Archangel's Consort

30

The last time Elena had set foot in Japan, it had been on the trail of an investment executive—a vampire who’d decided that having served ten years of his hundred-year Contract, he’d now live a life of leisure using the money he’d siphoned from the accounts of his more trusting vampiric clients.

The angel who held the Contract had been “severely angered” by the fact that not only had the vampire broken the agreement, but that he’d used his position in the angel’s employ to swindle others. Elena had been given a “kill if unable to retrieve” order, but she’d brought the idiot back to his angel alive if petrified.

“Thank you, Guild Hunter,” the angel had said in a calm tone that held pure death when she delivered the package. “I will take care of the punishment.”

Elena had pitied the vampire, but the man had dug his own grave when he’d stolen that money. “He’s not dead, you know,” she said to Illium—who stood by her shoulder, listening to the story of the hunt. The fourth member of their party, Naasir, had stayed behind at a small settlement about an hour’s flight from here, hoping to mine further information from the locals. “His angel preferred to punish him in other ways.”

Illium’s face was clean and beautiful in the breeze that swept across the mountaintop where they stood, the blue-tipped black strands of his hair silken against his skin. “Sometimes, death is too merciful.”

“Yeah, but I felt sorry for him anyway. It was a white-collar crime.”

Illium gave her an odd look. “In the human world, such crimes are lightly punished, though they harm hundreds, leading some to choose death out of despair, while the man who beats a single person is considered the worse criminal.”

“Huh.” She stared out at the endless spread of mountain and forest in front of her. “I never thought of it that way.” Frowning, she realized the dark green of the forest wasn’t totally uninhabited—she could just glimpse the distinctively tiled roof of what might have been a temple.

Raphael? She tried to keep the worry out of her mental question. Raphael had landed with her and Illium, told them to wait while he did a preliminary survey, then disappeared into the clouds. That had been over fifteen minutes ago, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t sense the familiar rain of his scent. Archangel?

A glint of gold in the clear blue sky. Shading her eyes, she looked up and felt her heart sigh. Hey, what’s with the silent treatment?

Still no response. Deciding to hold her peace, she watched with aching wonder as he made his way down toward the canopy—his movements powerful, precise, making the act of flying appear effortless. “He’s the most magnificent male I’ve ever seen.” The words just spilled out.

“You wound me, Ellie.”

Her lips curved, but she didn’t take her eyes off Raphael as he circled around the temple before turning to head back to them. “Ah, but you are surely the prettiest.” All eyes of gold and wings of blue, Illium should have been too beautiful, and sometimes she thought he was. What woman would dare walk beside him?

“Prettier than Ransom?” His wing brushed hers as he shifted to nudge at her shoulder with his own.

“Well now, depends if a woman likes eyes the color of ancient Venetian coins, or hair that’s a sheet of ebony silk.” She razzed Ransom about his hair, but it really was gorgeous.

A wash of wind against her face as Raphael backwinged to a landing in front of her. “You prefer the crashing hue of the sea, do you not, Elena?”

“Heard that, did you?” But she wasn’t smiling. “Why didn’t you reply when I was talking to you?” She tapped her head to make sure he understood.

His expression grew watchful. “I heard nothing.” Glancing at Illium, he said, “Did you attempt contact?”

“Once, Sire. I thought you preoccupied when you didn’t answer.” Illium’s face was suddenly that of the man Elena had seen amputate the wings of his foes with pitiless efficiency. “Something in this place attempts to break you away from us.”

Elena stared down at the mountainous terrain. “She can try, but she won’t succeed.” It was a challenge, and when lightning shattered the sheet blue of the sky, she knew the challenge had been heard.

Raphael touched the back of her neck. “Stay close, Elena. You are the easiest to hurt. And this entire region . . . sings to me. She is here, somewhere.”

In response, Elena pulled down his head and took his mouth with fierce, possessive hunger. “You’re mine,” she whispered. “I won’t let anyone take you from me, not that creepy Lijuan and not her.”

Raphael’s bones stood out sharply against his skin, that skin holding a faint glow as he spoke against her mouth. “Come, warrior mine. Let us find her wherever she may Sleep.”

Diving off the mountain with him, Illium on her other side, she kept her senses wide open as they flew to the old tiled roof she’d seen from a distance. As they came close enough to look down at it, she glimpsed the remains of what could well have been the curving arch of a torii guarding the entrance, confirming her supposition that it had been a temple. Or perhaps shrine was the correct word. Now, it stood abandoned.

