by Nalini Singh
Chapter 27
Elena wasn't the least surprised when Michaela's mansion turned out to be a place of beauty and grace. The archangel might be a two-faced bitch, but she hadn't earned her reputation as the muse of artists across the ages by accident.
"This was where we found the . . . gift," the vampire guard told her, pointing to a patch of bloodstained grass.
The bite of acid was sharp here despite the other vampire's presence. Either Uram had mingled some of his own blood with the hearts, or he'd landed on the lawn itself. Talk about brazen . . . and creepy. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. "Can you move out of the immediate area?"
He gave a short nod but didn't take a step. "I was hunted once. "
Elena looked up to where she could see Raphael and Michaela talking on a high balcony overlooking the lawn, and wondered if either angel would mind if she simply coldcocked the idiot at her side-she didn't have time to deal with this kind of shit. "Can't have been too bad if you're still here. "
"My mistress flayed the skin off my back and made it into a purse. "
She wondered how well that info would go down with the faction who ascribed heavenly origins to the angels. "Yet you serve her even now. " It sounded like something the bitch goddess would do.
The vampire smiled, showed teeth. "It was a very nice purse. " Then he finally walked away. She'd have to watch her back around that one, she thought. Whatever else Michaela had done to him over the centuries, he was no longer all there.
"Immortality has way too many drawbacks," she muttered, adding the possibility of becoming a purse to her mental list. Her eye fell on the bloody grass again. Kneeling, she confirmed the scent, then began walking out in ever-increasing circles.
Uram's scent blanketed the area. The archangel had most certainly touched down, standing there cloaked in glamour while Michaela's guards remained clueless. Elena would've worried about running into him, but the scent, while pervasive, wasn't as strong as it would've been had he been in the immediate vicinity. That made her wonder-were other archangels able to sense their brethren through the glamour?
If not, no wonder Michaela was spooked.
Unsurprisingly, the scent was particularly intense near the edge of the lawn. Looking up, Elena found herself with a direct line of sight into the bank of windows on the third floor. Michaela's bedroom was smack in the middle.
If this had been an ordinary hunt, Elena would've been grinning ear to ear by now. With this recent a trail, she could've run her prey to ground by sundown. But vampires didn't fly. Still, she thought, eyes narrowed, now she knew Uram's Achilles' heel. His compulsion toward Michaela would constrict the breadth of his hunting grounds. She glanced up again, her mind pure, focused hunter. She needed the map of Michaela's movements that Raphael had promised to get.
Raphael was aware of Elena moving farther and farther away as she performed a methodical search. He kept his eye out for Riker, Michaela's favorite guard. Riker did whatever Michaela told him to-it would make no difference to the vampire that Elena was under Raphael's protection . . . though he probably should've killed her the second he recovered from the shooting. Because if Lijuan was right, then Elena was his fatal weakness.
Death was a concept he hadn't considered in centuries. But Elena had made him a little bit mortal. As she was. She'd die if Riker tore out her throat. And Michaela was capricious enough to have given such an order. She knew Raphael wouldn't start a war over a mortal.
Destiny's Rose.
An image of the ancient treasure danced in his head. In all his centuries of existence, he'd never once considered giving it away. Until Elena. His mortal. Perhaps he'd fight Michaela over her after all. "You have safeguards in place?"
"Of course. "
Those safeguards were obviously not enough-the entire Cadre had expected Uram to come for her, and yet she'd been caught unprepared. "Do you need more men? You're far from home. "
"No. " Pride dripped from the single word as she strode to the edge of the balcony and stared down, following Elena's progress. "If your hunter has the scent, it means he was watching me long enough to have left a discernible imprint. "
Raphael could have asked Elena to confirm, but after the incident that had led to the Quiet, he was making an attempt to stay out of her head. A sign of the weakness Lijuan had warned of-an attack of human scruples? Perhaps. But Raphael had never liked what he became in the Quiet. And this time . . . it had been a fraction too close to Caliane's madness. "You're still as you were?" he asked, burying that ancient memory.
Michaela's skin tightened, the sharp lines of her bones almost cutting through her skin. "I'm an archangel without glamour, yes. "
"Unfortunate. "
She laughed, a low sound designed to make men think of sex. The first time he'd seen Michaela, she'd had her mouth on the cock of the archangel who'd ruled ancient Byzantium. Her eyes had met his as she drove the archangel to his little death and Raphael had known she would one day rule. Two decades later, the Archangel of Byzantium was dead.
