Archangel's Enigma

33

“The silver-eyed beast.” Despite the description, the leader’s voice held no insult as he lowered his weapon. “How many of my men did you kill?”

“None—there was no need.” Naasir shrugged. “They’ll have headaches when they wake if they haven’t already. You should remind them never to forget to look up, even if there are no wings in the sky.”

A slight incline of the leader’s head. “A point well made.”

Andromeda appeared out of the trees right then, her dark brown pants dusty and the paler brown of her fitted tunic bearing a streak of dirt. Her eyes went to Naasir, skimmed over him, the tense lines of her only easing once she’d taken in his uninjured state. Naasir wanted to preen at having a mate who cared, and he wanted to nuzzle at her to ease her worry. He also wanted to run his hands over every inch of her to confirm that she, too, was unhurt.

“So,” she said, sword held out at her side and eyes on the sentinel leader, “we’re all here and not attempting to kill one another. Why don’t we go back to the village? I need some coffee.”

Naasir didn’t dispute her suggestion. Until they convinced the sentinels of their intent, they’d get exactly nowhere. “You know who I am,” he said to the leader of the sentinels. “This is Andromeda.”

“I am Tarek,” the other man replied, his skin smooth over angular cheekbones and his jaw shadowed with dark stubble. “We will head to the village, but do any harm to the villagers and our agreement is void.” When he pulled down the scarf to allow it to lie loosely around his neck, his hair proved to be not black but a dark brown threaded with gold.

“We have no cause to harm anyone,” Andromeda said and the three of them walked back to the village, the other sentinels no doubt at their backs.

The villagers looked at them with wide eyes when they walked in, though a barefoot child with dark hair and skin not many shades lighter than Naasir’s, ran straight for Tarek. “Grandpapa!”

The vampire, who looked no older than his third decade and yet who was likely not “grandpapa” but great-grandpapa many times removed, picked up the little girl without breaking his stride and held her with an ease that shouted familiarity. The child peered curiously at Naasir. Her eyes were the same light gray as those of her living ancestor.

Naasir smiled, flashing fangs; the child immediately dimpled and waved. Children liked him. They knew without being told that he wouldn’t hurt them. It didn’t matter if the child wore skin or fur or scales.

Osiris had taken and killed the young of many species without compunction. That was one of the many reasons he had to die. One of the many reasons why Alexander had to execute him.

The latter was a fact Naasir hadn’t known until he was older. He’d always thought Raphael had done it, but Raphael hadn’t been an archangel at the time, and Osiris had been an Ancient’s brother.

“Whatever our later disagreements,” Raphael had said to Naasir a hundred years earlier, “Alexander and I always agreed that Osiris had to die.” A grim tone that echoed the hard line of his jaw. “Alexander’s older brother wasn’t insane. He was just wired wrong and he committed infanticide on a horrific level. Simply because he killed the children of mortals and animals didn’t make his crimes any less terrible—he wiped out entire species in his obsession.”

Naasir knew Osiris would’ve loved to have had an immortal child on whom to experiment—stronger, less apt to die on him—but he’d never been able to father one on the concubines he kept far from his stronghold and only rarely visited. And even he hadn’t been arrogant enough to kidnap an angelic child.

Not then. Had he been allowed to live . . .

Calling out in a subdialect Andromeda didn’t fully understand, Tarek led them to a clearing surrounded by houses on one side and the blue-green waters of the lake on the other. There was a table set up there by the time they arrived, benches on either side. Food and drink was being placed on it by fast-moving men and women.

Suspicion underlay the quick, curious glimpses to which Andromeda was subject, though she noticed the non-warrior women were sending Naasir some very come-hither smiles. Then she saw one of the male sentinels scan Naasir’s body in an unobtrusive but admiring way and knew the interest wasn’t confined to the noncombatants or to the female sex.

She couldn’t blame them; there was simply something about the way Naasir moved that said he’d offer a lover great pleasure. The fact she’d chosen a life of celibacy hadn’t made her blind to sexual attraction, or put her body into stasis, and Naasir . . . Just watching him walk or feeling his breath against her ear when he nuzzled at her aroused her to near-unbearable levels. As for seeing his nakedness when he’d come out of the pond in Lijuan’s territory . . .

Her stomach fluttered, her skin hot.

Another woman gave him a flirtatious smile right in front of Andromeda. Her hand clenched on the hilt of her sword.

None of these doe-eyed beauties, she reminded herself, would last an hour with him in his real skin. He was too wild, too strong, too demanding, and too aggravating.

He was perfect.

