Archangel's Kiss

33

Raphael in formal clothes made Elena drool, his profile etched with perfect clarity against the night sky as they walked along the curving pathways of the Forbidden City—following their escort to dinner. Her archangel was wearing a white shirt with black pants, but that shirt was a work of art, the fabric on either side of the wing slots embroidered in a black design that curved and flowed—without ever losing the edge that said this was the Archangel of New York.

“Sexy” was too tame a word to describe him.

And it was obvious the silken-maned vampire beauties around them thought the same. She pinned her eyes on one who had the temerity to flutter her fan in his direction. The fan drooped.

Satisfied, she turned back to Raphael. “Jason and Aodhan?”

“They have their tasks.”

Doesn’t she know about Jason?

Yes.

And then they were being ushered through intricately painted doors—into a room that seemed to absorb all light, all air, crushing her ribs into her organs. Shifting the barest fraction, Raphael caught her gaze, giving her a focus, a way to fight the feeling of suffocation. It felt like hours passed, but it couldn’t have been more than two seconds at most. When she turned her attention back to the room, her heart scrabbling to regain its rhythm, she found her gaze drawn to a grouping of chairs below a wall filled with butterflies, their wings forever unfurled, a single sharp pin spearing each.

“Raphael.” Lijuan whispered across the room to greet them, her pupils a strange pearlescent shade, her gown a disconcertingly girlish concoction created from layers of floating gauze that swirled around her body in a haunting gray and white mist, her hair blowing off her face in a wind that Elena couldn’t feel, a wind that touched neither the heavy brocade curtains, nor the exquisite tapestries on the walls.

Elena’s skin pricked in primitive warning, millions of years of evolution telling her she should never, ever let herself come to the attention of the creature in front of her. Because it wasn’t the room that absorbed all light. It was Lijuan. Elena’s primitive hindbrain sent a bolt of panic through her when she stayed in place, telling her to run, to hide.

But, of course, it was already too late.

She watched as Raphael took Lijuan’s hands in his, as he bent his head to brush his lips across that pale, perfect skin. Lijuan’s eyes met hers over Raphael’s shoulder, and there was nothing remotely human in them, nothing Elena could even attempt to read.

As the delicate angel drew back, those unearthly eyes returned to Raphael. “You are different.”

“And you never change.”

A tinkling laugh, one that shouldn’t have felt so cutting against Elena’s skin, as if it was made of razors crushed into glass. “Why did I not meet you when I was younger?”

“I wouldn’t have held your interest then,” Raphael said, turning to put one hand on Elena’s lower back. “This is Elena.”

“Your hunter.” Lijuan’s pale eyes settled on Elena, and it took every ounce of will she had not to step back, not to hide.

Because Lijuan was the horror in the closet. The one mothers scared their children with. The one you were never actually supposed to see.

“Lady Lijuan.” The formal title, learned from Jessamy, came out, sounded normal. How, Elena wasn’t sure.

Lijuan’s eyes went to Elena’s neck. “You wear no necklace.”

Elena didn’t drop her gaze, though her stomach was a knot of fury. “I prefer Raphael’s gift.”

“A knife—such ornamentation was popular in another age.” Lijuan’s attention shifted, as if the necklace that had caused Elena so much pain no longer mattered. “Such beautiful wings. Will you show them to me?”

Elena didn’t want to show this creature anything, but the request had been polite. She wasn’t going to cause a political incident simply because Lijuan was so inhuman it defied understanding. Moving to give herself space, she spread out the wings her archangel had given her even as he gave her life. But when Lijuan raised a hand as if to touch, she snapped them back.

Raphael was already speaking. “It’s not like you to break protocol.”

“My apologies.” Lijuan’s hand dropped, but her eyes remained on the parts of Elena’s wings visible around her body. “My only defense is that they’re quite extraordinary.”

Elena wished she could tighten her wings even further. “Thank you.”

Lijuan took the acknowledgment as if it was her right. “My own, as you can see, are so very plain.” She spread her wings.

They were a soft dove gray. Gentle. Utterly exquisite in their silky perfection. “Plain perhaps,” Elena found herself saying, “but all the more beautiful for it.”

Lijuan refolded her wings. “So honest. Is that why she intrigues you?”

Raphael answered with an implied question. “You care little for such earthly emotions.”

“Ah, but you intrigue me.” Touching his hand, Lijuan gestured to her left. “I thought we could eat informally.”

Elena about swallowed her tongue at that. This room might not be a dining room, but it was sumptuous beyond description, the back wall lined with mirrored panels bordered in ornate gold, the right wall hung with tapestries that surely cost in the hundreds of thousands, the front wall full of windows that looked out into the sparkling—and always elegant—revelry of the courtiers below. The left wall, the wall below which they were to sit, was where the butterflies lingered.

