by Nalini Singh
“Lijuan,” he said in a voice touched with midnight, “can make the dead walk.”
Her heart stopped for a second as she read the truth in his eyes, processed the awfulness of what he was saying. “You don’t mean that she can somehow bring people truly back to life, do you?”
“I would not call it life.” He bent his head, pressing his forehead against hers.
Sliding her hand around to the back of his neck, she held him close as he told her things no mortal knew.
“They walk, but they do not talk. Jason tells me that for the first few months of their existence, they seem to have some semblance of sentience, that it’s possible they know what they are—but with no power over their reborn bodies. They are Lijuan’s puppets.”
“Dear God.” To be trapped in your own body, knowing you were a nightmare . . . “How does she keep them alive?”
“She awakens them with her power, but they then feed on blood.” Raphael’s voice twined around her, filling her cells with horror. “The old ones, the ones who went to the earth long ago, feed on the flesh of the recently dead to keep their own bones clothed in flesh.”
Her soul grew cold, so cold. “Will you gain that ability?”
7
Raphael threaded his hands through her hair once more.
“Our abilities are tied to who we are. I would hope I never become capable of creating the reborn.”
Shivering, she slid her arms around his torso. “Have you gained any new abilities in recent years?” Because she knew him, knew how thin the line he’d skated. Not that long ago, he’d broken every bone in a vampire’s body while the pitiful creature remained conscious. It had been a punishment Manhattan would never forget. “Raphael?”
“Come.” He rose into the air.
Yelping, she shifted her hold to around his neck. “You could’ve warned me.”
“I have faith in your reflexes, Elena.” After all, if you hadn’t shot Uram, New York might yet be drowning in blood.
She snorted. “That wasn’t all me. I seem to remember you throwing fireballs at him.”
“Angelfire,” he murmured. “One touch and it would’ve killed you.”
Rubbing her face against his chest as he flew them over the lethal beauty of the massive mountain range that surrounded the lights of the Refuge, she said, “I’m hard to kill.”
“Take care, hunter.” Dipping, he swept down toward the edge of a crashing waterfall. “You can still be hurt.”
They were so close she could skim her fingers along the glittering beauty of the water, the droplets diamonds trapped under moonlight. Wonder burst to life inside of her. “Raphael!”
Rising, he flew them back up into the icily clear night sky, each star cut in crystal.
“You said a strong vampire could kill me,” she said, feeling the cold color her cheeks as the wind ripped through her hair. “Angelfire, I can guess. What else am I vulnerable to?”
“Angelfire is the easiest method, but those archangels who can’t create the fire have other means.”
“I wasn’t planning on hanging out with the Cadre, so that’s good.”
Lips against her ear, a touch that seared her to the toes, but his words . . . “Disease is no longer your enemy, but fellow angels can also kill you. You’re so young that if you were partially dismembered, you’d die.”
She swallowed her gorge at that violent image. “That happen often?”
“No. Usually, the head is cut off and burned. Very few survive that.”
“How could anyone survive?”
“Angels are resilient,” he murmured, twisting to glide them back down.
“This place is huge,” she said, glimpsing lights far in the distance. “How can no one know it exists?”
Raphael didn’t answer until he’d landed on the balcony outside their bedroom. “Immortals may disagree on many things, but on this we are united—our Refuge must never be known to mortals.”
“Sara?” She clenched her fingers on his upper arms. “Did you do something to her mind?”
“No.” Eyes of endless, merciless blue stared down at her, eclipsing everything else. “But if she speaks of it, I must silence her and all those she tells.”
A cold knot formed in her stomach. “Even if that would break my heart?”
“Make sure she doesn’t speak.” He cupped her cheek, his fingers cool from the night air. “And that will not come to pass.”
She pushed away from him. This time, he let her go, let her walk to the end of the balcony and stare down into that ragged tear in the flesh of the earth. There were fewer lights now, as if the angels were bedding down for the night. “I’m not part of your world, Raphael. I’m still human inside—I won’t sit back and let my friends be slaughtered.”
