Archangel's Heart

36

Elena searched all over the map at his question, found a scratching of words in the corner. “This looks like that angelic language we saw in the Gallery.” She’d have to see if she could learn some of it at least; she hated not knowing things. Then again, every hunter had his or her specialty—ancient languages were more up Honor’s alley.

Leaning in, Aodhan looked carefully at the writing before nodding. “There is no exact date, just the millennium. It was done at least a thousand years earlier.”

“How many Luminata leaders since then? Did Laric mention it?”

“Remus did.” His tone didn’t change as he named the angel who’d sought to break him when he’d been hurt and vulnerable. “After the one Laric spoke of, there have been only two.”

“So it’s not only Gian who’s ruled for longer than the fifty-year-term Luminata are meant to serve. He’s only been leading for four hundred years.”

Aodhan nodded slowly. “Yes, you’re right. Before him, it was Hanjel who held the position. He gave up the title to Gian after deciding he wished to find luminescence walking the hidden roads of the world.”

Elena jerked up her head. “No shit,” she whispered. “I always figured that was an urban legend.” At Aodhan’s curious look, she said, “Over the years, a number of hunters have reported seeing an angel walking along isolated roads and forest trails on bare feet, his wings coated in dust—as if he’d been walking forever. The reports are rare for how long he must’ve been around, so he must stick to really remote regions.”

Shaking off her surprise, she said, “So which one of them began the change?” From Lumia with a heart to Lumia with cold, hidden secrets and violence. From a place where the brothers cheerfully showed their faces to one where shadows ruled.

“Gian,” Aodhan said definitively. “Remus was here during the second century of Gian’s rule and he said the more established Luminata spoke of the difference in management styles. Hanjel was focused only on his own inner luminescence, left Lumia to run itself as it would.”

“While Gian thinks of Lumia as his personal territory.”

“Even if he began it, others had to agree,” Aodhan pointed out. “A man does not stay in power without support.”

“Yes, this is definitely not a one-man show.” She stared at the map. “Okay”—she pointed to a familiar glass dome—“this is the Atrium.”

“And this is where our rooms are situated,” Aodhan hunkered down to touch his finger to the right location.

“The Gallery is already there.” That was a surprise. “Wow, I would’ve placed it at Gian’s feet—it seems a testament to ego that fits him.” The disconnect was another reminder that she had to be careful not to get tunnel vision; Gian was creepy and a liar, but that didn’t mean he was behind the subjugation of the town, for example.

“Perhaps Gian exists because of a subtle sense of superiority that was present in earlier Luminata,” Aodhan murmured. “They’ve been left to live as they would for millennia.”

Elena nodded. “The seeds must’ve been sown over a long period, just waiting for the right Luminata to take it to the next level.” She thought of Donael, of how old he was, how experienced. “It’s even possible Gian is an unknowing puppet.”

“A stalking horse?” Aodhan lifted a shoulder, dropped it in a liquid shrug. “I don’t see Gian as anyone’s fool, but arrogance can be blinding.”

“Yes.” Now that she’d oriented herself within the map, Elena tried to figure out if something was amiss. “Damn,” she said after a few minutes. “We don’t know Lumia well enough to figure out what to look for.”

Aodhan was silent, his attention on the Gallery. Turning the map toward himself, he continued to stare. “We flew through all the levels of the Gallery,” he murmured, as if speaking to himself. “There is no discrepancy with the number of levels, but . . .”

He lifted the map, sending her blades sliding off.

Tucking them back into the various sheaths and taking over the watch so Aodhan could concentrate, Elena waited. Aodhan had very good spatial skills. At last, he gave a curt nod and put the map back down. “Look here, Ellie.”

“It’s a door.” On the bottom floor of the Gallery.

“No, Ellie, it’s a trapdoor.”

Elena’s eyes widened, realization slamming belatedly into her. “And if we were on the very bottom floor, what the hell lies underneath?”

“More importantly, that trapdoor wasn’t covered by a rug or other easily removable object when we were in the Gallery. The entire floor was smooth marble.”

“What’s the best place to bury something?” Elena whispered. “A place that no one knows even exists.” Her heart thundered.

Was she looking at her grandmother’s grave? The graves of countless other men and women taken from the town because Luminata wanted them—or as with Majda’s vampire husband—because they stood in the way of someone else the Luminata coveted?

“Ellie.” Aodhan’s voice was gentle, his wings sparking wildly in the firelight. “You must make no assumptions. If it was a burial place for a mortal, no one would care.” The harsh words made her flinch then stiffen her spine. “You know what most immortals think of mortals, and you’ve seen evidence of how the Luminata treat the people of the town.”

Elena fought not to strike out at him—she knew he didn’t believe the same, was just giving her the perspective she needed to keep in mind. “So what the fuck is down there that has Ibrahim lying in anshara?” Because it was the map that had caused the angel to be beaten to a pulp, of that Elena had no doubt. “He gave us this and he paid for it.”

