Archangel's Enigma

10

Swallowing to wet her dry throat, she said, “Is it possible for me to refresh myself prior to meeting the archangel? She is not known for her kindness to those who offend her.” An undeniable truth. “I would rather go in looking my best.”

“A wise and intelligent choice.” Xi’s near-black eyes skimmed her dusty form, but there was nothing derogatory in the glance.

No, it was more like a general taking stock of one of his men.

“You have fifteen minutes,” he said. “I will speak to my lady in the interim and tell her I have given you time to recover.” He made a small gesture and a short, sturdy-looking Chinese vampire appeared out of the woodwork to bow deeply toward him.

Andromeda’s heart slammed hard against her rib cage. She hadn’t seen the black-garbed vampire, hadn’t even suspected he was hovering. She’d have to be far more alert if she intended to make it out of here. Following the vampire down the corridor, then another and another and another, she realized he was either deliberately taking her on a circuitous and confusing route, or this citadel was a maze. It didn’t matter—a scholar’s mind was her greatest weapon and Andromeda had long ago learned ways to memorize and retrieve information.

Reaching the room at last, the vampire waved her in. “I will wait for you, honored guest,” he said in one of the major dialects spoken in Lijuan’s territory, then began almost immediately to repeat the words in French.

Andromeda held up a hand. “I understand.” Like most angels, even the youngest, she spoke multiple languages. However, as a scholar who wished to work at Jessamy’s side, she was expected to learn every single one that might be used by mortals and immortals both, including those languages that had fallen slowly out of favor.

For how can a Historian keep a true record if she doesn’t hear and understand all of the voices, even the quietest?

Jessamy’s words the day she’d explained the importance of language studies to a young Andromeda who was a novice at scholarship but who wanted so desperately to learn. Andromeda’s current retention rate was fifty-eight percent and included all the major world languages, as well as about a third of the minor ones.

Also remaining on her list were the subdialects, as well as certain languages spoken only in isolated pockets of the world, and the “dead” tongues. Of course that percentage would never hit a hundred—language was a living organism that changed from day to day, year to year, century to century.

Even Jessamy considered herself only ninety-eight percent proficient at any given time.

“I won’t be long,” she said to the vampire and closed the door behind herself.

The room she’d been given was elegantly appointed in dark gray with touches of jewel blue, and to her surprise, it had a window large enough to allow an angel to fly out. When she opened the latch, the window swung outward, letting in cool outside air that settled like a balm on her strained skin.

In front of her were rolling fields full of wildflowers that appeared undaunted by summer’s absence, beyond them trees resplendent with fall foliage that glowed in the soft morning light. While Andromeda had no idea of her exact location, the fact that the landscape appeared mountainous, when added to the noticeable chill in the dawn air, suggested that this part of Lijuan’s territory would turn snow white come winter.

It would be much more difficult to escape in snow, or icy, torrential rain.

The flowers beckoned at her to take a step, fly free.

The window was beautifully convenient.

It was as if Xi wanted her to fly out.

Leaning out with her hands tightly gripping the windowsill, she drew in a long breath, doing her best to make it seem that she was simply enjoying the view. As she did, she took in everything around her. Still, she’d have missed it if she hadn’t trained under Dahariel, and later, under Jessamy.

Dahariel had taught her how to assess a threat situation.

The Historian had taught her not only to look, but to see.

What Andromeda saw was that the fields might be empty but the same couldn’t be said for the sky. It wasn’t that she spotted any wings or caught a glint off a sword strapped onto a body high above. No, what she saw was a single feather float down to land on the grass not far from her window. That feather was small, could’ve been of a bird except that it was a pale yellow streaked with blue.

A very distinctive coloration identical to that of Philomena, one of Lijuan’s generals.

Only a fool would expect to beat Philomena and her squadron on their own terrain.

Pushing away from the window, Andromeda walked to the bed to see a change of clothes laid out for her. Had she given it any advance thought, she might’ve expected the garments to be delicate—and wholly impractical for escape purposes—courtier clothing, but the outfit was formed of tunic and pants, of a style she might have chosen herself. The hip-length tunic’s design echoed that of a cheongsam, the fabric lush midnight blue silk hand-printed with tiny white flowers. The pants were loose and white and cuffed at the ankles.

Stark and lovely both—and clearly tailored for her body.

The underwear placed beside it in a discreet cloth bag was still in its packaging . . . and also of the correct size. It made her wonder exactly how long Xi’s people had been watching her from the shadows, just waiting for the opportunity to grab her.

