Archangel's Kiss

36

“Get down!” she screamed even as the bolts fired.

Not one. Two crossbows.

Aodhan moved to protect her, and that was his mistake. He took a bolt through his wing, the force of it pinning him to the wall even as she went facedown on the paving stones, feeling a bolt pass overhead. Raising her head, she saw Aodhan reach over to pull the projectile out of his wing. Another bolt pinned his opposite shoulder to the wall before he could succeed.

Rolling sideways—something it had been damn difficult to re-teach herself now that she had wings—she got herself into the shadow of one of the trees not far from Aodhan. Her first instinct was to go for the gun, but the bullets were meant to shred angelic wings. She didn’t know what effect they’d have on vamps, but if they worked like normal bullets, there was a slight chance she’d hit a vulnerable spot, killing their attackers—and they needed them alive to get to the bottom of this.

Having made up her mind, she dropped the knives in her arm sheaths down into her palms, ignored the bolts thudding into the trunk at her back . . . and focused.

Everything went still, until it was as if the world was moving in slow motion, the sun’s haze a blinding mist. Once again, she heard the crossbow being pulled back, the bolt being notched into place. But hearing had never been her primary sense.

Elderberries with sugar.

Taking aim, she threw.

The stained glass shattered, littering the ground in a thousand fractures of color. Her second knife was already traveling—to hit the vampire behind the glass in the neck. She saw the blood geyser up, but her attention was on tracking the second shooter. He remained in position, hidden behind a small, solid wall. Safe. But also unable to shoot without exposing himself.

Scrambling up from her hiding position, she ran to Aodhan, ripping out the bolt in his wing while he took care of the one in his shoulder. “Behind the wa—” Her head jerked up as the scent of elderberries began to move. An instant later, it was joined by a rich burst of bitter coffee.

Swearing, she dropped the blood-slick bolt and ran for the stairs cut into one side of the square, cursing the fact that she couldn’t manage a vertical takeoff. Aodhan rose into the air behind her, the draft of his ascent hitting her in the back as she reached the upper-level pavilion the vampires had used as their hide. The scent of coffee was thick, the elderberries stained with blood.

They’d gone down the steps on the other side.

Walking backward, she took a running start, and was airborne. Exhilaration burst into life inside her, a rush that accompanied each and every fight. Fighting the urge to simply follow the air currents, she looked down. From above, the Forbidden City was even bigger than it appeared from the ground, a sprawling warren of upper and lower courtyards connected by delicate bridges, and lanes that split off in several different directions—leading to elegantly shaped buildings and the privacy of closed doors.

Aodhan, bleeding from the shoulder, one of his wings damaged but still functional, met her above the main courtyard. “They lost themselves in the courtiers below.”

“Guess it’s time to go hunting. Cover me.” Narrowing her senses, she decided to focus on the one who’d been injured. He’d be slower, easier to run to ground.

Scents swirled like a thousand strands of color.

Violets. Lush. Sweet. Intoxicating.

Wood. Freshly cut.

Rain on a sunny day. Bright. New.

Tangled sheets and champagne. Heavy. Feminine.

Elderberries dripping darkest red.

The thrill of the hunt in her blood, she swooped to the area where she’d tracked the elderberries. It was almost too easy. Dressed in a coat of peacock blue, the vampire stood with a group of others of his kind, a silk scarf knotted around his neck. The scarf was wet, drenched with the pulse of his life’s fluid.

She was about to point him out to Aodhan when the vampire jerked and fell to the ground, his body twisting as if in the throes of a grand mal seizure. Cries of dismay, the other courtiers scattering like the butterflies they were. Landing on the ground beside the vampire’s jerking body, she rolled him to the side, conscious of the blood foaming around his mouth. “Keep his jaw open!” she said to Aodhan as he landed. “If he chokes on his own tongue—”

The body went silent under her hands.

Vampires could survive a lot, but she knew this one was dead, a tool that had become a liability. “What a fucking waste.” He was so young. Likely not even a decade into his vampirism. Going by his face, he’d been Made in his late twenties. “Some kind of immortality.”

Aodhan’s eyes were glacial when he looked up. “Track the other. I’ll be right behind you.”

“We need the body.”

A curt nod.

Elena stood, gun in hand, angling her head into the wind. The scents had changed now, become charged with fear and a nauseating undertone of arousal. Violence as a drug—it seemed to be an inevitable side effect of immortality for some. Shaking off the extraneous thought, she began to walk through the square, tracking the second shooter on the ground.