Moving reluctantly to stand beside a chair upholstered in a stunning jade, she couldn’t help but look up at the creatures frozen forever in stasis. “There’s no glass,” she said almost to herself. “How do you keep them from decaying?”

Another tinkle of laughter. Her heart chilled as she realized what she’d said.

“Have you not told her my secret, Raphael?” Eyes that sparkled with girlish mischief.

Creepy.

Raphael touched his hand briefly to Elena’s back. “It isn’t such a secret any longer. Favashi spoke to me about it yesterday.”

“But you knew before them all.” Lijuan took a seat on a chair that had been made to accommodate wings, having a central column for support, with the sides curving gracefully away. “How is the black-winged angel?”

Raphael waited for Elena to take a seat before taking one beside her. “Jason’s looking forward to the ball.”

The civilized conversation masked an undercurrent of danger that licked at Elena’s ankles like a sentient fire. Raphael had told her that Jason had been injured by Lijuan’s reborn. Now she wondered if the attack had been on purpose. A warning?

Lijuan lifted a hand and the corpse of a bright blue butterfly fell from the wall into her hand, the pin dropping soundlessly to the carpet. “And the young one? The pretty one?”

“I decided it would be best if Illium didn’t join us,” Raphael said without missing a beat. “He might have proved too much of a temptation.”

Dropping the butterfly onto the table, Lijuan laughed, and this time, it was darker, full of—if you could call it that—true humor. “Hmm, yes, those wings are rather magnificent.” Her eyes tracked to Elena’s. “As unusual as yours.”

“Unfortunately,” Elena said, knowing she had to stand her ground, no matter if this archangel could crush her with a single thought, “I’m not a collectable, either.”

“Oh, I don’t want to have your wings mounted,” Lijuan said, her hair continuing to dance softly in that eerie breeze that touched nothing else. “I find you far too interesting alive.”

“Lucky for me.” Except she didn’t think so. Leaning back in her chair, she let Raphael and Lijuan carry on the conversation. As they talked, she watched, she listened . . . and she tried to figure out why Lijuan seemed so very wrong.

Yes, her power was one that made Elena’s skin crawl, but Raphael had once broken every bone in a vampire’s body and left him as a caution to others. And their conversation on the plane had made it clear he was as capable of that kind of brutality today as he’d been the day she first met him.

Yet she took Raphael to her bed night after night, clung to his embrace when the nightmares got too bad. Trust, there was trust between them. But even before, when he’d only been the Archangel of New York—hard, cruel, certainly without mercy—she’d never felt this creep across her skin, this sense that she was in the presence of something that simply should not be.

“Ah, here is the meal.”

Elena had already turned her head toward the door, having scented the approaching vampires.

Jasmine and honey.

Sweet balsam wood dusted in cinnamon.

A kiss of sunshine touched with paint.

Odd combinations, strange scents, but vampires were like that. She’d asked Dmitri what they smelled like to each other. The vampire had given her that taunting smile he kept just for her. “Nothing. We save our senses for the mortals—for the food.”

The three who came into the room were all male, but one alone bore the oil-slick black hair and almond-shaped eyes of Lijuan’s homeland. He was the balsam wood. Beside him was a Eurasian man with the solid shoulders of a boxer and the sky blue eyes of some boy from Kansas, his face not quite put together right, but arresting all the same despite, or perhaps because of, his unusual features. He was the jasmine. And the sunshine—her stomach twisted at the memories evoked by that scent, memories of blood and death, putrid flesh lying on every side as Uram squeezed her shattered ankle.

The sunshine shifted closer, laid a delicate setting of hand-painted porcelain on the low, carved table that was the only barrier between her and Raphael, and Lijuan. His hand was the lustrous darkness found at the heart of the mpingo tree, so rich, so pure that furniture made from the heartwood went for thousands upon thousands of dollars.

His skin was so beautiful, so evocative of the months she’d once spent in Africa, that it took her a moment to look into his eyes, to realize that he was dead.

Raphael knew the instant Elena realized the vampire standing before her, pouring honey-colored oolong tea into a tiny cup, was one of the reborn. Her entire frame went still, so very still, the quiet of a hunter who’d sighted prey.

He could’ve spoken to her mentally, warned her not to betray fear, but with Lijuan’s growing abilities, it was possible she might hear the warning—and Raphael would not do anything that would paint Elena as weaker. Instead, he trusted his hunter, and she didn’t let him down.

“Thank you,” she said politely as the reborn finished pouring.