While Andromeda was a fool, judging these other women when she, herself, was the most unsuitable of them all.

“We will break bread,” Tarek said as he took a seat on one side of the table after handing off the girl in his arms to a mortal woman of about forty.

Andromeda and Naasir slid in on the opposite bench.

His troops, meanwhile, scattered around the village, but they didn’t go far, clearly ready to go on the offensive the instant either Naasir or Andromeda made a threatening move.

A tiny, steaming cup of hot, strong coffee was placed in front of Andromeda, a fresh bowl of flatbread put in the center of the table. At the same time, a villager brought over two small glasses of blood for Tarek and Naasir, the condensation on the glasses showing the blood had been stored somewhere cold. Leaning in toward Naasir after placing his glass in front of him, the curvy and quite frankly beautiful woman whispered something in his ear, her face falling when he shook his head.

Andromeda knew it must’ve been an offer to feed him, found herself both pleased that he’d turned down the offer and angry because she’d soon be out of his life while countless other women wouldn’t.

In front of her, Tarek lifted his glass after giving the lingering server a sharp look that had her hustling away. “To honor.”

“To honor,” Andromeda and Naasir said together and drank.

Placing her cup back on the table, Andromeda took a piece of the bread and tore off a small bite for Naasir. His consuming the ceremonial piece seemed to please the sentinel leader. Finishing off the blood in his glass then eating a small piece of bread himself, Tarek folded up the sleeves of his sand-colored shirt, the fabric shadowed with slightly darker blotches that allowed him and his men to blend into the landscape.

The tattoo on his left forearm, the lines inked in an impossible silver, caught Andromeda’s eye.

A raven.

That wasn’t a surprise. Alexander’s symbol had been a raven. Legend said that on his ascension, a raven had flown high with him, only to die in the blaze of his power. To Alexander’s people, the raven symbolized courage against all odds. But this particular stylized rendering of a raven . . .

Andromeda narrowed her eyes, sure she’d seen it before.

“You say you are friends,” Tarek said into the quiet, “but you bring Lijuan’s people with you.”

Having caught Naasir’s eye, Andromeda was the one who spoke. “Our task is to find and warn Alexander before the enemy locates him.”

The sentinel’s face grew austere. “In seeking Alexander you break a taboo so old, its origins are lost from memory.”

Andromeda knew her next words could lose this man’s trust and possibly endanger her and Naasir’s lives. “Yes,” she said. “We break a law, but if we don’t, then Alexander will be helpless against Lijuan. You can’t protect him against her.” Even weak as she was, Lijuan could easily annihilate this village—if Xi didn’t take care of that first.

“You will die if beheaded, and once you are gone, no one will stand between Lijuan and the Ancient.” She held the man’s gaze. “We cannot lose him from the world. He is the greatest angelic statesman who ever lived. He stopped wars and created cities that stand to this day. His battle strategies are taught to young soldiers and his political strategies studied by archangels themselves.”

Tarek looked at her very carefully, the intensity of his gaze making the hairs rise on the back of her neck. “How do you know so much of Alexander?”

“I am a scholar.”

The male’s eyes went to Naasir. “I’ve been long from the Refuge, but I know you have never claimed to be a scholar.”

Naasir’s fangs flashed in the sunlight as he grinned. “I can read.” Laughter in his voice. “I am a bloodhound and, like you, a guard dog.”

“You’re so much more,” Andromeda said, unable to keep the words within. “You’re extraordinary.”

“Yes,” Tarek agreed, his tone difficult to decipher. “There is no one else like you—the silver-eyed vampire who has hair and eyes the same unique shade as Alexander’s wings.”

Andromeda frowned at the explicit connection, her thoughts once more on that metallic feather in the Archives.

“Alexander didn’t Make me,” Naasir said, answering the unasked question. “It was his brother, Osiris.”

Andromeda sucked in a breath as Tarek’s expression turned deadly. “Osiris was purged from the family line, all traces of him erased.”

“Except me,” Naasir said unworriedly, accepting a second small glass of blood brought out by an older woman whose smile held simple courtesy.

“Except you.” An unblinking gaze. “How did you survive the destruction of all that was Osiris?”

“I helped that destruction along,” Naasir said before he drank from the glass. “I ate his liver and his heart.” A sideways look at Andromeda. “Osiris kept me hungry to test my strength.”

Andromeda closed her hand over his. “Then he was a stupid angel who deserved to get eaten.”

