Archangel's Enigma

34

Naasir bared his teeth when he saw he’d slowed the Brotherhood just enough that none of the bolts reached Andromeda. The instant he’d confirmed she was safely out of range, he swung up into the trees and ran.

Bolts came up into the foliage but the wing brothers couldn’t move as fast as he could and the bolts thudded in where he’d been seconds before. Trusting Andromeda to go in the same direction, he headed right back to the village. It was the fastest way through to the other side.

He wasn’t arrogant, well aware the wing brothers were some of the most highly trained warriors in the world. The only reason this had worked was because they thought Andromeda a scholar despite her sword, and hadn’t been watching her as carefully. The backup she’d offered had given him just enough of an edge—one more minute and the fight would’ve turned against them.

His heart pumping at full strength, he’d crossed the village using the trees on one side, well before the sentinels’ cries alerted the fighters left within. He saw them mustering behind him, heading in the wrong direction, but he didn’t drop his alert status; the wing brothers were scattered throughout this area, were no doubt also in the caves themselves.

His muscles were tight, his lungs burning but he kept going.

There were no trees in the final stretch to the caves, the sunlight bright on the fine desert sand. Even at his speed, a sniper positioned atop the cave system might take him out. If he ran in this skin. Not being stupid, he stripped and slipped into a skin that was his own, but that he hadn’t yet shown Andromeda.

He wanted to surprise her.

To anyone watching, he was now a striped mirage they couldn’t quite focus on. Thanks to the pack he decided not to abandon, a sniper did still spot him, but his aim was off by several feet. Naasir was never where he should be, the combination of his speed and the fact that his body was lower to the ground, not to mention his natural camouflage, making him the perfect predator.

He only stopped once he was on top of the mountain that hid the cave system, far from the frustrated sniper. Finding a supply of water by following his nose until he located a hidden stream, he threw some on his face before taking a drink, then pulled on his pants.

His senses cut out to below-human levels the next instant.

He had to wait for his heartbeat to settle before he could track Andromeda. It was frustrating, but at the pace he’d run, his body needed time to “recalibrate.” Keir had said that to him when he grew old enough to understand such words and things—apparently, his unstable state after a sudden full-strength burn was a design flaw. But since the flip side was incredible speed unseen in any other terrestrial being, four-legged or two, Naasir didn’t usually complain.

Today, he had to fight fury.

The instant his blood stopped rushing through his ears and his heartbeat settled, his senses flickered back to life. It took him mere seconds to catch Andromeda’s scent.

Loping over the mountain’s craggy surface in his secret skin and staying low again, he looked down to find her just below an outcrop. He grinned; his mate was clever. She was hidden from aerial view and she was nowhere near the cave mouth the wing brothers had to be watching.

About to jump down, he remembered Honor’s shock that day he’d jumped onto her balcony, and looking around, found two small pebbles and threw gently. When they hit Andromeda’s shoulders and she jerked up her head, her smile at seeing him was luminescent.

Jumping down to join her, he cupped her cheek with a clawed hand slightly chafed from his low-ground lope. “Did you get hit?”

She shook her head and threw her arms around him, holding on tight. He wrapped his own arms around her and squeezed, breathing in her scent. Her life.

Drawing back after a long time, she pushed at his shoulders. “A chimera? And you couldn’t have told me? You pretended it was a ridiculous thing!”

“The one in the legends is ridiculous,” he grumbled. “A lion with a goat’s head on its back? What idiot thought that up?”

She glared at him, then blinked and shook her head. “You weren’t an ordinary tiger, were you?” she whispered, seeming to notice his secret skin for the first time.

He realized at that instant that Andromeda saw him, regardless of the skin he wore.

Gentle fingers brushing over his chest, her honeyed skin dark against skin of a silvery white striped with black that made him all but impossible to spot in the glare of sunlight.

“A white tiger?” An even softer whisper.