He’d gone a fair distance, crossing the entire length of the courtyard, down a long, winding passageway filled with carvings that exited into a sunny plaza, up a flight of stairs and across three curved bridges, then down into what was obviously a very private section of the city. No lanterns swung from the sole tree she could see. No beautifully clad women peered flirtatiously from behind deftly lowered fans. No music played.

Instead, there was only an angel sitting on a marble bench beneath that tree with its winter-green leaves, a vampire at her feet. Elena didn’t see it coming. One moment the vampire was kneeling, his chest heaving. And the next, his head rolled to a stop at Elena’s feet, having been cut off with ruthless ease.

“Stupid,” Anoushka murmured, putting the wickedly curved blade on the bench beside her and brushing at her flowing white skirt as if unaware of the blood that spotted it, covering the tiny mirrors worked into the embroidery. “Leading you straight to me.”

Elena couldn’t ignore the head touching her foot, strands of hair drifting across the black leather of her boot. She saw Anoushka’s lips tilt upward as she took a step to the side. “You won’t have many men left if you kill so indiscriminately,” Elena said, gauging if she could shoot and hit Anoushka’s wing, given the way the other angel was sitting.

Conclusion: Uncertain.

Running wasn’t an option either. Not unless she wanted a blade buried in her back.

“If you’re waiting for the broken one,” Anoushka said, “he’s been detained. Unfortunately, before he could call for reinforcements.” The angel rose to her feet. “Do you hear that?”

It was eerie, how silence could weigh so much. “Why target me?”

“You know already, but you’re trying to stall me. Shall I humor you?” Anoushka kept her wings tight to her back as she picked up her weapon, continuing to deprive Elena of a clear target. Hitting an angel in the body with a bullet, even one of Vivek’s special bullets, was a no go—you might as well be defending yourself with a flyswatter. Only the wings were vulnerable.

Her eyes went to the knife. She recognized it from her weapons class at Guild Academy. It was called a kukri, the curved blade consisting of a single sharp edge. Perfect if you were looking for something with which to efficiently separate a head from its body.

Anoushka’s next words proved as much. “It’s really very practical—walking into the Cadre’s current meeting with your head as my trophy will, as the humans say, make a splash no one will be able to ignore. I planned to do it at the ball itself, but one must adapt.” A sigh. “It’s a pity we have so little time. I actually might have liked you had things been different.” The kukri turned into a blur in her hand.

And Elena realized the Princess knew exactly what she was doing with that blade.

She didn’t hesitate, firing her gun at Anoushka the instant the angel moved, her wings spreading just a fraction. But Neha’s daughter, moving with that reptilian speed, snapped her wings to her back before the bullet reached her. It lodged harmlessly in the opposite wall in a shower of plaster. Fuck! Elena shot again, had the satisfaction of seeing blood bloom on Anoushka’s leg, but the angel ignored that, reaching for what Elena had taken to be a belt.

It wasn’t.

The whip wrapped around Elena’s wrist with the quickness of a snake’s tongue, threatening to snap her bones. Shooting as she fell, she managed to distract Anoushka enough to pull her hand free. But the gun was out of bullets, and, as Galen had once warned her, she didn’t have the luxury of reloading, not with an opponent who needed a scant instant to kill.

Dropping the useless metal, she rolled to her feet, a knife falling into her hand.

“So,” Anoushka said, the top of her left wing bearing a burn mark that had her hissing in pain. “That ruffian Raphael insists on keeping in his Seven managed to teach you something after all.”

“I’m hunter-born,” she said, shifting to keep Anoushka off balance as the angel played with the blade in her hand.

Anoushka moved with her, sinuous, graceful.

Recalling Venom’s little trick, she kept her own gaze slightly to the left. Anoushka laughed. “Oh, you are smart. Such a shame you were too young to save your family.”

Elena jerked as if kicked, her guard dropping for a fragment of a second. Anoushka struck, slicing deep into Elena’s arm before she managed to get out of the way. Ignoring the burn, ignoring the heart-pain caused by the angel’s words, Elena caught a second knife in her free hand. “To the death, then?”

“Did you really think otherwise?” Anoushka swept out with the kukri, her movements blindingly fast.

Elena threw both knives, heard Anoushka deflect one with the blade as she twisted out of the way of the other. And still the angel managed to cut a line into Elena’s unmarked arm.

The bitch was playing with her.