Feeling painfully vulnerable, she bathed quickly before getting into the new garments. A little fiddling and some creative use of strips of fabric torn from her dirty and already damaged gown and she managed to hide her blades along either side of her hips, under the waistband of the pants. She’d taken care to rip the gown along tears created by the net when she was first kidnapped, so there was no reason it should arouse suspicion.

As for this outfit, the pants were light enough that they wouldn’t hamper her should she need to run, though she would’ve preferred a color other than white; her best chance of escape would be at night, when no one would expect a scholar to venture out into the unknown.

That, however, was a problem for later.

For now, she had to survive Lijuan.

Having washed her hair, she tamed it into a neat knot at her nape while it was still wet and manageable, then slipped her feet into the provided slippers of white silk before opening the door. “Thank you for waiting.”

The vampire bowed again and turned to lead her onward. The corridors through which they walked were wide and, thanks to myriad windows, full of morning sunlight. Art lined the walls: fine pencil drawings and detailed paintings of parts of Lijuan’s territory intermingled with small but intricate tapestries. Flowers sat fragrant and lovely in large porcelain vases almost as tall as Andromeda.

“Oh.” She couldn’t help herself when she saw one particular vase. Touching her fingers to the masterwork by an angel long lost, she felt her heart weep. Lijuan had lived so long, seen so much beauty, been a patron of it . . . how had she become this twisted nightmare?

“Honored guest.”

Swallowing the sudden lump in her throat, Andromeda rejoined her escort.

The light-filled and gracious atmosphere of the citadel began to change in slow degrees the closer they got to the center. Darkness licked at the edges like a crawling beast, creating pools of shadow the leadlight lamps set into the walls seemed unable to penetrate. There was no longer any natural light. And the flowers . . . they were wrong.

Instinct told her they’d come from stock identical to the flowers she’d seen earlier, but a dark power had warped these blooms after they’d been picked, the same maleficent energy that made the hairs rise on Andromeda’s arms and on the back of her neck and that caused nausea to churn in her gut.

Girding her stomach, she took care that no part of her touched the shadows . . . at least until they grew so thick not even a child could’ve avoided them. Cold whispered over her feathers and her skin where the shadows found purchase, and it was a cold that made her think not of winter, but of the grave and of dead, decaying things.

She tried to tell herself it was just her imagination, but the mute courtiers she passed in the corridors, their faces pinched and skittering fear in their eyes as they walked rapidly in the opposite direction, argued otherwise.

“We are here, honored guest.” Her escort stopped in front of a set of large doors that had been opened outward. Two vampires stood guard, both dressed in dark gray combat uniforms embellished with a single stripe of red down the left side.

The same colors as those in Xi’s wings.

As Lijuan had used these colors since her ascension, it made Andromeda wonder if the archangel had paid a young Xi particular attention because of his patriotic coloring. Had Xi’s future been written the instant his wings settled into their final coloration?

If she survived this meeting, perhaps she’d ask Xi.

In front of her, the guards didn’t so much as appear to breathe. One was a square-jawed and blue-eyed blond, the other dark-eyed and black-haired, his features angular, but they’d clearly been tempered in the same merciless crucible, their eyes without pity.

Walking past the two and leaving her guide outside, Andromeda found herself in a cavernous space that contained only a single piece of furniture. It was a throne carved of jade, the shades within spanning the spectrum from creamy white to a green so dark it was near black. Set atop a dais reached by five wide steps, it was spotlighted by the gentle golden light of the standing lamps set behind it. The soft lighting brought up the warmth in the jade, made the carvings glow.

Drawn to what was surely a treasure beyond price, she glanced around but saw no one else. She couldn’t resist. Going up the steps, she didn’t touch but bent to closely examine the carvings. Eerie, haunting, and disturbing in equal measures, they made her fingers itch once again for a pencil and a paper so she could record what she was seeing.

“Astonishing, is it not?”

The spectral voice was filled with a thousand echoes, with endless screams. As if behind that voice stood countless trapped souls. Spine threatening to lock as her skin iced over, Andromeda shifted on her heel to look around, but the metal disk on the opposite wall reflected only her own image back at her.

That meant nothing. Not when it came to the Archangel of China.

Abdominal muscles clenched tight, she walked down the steps and, making the decision to face the throne, clasped her hands in front of her. “Yes, my Lady,” she said. “I apologize if I overstepped.”

“It is to a scholar’s credit to be curious.” A frigid rush of air and then Zhou Lijuan appeared on the throne in a whisper of light and shadow that Andromeda’s mind struggled to comprehend.

Lijuan’s wings had always been a glorious dove gray, beautiful and elegant. The color had suited her age and her power. Those wings spread out behind her, as elegant and as flawless as always, and for an instant, Andromeda thought Lijuan was back to who she’d been before the battle with Raphael.