He grinned as he allowed his usual skin to emerge. “It’s a good skin for daylight, but I don’t look ‘human’ when I wear it, so I normally wear my night skin.” One came from the boy. One from the tiger cub. Both belonged to Naasir now.

“You are a walking, talking impossibility.” In spite of the temper in her eyes, she kept stroking his hair, his shoulders.

“There’s a reason for that, a reason my kind doesn’t exist in nature.” He made her spread her wings so he could confirm she hadn’t been hit. Walking around to check the surface of her wings, he said, “I could as easily have been an insane beast or a crippled monster.”

Pain and vicious fury tore through him so suddenly that he had to press his chest to Andromeda’s back and bury his face against her neck. “There were many before me . . . my brothers and sisters in a way, though we were never alive together. I saw many of their twisted skeletons.”

Andromeda’s hands closed over his where he had them locked around her waist.

“Osiris executed all the others when they proved flawed. Of three thousand attempts, I was the only one who was physically whole and appeared sane.”

Andromeda’s fingers trembled. “He killed three thousand children?”

Nuzzling her, Naasir shook his head. “He killed six thousand children. Not all wore a human skin.” Like the tiger cub who had given Naasir his secret daylight form. “To be a chimera requires two ‘base’ entities, one human, one other.”

Tears rolled down Andromeda’s face. “How? Why wasn’t he stopped?”

Hugging her close, rocking a little, he said, “I will answer all your questions, Andi, but we must first complete our task.”

Wiping away her tears as he went around to pull on his T-shirt, his mate nodded. “I saw a possible entry into the cave system when I flew over. It looks like it’s relatively new, perhaps caused by a rockfall or a small earthquake, but it could still be a trap.”

“Show me.”

They crawled over the rough, craggy landscape, Naasir on alert for any wing brothers who might be posted this high, and Andromeda having to be careful not to get her wings caught. “There.” She pointed up ahead.

“Watch our backs.” Leaving the sole surviving pack with her, he went to the hole in the mountain.

The blazing sunlight made him wish he’d kept on his secret skin, but it worked best when he was naked, with nothing breaking the pattern. He didn’t particularly want to be naked on craggy rocks that tore at his clothing and scratched his arms.

“So?” Andromeda asked when he returned.

“There are no scents around it from living creatures. The wing brothers apparently do not yet know of this new entrance.”

Crawling with him to the hole, she winced. “It’s going to be hell on my wings. Angels aren’t meant to go through small holes into underground caverns.”

He scowled at the idea of her being hurt. “Wait and I’ll incapacitate the wing brothers inside, then you can walk in.”

“That’ll take too long—we have no idea how many of them are inside.” A determined smile. “A few scrapes won’t kill me. But you go first so you can cover me from below while I squeeze in. I think there’s more risk down there than out here.”

Naasir had to balance the known danger on top, with the unknown below; he finally decided she was right and the one below was more of a threat. Dropping the pack inside first, he jumped down to the sandy floor of the cavern, then stepped aside and pushed the pack out of the way so Andromeda wouldn’t trip on it.

It took her at least three minutes to get in; her wings were badly scraped, feathers from darkest to palest brown falling around him by the time she succeeded.

Biting back his growl when he saw the extent of the damage and caught sight of the tears she was trying not to shed, Naasir made her stand in place in the light under the hole while he examined her.

“I’m immortal,” she reminded him softly, though her voice was husky with withheld pain. “I’ll heal.”

He bit the tip of her ear. She jumped, then turned to take his face in her hands, her touch gentle. “I’m okay,” she said softly. “Soon as this is over, we’ll find a hot spring and relax.”

She was lying. Naasir caught the minute change in her scent, the break in the rhythm of her pulse. What he didn’t understand was why, but he’d pursue that once they’d completed their task and he’d gotten her to safety. For now, he took her hand and hooked her fingers lightly in the back of his pants after he’d pulled on the pack. “I can see in the dark.” Even in places with zero ambient light.

A result of the mix between chimera and vampire.