It was, Elena realized, Anoushka’s sole weakness. That and an ego that made her believe herself fit to be an archangel. “They say your blood is poison.”

“Thomas drank from me before he went to scare you.” A piece of swift bladework that had Elena falling to the earth, only just managing to roll out of the way before Anoushka sliced off a piece of her wing. “Impressive.” A mocking bow, as if they were sparring in the most civilized of fashions.

She could feel the blood loss from the deep cuts on her arms beginning to have an effect. Not disabling. Not yet. But it was going to slow her down soon. “Thomas’s death was a delayed response to the poison?”

“He thought he’d been honored above all others, allowed to sip from my veins.”

“So he was dead no matter what happened, even if he didn’t find me?”

“He was getting a little too possessive, the sweet dear.” A sigh. “Such fools are men. Even Raphael—he should’ve killed you the first time he met you. Now you are his weakness.”

Elena saw something in Anoushka’s expression change at that instant, and knew death was looking her in the face. She threw a blade. It went harmlessly to the ground as Anoushka moved . . . but that move put her in direct sunlight, blinding her for a split second. Elena’s next two knives slammed home in her eye sockets, driving her backward.

Anoushka screamed, dropped the kukri. Ignoring it, Elena retrieved the short sword hanging from her belt and—without giving herself a chance to think—slammed the blade down into the angel’s heart, pinning her to the earth. Blood bloomed across the white of Anoushka’s top as Elena opened up her mind and screamed. Raphael! She didn’t care who the fuck else heard her, as long as he did.

Hissing in open fury, Anoushka ripped the knives from her eyes, throwing them to the side. As she jerked upward, in spite of the blade that anchored her to the earth, her nails clawed, Elena remembered that Anoushka was her mother’s daughter. Moving out of the way in the nick of time, she twisted the blade while it remained in the angel’s body. Anoushka’s scream was a thin, bloodcurdling cry as she fell back to the ground, her poisonous fingers dropping to flutter on the paving stones. Fighting the nausea in her stomach, Elena twisted the blade again, turning Anoushka’s heart into so much mush.

It would regenerate, but right now, Anoushka lay twitching on the ground, her mutilated eyes bleeding red on her cheeks.

Her mother’s eyes, so beautiful, so like her own, sightless and distorted, the veins scarlet against the white.

Elena wrenched herself out of the memory, fighting the abyss that threatened to suck her in, leave her helpless.

“I’m not strong enough. Forgive me, my babies.”

Elena had tried not to hear those whispered words. She’d been half asleep that night, Beth still so small, tucked in beside her. Her baby sister had always been afraid of her new room in the Big House. But she’d slept soundlessly that night, as if sure Elena would keep her safe. Only Elena had heard their mother enter their bedroom, only Elena had tried not to understand.

Elena.

She shuddered at the scent of the wind, of the rain. Relief made her careless, her body completely unprotected as Anoushka rose in a screaming rush, kicking Elena to the stones and clawing out with her hand.

Agony blazed down Elena’s thigh. She fell to the ground, hearing Anoushka’s body hit the stone wall with an audible snap at almost the same instant. Raphael touched her thigh a moment later . . . and she realized she couldn’t feel anything in that leg.

“Raphael,” she whispered, panicked. The numbness was spreading, crawling up her body, making her heart shudder.

His wings covered her from view as he leaned close. “A bare scratch.”

She knew it had been more than that. She’d felt her flesh being gouged out, but she understood the message. Nodding, she bit her lower lip and tried to stay calm. When she glanced down, she saw his hands on either side of the wound. They were glowing blue.

Fear rose, but she knew that couldn’t be angelfire. It wasn’t hurting her. In fact, she could feel a soft warmth at the site. As she watched, her eyes wide, an umber-colored liquid seeped out of the wound to discolor the paving stones. “Dear God.” It was an almost soundless whisper. The stuff was eroding the stone.

“You’re fine, Elena. It was simple shock.” Betray no weakness.

Elena let him pull her to her feet, sliding her foot over the discolored part of the paving as she did so. As Raphael folded away his wings, she realized two things. One, both the claw marks and the cuts on her arms had stopped bleeding, and two, the entire Cadre had come with Raphael. Neha knelt by her daughter’s slumped body, the sword flung aside, a spray of red marking its path on the stones. Her daughter’s blood was scarlet against the archangel’s dusky skin, her eyes ice when she glanced back. “She will die.”

Elena didn’t think Neha was talking about Anoushka.