His eyes picked out Elena as she entered the wooded area that divided his property from Michaela's. "Have you spoken to Lijuan about it?" he asked, even as he watched Elena purse her lips in concentration. Her mouth was lush, seductive. He was very interested in having it all over his body. But like all warrior women, she'd have to be tamed to his hand.
"She talks in riddles," Michaela spit out, "has no explanation for why the glamour eludes me. "
Under normal circumstances, that lack wouldn't be much of a concern-Michaela had other skills, some known, some not, but no one could doubt her status as archangel. However, in this one situation, she was at a lethal disadvantage, because along with glamour came an immunity to it. Raphael couldn't hide from Uram but the Angel of Blood couldn't hide from him either. "Call Riker back. "
"Why?"
"You can't see Uram, but Elena can scent him. "
Michaela's next words were dismissive. "Riker is watching her, nothing more. And there are other hunters if he loses control. " A pause. "She's human, Raphael. She knows nothing of the pleasures I could show you. "
Raphael flared out his wings in preparation for flight. "I would have thought Charisemnon would appeal. He was your lover once. "
Green eyes met his as he went to the very edge of a balcony made for angels-no railing, nothing to prevent a deadly fall. "But you I've never tasted. I can do things that will make eternity an erotic dream. "
"The trouble is, your lovers seem to have very short life spans. " He flew down, across the yard, and over the wooded area.
Riker was standing a few feet from Elena, his smile full of menace.
Far from appearing frightened, Elena was flicking a knife through her fingers, her stance that of someone trained in hand-to-hand combat. As she opened her mouth as if to speak, Raphael flew down to land behind Riker, one hand on the vampire's shoulder, the other on his back.
"This is my territory," he said. "Your mistress is a guest. " That was all the warning he gave before he thrust his hand through Riker's clothing, flesh, and muscle to grip his panicked heart. A second later, that heart was in Raphael's hand and Riker was twitching facedown on the ground.
"Why?"
He looked up to meet Elena's horrified gaze over the continued pulse of Riker's vampire heart. "There are boundaries. It's better for mortals and immortals alike if those boundaries are not crossed. "
Her grip on the knife was white-knuckled. "So you killed him?"
Raphael dropped the heart to the ground and looked at his bloody hand, wondering if Uram had taken his victims' hearts the same way. "He's not dead. "
"I-" She swallowed as he approached, took a step back. "I know they can heal a hell of a lot of damage but completely removing the heart?"
"You fear me again. " He hadn't seen that look on her face since that first meeting on the roof.
"You just ripped a vampire's heart out wit
h your bare hand. " Her voice echoed with shock. "So yes, I fear you. "
He looked down at the blood coating his skin. "I wouldn't do this to you, Elena. "
"You saying my death will be short and sweet?"
"Perhaps instead of killing you," he said, "I'll make you my slave instead. "
"I hope to hell that's your twisted idea of a joke. " Biting words, but she put away the knife. "We might as well head back so you can wash off the blood. I've lost the trail anyway. "
"He flew?"
"I'm guessing, yes. " She folded her arms, nodded toward Michaela's house. "You get the map of her movements?"
"It'll be delivered within the next hour. " As they walked, he wondered why a mortal's opinion of him mattered. "Do you plan to walk those streets and see if you can sense him?"
"Yes. " She strode forward with determined steps. "If he's as fixated as you guys think-and hell, he is wooing her with bloody hearts-he won't go far from her. "
"No, he won't. " The bloodborn always killed another angel before devolving completely. In most cases, it was the angel who had been closest to them-a macabre sacrament, as if they were cutting away everything they'd once been.
Elena nodded. "Then we might be able to beard him in his lair while he's sluggish from the amount of blood he took. Unless that's different with you lot?" She glanced at him, her eyes sliding to his bloody hand and forearm before she sucked in a breath and looked away.
"From what we know," he said, hand curling into a fist, "the bloodborn-"
"Bloodborn?" She scowled. "You have a name for whatever it is Uram's become? That means it's not an isolated incident. "
"The bloodborn," he said, ignoring her implied question, "are affected as the vampires are by overindulgence. He'll be lazy, sleepy, vulnerable. "
Elena's fury at his refusal to answer her question was un-hidden, but whatever it was that she might've said was lost as her cell phone rang. Pulling it out of a pocket, she flipped it open. "Yes. " Her eyes turned chaotic. "What?" A pause. "I-" For the first time, he saw her look unsure. "Yes. I'll be there. " She closed the phone. "I need to take off for a while. I'll be back by the time Michaela delivers her map. "
"Where?" he asked, disliking the expression on her face.