“I won’t let go.”

Listening carefully to make certain the wing brothers hadn’t detected them, he began to head down the corridor. When they reached a fork, he said, “Right or left?” At this point, he had no scents to use as a guide, so they had to rely on Andromeda’s research.

“Right.” Her wings rustled in the pitch-dark. “We’re on a slight upward gradient—to get to Alexander, we need to head downward and to the north. That’s the rumored location of the lava chasm.”

Naasir kept her words in mind at the turns that followed.

“Can we talk?” Andromeda whispered after the third turn.

He understood what she was asking. “Yes. The caves and tunnels are structured in a way that sound won’t travel if we keep our voices low.”

“I feel trapped.” Andromeda’s fingers tightened their grip. “In a space this narrow and compact, I’m all but useless.”

He thought of the wings that made her so beautiful in the sky and knew she was right. Here, those same wings were a serious handicap. “You’ll still fight,” he said, her courage an indelible part of her. “You won’t allow your feelings of claustrophobia to trap you.”

“No.” She released a breath he felt ripple along the air currents. “Thanks, that helped.”

Reaching behind him, he squeezed her wrist before dropping his hand. “Shall I tell you about Osiris and about how I came to be?”

A long pause. “No. Tell me in the light, under the sun and in a place that speaks to your soul.”

He wanted to kiss her; his mate saw the wildness in his heart, understood that while he could navigate dark places, his choice was to live in the wind and the sun, the rain on his face and grass underfoot. “I have a special place I stay at near the Refuge,” he told her. “About fifteen minutes’ flight for you—it’s in the forests that begin lower down the mountains.” The Refuge itself was full of mountain wildflowers and other foliage, but had few tall trees.

“Really?” Andromeda’s voice held a hunger to know him that was a verbal caress. “Did you build it in the trees?”

Yes, she understood him, his delicious-smelling mate. “Aodhan helped me design it.” The angel was young to Naasir’s way of thinking, but his mind saw in intricate patterns and shapes. “It’s a house perched high in a tree and it opens out on all sides.” Letting in the wind and the sun.

“There’s a landing platform for my winged friends.” He hadn’t told many of his secret home, and all those who knew were careful never to give away its location. “The tree trunk is so straight and high, with so few lower branches that no one who isn’t like me can climb it. If my vampire friends want to visit, I drop down a rope ladder.”

“What about inside? Where do you sleep?”

“In the rain and snow, I make a nest inside, but when the sky is clear, I sleep in a hammock strung out between branches outside.” Where he could look up at the stars and listen to the forest. “It’s warm because Illium hid small panels near it that catch the sunlight and release it at night.” He reached back to touch her wrist again. “I’ll make the hammock bigger, big enough for your wings.”

A sucked-in breath behind him, before Andromeda whispered, “I’d like to see your home.”

“I’ll take you, after.” If she wanted to put her things there, he wouldn’t say no. It was his territory, but he’d share it with her. He wanted her scent in his space, on his things. “I only have a few books,” he admitted. “Things Jessamy gives me so I’ll have knowledge—but I prefer to get my knowledge from listening to people.”

“You must have an acute memory.”

“Yes.” It was apparently an inborn gift that came from the bloodline of the boy who was part of his self. “From the hammock, you can see the stars at night, so clear and bright, and sometimes, you can see the wings of passing squadrons.”

“They don’t spot you?”

“The hammock is too small to see from up high and the house itself is camouflaged in the branches, part of the tree.” As if Aodhan had plucked the image straight out of Naasir’s thoughts. “Aodhan says there is no other house like it in the world.”

“He has such incredible talent.” Andromeda’s voice held a heavy vein of sadness. “Something terrible happened to him, didn’t it?”

Naasir knew exactly what had happened to Aodhan. He’d helped Raphael track down the younger man—who he thought of as a cub in their family unit. That cub had been so badly damaged by the time they found him that Naasir had gone a little insane in vengeance. He wasn’t sorry. No one touched Naasir’s family and walked away unscathed.