Smile deep and wide, Naasir wove his fingers into hers and turned back to a grim-eyed Tarek. “I never called Osiris sire and I never would have even if Alexander hadn’t executed him.” Naasir’s loyalty was Raphael’s.

The sentinel stared at him. “Two hundred years ago, I ventured briefly to another part of the world and met a learned man. He told me there were rumors of a living legend, of a chimera with silver eyes who is not one but two, asked me if I knew the origins of it, for only Alexander and Osiris had eyes of true silver and both were gone from the world.”

“Such things are myth.” Naasir’s eyes laughed when Andromeda glared at him.

Lifting her hand to his mouth, he kissed her knuckles, then tipped her gaping mouth shut.

She pursed her lips. “I am not talking to you.” Turning to face the openly amused sentinel, she said, “If you don’t believe we’re here to oppose Lijuan, you should find out what’s happening at Rohan’s palace right now.”

The amusement disappeared. “Is that a threat?”

She held her ground. “I had to tell Lijuan something when she kidnapped me and asked for Alexander’s location. I tried to lead her away from this territory, but given the presence of that squadron, the distraction clearly didn’t take.”

“We got a warning to Rohan,” Naasir added. “He won’t have been caught unprepared.”

“Rohan can look after himself.” A confident statement from Tarek. “But even if you are here to oppose Lijuan, we can’t break our vow and that vow is to hold the line.”

“In that case,” Naasir said, “I’ll have to incapacitate you all.” He sounded like he was joking but Andromeda knew he was dead serious.

“Even the silver-eyed beast can’t take on the heart of the Wing Brotherhood.”

Of course. That’s where she’d seen the tattoo before. Usually on clean-shaven scalps.

Tarek must’ve seen her eyes flick to his hair because he said, “We all take the mark on our eighteenth birthday. Those who leave here shear their hair as a rite of passage, a reminder of the discipline and honor in which they have been forged.”

“Your people have gone far from your homeland.” The reclusive and deadly Wing Brotherhood worked on tasks for various individuals and groups, but always on a contract basis. Until now, no one had ever known from where they came—the guess had been that they belonged to an angel who preferred to stay in the shadows.

“Some of my younger brethren like to fly,” Tarek said. “We do not stop them. All return eventually, for this is home. Often, they bring mates who understand our ways, and who rejuvenate our bloodlines.”

“No one has spoken the secret in four hundred years?” Andromeda whispered. “How can that be?”

“Honor and loyalty and a crucible that does not forgive the weak of soul.” He rose. “You can either fight us or you can leave. We will escort you out.”

Naasir rose, hand linked to hers. “You need to think for today, not stand in the past.”

The leader of the Wing Brotherhood didn’t say anything, just put his hand on the butt of his crossbow. Polite, elegant skin suddenly on, Naasir glanced at Andromeda. “It appears we have worn out our welcome—and Alexander’s guard hasn’t fallen for my bluff.”

She shrugged. “We had to make the attempt.” Meeting Tarek’s gaze, she said, “If you won’t allow us to go to Alexander, then you must warn him yourself.”

An impassive face. “The Ancient Sleeps. No living being can enter his chamber and survive.”

“Not even Lijuan?”

No flicker in his expression. “She may style herself an Ancient, but she is no power in comparison to Alexander.”

“You haven’t seen her since the Cascade began,” Andromeda said, but knew she was wasting her breath—Alexander’s sentinel was too locked into the idea of what should be to see what was happening to the world today.

They walked out with a strong Brotherhood contingent as escort. It was an hour out from the village that Naasir let go of her hand. Dropping her pack, Andromeda had her sword out within the next two heartbeats but was still deathly slow in comparison to him.

Using his claws, he took down three of the wing brothers before they knew what was happening. There was blood but no death, only incapacitation. Andromeda was hampered by the fact she, too, didn’t want to do real damage with the sword, but she wasn’t fast enough or nimble enough to fight the highly trained wing brothers hand-to-hand.

Who, despite the name, were both male and female.

Wanting to ensure she didn’t end up a hostage, she stayed behind Naasir and acted as cleanup for the men and women Naasir pushed off balance or otherwise slowed down; in the end she managed to take down several by whacking their heads with the hilt of her sword. Even in the midst of battle, she took care to use less force with the mortals.

Alexander wouldn’t forgive those who’d fatally harmed his people.

“Andi, fly!”

Everything in her rebelled against the order, against leaving him surrounded by fighters with death in their eyes, but she’d made a promise to obey him in such situations. Gritting her teeth, she put her trust and faith in his skills and took off.

Crossbow bolts fired in her direction in a sharp whistle of air.