by Nalini Singh
But the monster wouldn’t let her escape. “Isn’t Belle delicious?” His eyes were darkest brown, ringed with a thin circle of bloodred. “I saved some for you. Here.” Hands brushing away her sister’s golden blonde hair from her neck, revealing the raw meat that was her throat. “I think it might still be warm.” His face nuzzling into Belle’s neck, his hand on breasts that had just begun to bud.
The scream tore out of her. “No!” She was on him, fists and hands like claws, teeth and kicks and fury.
But even a hunter-born wasn’t as strong as a vampire full grown. A vampire glutted with blood. He played with her, made her believe she’d hurt him. And when her guard was down, when she was gasping from the fight . . . he kissed her.
Elena woke choking.
Black spots hazed her vision, threatening to tip her into unconsciousness until the scent of the rain, of the sea, infiltrated her mind. Fresh and wild and far from the horror she could feel in her mouth, it wrenched her out of the loop of nightmare and had her sucking in air as she turned desperately into Raphael’s arms.
They locked around her, an absolute, unbreakable haven. “Shh, I have you.”
“Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
Raphael held Elena tight, so tight he had to be putting bruises on her. But still she trembled, her words garbled, her fear so thick he could taste it. “Elena.” He kept saying her name, kept brushing his mind across hers until she seemed to see him, to know him. Continuing to hold her, he swept his hand down her wings over and over, soothing her, reminding her that she was here, with him, not locked in a past she couldn’t escape.
He kept his own anger, his rage, contained behind iron shields. Archangels could do many things, but not even he could turn back the clock and erase the evil that had ravaged Elena before she’d had a chance to grow.
“He fed me Belle’s blood.” It was a husky whisper, as if her throat was torn from screaming.
“Tell me.”
“My sister’s blood. He kissed me, feeding me Belle’s blood.” Rage and horror and a bewildered kind of pain. “I tried to spit it out but he covered my mouth, my nose, and I drank it. Oh God, I drank it.”
Sensing the hysteria beginning to retake hold of her, he tugged her head from his chest, taking her mouth in a kiss that was pure, untrammeled demand. She froze for a fractured instant before her hands thrust into his hair, before her body twisted until she slid beneath him, her legs wrapping around his waist.
There was a wild kind of desperation in her kiss, a kiss flavored with the salt of her tears. She wanted to forget. He’d do anything in his power to help her find what peace she could. He took her as hard as she wanted, pinning her wrists to the sheets with one hand, shoving her thigh aside with the other, and sliding into her welcoming sheath in a single thrust.
Her scream echoed into his mouth. He kissed her through the taking, through the raw, almost painful emotion of their joining. He kissed her until she gasped for breath, until her eyes went blank with pleasure, with passion, with ecstasy. And then he kissed her as she came down from the peak.
“Again,” he whispered into her mouth.
She met him stroke for stroke, her hips rising in welcome, in demand. Tugging her hands free, she held him to her, trailing her mouth over his cheek, his jaw, his neck. At the end, she buried her head in his neck and simply held on . . . let him hold her, let him protect her.
It was her trust that brought him to his knees, that shoved him over the edge and into her arms.
“Thank you.” Elena refused to let Raphael move off her body, her lips brushing his ear as she spoke, the dark silk of his hair cool against her flesh. “Thank you.”
“I would take your nightmares, Elena.”
“I know.” And that he hadn’t forced them from her when she could feel the savage need he had to wipe away her pain, it made her heart expand impossibly more. “But they’re a part of the package.”
She hadn’t voiced the question, but he knew.
“It’s a package that belongs to me.” No hesitation, no sense of him pulling away.
“I’m so messed up. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“You have lived.” Untangling his arms, he used them to brace himself above her, his forearms forming a bracket around her head. “As have I. Would you throw me back?”
The idea of losing him was a violent pain in her heart. “I told you—you’re mine. No getting away now.”
Lips on her own, a slow, so slow, kiss that curled her toes, made the nightmare seem a lifetime away. Her breasts rubbed against his chest as she drew in deep, trembling breaths. “Something in this place . . .” Shaking her head, she pushed damp strands of hair off her face. “The death, all this death. It’s fertile ground for my imagination.”
“You don’t believe it was a true memory?”
“I don’t want it to be.” A whisper, because deep inside she knew it wasn’t just a figment of her mind. “If it’s true . . .” Her eyes burned. “He came for me and he left a piece of himself inside me.”
“No.” Raphael forced her to meet his gaze, the cobalt having overtaken his irises until it was all that remained. “If he made you drink your sister’s blood”—he spoke through the cry she couldn’t hold back—“then you carry a piece of her.”
“How is that any better? I can taste her.” Her hand went to her own throat. “It was thick, rich, full of life.” The horror of it was a noose around her neck.
“Even my mother,” Raphael said, one hand cupping her face, “no matter what she became at the end, never blamed me for that which couldn’t be changed. Your sister, I think, was a far gentler creature—one who loved you.”
“Yes. Belle loved me.” She needed to say that, to hear it out loud. “She used to tell me all the time. She would’ve never called me a monster.” It had been her father who’d done that.