“I would expect no less.” He opened the doors. “Come, sleep.”
“How can you expect me to sleep after saying something like that?” Swiveling on her heel, she stared at him.
He glanced back, a being of such power that she still couldn’t accept he loved her. But was an archangel’s love like a human’s? Or did it cut deeper? Draw heart’s-blood?
“I forget,” he said, “that you are so very young.” Moving to her, he stroked his fingers down her temple, over her jaw. “Mortals fade, Elena. It is a simple truth.”
“So I should forget my friends, my family?”
“Remember them,” Raphael said, “but also remember that one day, they won’t be there.”
Grief was a wild-eyed beast inside of her. She couldn’t imagine a world without Sara, without Beth. The ties she had with her younger sister might’ve been eroded by the choices they’d both made, but that didn’t mean Elena loved her any less. “I don’t know if I have the courage to survive that kind of loss.”
“You’ll find it when the time comes.”
The pain in his voice slid a dagger hilt deep into her own heart. “Who?”
She didn’t really expect an answer. Raphael might be her lover, but he was also an archangel. And archangels had made an art form out of keeping secrets. So when he ran his knuckles down her face and said, “Dmitri,” it took her several seconds to respond.
“He was Made against his will,” she guessed, remembering the conversation she’d once had with Dmitri about children. Had the vampire watched his children grow old? Had he lost a wife he loved?
Raphael didn’t respond this time, nudging her into the bedroom. “You must rest or you won’t be fit for flight by the time of the ball.”
She followed, shaken by the truth he’d forced her to face.
Raphael placed his hands on her shoulders. “Undo the straps.” The heat of his body was a lush stroke against her, invisible, inescapable.
And that quickly, her wings were afire with sensation, with a need that obliterated all else. It took effort to breathe, to speak. “Raphael, are you inside my mind?” She was pulling out and undoing the straps that held the piece of fabric crisscrossed over her breasts even as she spoke.
“No.” Long, strong fingers playing over her collarbones, the dip of her breastbone. “Such soft skin, Guild Hunter.”
Every inch of her seemed to burn with a thirst that couldn’t be quenched. “Then what’s happening to me?”
“You are still becoming.”
He slipped off her top, and she felt the rasp of every fine thread, shuddered against the fleeting brush of his fingertips.
“Do you know what I taste at the curve of your neck?” He pressed his lips over that very spot. “Fire and earth, spring windstorms cut by a hint of steel.”
She shivered, reaching back to tangle her hand in the heavy silk of his hair. “Is that how you see me?”
“It’s who you are.” He moved his hand up the slope of her hip, a slow seduction that made her suck in her stomach in anticipation.
But nothing could’ve prepared her for the shock of lightning that was his hand on her breast, his intent explicit. She couldn’t help but watch, her entire being attuned
to the merest shift of his.
Then he kissed her neck again and her senses splintered. Clenching the hand she’d thrust into his hair, she spun around, cupping his face between her hands, taking that beautiful, cruel mouth with her own. The kiss was wild, full of the fury of her need, the savage possession of his. One male hand fell to her hip as the other gripped her neck, refusing to let her draw back.
Her breasts were crushed against the linen of his shirt, the texture deliciously—almost painfully—abrasive against her sensitized nipples. She bit his lip in revenge for what he’d done to her. He bit her back, but he held the bite, releasing her flesh with a slow concentration that had her thighs pressing together in a burst of damp heat.
She went to slip her hand underneath his shirt. He caught her wrist. “No, Elena.”
“I’m not that fragile,” she said, frustrated. “Don’t worry.”
His hand tightened on her wrist for a second before he dropped it and took a step back, breaking their connection. Ready to fight him for what she needed, she looked up . . . and froze. “Raphael.” Azure flames surged in those eyes, deadly as the angelfire he’d thrown at Uram in that final, cataclysmic fight.
