as she’d predicted, and she felt scared, lost, a child again. Gripping at the doorjamb, she thought back to that fateful day when everything had fractured, remembered that her daddy had been missing. “You went to pick Beth up from her sleepover.” She’d always been grateful for the kindness of fate that meant her sister had been spared the butcher’s attention.

A cold gray glance from behind those clear spectacles. “I had a fight with Marguerite, went off to clear my head, picked your sister up later than I should have.”

Elena’s whole world began to spin.

“We fought because I thought she was too flighty. I wanted her to be a businessman’s wife ...”

“When she was a butterfly,” Elena whispered, knowing that in spite of his harsh words, her father had loved his first wife, loved her in a way that he’d never again loved anyone else.

“Sweetheart, this cake looks delicious.”

Marguerite laughing and tugging on Jeffrey’s sedate tie to pull him down for a passionate kiss. “The cake looks atrocious and you know it, mon mari.”

A smile that turned her father into the most handsome man in the world. “Ah, but the cook is definitely delicious.”

Even as the fragment of memory tumbled unbidden into her mind from some secret hiding place, Jeffrey straightened, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his suit pants. She knew the moment was gone before he spoke. “Have you come to tell me that more of your new friends will be coming to harm your sisters?”

She flinched. “They’re under constant protection.”

Jeffrey didn’t look at her. “I’ll make sure word gets out that you’re not a welcome member of this family.”

It was a good precaution, but it also burned like a poker searing through her heart. “All right.” Her voice caught, but she didn’t let it break, refusing to crumble in front of this man who couldn’t be the same one who’d held her hand in that hospital morgue almost two decades in the past. “I’ll make sure any meetings I have with Eve are at the Guild from now on. No reason for anyone to question my presence there.”

Jeffrey said nothing.

Turning, Elena went to leave.

“Elieanora.”

She froze with her hand on the doorknob. “Yes?”

“Of all my children, you have always been the most like me.”

Repudiating the thought with every part of her, she walked out of the house without looking back. Raphael was there to pull her up into the sky until she’d gained enough altitude to fly. And fly they did, as she tried to bury her father’s words deep under a mountain of truth.

Elena.

I’m nothing like him! I would never do to my child what he did to his.

Raphael didn’t immediately agree, and his words, when they came, were not what she wanted to hear. You are both survivors, Elena. You chose different methods to do it, but you both did it.

Her lower lip quivered, and she was so frustrated at the sign of weakness that she bit down hard enough to draw blood. He survived by destroying all memory of our family. I hold them here. She slammed a fist to her heart, blinking the rain out of her eyes.

I am not your father’s champion. I would kill him if you would only not hate me afterward, but the fact of his mistress, it argues against your belief.

Dashing away more of the rain . . . and realizing the salty droplets weren’t falling from the sky after all, Elena thought of the poor woman Uram had brutalized in his rampage through New York. That light blond hair and golden skin, it had been a pale imitation of her mother’s butterfly beauty ... but an imitation nonetheless. I can’t, she said, a painful lump in the center of her chest, I can’t see him that way.

They’d reached the Tower, and Raphael waited to speak until they’d landed. Taking her into his arms, wings raised to protect her from the driving rain once more, he spoke against her ear. “You may be Jeffrey’s daughter, but you are also Marguerite’s.”

Elena clutched at his back, her fingers digging into him as she buried her face against his chest. “That’s the thing,” she whispered, almost hoping he wouldn’t hear her above the storm. “I hate him for what he is . . . but at least he stuck around.”

A lonely red high-heeled shoe on the cold black-and-white tile. A thin shadow swinging against the wall of the Big House. Those were her last memories of her mother. “At least he didn’t give up when it got too fucking hard. It was hard for all of us! But she left; she chose to leave!”

Her archangel said nothing, simply enfolded her in the circle of his arms and the protection of his wings as the storm raged with relentless fury around them.

Raphael knew his hunter needed time, but he couldn’t give it to her, not today. We must go, Elena, he said too soon. The sky is beginning to clear.

A nod against his chest. “Don’t worry, Archangel. I’m okay.”

No, he thought, she wasn’t. But she would survive, as she’d survived the losses of her childhood, Uram’s evil, the staggering change from mortal to immortal. Come.

The flight over the Hudson was relatively quick, the wind no longer against them. Once there and in dry clothes, Elena said, “I’ll see if my hunter friends in Japan were able to dig up any more intel.”

While she did that, Raphael spoke to the leader of his Seven in the library. “Do you foresee any problems in my absence?” Lijuan wasn’t the only one who’d noticed that he’d become more vulnerable to injury—it might well be the incentive another angel needed to attempt conquest.

Dmitri shook his head. “The fact that I’m here will deter anyone who might have ideas. They know I’m no new-Made vampire.”

“If there is an attack, go for the kill.” Only the most ruthless will would keep the city safe. “I’m leaving Venom with you, with Jason ready to fly in if necessary, while Galen holds the Refuge territory. Illium comes with me, and Naasir is already in Tokyo.” The vampire would meet them in Kagoshima.

“What about Aodhan?”

“I’m sending him back to the Refuge.” The angel had already pinpointed Caliane’s possible location on a satellite map. “I don’t want Galen alone.” He didn’t trust the others in the Cadre not to strike at him through eliminating one of his Seven.

“He would’ve been my choice as well,” Dmitri said. “Other than Galen, Aodhan is the one most used to handling your affairs in the Refuge.” The vampire turned a fraction as Elena walked into the room, and Raphael knew he’d likely curled out a tendril of scent in an effort to get a rise from her. About to tell Dmitri that today was not the time, he saw Elena’s lips curve.

“That hard up for a date, Dmitri darling?” she purred. “I have a number you can call.”

Dmitri’s eyes narrowed, and at that instant, there was nothing of the sophisticated male who was Raphael’s second. Instead, it was the warrior honed in fire who spoke. “You look weak.” It was a condemnation. “You’re in no shape to go into battle beside Raphael.”

Dmitri, take care. A soft warning—Raphael allowed Dmitri to push Elena, because the inescapable fact was, Elena needed to be able to hold her own against vampires and angels alike. Dmitri was the perfect testing ground. But there were some lines he would not allow even Dmitri to cross. It is my consort to whom you speak.

Jaw set, Dmitri parted his lips to reply, but Elena beat him to it. “I might look like shit, but I’m feeling plenty blood-thirsty.” Her voice was a razor. “I’d be happy to demonstrate if you’d like to step outside for a while.”

“I would not damage the Sire’s consort.” Arctic politeness.

Elena put fisted hands on her hips, cheeks filling with color. “Raphael, tell him you won’t do anything to him if I get ‘damaged.’ ”

“That would be a lie, Elena. I would tear out his throat.”

Dmitri’s smile was loaded with provocation. “Too bad, I guess. You’ll have to wait for my touch another day.”

Elena glared at both of them. “No wonder the two of you get along. I’m going to go finish my calls—I just wanted to let you know that a hunter who was in that part of Kagoshima a week ago said he got the creeps the entire time he was there. As if something was telling him to leave or else.”

Raphael met the gaze of the leader of his Seven after Elena left. “You will go too far one day.” Dmitri had proven his loyalty, but Elena was Raphael’s heart. There was no contest.

The vampire shrugged. “She fights better when she’s angry than when she’s hurt.”

The fact that you enjoy baiting her had nothing to do with it?

“Side benefit.” Dmitri’s smile faded the next second. “Sire, if your mother wakes, what do you want me to do?”

Raphael understood what his second was asking. “If she wakes and she is as before, there will be nothing anyone can do.”