Archangel's Kiss

27

“Fuck! ” Illium dodged one knife, swiveled to find the tip of his opposite wing pinned to the wall. “Two knives is cheating!”

Something feral in Elena smiled in satisfaction—poor Illium was bearing the brunt of the turbulence incited by her father’s call a day ago. “Strike one for the hunter.”

The blue-winged angel reached over and pulled out the knife. Dropping to the earth, he handed it to her, hilt first. “Lucky hit.”

“Sore loser.”

“It was getting pathetic watching you fail.”

“Look at that,” she said with a mock gasp, “I think I nipped off a few feathers in the process. Poor, poor Bluebell.”

He grinned, those golden eyes bright with mischief, with an ability to play that seemed to have been leached out of the other immortals. “Next time,” he said, “I’m going to run you around so bad, they’ll have to carry your whimpering body out of here.”

Cleaning off the knife, she slid it back into her arm sheath before bringing her hand up to hide an exaggerated yawn.

“If you two have finished,” Galen said in that humorless way of his, “we still have an hour to go.”

She glanced at Illium’s wing—to see that it was already almost completely healed. “I guess it’s time to put a few more holes in you.”

“Tell you what,” Illium said. “If you manage to hit me three times in a row, I’ll give you a diamond necklace.”

“Make it a diamond-studded decorative knife sheath and you’ve got a deal.”

Illium raised an eyebrow. “Not very practical.”

“It is if you’re planning to wear it with a ball gown.”

“Ah.” A gleam of interest. “Fine. And if you don’t hit me three times, you have to take me along with you on a hunt.”

“Why?” she asked, perplexed. “They’re hot, sweaty, often exhausting.”

“I want to see how you hunt.”

A pulse of memory: Illium is fascinated by mortals.

Maybe that was why she liked him so much. He saw her former status not as a weakness but as a gift. “Alright.”

He stuck out a hand. “Done.”

She shook it. “Now do your job, butterfly.”

He left the ground in a sweep of wind, a single blue feather floating to her hand. She put it in a pocket, saving it for Zoe. So far, she had several of Raphael’s golden-tipped ones, two of Illium’s, and a few of her own.

“Go!”

Eyes on the target, she balanced her throwing knives in hand and set her feet. Her sight was sharper than when she’d been human, but not by much—not yet.

In the end, she hit Illium twice more, missing a third strike by the barest flicker of a feather. Illium swooped down. “I get to go on a hunt.”

“See if you’re smiling when we end up in some mosquito-infested swamp.”

“I’m not scared of mosqui—”

She was swiveling on her heel before Illium stopped speaking, having picked up the scents of three unfamiliar vampires. But it was an angel she found in the doorway, his exotic cheekbones and near-black eyes nowhere near as unusual as the wings she glimpsed before he folded them inward.

Dark gray patterned with streaks of vivid, striking red.

Stunning wings.

But instead of admiration, it was fear, primal and deep, that stabbed her in the gut, sharpening her senses, her reflexes. “Who is he?” She could feel his power pressing down on her, a crushing weight.

The metallic slide of sword leaving scabbard. “Xi belongs to Lijuan.” Illium stayed by her side as Galen walked forward to greet the other angel. “He’s nine hundred years old.”

“Why isn’t he an archangel?” He could topple cities with that power, erase thousands.

“As long as Lijuan lives, Xi will continue to gain power. Without her, his body wouldn’t be able to hold what it does.”

“Can all archangels do that?” she asked, feeling her skin creep when Xi’s eyes shifted to stroke over the exposed portion of her wings. “Share power?”

“Only Lijuan.”

Galen appeared to be arguing with Xi and finally, several minutes later, the Chinese angel snapped his feet together in an almost military salute and passed over a gleaming wooden box. But his eyes, they lingered on Elena for a long, chilling second.

She began to walk toward Galen the instant Xi left. The red-haired angel remained standing with his back to her, his eyes on the entrance. “It would be better,” he said in a very precise voice, “if you wait for Raphael to return before opening this.”

“Raphael’s gone to meet with Michaela and Elijah. It could be hours.”

“I’ll inform the sire—”

“No.” She put her hand on the box, almost flinched at the inhuman coldness of it. “The meeting’s important—it has something to do with Titus and Charisemnon.”

Illium touched her shoulder, his expression grim. “Lijuan is playing games, Elena. Don’t open the box without Raphael.”

She’d accepted that she was physically weaker though it galled, but there was only so much a hunter could take. “Give me a reason.”

“I don’t know what’s in there,” Illium said, his eyes shadowed in a way that turned the gold to something razor-sharp, a reminder that for all his playfulness, Illium hid a core as ruthless as the man he called sire, “but I know it’s meant to weaken Raphael.”