“Go to bed,” he said in a tone of voice so calm it was a sheet of ice.
But the fire continued to burn. Feeling her heart spasm at the lethal edge of it, she wrapped her arms around her body, covering her breasts. She didn’t know if she was protecting herself or him. “Will you come back?”
“Are you sure you want me to?” He’d turned and was through the balcony doors before she could answer.
She watched him take off into the infinite darkness of a mountain night, before closing the doors with fingers that had dug dark red crescents into her own skin and crawling into bed. But though she pulled every single one of the blankets over her, it took her a long time to stop shivering.
She’d thought she’d known, had thought she’d understood. But she hadn’t. Ever since she’d woken, she’d been treating Raphael as if he was “safe.” Tonight, she’d had a rude awakening. Raphael would never be safe. All it would take was one slip and he could kill her.
Was she strong enough to take that risk, that chance?
“You’ve made me a little mortal.”
He’d said that to her the night she’d shot him, the night he’d bled so much that she’d cried, her hands trembling as she attempted to stop the crimson flow of blood. Had he been afraid then? Did Raphael even understand fear? She didn’t know, wasn’t sure he’d answer her if she asked.
Elena knew fear far too intimately. But, she thought, her muscles relaxing, she hadn’t been afraid at the end. When her body lay shattered in Raphael’s arms, she hadn’t been afraid. And that was her answer.
Yes, she said speaking to Raphael, not knowing the strength of their mental connection, not sure how far it’d reach. Yes, I want you to come back.
He didn’t answer, and she didn’t know if he’d even heard her. But deep in the night, she felt the caress of lips against the curve of her neck, sensed the dark heat of a big male body curving around hers, her wings trapped in between . . . an indescribable intimacy between two angels.
8
Elena woke alone, but there was a cup of coffee waiting for her on the nightstand—right next to Destiny’s Rose. Raphael had given her the priceless treasure—a sculpture carved impossibly from a single diamond—not long after they first met. She kept trying to return it, only to find it back on her bedside table the next morning.
Eyes on the gift, one that was undeniably romantic, she struggled up into a sitting position and drew in the intoxicating scent of fresh coffee. However, she’d hardly taken a sip when she felt it—the cool stroke of satin blended with the promise of a pain that would hurt oh-so-good.
“Dmitri.” Throat husky, she put down the cup and tugged the sheet above her breasts.
Just in time.
The vampire walked in with the most perfunctory of knocks. “You’re late for training.”
Her eye went to the envelope in his hand. “What’s that?”
“It’s from your father.” He handed it over. “Be down in half an hour.”
She barely heard him, her eyes fixated on that envelope. What did Jeffrey Deveraux want now? “I’ll be there.” Words forced out past the rocks in her throat.
Dmitri left her with a kiss of diamonds and cream, a sensual taunt that trapped the air in her throat, made her thighs press together in involuntary reaction. But the distraction was momentary. All too soon, she was alone, staring at the envelope as if it might grow fangs and strike. “Don’t be a coward, Ellie,” she told herself and reached out to slit it open. It was, she saw, addressed to her care of the Guild.
Her lips twisted. How he must’ve hated that, having to go through his daughter’s filthy, inhuman occupation to get to her. Abomination. That’s what he’d called her the final night she’d spent under his roof. She’d never forgotten, would never forget.
Her fingers clenched on the enclosed letter as she almost ripped it from the envelope. For an instant, she didn’t understand what she was seeing, then she did and her emotions crashed in a violent wave.
It wasn’t from her father. The letter had come from the Deveraux family solicitors—a note advising her that they’d paid the fees for her storage unit out of courtesy for her father’s business, though the items in that unit now belonged solely to her.
The paper crumpled in her fist. She’d almost forgotten . . . no, that was a lie. She’d deliberately put the memory out of her mind. Her inheritance from her mother, she understood. Marguerite Deveraux had left Elena half her small personal estate, the other half going to Beth.
