Archangel's Prophecy

31

“I have no answers for you, hbeebti. As I had no answers the day I caught Illium out of the sky.”

“Yeah, you were too far away then, too, but you got to him in time.” Elena bit down on her lower lip. “But that was across the city and this . . .”

Raphael continued his careful investigation of her wing. “If I have gained a new Cascade-born ability tied to speed, it is a valuable one. Unfortunately, I have no knowledge of how to access it.” When he attempted to focus on what had occurred so he could recreate it, all he got was a turmoil of emotion and blinding power.

“I knew only that you needed me and I was too far away.” He’d reacted with anger and determination. “I pushed myself faster and faster, and then I was lightning stretched across two universes.”

Elena listened with silent attention, her hair a glorious tumble over her shoulders.

“It felt for a single endless instant as if I was in two places at the same time. My position when you contacted me, and here, at the Tower. Then the two ends crashed into one and I dropped out of the sky to land on our balcony.”

“Like a rubber band stretched too tight snapping back together.”

“An apt description.” Bracing one arm under his head, his other one on her wing, he tried to think through the entire happening again but his brain saw only chaotic flashes, as if the speed of it had been too much for his mind to process. “My skin was afire when I landed—no pain, but a searing heat.”

“Kinda makes sense, if you went supersonic.”

Raphael began to reply when his attention was caught by a glimmer on her shoulder. He’d almost missed it because it was the same shade as her hair, but when he reached out and picked it up, it came away with ease. Long, silken white strands that floated against his palm.

“Am I shedding?” Elena said, tugging at her hair as if to check on its health.

“Elena, this isn’t hair.”

Frowning, she leaned in to pick up the delicate strands from his hand. “It looks like the lint that’s infested my clothes.” Her face went motionless, her breathing too quiet. “It was never lint, was it?”

“I don’t know what it is, but this morning I dropped off a sample at our labs for testing.”

Lines formed on her forehead. “So?”

“No answer yet.” And no return of silver to her irises. “Let’s go speak to them now—but first, hbeebti, you must look in a mirror.”

She noticed the change at once. “Shit.” Her fingers rose as if to touch her eye, dropped before she made contact. “I guess we wait and see. Maybe the ambrosia takes time to reboot me for stage two.”

Raphael glanced out the balcony doors as they went to leave their suite. A number of the Legion sat outside, watchful gargoyles whose huge mind had amplified Raphael’s senses when Elena called out to him. Stay with her when she leaves, he ordered, because he knew his hunter and the demons that haunted her.

“I need to look in on Harrison, too,” she said right then. “And I’ve been trying to track down that Jade guy I told you about.”

Raphael cared nothing for her brother-in-law when the unpredictable changes in her had him by the throat, but some battles had to be fought. Elena had to keep this monster from her sister’s door, had to save Beth as she hadn’t been able to save Ariel and Mirabelle. You should speak to Dmitri. If Jade is any kind of power, Dmitri will know his whereabouts.

No response from Elena, though she did raise her fingers to her temple and rub it absently.

Raphael stopped. Hbeebti, do you hear me?

Halting, Elena turned to face him, and he cursed himself for a worry that had no cause . . . then she said, “Raphael? What’s up?”

“Elena, I want you to send me a mental thought.” She’d developed the ability to speak to him on the mental level far faster than anyone had expected, and now the steel and wildfire of her was a familiar presence in his mind.

She’d braided her hair after showering quickly, and the single plait swung a little as she tilted her head, her expression acute. “I just did.”

“I heard nothing.”

Elena’s throat moved as she swallowed. “No silver in my eyes, and now I’ve lost mental speech.” Pressing her fisted hand against the center of her chest, she took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “But my wings work and feel fine. This could be a normal part of my development.”

“I don’t care about the silver or the mental speech.” Raphael cupped her face. “I care about what they say about your immortality.” No matter how they worked it, how they justified it as a part of her development, she was steadily going backward.

“No signs of forward momentum, huh?” she said, as if they’d spoken mind to mind after all.