A small nod from the vampire who was so fresh, so new, he couldn’t have been reborn long. His eyes—yes, there was something there, knowledge of who he’d been, what he was now. But there was no panic in them. Perhaps the man didn’t yet understand what he’d become. Raphael waited as the reborn moved around to pour for him, even as the blue-eyed one poured for Lijuan.

“A toast,” Lijuan said, lifting the cup as the men began to transfer the food onto the table from a serving cart made of wood and gilded with gold. “To new beginnings.” Her eyes were on Elena.

Raphael fought the primal urge to step in between, to protect Elena from a threat she had no hope of surviving . . . but then, he thought, his hunter had survived him. “To change,” he said.

Lijuan’s gaze moved to him, but she didn’t challenge the subtle difference in his toast. “That will do.” She waved a hand at the three men, and they left as silently as they’d arrived.

“No audience?” Raphael passed Elena a small platter that held a sweet red bean cake he knew she’d like.

“Not today.” She watched Elena eat the cake he’d given her. “Does food continue to hold pleasure for you, Raphael?”

“Yes.” It was a simple answer. He was still rooted to this earth, to the world. “You no longer eat.” It was a guess, but he wasn’t expecting her nod.

“It’s become unnecessary.” She sipped from the cup in her hand. “With friends, I make an effort, but . . .”

He understood what she was saying. No archangel would ever starve to death, even if he or she stopped eating altogether. However, lack of sustenance would eventually begin to leach power. It might take years, perhaps decades, but the loss might well be permanent. An archangel couldn’t afford to take that chance.

Lijuan was telling him she’d gone beyond that. Which brought up the question of how she was now gaining her power.

“Blood and flesh?” he asked, conscious of Elena remaining uncharacteristically quiet beside him. Some would’ve said she’d been cowed into silence. He knew very well that she was listening, honing her knowledge, making note of any possible weakness.

“That would be a devolution,” Lijuan said, her hair feathering as if caressed by ghostly fingers, “and I am evolving.”

Elena waited until they were behind the closed doors of their bedroom before giving in to the shivers. “She’s . . . what is she?”

“Power in its purest form.” Walking to the painted wooden doors that led to their private courtyard and balcony, he spread them open. “Come. The air will cleanse.”

She took the hand he held out, let him lead her into the crisp winter air. The Forbidden City spread out like a sea of multicolored stars before her, dancers still swirling gracefully in the main courtyard as music played, haunting, evocative, beautiful enough to bring tears to the eye.

Standing in the circle of Raphael’s arms, her head against his shoulder, her arms around him, she took her first real breath in hours. Her lungs sucked in the air as if parched, her throat seeming to unlock with a quiver of relief. “That music—what is it?”

“The ehru.”

For long, quiet moments, they just stood there, letting the music soak into their bones. Elena was the one who spoke first. “You don’t think she steals power from others?”

“No.” Raphael stroked his hands over her wings, and the rush of sensation was welcome, a reminder that she was real, nothing like the creature who’d sat across from them in that room full of silence. “If she could do that, her courtiers wouldn’t be so healthy. Lijuan has always first played in her own territory.”

“Like with the reborn.” She shivered again, slipped her hand under his shirt to touch the uncompromising masculine heat of his skin. “That vampire—he smelled of sunshine and paint. He was new . . . fresh.”

“He thinks he’s been given a second chance,” Raphael said, remembering the loyalty in that dark gaze as it had swung to Lijuan.

“When do they start to rot?” she forced herself to ask.

“Jason is almost here.” He could sense his spymaster getting ever closer. “He’ll have the most recent information—but from what we know, it depends not only on the amount of power she expends, but on what she feeds them.”

“Flesh,” she whispered. “Human?”

“Or vampire. It seems to have little significance.” There’d been no reports of angels being sacrificed for Lijuan’s pets, but Raphael wouldn’t put that depravity past the oldest of the archangels.

Elena’s head lifted up at that instant. “Storms,” she whispered. “Jason smells of the wildest of rainstorms, lightning and fire.”

“Has the new aspect of your ability stabilized?”

“No.” Her eyes followed Jason’s descent from the sky, though the black-winged angel was but a shadow. “It switches on and off. Mostly off.” She pressed her lips to Raphael’s jaw. “But you, you’ve always been the rain, the wind, inside my mind. I taste you when I sleep, when I wake, when I breathe.”

If Jason hadn’t landed then, Raphael would have drawn Elena inside, taken his fill of her own unique scent. As it was, he ran his hand to close over her nape, brushing his mouth over the sweet curve of her ear. I will taste you tonight, Elena . Be ready for me—I won’t stop until you scream your pleasure.

He heard her heart hitch, her breath catch. But his hunter had never yet backed down from a challenge. Anytime, angel boy.