A hard glance. "None of your damn business. "
He should've been angry. Part of him, the part with over a thousand years of accumulated arrogance, was. But the rest of him was intrigued. "A taste of my own medicine?"
She shrugged, her mouth pinched.
"Your father. "
Her shoulders tightened. "What, you can listen in to conversations now?"
"Even archangels can't do that. " Not always true, but true in this case since he'd vowed not to eavesdrop on her mind. "But I did my research. "
"Good for you. " If words could cut, he'd have been shredded.
He looked down at his bloody fist and wondered if she saw him as a monster now. "Jeffrey Deveraux is the only human being you seem unable to handle. "
"Like I said, it's none of your business. " Her jaw was clenched so tight, she had to be in pain.
"Are you sure?"
Raphael's question repeated over and over in Elena's head as she strode up the steps to the tony brownstone her father maintained as his private office. There was another office high up in a tower of steel and glass, but this was where the real wheeling and dealing went on. It was also a place you entered only by invitation.
Elena had never set foot across the threshold.
Now she stopped in front of the closed door, her eye falling on the discreet metal plaque to the left.
VEVERAUX ENTERPRISES, EST. 1701
The Deveraux family could trace their roots back so many years, Elena sometimes thought they must've kept records even while crawling out of the primordial ooze. Her lips tightened. Pity the other side of her familial ledger wasn't so established. An orphaned immigrant raised in foster homes on the outskirts of Paris, Marguerite had had no family history to speak of-nothing beyond the vague memory of her mother's Moroccan origins. But she'd been beautiful, her skin gold, her hair close to pure white.
And her hands . . . gifted hands, hands that wove magic.
Elena had never been able to understand why her parents had married. Most likely, she never would. The parent who might have told her was dead and the one who remained seemed to have forgotten he'd once had a wife named Marguerite, a woman who spoke with an accent and laughed loud enough to banish any silence.
She wondered if her father ever thought about Ariel and Mirabelle, or if he'd erased them from his world, too.
Ari's eyes staring into hers as she screamed. Belle's blood on the kitchen tiles. Her bare foot sliding on the liquid, the jarring hardness of the floor as she fell. Warm wetness against her palm.
A hand clutching a still-beating heart.
She shook her head in a harsh negative, trying to wipe away the mishmash of nauseating images. What Raphael had done . . . it had been another reminder that he wasn't human, wasn't anything close to human. But the Archangel of New York wasn't the monster she'd come to face.
Raising her hand, she pressed the buzzer and looked up at the discreet security camera most execs probably never made. The door opened a second later. It wasn't Jeffrey on the other side. Elena hadn't expected it to be. Her father was much too important a man to open the door for his eldest living child. Even when he hadn't seen that child for ten cold years.
"Ms. Deveraux?" A perfunctory smile from the small brunette. "Please come in. "
Elena stepped inside, taking in the woman's ghost-pale skin against the sedate navy color of her well-cut suit. She was every inch the executive assistant, the lone touches of flamboyance coming from the glittering diamond on her right middle finger, and the high mandarin collar of her jacket. Elena drew in a deep breath, felt her lips curve.
The woman's spine went stiff. "I'm Geraldine, Mr. Deveraux's personal assistant. "
"Elena. " She shook the woman's hand, noted the cool temperature. "I'd suggest you get yourself a prescription for iron. "
Geraldine's calm expression flickered only slightly. "I'll take that under advisement. '
"You do that. " Elena wondered if her father had any idea of his assistant's extracurricular pursuits. "My father?"
"Please follow me. " A hesitation. "He doesn't know. " Not a plea, almost an angry declaration made in clipped private-school vowels.
"Hey, what you do in your own time is nobody's business but yours. " Elena shrugged, mind filling with the image of Dmitri bending over that blonde's neck. Of the hunger in his eyes after she cut his throat. "I just hope it's worth it. "
The other woman gave a soft, intimate smile before leading Elena down the hall. "Oh, it is. It's better than anything you could imagine. "
Elena doubted that, not when she kept flashing back to Raphael's hand on her breast, powerful, possessive, more than a little dangerous. Too bad she couldn't forget that same hand shoving through a man's rib cage to tear out his heart.
Geraldine halted in front of a closed wooden door. She gave a quiet knock and drew back. "Please go in. Your father is waiting for you. "
"Thank you. " She put her hand on the doorknob.
