Archangel's Kiss

17

The other archangel came into sight seconds later, her wings copper in a sky slowly turning from gray to light. He waited as she brought herself to a standing hover in front of him. “The boy?” she asked, her expression haunted by an agony he knew would’ve made Elena’s heart fill with pity, with sympathy.

He was older, harder. He’d seen Michaela end lives on a whim, play with men and angels as one would with chess pieces. But in this . . . she’d earned the right to know. “He will heal.”

A shudder rippled through her body, a body so beautiful that it had made fools of kings and led to the death of at least one archangel. Neha might be the Queen of Snakes, but Raphael was certain it was Michaela who’d helped push Uram to the point of no return, goading him with the most poisonous of whispers.

“Your hunter,” Michaela said, making no effort to hide her dislike, “was she able to pick up the trail?”

“Not beneath the snow. Indications are that the vampire was helped by an angel.” And if that knowledge leaked to the general populace, it would devastate what remained of the Refuge’s equilibrium. “You need to check your people.”

Her face turned to a stone mask, her bones blades against her skin. “Oh, I will.” A pause, her eyes piercing even in the dark. “You don’t think my people are loyal to me.”

“It matters little what I think.” What he believed was that fear alone, shaped by capricious whim, would never foster loyalty. “I must go. Elena will try to trace the scent again when she wakes.”

“She remains as weak as a mortal.”

“Good-bye, Michaela.” If she believed Elena weak, that was her mistake.

He landed beside the Medica with a silence born of a million such landings, the snow hardly lifting around him. The building was serene, empty, but he knew angels and vampires both would return with the rising of the sun, to reassure themselves that Sam lived, that his heart still beat.

Until then, Raphael would watch over him.

Elena woke to the knowledge that she was in an archangel’s arms, the sun streaking its way into the room on gilded fingers. “What time is it?”

“You’ve only slept a few hours,” Raphael told her, his breath an intimate caress against her neck. “Do you feel strong enough to continue the track?”

“Oh, the track’s happening,” she said, stealing a single moment to savor the wild heat of him. “It’s just a matter of how fast I’ll be able to go.” A deep breath and she dragged herself out of bed, her wings held close to her back until she was standing beside it. She turned to find Raphael watching her with those eyes of unearthly blue, his chest naked enticement bathed in sunlight.

“Elena.” A subtle reprimand.

Blushing, she went through a quick but comprehensive warm-up. “Nothing’s too stiff.” Her eyes returned to that magnificent body he wouldn’t let her touch. “I might need a massage at the end of the day, though.”

“That might be a temptation too far.”

Memories stroked into her mind, of his fingers teasing her to ecstasy as that deep voice told her every wicked thing he planned to do. Feeling her body flush, she turned away from a face that could make even a hunter fall into sin, and made her way to the bathroom. A quick shower later, she was feeling a bit more human.

Human.

No, she wasn’t that anymore. But she wasn’t a vampire either. She wondered if her father would find her more acceptable now, or would this make her even more of an abomination in his eyes?

“Go then, go and roll around in the muck. Don’t bother coming back.”

It still hurt, that rejection, the way he’d looked at her from behind the thin metal frames of his spectacles. After her mother’s death she’d tried so hard to be what Jeffrey Deveraux wanted in a daughter, in his oldest surviving heir. Her existence had been a tightrope, one that wobbled constantly beneath her terrified feet. Never had she been comfortable in the Big House, the house her father had bought after the blood, the death, the screams. But she’d tried. Until one day, the tightrope snapped.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

“Your hunger makes mine sing, hunter.”

She stiffened in rejection. “No.”

Turning off the water, she got out and stood with the towel pressed to her face. Was it real, that whisper? It had to be. She’d never forget that low, sinuous voice, that handsome face that hid the soul of a murderer. But she’d forgotten those words, had buried them. The words . . . and what came after.

Elena.

Clean, fresh, the sea and the wind. She clung to it. Hey, I’ll be out soon.

I can sense your fear.

She didn’t know how to answer that, so she didn’t. The scent of the sea, the fresh bite of wind, didn’t disappear. Part of her wondered if he was stealing her secrets, but another part of her was glad he hadn’t left her alone in that home turned butcher’s shop. Raphael?

He appeared in the doorway, a being she’d once shot in terror. A being who now held her very soul in his hands. “You have need of me?”

“How much do you know?” she asked him. “About my family?”

“The facts. I had you fully investigated before the Cadre decided to hire you.”

She’d known that, but now she met his gaze, walling up her suddenly vulnerable heart. He could hurt her so much. “Have you taken more than the facts from me?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re used to taking what you want.”

“Yes.” A slow nod.

Her heart threatened to break.

“But,” he said, “I’m beginning to learn the value of that which is freely given.” Walking across, he ran one hand over the acutely sensitive arch of her wing.

She shivered, caught by the magnetism of an archangel who’d never be anything close to mortal. And then he spoke, his eyes the infinite blue at the deepest part of the ocean, endless and pure beyond description. “I haven’t taken your secrets, Elena.”

Everything crashed open, emotion threatening to tow her under. “That’s not the answer I expected.”

Picking up a towel, he moved behind her and began to dry her wings with slow, soft strokes. Too late she realized that with her holding the towel to her front, her entire back was bare to his eyes.