“It could be the Sleeping place of an angel, one that is known to the older Luminata,” Aodhan pointed out. “If so, we have no right to disturb it.”

“But if it was that, all anyone had to do was drop a word in Raphael’s ear and none of us would’ve gone near it,” Elena said. “Why beat Ibrahim so badly?”

“Ibrahim could’ve been beaten for some other, totally unrelated reason. Such as the fact he fell afoul of a Luminata who wished to take an unwilling man or woman from the town.”

Elena hadn’t even thought about that option, and damn it, she could see innocently hopeful Ibrahim being shocked by such an abuse of power.

Glaring at Aodhan, she said, “Stop being a devil’s advocate.”

A faint smile. “Your Bluebell is not here, so I must carry the banner.”

“Ha ha. How did you know about what the Luminata are doing in the town anyway?” She hadn’t had a chance to brief him after their first trip, and he hadn’t come along on the second.

“The sire spoke to me soon after you discovered the spyhole in your quarters.” He touched his temple to indicate how Raphael had contacted him.

Rolling up the map after biting back a snarl at the memory of that hole, she slipped it into the crossbow bolt sheath once more. “We have to find out if there’s another way to get underneath that final level of the Gallery and we only have until the storm passes.” Soon as the lightning stopped, the Cadre would have to move. Bloodlust across China was a far more lethal threat than the insanity of a small, power-mad cult.

Aodhan appeared thoughtful. “I can ask Laric what he knows. Before Lumia changed, he didn’t always stay in his tower. He used to walk the hallways and talk sometimes with a few others who know the hand language.”

“He can’t vocalize at all?”

“No, the scarring is too severe.” A pause. “He says none of the new ones but Ibrahim bothered to learn the hand language if they didn’t know it already. Ibrahim is apparently terrible at languages, but he is dogged.”

The more Elena learned about the hurt novice, the more she liked him. As for the others who hadn’t bothered with a simple kindness for a living being in pain . . . “That’s what happens when the rot comes from the top. People turn into mindless sheep.” She got to her feet. “I want to talk to Hannah, too. She spent the most time in the Gallery, could’ve seen something she doesn’t realize the importance of.”

“Donael will know if there is a hidden part of Lumia beneath the final level of the Gallery,” Aodhan said as they left Laric’s library. “He was here when this map was created.”

“Last resort.” Elena played with a blade to keep her anger under control. “I don’t know if we can trust him, even if he doesn’t give off the creepy vibe.”

“Because if he’s been at Lumia so long,” Aodhan murmured, “he either knows of the secrets in these walls, or he has stayed deliberately blind.”

“Like you said, Gian didn’t appear in a vacuum. If Donael had stuck up for what was right when Gian began to take control—or even earlier, when Lumia first began to change, we might not be here today.” A focus on personal luminescence didn’t, in her book, excuse willful blindness to evil occurring right under your nose.

Archangel, she said, reaching out to Raphael, can you tag Elijah, find out where Hannah is? I need to talk to her. She told him what they’d discovered about a possible hidden underground section to the Gallery.

Sea winds kissed her mind moments later. Eli and Hannah are in their suite. It’s almost exactly on the opposite side of Lumia to ours.

Thanks. She followed Aodhan down the staircase.

There is a deep vein of fear within the brothers who live here, Elena, almost as deep as that in the town. It stinks up the air when I speak to those who might have seen Ibrahim in the moments before the attack.

I’ll take care, she said, because while she’d fight him always when he slipped back into seeing her as a vulnerable mortal, she also understood that fear was a new concept to Raphael.

He hadn’t tasted it for eons until he fell in love with her, until he tied his heart to that of a woman who could be wounded or killed by his powerful enemies. After all, Elena worried about him even though he was one of the most violently powerful beings in the world.

Telling Aodhan their new destination just before he opened the door on the lower level of the tower, Elena jerked back at the slap of wind that rattled that door, as if trying to rip it from his grasp. The storm wasn’t just holding, it had increased in size and violence. The lightning now fell like rain, punching into the earth over and over, and where it hit, it left behind only scorched earth. The stone walls of Lumia bore several new scars that she could see, but that stone was still holding up under the assault.

Heart thumping at the beauty of the primal display despite the danger of it, Elena looked at Aodhan. “Ready?”

To her surprise, he took her hand, gripped it hard. “Wings tight to your back, body low. The wind is strong enough to blow us off the path if we’re not careful.”

“Wait.” Tugging her hand from his grasp, she unstrapped her crossbow and gave it to him to hold, then pulled out the garrote bracelet she’d stuffed into a pocket at the last minute. It actually had a far longer length of thin wire inside it than was necessary for twisting it around someone’s neck.

She snapped the bracelet into two parts with the wire in between, tied one part to the front end of a crossbow bolt, was about to twist the other end over her own gauntleted wrist when Aodhan held up his. “I’m stronger.”