“He’s smiling again.” It made Naasir happy to remember that and he knew it would make Andromeda happy, too. “He played a trick on Illium when Illium teased him too much.”

“I’ve never seen Aodhan do anything like that.”

Naasir grinned. “He’s Illium’s best friend for a reason.” Naasir had been a hundred and twenty the first time he met the two. He still hadn’t been full-grown, but he’d been old enough to know that two tiny angel cubs shouldn’t be diving off a steep cliff into a pond below.

When he’d caught them by the scruffs of their necks, the two wet boys had wiggled like squirmy fish in an effort to get away. He’d growled and carried them straight to Jessamy. The memory was one Andromeda would like. He’d share it with her later, he thought, just as she said, “Tell me about Aodhan’s trick.”

Naasir wanted to laugh at the cleverness of it. “He snuck into Illium’s room while Illium was asleep. Normally Illium would wake at once”—the squirmy cub had grown into a seasoned warrior— “but his mind would’ve known Aodhan was no threat, so he slept on.” As Naasir would sleep on if Andromeda was in the room.

“Waiting until Illium turned over onto his front, Aodhan painted words on the outer surface of his wings with a special ink that soaked in but dried without leaving a sticky feeling. When Illium woke, he didn’t notice anything.”

Andromeda giggled. “What did Aodhan write?”

“Well, when Illium went out to join his squadron commanders for a drill, they patted him on the shoulder and said, ‘Sorry, you’re not my type’.” Naasir had seen it all from his vantage point on a balcony.

“Don’t keep me in suspense.” Andromeda thumped him playfully on the shoulder.

Naasir grinned. “Free Bluebell kisses on offer.”

Andromeda stifled a snort.

“The best part was that the ink didn’t wash off, not for three days. Illium finally hunted Aodhan down and had him ink out the words so it just looked like he had splotches of black on his wings.”

“Will Illium retaliate?”

“Of course.” Illium’s accident, Naasir knew, would’ve terrified Aodhan. “But they will always be friends, no matter what tricks they play on each other.” Naasir had a feeling nothing would ever sever that bond. The two were incapable of betraying one another.

“Do you have a friend like that?” Andromeda asked, a wistfulness to her tone.

“I have family. I have friends.” Far more than he’d ever imagined he might have when he’d been a feral boy who didn’t understand what it meant to be civilized. “Janvier and Ashwini see me, understand me, are my friends.” Like the others in the Seven, as well as Raphael, they had never asked him to be anything but exactly what and who he was. “But they belong to each other first.” As it should be. “I will be always-friends with my mate.”

Andromeda’s voice was small. “She’ll be a lucky woman.”

He scowled; who did she think he was talking about? Before he could challenge her, however, he caught the first traces of a scent. “We have to be quiet now,” he murmured. “This scent is old but it means the wing brothers patrol here.”

The tunnel widened soon after that point and Andromeda was able to walk next to him, her hand in his. His eyes penetrated the darkness as if it was nothing, but he knew that for her, it must be a stygian nothingness. Yet she walked into it without flinching.

Lifting her hand to his mouth, he kissed her knuckles.

Her wing brushed over his back in a silent, affectionate response just as the darkness of the tunnel became suffused with a soft light.

Hearing nothing and scenting nothing fresh, Naasir continued on until they found the source of the light. It was inside a large cave—part of the roof was slightly cracked. Not enough to allow access, but enough for a shaft of sunlight to spear in.

“We’re still far too high,” Andromeda said, her lips brushing his ear. “We need to go deeper.”

Nodding, Naasir did a careful scan of the cave. “That’s the easiest downward option.” He pointed to the tunnel entrance across the cave. “No fresh scents, but old ones are buried within.”

“A trap?”

“My gut says yes.” He and Andromeda walked across with utmost care. He felt the minute change in the slope of the sand beneath their feet an instant before Andromeda put her foot forward.