“You think she’d hurt me?” Elena stared at the carvings on the box, stared until the complicated patterns shaped themselves into the horror they truly were. “Corpses. They’re all corpses.”

“I think,” Illium said, placing both hands on her shoulders, his thumbs gentle against her nape, “there are many ways to hurt. Not all of them are physical.”

Elena played with the latch, her lungs expanding as she took a deep breath. “I can smell them. Fresh grass crushed with ice, a warm woolen blanket sprinkled with rose petals, blood strained through silk.” Her heart pounded in her chest, ready to hunt, to give chase. Under her fingertips, the box grew warm, as if sucking in her very life force.

Shoving away the unsettling thought, she swallowed. “There are pieces of vampire in here. Organs. They always smell the strongest.”

“It’s time for us to make our own move.”

She took her hand off the latch. “I don’t need to open it. I know what’s inside.” Lijuan had simply returned what Raphael had sent her. And if part of Elena was horrified by the form of his warning, another part—a raw, primal part born in a blood-soaked room almost twenty years ago—was viciously glad. “Do whatever you want with it.” Shifting on her heel, she broke Illium’s hold and walked out into the biting cold of a mountain afternoon.

Venom was waiting for her by a stony crag that had been left untouched by angelic hands, an incongruously untamed background for a vampire who looked as if he’d stepped out of the pages of some high-class men’s magazine. Her sweaty, tense face reflected off the black lenses of his sunglasses, his own as untouched as always. “How much wax does it take to keep your hair that perfect?” she muttered as she tried to walk past.

He blocked her with a single smooth move. “It’s a natural gift.”

“Today is not the time to mess with me.” She wasn’t going to fall into the trap Lijuan had designed, wasn’t going to see Raphael as a monster, but . . . each time he did something that pushed the boundaries, it slapped her in the face with her new reality. A reality in which archangels played with immortal and mortal lives as if they were nothing but the most disposable of chess pieces.

Venom smiled, and it was a sight that would’ve sent many women to their knees, full of an erotic promise that said he’d make even death feel good. “I’ve been trying to figure out what he sees in you.”

Elena swiped out with a knife in her right hand, missing his arm by the barest fraction of a hair. His dodge was impossibly fast. When Venom moved, it reminded her only of the creature Neha had chosen as her avatar—as if he’d never been human. But today, even that wasn’t enough to compel her curiosity. She kept on walking.

The vampire appeared beside her again a moment later. “Dmitri now,” he murmured, “I can see why he’d want to play with you. He’s into knives and pain.”

“And you’re not?” She remembered all too clearly that scene in the garage—Venom prowling with silky grace toward a woman stunned to silence by his dangerous brand of sex. There’d been male appreciation in his expression . . . but there’d also been the primordial hunger of the much colder creature that marked his eyes. “You’re the one who secretes poison.”

“So do you.”

She halted, blinked, braced herself with her hands on her knees. “Shit.” How could she have let that go? Not asked Raphael about the consequences of becoming an angel?

A coolly honest part of her answered with a single word.

Fear.

She was scared. Scared to accept the irreversible truth of her new life. Scared to know that she might one day look into eyes as worshipful as Geraldine’s, and understand too late that she was creating a victim. Prey for the immortals circling like sharks.

Feeling her cheeks flare with a hot-cold burn, she said, “When?”

Venom gave her a slow smile. “When it’s time.”

“You know,” she said, rising back to a standing position in spite of the sudden churning in her gut, “inscrutable doesn’t work when you’re smirking.”

Venom’s reply was abrogated by a tinny little beep. Holding up a finger, he took out a slick black cell phone, reading something on the screen. “What a pity, there’s no more time to chat. You have to get ready for a meeting.”

Elena didn’t bother to ask who the meeting was with—the vampire would just take the chance to jerk her chain. Instead, she made quick work of the remaining distance to the stronghold, slammed the door to the private wing in Venom’s face, and stripped, trying not to think about the box she’d touched, what lay beneath the macabre carvings.

There was a knock on the main door fifteen minutes later. Having rushed through a shower, Elena opened it to find an old vampire with eyes that twinkled. He had a measuring tape around his neck and pins in his pocket. His assistant carried tailor’s chalk and what appeared to be a case containing a thousand swatches of material.

She was, it seemed, getting measured for clothing suitable for Lijuan’s ball.

All of it in shades of blue.

Raphael returned from his meeting with Elijah and Michaela to discover Jason waiting for him. The black-winged angel kept his silence until they were in Raphael’s office. “Maya’s uncovered something disturbing about Dahariel.” He handed over a file.

Opening it, Raphael found himself faced with the photographic image of a young male who’d only just crossed the threshold that separated man from boy. “Mortal?”