The forest had encroached over and through it to the extent that vines crawled into windows that had long lost their coverings, while fallen leaves and other debris lay at least a foot deep in the doorway. Most of the roof, too, was covered by vines and mossy growth, while below, the roots of an ancient sakura tree appeared to have slipped under and buckled what might’ve once been a small courtyard.

“Elena, collapse your wings.” Raphael dropped just below her and went vertical, as Illium did the same on her other side.

Realizing what they intended to do, she snapped back her wings. One strong masculine hand closed on each of her upper arms at the same instant—as they came in for a tight landing in the courtyard where people might once have waited to enter the shrine. Or maybe ... Bending down when Illium and Raphael released her, she brushed away the leaves and dirt to uncover traces of a gritty white substance. “I think this might’ve been a sand garden.”

Neither of the men spoke, moving away toward the building. Looking up, she glanced around. Given the size of the shrine, it was possible that the sand garden may have been part of a larger garden—complete with velvet green grass and trees planted after the utmost thought and care alongside a small bubbling stream, perhaps a tiny Japanese maple or two with leaves that would turn a brilliant orange red come autumn.

So quickly nature takes over, she thought, rising to her feet and dusting off her hands. Now, though enough light came in through the canopy that they could see what they were doing, it was soft and shaded by the time it hit the ground, and the roots of several forest giants had not only overwhelmed the sand garden, they appeared to have gone under then cracked upward through the floors of the shrine itself.

Walking to one huge root, she put her hands on the wood and vaulted over, her wings trailing across the knotted surface as she did so. “Find anything?” she called out to Raphael, unable to see Illium.

He glanced over at her from where he stood by the entrance. She took a startled step back. His eyes . . . “Raphael, talk to me.”

That unearthly glow continued to shine unabated as he held out his hand. “Come here, Elena.”

Walking carefully over the twisted and broken remains of two low steps, she reached out to take his hand, let him pull her up beside him. “What do you see?”

That inhuman gaze focused on something in the forest. “I see nothing, but I hear her.”

Raphael.

Elena shivered. “I heard that, too.” Looking down at their clasped hands, she realized the glow from his skin was traveling over hers in a glittering wave. “What’s happening?”

Raphael shook his head, silken strands of midnight black hair sliding across his forehead. “I do not know. But I know that my mind is clearer when you stand beside me.” His eyes continued to smolder with that preternatural fire, as if he was burning huge amounts of power ... to keep Caliane at bay, she realized.

She dropped one of the knives from her arm sheath down into the palm of her free hand. “Do you still want to look inside the shrine? The debris in front of the door isn’t too bad.” What little she knew about Japanese shrines said this was unlikely to have been the main entrance—but from what she’d seen in the air, the front was inaccessible.

“Yes.” He returned his attention to the ruins. “My mother was Cadre. She is adept at games, may well be trying to lure me away from here because it is her resting place.”

Glancing around, Elena frowned. “Where’s Illium? Inside already?”

“I cannot hear him.” Raphael’s tone was sharp.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Elena said, hand tightening on the hilt of her dagger. “Not here, with the static.” But her heart thudded double-time. Not Illium, she thought, not the angel who’d become one of her closest friends.

“Wait.” Raphael held her back when she would’ve headed down to where she’d last seen the blue-winged angel. “I will go first—there are things here you have no hope of defeating.”

“Go.” She wasn’t stupid, no matter that worry for Illium had her frantic. The angel had become one of her people, someone she’d fight to the death to save. “Be careful Archangel.” Because if she loved Illium, what she felt for Raphael was beyond words, beyond her ability to describe. A huge, powerful, near-painful emotion, it simply was.

“Death holds no allure for me, Elena.” The power of him cut against his skin, a cold white fire. “Not when I have yet to sate my hunger for you.” Turning, he walked not to where she’d last glimpsed Illium, but into the bowels of the shrine. “He came in here.”

Following, her entire body on alert, she paused by a long, pitted column that bore flecks of what appeared to be rust-colored pigment and checked in the shadows around its side. Seeing nothing, she continued on, the rustle of her and Raphael’s wings the only—“Wait.” Gripping Raphael’s arm, she stopped him when he would’ve gone farther into the depths of the building.

When he glanced back at her, she leaned forward to brush the dirt off a cracked but still-standing column using her fingers. “Do you see?” It was a whisper.