Elena had always understood him, even as a mortal with too much courage and not enough self-protective instincts. At times, he thought he’d fallen for her that first day on the roof, when she’d closed her hand defiantly over a blade, her blood dripping to the floor.

“I have asked Keir to journey to New York. You will cooperate with him and Nisia.” It came out an order.

Rather that bristling, his fiercely independent warrior shook her head. “I don’t think they’ll be able to do much. Right now, with all records of previous angels-Made lost, I may as well be one of a kind.”

Unique beyond compare.

Words spoken by a fascinated Alexander. The Ancient still had trouble with the concept of a mortal turned angel, though he, too, had heard the legend of ambrosia.

“Come on, let’s go find out about the lint before I run down Jade.” Firm resolve in Elena’s voice.

No, his warrior would not sit and wait for events to overtake her. “We’ll speak to Lucius on the way, get him to run tests on your blood.”

“Yes, good plan. Maybe he can figure out what the ambrosia’s doing to my insides.” She held up another strand of the gossamer “lint.” “Just saw this on my wrist. No idea when it appeared or if it was caught in my clothes already and got shaken loose when I put them back on.”

Raphael said nothing, but three minutes later, he watched Lucius draw Elena’s blood, and he told the angel with wings of softest yellow exactly what he wanted him to check. “Focus on any changes. You have the results from Elena’s blood over the years.” Taken by the healers as part of routine checkups to monitor the progress of her immortality. “Find out if anything has altered.”

Lucius bowed his head. “Sire.”

“Compare my blood against mortal, vampire, and angel exemplars, too,” Elena said, her jaw set. “No point avoiding the truth if I’m regressing.”

Their next stop was Nisia’s office.

“I’ve just received the results,” the senior Tower physician said when Elena held out the gossamer strands in a wordless question. “It is a natural byproduct of some process in your body.”

“Like hair or nails?” Elena dropped the strands into a sample receptacle Nisia held out.

“Yes. Its structure comes closest to hair, though its tensile strength is far weaker.”

“Am I going to turn into Elena Haireaux?”

“At this stage, there are no indications the material is adhering to your skin. My working theory is that it is a waste product—your body discarding that which it does not need. But it’s a theory only, with no proof.”

“That is not a satisfactory answer, Nisia.” Crackling with ice, Raphael’s voice created frost in the air.

Elena shot him a scowl, her thoughts written on her face. Stop bullying Nisia for what she can’t control.

Clenching his jaw, Raphael wrenched himself back from the edge. Elena was right; Nisia had done nothing to earn his anger. “You have the apology of your archangel, Nisia.”

A wideness to the healer’s eyes he’d rarely seen, she was so competent and self-assured. “There is no need, sire. I am as frustrated as you.” Picking up a medical device, she pressed it to Elena’s heart.

It was merely the first test.

Heart, lungs, muscles, bones, Nisia ran Elena through the gamut.

“Can I fly safely?” Elena asked that question in a calm tone, but Raphael could feel her need to fly as a second heartbeat.

“Your wings are in perfect condition and your bones no longer have the tunnels,” Nisia said. “I see no reason to ground you.”

Leaving Nisia to continue her work, Raphael’s hunter walked with him to the privacy of the balcony outside the infirmary. “Do you have more archangel business today?”

He couldn’t smile at her reference to their earlier play. “Partway through your tests, Dmitri informed me of a kiss of vampires in an area some distance from here who appear to believe they are out of the Tower’s sights.” He could send Illium or Dmitri to remind the vampires of the fallacy of their thinking, but an archangelic reminder would undulate through the entire territory, nipping any other such erroneous thoughts in the bud.

“Go,” Elena whispered.

“Elena.”

“I know. I’ll land if I feel the merest twinge.” Elena placed her hands on his chest, her expression strong and her words a promise. “I would never make you watch me fall out of the sky.”

Closing his hand over her wrist, Raphael bent his head so their foreheads touched. There they stood for long minutes even as the snow began to fall and the Legion landed all around them.