“The color sweeps up your back.” He slid her hair over one shoulder, pressing a kiss to the delicate skin of her nape.

She shivered, tried to lift her wings so she could slide the towel around her body.

“No.” Stroking his hand down the curve of her spine and over her buttocks, he trailed his fingers back up.

She found herself rising on tiptoe to escape the delicious torment. “Raphael.”

“Will you tell me your secrets?”

Her feet lowered to the ground on a ripple of pain and fear. Leaning back into him, she let her head fall against his chest. “Some secrets hurt too much.”

He ran his hand down her wing again, but this time, the sensation felt more like comfort. “We have eternity,” he said, one arm coming around her neck from the front.

She felt her heart skip a beat at the certainty in his tone. “In that eternity, will you tell me your secrets?”

“I haven’t shared my secrets for more sunrises than you can imagine.” He tugged her even closer. “But until I met you, I’d never claimed a hunter, either.”

There was something strange about scent-tracking through the Refuge. It wasn’t only that she seemed to be developing the ability to track angels—that came and went, the new scents static in the back of her mind—it was that she could feel eyes on her every step of the way. “You’d think they’d never seen a hunter before,” she muttered under her breath.

Illium, walking beside her, vivid interest in his own eyes, took her words for a question. “Many of them haven’t.”

“I guess.” She frowned as she caught a hint of a scent that tugged at her instincts, but it whispered away so fast, she couldn’t pinpoint the elements that made up the whole. “Maybe they’re just checking you out.” Bare-chested and with the lithe muscle of a man who knew how to use his body, he was, as Sara would put it, “deliciously bitable.”

A wicked smile. “Your wings are trailing in the snow.”

Glancing behind her, she saw the white tips encrusted with ice. “No wonder they feel numb.” She pulled the wings back up, realizing they’d entered one of the main thoroughfares. It bustled with activity, but beneath it all was a hum of lethal anger. “Do all vampires know about this place?”

“No, only the most trusted.”

Which made the assault on Sam all the more egregious. But of course, everyone knew the vampire had been nothing but a tool. It was the angel who mattered, the angel who’d be put to death in the most painful way known to immortals—and they’d had a long time to come up with methods of torture. Catching a minute hint of citrus, she angled left, to a section almost free of angelic eyes. “Any orange groves in this direction?”

“No. They’re in Astaad’s and Favashi’s parts of the Refuge.”

Chocolate. Oranges. Faint, so faint.

Going down on one knee, she brushed aside the snow with her bare hand, having learned that while she felt the cold, she was in no danger of frostbite.

“I could dig for you,” Illium offered, crouching across from her, his forehead almost touching hers as he leaned in. One of his feathers floated to the ground, an exotic accent against the pristine white. “Should I?”

She shook her head. “I need to go down layer by layer, in case the snow trapped his—” Her fingers scraped against something hard, colder than the snow. “Feels like a pendant or a coin.” Brushing off the white flecks that melted at contact with her skin, she angled it to catch the light.

Her breath turned to ice in her chest.

“That’s Lijuan’s symbol.” Illium’s voice was low, hard, her laid-back escort replaced by the man who’d amputated his enemies’ wings with clean efficiency.

“Yes.” She’d never forget that kneeling angel with a deaths-head face as long as she lived. “What kind of an archangel uses that as her personal symbol?”

Illium didn’t answer, and she hadn’t really expected him to. Fighting her instinctive urge to throw the disturbing thing into the deepest crevice she could find, she brought the medallion to her nose, and drew in a long breath.

Bronze.

Iron.

Ice.

Oranges glazed in chocolate.

“The vampire touched this.” Wanting no further contact with the artifact, she placed it in Illium’s outstretched hand. “Let’s go.”

“Have you got the scent?”

“I might have.” She could feel it tugging at her, buried beneath all the snow, in constant danger of being melted away if the winter sun turned blazing in one of the rapid transitions she’d come to expect up here.

Pulling on that faint thread, she began to walk. “What’s down there?” Her target was a covered passageway between two neatly shut-up buildings. It appeared a black hole into nowhere.

“A small internal garden.” Illium’s sword made a shushing sound as he slid it out of its scabbard. “The angels who reside here are currently in Montreal, but there should be a lamp burning on the wall.”

“Let’s go.” It got very, very dark less than a meter into the passage, but light appeared at the other end not long afterward. She sped up her pace, exiting into the bright white scene that awaited with a silent sigh of relief.

It was, as Illium had said, an enclosed garden, a private retreat from the world beyond. In summer, it likely overflowed with blooms, but it had a unique kind of charm even in the arms of winter. The fountain in the middle lay still, its two upper basins and pool filled with snow. More snow covered the statues that ringed the pool, some inside, some outside, all caught in motion.

Walking closer, she felt an unexpected delight spark to life inside her—the statues were all of children, each face drawn with a loving hand. “There’s Sam!” she said, seeing a smaller version of the child angel, one foot in the fountain, hands on the rim, pure mischief in his expression. “And there’s Issi.”

“Aodhan used them as models.” At her questioning look, he added, “One of the Seven.”

“He’s gifted.” Each statue was meticulously detailed, down to the torn button on a shirt or the hanging lace of an abandoned shoe. As she circled the artwork, her smile faded, her gut raw with the knowledge that someone had defiled this place.

Oranges dipped in chocolate.

And below that . . . the putrid ugliness of rot just begun.