Raphael reached out to trace the shape of the dragon carved into the eroded surface. “This should not be part of this shrine. Everything about it is wrong.”

“Do you think ... ?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps she is simply remembered as legend in these parts.” Turning again, he walked a few steps into what had been the main room—the roof of which was now almost entirely gone, the sky covered with a filigree of green—and stopped three feet in. “Illium.” Bending, he picked up one startling blue feather edged in silver.

There was a drop of crimson on the very tip.

Half an hour later, they’d combed every single inch of the shrine and the surrounding area and found no further sign of Illium. “You said your mother liked beautiful things,” she said to Raphael as they stood beside the gnarled old root she’d vaulted over not long ago.

Raphael gave a slow nod. “And Illium is very much a man many have desired to collect over the years.”

“He’s not helpless despite the fact that he appears decorative, so that’ll be a surprise.” Folding her arms, she turned toward the being for whom she would walk into hell itself. “You’re also far stronger than you were when she last saw you—you can reach Illium.”

Raphael looked at her for a long, long moment before raising his hand to touch her cheek. “Such faith in me, Elena.”

She closed her fingers over his wrist, his pulse strong and steady under her touch. “I know your heart, Archangel. It gives you more power than you believe.”

Raphael felt a tug of urgency at Elena’s words, a flare of understanding that he couldn’t quite grasp. It was tempting to chase, but experience told him that would only send the whisper of thought further into hiding. Allowing it to fade away for the moment, he focused on the facts at hand. “She took Illium for a reason.”

Elena’s eyes glittered with intelligence, that thin ring of silver luminous in the muted forest light. “A warning.”

“That may be.” However, his mother wasn’t like other mothers. “Or it may be that she grows impatient.”

“She wants you to find her?” Elena frowned and parted her lips ... but the words never came, blades gleaming in her hands even as Raphael sensed the intruder at his back and turned.

A shift in the air, as if something was trying to take shape. For a fraction of a second, he thought it was Caliane, but then the formless being turned into an angel with hair of ice and irises of a strange pearlescent shade that almost melded into the whites of her eyes, giving her the look of an eerie blindness. Her wings were the last part of her body to appear, a silken dove gray that was as exquisite as Lijuan was dangerous.

“Raphael.” Her voice held the same faint echo he’d sensed before, as if there were other voices within her, ghosts trying to reach out. Trying to scream.

“What are you doing here, Lijuan?”

The Archangel of China smiled, and it was nothing even remotely of the world. What Lijuan had become, what she’d “evolved” into, was a nightmare even the Cadre couldn’t quite comprehend. But Raphael understood. Because he’d looked into the face of madness as a child, felt it touch him with featherlight fingers . . . and knew it might one day crash over him in an overwhelming wave.

Elena’s wing brushed his in a silent caress, as if she’d read his thoughts. As if she was reminding him of her promise.

“I won’t let you fall.”

Lijuan’s eyes flickered over Elena’s wings, and there was a faint avarice in her gaze. The most ancient of archangels had a fondness for the exotic and unusual—unfortunately, she liked to pin them up as trophies on her walls. “Your hunter’s wings are exceptional. Unique. Did you know that, Raphael? In all my millennia of existence, I’ve never seen wings like hers . . . or like the young one’s.”

The “young one” was Illium—and Lijuan’s fascination with him was such that Raphael made sure Illium was rarely in her vicinity, and never, ever alone. “You did not come here to talk of wings.”

“In a sense.” Settling her own wings, Lijuan looked around with those eyes that appeared blind. “I remember this place. It was an ancient shrine known only to its disciples. Legend said they worshipped a sleeping dragon.” A shake of her head, her hair blowing back in a wind that touched nothing else. “I didn’t pay it much mind.”

Because a goddess, Raphael thought, had little to fear from small mortal gods. But now, he thought, looking at that ageless visage, she did know fear. Lijuan had evolved ... but Caliane had been millennia upon millennia older than her when she lay down to Sleep. Who was to say that his mother could not vanquish the nightmare that was the Archangel of China?

Lijuan’s eyes settled on Raphael once more. “You always loved your mother,” she said in a sweetness of words that did nothing to hide the death that clung to her like a putrid shade. “So it is unfair of us to expect you to find and eliminate the problem.”

“You are here to kill my mother.” It was no surprise, but he wondered at her speaking to him of it again.

“I am here to kill a monster.”