“No.” Jason gripped the wrist of one hand with the other, the hold so tight, Raphael saw the blood flow stop to his hand. “He was Made half a millennium ago.”

Before the Cadre decreed that no mortal below the age of twenty-five could be Made without lethal consequences for the Maker. Mortals today would judge the Making of this boy a crime, but five hundred years ago, humans had lived much shorter lives. At this age, the boy might’ve been a father already, would almost certainly have been expected to earn his own way in the world.

“He signed on to serve Dahariel for five decades, three years ago,” Jason said, that grip ever tighter.

Raphael closed the file. “What is it you’re not telling me, Jason?”

“The boy hasn’t been seen for the past year.”

Raphael felt a dark wave of anger. The Made were at the mercy of their Makers, and after the expiration of their original Contract, if they couldn’t care for themselves—at the mercy of those to whom they chose to give their loyalty. Too many chose wrong. “Murder isn’t a crime if a vampire is under contract.” An inhuman law—but vampires weren’t human. In many cases, they were predators barely leashed. But angels were predators, too. And this boy had delivered himself into the hands of one.

“The boy isn’t dead,” Jason said, to his surprise. “It appears that Dahariel is keeping him in a private cage for his . . . entertainment.” The toneless way that word came out told Raphael more about Dahariel’s idea of entertainment than anything else. “And because he signed on to serve Dahariel of his own free will, no one can do anything to help him.”

“What did Dahariel promise in return for this vampire’s allegiance?” Murder wasn’t a crime, but there were certain unwritten laws that had to be followed, laws that kept the structure of the world from imploding on itself. One such law required that all service contracts be honored—on both sides.

“Protection against other angels.” Jason’s laugh was utterly without humor. “It seems the boy is still weak after all these years of existence. He’s survived this long only by tying himself to those stronger than him.”

“He chose his eternity, Jason.” Harsh, but true. No one who’d lived for five hundred years could fail to understand the cruelty engendered by age, the darkness that lived in the heart of so many immortals. If this boy had signed with Dahariel without doing his homework as to the angel’s proclivities, that was a mistake he’d have to live with—if he lived. “We can do nothing for him.” Because Dahariel had only promised protection from other angels.

Jason’s eyes met his, the pupils black against irises of almost the same austere shade. “According to those of his household who’d talk, Dahariel takes great pleasure in torturing the boy with such slowness that it ensures some part of him is always healed, able to bear more. They say he’s already lost in madness.” Raphael could see Jason fighting his rage, but his next words were icily rational. “The way Noel was beaten—it would fit Dahariel’s methods.”

“Astaad won’t move against him for that alone.” Especially since it would mean admitting he’d fostered a viper in his midst.

“Maya’s continuing to keep watch. I’ve also got information coming out of Anoushka’s court.”

“Anything of note?”

“She emulates her mother, but she’s stopped growing in power.”

“So she knows she’ll never be an archangel.” It might be enough to push an already fractured personality over the edge. “Did she discover that recently?”

“No. A decade ago. And she displays no signs of disintegration.”

Acceptance or a mask, there was no way to tell. “The Guild Director was able to track the theft of a crate of Guild daggers to a warehouse in Europe two days after Elena woke.” It angered him to see Elena being stalked, but his hunter, he thought, could take care of herself. So, now that he was healing, so could Noel. It was the abuse suffered by Sam that drove them all. “Nazarach was embroiled in a hunt for one of his vampires at the time—a female who managed to cross over into Elijah’s territory.”

Jason nodded. “He’d have been distracted, unlikely to choose that time to orchestrate the theft.”

That was what Raphael had concluded. “See if you can pin down Anoushka’s and Dahariel’s movements.”

“Sire.”

“Jason,” Raphael said as the other angel turned to leave, “you can’t rescue the boy, but I can buy out the remainder of his contract.” Dahariel wouldn’t say no to an archangel, especially not if he was the angel behind the sekhem-linked violence.

“Dahariel will only find another victim.” Jason’s eyes were bleak.

“But it won’t be this boy.”

As Jason left after a small nod, Raphael wondered if the scars on the angel’s soul would ever heal. Most would have gone mad after a few years of Jason’s “childhood.” But the black-winged angel had endured. And when the time came, he’d given his loyalty to Raphael, harnessing his intelligence in service to an archangel.

If saving this boy would give him a measure of peace, then Raphael would deal with Dahariel. And if the angel proved to be the one who’d hurt Sam, then Raphael would take even greater pleasure in tearing him apart one small piece at a time, keeping him alive so that he’d feel every burn, every break, every brutal slice.

Because while angels might be predators, it was the archangels who sat at the top of the food chain.