Then she saw eyes swimming in blood . . . and she saw absence.

There was no evidence of legs under the gown of red silk that flowed from Lijuan’s painfully thin shoulders. No indication of bones pushing against the skirt, nothing but emptiness. Her left sleeve hung equally hollow at her side.

Andromeda’s stomach twisted.

If Lijuan’s legs and arm—and possibly other parts of her that Andromeda couldn’t see—hadn’t yet grown back, then Raphael had done a kind of damage no one could’ve predicted when it came to a confrontation between an archangel who hadn’t yet reached his second millennium, and a near-Ancient. It also meant Lijuan was far more dangerous than even Andromeda had anticipated.

A woman who believed herself a goddess would not appreciate the daily, and excruciatingly painful, reminder of weakness.

At least, but for her eyes and her thinness, the archangel’s face seemed as it had always been. The same blade-sharp cheekbones, the same pearlescent eyes, the same ice-white hair. Her skin appeared fragile but that—

Andromeda choked back a scream.

Lijuan’s face had turned into a skull, her eye sockets black hollows crawling with maggots that screamed. It lasted a split second before her face was normal again, but Andromeda would never forget the horror. Raphael’s right temple now bore a vibrant and ancient mark in a wild blue lit with white fire, while the newest reports from Titus’s territory said he was developing a stunning tattoo-like marking in deep gold across the mahogany of his broad chest, but none of the archangels had developed anything so macabre.

Of course, no one had seen Charisemnon in months. And Michaela . . . she’d been missing from public view as long, highly unusual for a woman known for her love of the camera. Andromeda could’ve asked Dahariel, who was reputed to be Michaela’s lover, but Andromeda and Dahariel’s relationship was a small, tightly defined thing. He taught her to fight and if she asked, he spoke to her about angelic politics and how to understand the complexity of it.

That was all. And it was all it would ever be.

Lijuan’s face changed again, and this time Andromeda couldn’t hold back her gasp. If the first change had been horrific, this was so far beyond beauty as to bring tears to the eye and make the heart hurt. The Archangel of China glowed from within, the light of her power a blinding white that made her luminous with a fierce, primal sense of life that reminded Andromeda of Naasir. Lijuan’s features seemed softer, her eyes sparkling, her eyelashes deeper and thicker.

It was as if Andromeda was seeing a glimpse of the angel Lijuan had once been.

So perhaps . . . perhaps the other was who she would eventually become.

Naasir fed rather than rested. He didn’t kill, didn’t harm. He just made his way to the outskirts of a small, isolated village and smiled at a maiden out in her fields; she smiled back at him, her lips parting. When he walked up to her, she didn’t run and he could hear her pulse thudding, her scent changing as her body readied itself for him.

“I am hungry.”

Shivering at his words, she angled her neck and he drank, one of his hands cradling her head as her breath came in harsh gasps and her eager body pumped more and more of her rich, hot blood into his mouth.

He was gentle, didn’t gorge or take more than she could afford to give, and when he was done, he made sure she’d bear no marks. He always treated his food well, aware that without food, he’d die. “Thank you.”

She gripped at his wrist, stars in her eyes. “Will you return?”

“No.” Lying to his food wasn’t good treatment, so he didn’t do it. “Don’t wait for me.”

Two fat tears rolled down her face. Leaving her watching wet-eyed after him, he disappeared back into the woods, rejuvenated from her gift of blood. He’d had countless similar conversations in his lifetime. When he was a child, he’d fed from Dmitri or Raphael or Keir. At the time, he hadn’t understood the depth of the honor he was being given. He’d known only that three men who were very definitely not food, were allowing him to feed from them—as a result, he’d been on his best behavior.

All three were also so powerful that he’d only needed a sip once every two days at most. It would’ve lasted even longer had he been able to feed more deeply, but he’d been small, only able to handle a tiny taste of such potent blood. Dmitri was the one he’d gone to most often. The older vampire had disciplined him more than anyone else, but Naasir liked that, liked knowing Dmitri cared enough to teach him things. When he’d needed to feed, he’d found Dmitri and Dmitri had held out his wrist.

Never once had he withheld it, not even when Naasir was in trouble.

The times when all three men were gone from the Refuge, he was meant to feed from Jessamy, but in his childish mind, he decided she was too weak to spare blood, and so forced himself to drink the bottled backup blood Dmitri stocked for him.

All that changed as he grew into a bigger boy, then almost a man. He’d discovered that girls liked him. And not just girls. Women, too. Vampires, angels, mortals when he snuck out into the world, women of all ages and races were drawn to him. Their scents melted when he neared.

Suddenly, he had more food than he could ever consume, even if he gorged.

Not that he hadn’t tried.