Because he was, Elena wrapped the metal wire over the top of his gauntlet and gave him this end of the bracelet to hold. They couldn’t afford to tie it to something on the tower side without first knowing if they’d have enough length to make that possible. “Grab on to something.”

After fixing the door open with what looked like a heavy chunk of rock meant for that purpose, Aodhan used his free hand to grip the staircase railing behind them and stretched out his body so that she had as much wire to play with as possible. And she shot the bolt. It went at too fast a velocity for the wind to impact, slamming home safely on the wall of the hallway at the end of the path.

While Aodhan maintained his position, arm muscles rigid, she quickly unwrapped the wire from his gauntlet, then together, the two of them got it hooked around the stairwell railing. The length proved just enough. The only problem was that the metal was so thin it’d shred their hands if they gripped it with bare palms. “I have an idea.” Racing upstairs, she cut out two pieces of Laric’s old rug using one of her knives, came back down.

Aodhan took one look at what she held and nodded. “I’ll go in front. Use my body as a wind shield and grip the back of my pants.”

Two seconds later, they headed out. And Jesus, the winds were brutal. A gust actually lifted Elena off her feet at one point, only her dual grip on the wire and on Aodhan keeping her on the path. Face and body wet on one side from the driving rain, she stumbled into Aodhan on the other end, colliding with the soft smoothness of his wings. “Sorry.”

He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her firmly out of the wind.

“The wire,” she said, pushing damp strands of hair out of her eyes. “I was going to cut it at this end, but with the ferocity of the wind, it could whip around and accidentally garrote someone.”

Putting a bare hand on the wire, Aodhan released a touch of the same energy she’d witnessed him use in battle. It raced along the wire to spark against the stairwell . . . and behind it, the wire disintegrated. “When do I get superpowers?” she muttered, retrieving the bolt she’d shot and sliding it away.

“Perhaps once you’re no longer around the same age as Sam.”

Surprised into laughter and threatening to brain him with her crossbow, Elena forced herself to look away from the wild fury of the storm. She and Aodhan made good time to Hannah and Elijah’s suite, to find Hannah alone but for Cristiano’s languid form, the vampire as loose-limbed as always. Those dark brown eyes, however, they were of a cool-eyed predator who’d eliminate any threat to Hannah or die trying.

“Elijah has gone to join Raphael,” Hannah said to Elena after Cristiano let them in, the vampire and Aodhan staying by the door to talk in quiet tones. “Gian is insisting the violence must’ve come from one of the Cadre’s escorts. He is pointing the finger most strongly at Riker.”

Elena had zero love for Michaela’s vampire guard—and that was a grand understatement, but making him the fall guy was a little too convenient. “He sticks as close to Michaela as permitted,” she pointed out. “When she’s meeting with the Cadre, he lurks outside. So if he beat up Ibrahim, that means Michaela was watching.”

Aimlessly rearranging a vase of flowers, her deep green gown simple and elegant and her hair in a neat knot, Hannah raised an eyebrow. “We both know that could happen.”

“Normally, yes. But Michaela wants out of here—she wouldn’t have countenanced anything that could cause a delay.” She folded her arms. “And I know Riker’s scent. It wasn’t on Ibrahim.”

Nodding, Hannah abandoned the flowers. “Why did you want to speak?”

When Elena told her, Hannah frowned. “Another level below the Gallery? I saw nothing that indicated a hidden area.”

“Are you sure?” Elena pressed. “You were on the map level for a long time. Maybe they forgot something, left it on display.” Visitors, after all, were rare in this place.

Picking up a sketchpad, Hannah began to make strokes with a charcoal pencil that had been lying beside it. Again, it seemed aimless . . . “Oh, damn,” Elena murmured, ice in her own veins. “You’re worried Elijah is going to fly out of Lumia to draw away the storm.”

Hannah swallowed hard, her expression bleak when she looked up from the sketchpad. “He was talking about it before you left, how it was the only option if the storm didn’t abate in the next three to four hours—else Lumia will begin to collapse. Has Raphael said anything?”

“No, but I know he has to be considering it.” Elena had succeeded in putting the possibility to the back of her mind, but faced with Hannah’s fear, her own nipped at her with cold, hungry teeth. “They’re archangels, Hannah. Don’t forget that.” It was as much a reminder to herself as to Hannah.

“I know, but that lightning, it’s not natural.” Shuddering out a breath, the other consort continued before Elena could reply. “I am sure about what I saw on the map level. Absolutely nothing that indicated a hidden level to the Gallery.”

Disappointment sank leaden fingers into Elena’s blood, joining the icy knot of fear in her gut. “Damn. It would’ve been nice to have confirmation.”

“I’m sorry,” Hannah said.

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard the name Majda or Jean-Baptiste?” Elena threw out without hope.

But Hannah’s eyes widened.