But the things in that storage unit . . . they were from Elena’s childhood.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
“Come here, little hunter. Taste.”
Shoving aside the blankets with hands that wouldn’t work right, she got out of bed, the letter lying abandoned on the sheets as she stumbled into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Her fingers slipped off the knob. Biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, she tried again. Finally, thankfully, the water came down in a soft, warm rain. It washed away the sleep, but nothing could erase the memories now that they’d awakened.
Ariel had been the best big sister any girl could want. She’d never once told Elena to go away, though Elena knew she must have been a pest with her constant need to know what was going on in her teenage sister’s life. Mirabelle, the oldest of them all, had been more apt to snarl, but Belle had also taught Elena to play baseball, spending long, patient hours teaching her how to throw, how to catch.
Yin and Yang, her mother had called her two oldest. Ari was the sweetness, Belle the spice.
“Belle, where do you think you’re going dressed like that?”
“Aw, come on, Mom. It’s all the rage.”
“It might be all the rage, mon ange, but you’ll be grounded for a month if your father sees your butt hanging out of those shorts.”
“Mom!”
Elena remembered sitting at the kitchen table, giggling, as her long-legged fifteen-year-old sister stomped upstairs to change. Across the table, Beth, too little at five to really understand, had giggled with her.
“And you two little monsters, eat your fruit.”
Her heart twisted at the memory of her mother’s uniquely accented voice; her fingers rose to her cheek, searching for the faded echo of Marguerite’s kiss. “Mama.” It came out a broken whisper, a child’s plea.
There’d been so much blood later. Elena had slipped, fallen hard. And heard Belle’s dying breaths as she met Ari’s horror-filled eyes. Even then, her sister had been trying to protect her, trying to tell her to run, her voice a gurgle as blood filled her throat. But Slater Patalis hadn’t been interested in killing Elena. He’d other plans for her.
“Sweet little hunter.”
Jerking off the water, Elena stepped out and dried herself off with a
concentrated kind of focus. She snapped out her wings like she’d seen Raphael do, then gasped at the pain that radiated down her back. Embracing the pulses of hurt because they broke the endless loop of memory, she dressed in workout gear—loose black exercise pants with a white stripe down the sides, and a severe black tank with a built-in bra.
As with all the clothing she’d found in the wardrobe that was hers, it had clearly been designed with wings in mind, the tank pulled tight at the halter neck, and having three panels—one on each side of her wings, the other down the middle of her back—that looped into a wide strap she wrapped around her waist then locked at the sides using adjustable clasps. Extra support was provided by boning around the breast area. Satisfied her body wouldn’t distract her from what she needed to learn, she plaited the damp mass of her pale hair into a braid close to her skull.
Then, unused to leaving things a mess, she made the bed—stuffing the letter in a drawer—and walked out. The bedroom, with its walls of glass, was connected to the large living area she’d already used. Across the hallway outside the living area lay what appeared to be an office and a small but well-appointed library, both with clear walls that brought the mountains inside. Books filled the low shelves, some old, some new, but she’d also glimpsed a sophisticated computer station. It all sat at the very top of the stronghold, above the soaring central core. More living quarters spread out below, rooms for the Seven, other angels and vampires. But the top wing was private, Raphael’s.
The hallway—which led eventually to stairs cut into the side of the central core—was a symphony of clean lines broken up by the unexpected. A scimitar, ancient runes burned into the blade itself, was mounted on the left wall, the steel gleaming wicked sharp. She could see Dmitri holding that blade, wondered if it had been his once upon a time. Because Dmitri was old, one of the oldest vampires she’d ever met.
A few feet down, a handwoven tapestry covered most of the right wall. She’d spent almost half an hour staring at it yesterday, compelled by something she didn’t understand. Now, in spite of her need to get out, to combat the churning in her gut with raw physicality, her feet hesitated, then stopped. There was a story woven within those precise threads, a story she desperately wanted to understand.