“I will not have a child of mine become an abomination!” Hands shaking her, shaking her so hard she couldn’t speak. “Don’t ever bring up that scent nonsense again. Understood?”
“Tell me something about your mother,” she blurted out, her soul too brittle to handle the memories of the night her father had first hurt her with his words.
It had been a month after they buried her mother. Awash in a black wall of anguish, she’d brought up something she hadn’t even whispered about for three long years. Her hunter sense had been the only constant in her life by then, and she’d thought Jeffrey would understand her need to cling to it. But his anger that night . . . “Something good,” she added. “Tell me a good memory about your mother.”
“Caliane had a voice like the heavens,” he said. “Not even Jason can sing as beautifully as my mother.”
“Jason—he sings?”
“His is perhaps the most magnificent voice in all angelkind, but he has not sung for centuries.” He shook his head when she glanced up. “Those are his secrets, Elena. They’re not mine to tell.”
It was easy to accept that—she understood about loyalty, about friendship. “Did he learn from your mother?”
“No. Caliane was long gone by the time Jason was born.” He dropped his forehead to hers, their breaths mingling in the most tender of intimacies. “She used to sing to me when I was but a babe, a child who could barely walk. And her songs would bring the Refuge to a standstill as every heart ached, every soul soared. They all listened . . . but it was me she sang to.
“I was,” he said, falling into memory, “so proud to know that I had that right, the right to her song. Not even my father fought me for it.” Nadiel had already been losing pieces of himself by then, but there were a few joyful memories of the time before the madness stole him from Raphael, from his mate. “He used to say that my mother’s song was so beautiful because it was formed of the purest love—the kind of love only a mother can feel for her child.”
“I wish I could’ve heard her.”
“One day,” he said, “when our minds are able to truly merge, when you’re old enough to hold
your own, I will share my memories of her song.” They were his most precious treasures, the biggest gift he had to give.
Her eyes shone even in the darkness, and he knew his hunter understood. One day.
They stayed that way, entangled in each other for the rest of the night. She turned to him more than once, and he willingly gave her the oblivion she sought.
The next morning found Elena glancing again and again at the angel who walked beside her, half certain he couldn’t be real. His hair was the color of the mist, of the blinding heart of the sun. It was the most fair blond hair she’d ever seen, whiter than her own. If she had to, she’d label it white-gold, but even that spoke of color. This angel’s hair had no color but it shimmered in the sunlight, as if each strand was coated with crushed diamonds.
His skin matched the hair. Pale, so, so pale—but with a golden sheen that turned him from stone to a living, breathing man. Alabaster touched with sunshine, she thought, that might possibly describe the color of his skin.
Then there were the eyes.
A black pupil, shattered outward in spikes of crystalline green and blue. You could look endlessly into those eyes and see nothing but your own image reflected back at you a thousand times over. They were beyond clear, beyond translucent, and yet they were impenetrable.
His wings were white. Absolute and with the same diamond shine as his hair. They glittered in the bright winter sunlight, until she almost wanted to look away. He should have been beautiful. And he was. An astonishing being, one who would never in a thousand years pass for human. But there was something so remote about him that it felt akin to admiring a statue or a great work of art.
As it was, this angel was the last member of Raphael’s Seven. His name was Aodhan, and he wore two swords side by side in a vertical sheath on his back, their hilts unadorned except for a symbol similar to a Gaelic knot, but unique in a subtle fashion. She’d have asked him about it, but he spoke so rarely, she hadn’t yet learned the timbre of his voice. His silence felt strange after Illium’s humor, Venom’s barbs, even Dmitri’s sensual taunts. But it did allow her to focus uninterrupted on their surroundings.
Her eye fell on a particular carving at the bottom of a small flight of steps. Walking down, she found herself on the same level as the main courtyard, a winter-bare tree to her left, the carved panel to her right. Ignoring the courtiers who were pretending to ignore her, she turned her attention to the carving.
One touch and she knew it was old. She’d always been able to estimate the age of things, especially buildings. And this panel was at least a few centuries old. It had been carved with painstaking care, the scene one of a day in court life. Lijuan sat on a throne, while below her, courtiers danced and acrobats played. Nothing extraordinary . . . and yet. She frowned, examined it again.
There.
“It’s Uram.” It shouldn’t have been a shock to find an image of the dead archangel, but—“I never saw him this way.” So compelling, his presence darkly beautiful beside Lijuan’s elegance. “All I saw was the monster he became.”
It surprised her when Aodhan spoke, his voice holding the music of a land of green hills and faerie mounds. “He was a monster even then.”
“Yes,” she said, knowing such depravity couldn’t have come into being overnight. “He just hid it better I suppose.”
She was about to head down a narrow pathway when her instincts jerked awake. Shifting on her heel, she saw an angel walking toward her. His eyes were amber, his wings the same shade, his skin darker than Naasir’s.
She’d never met him, but she knew him. Nazarach. Ashwini’s voice had been full of whispered horror when she’d spoken of him.
“The screams in that place, Ellie.” A shiver, rich brown eyes darkening to black. “He enjoys pain, enjoys it more than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Raphael’s hunter.” The angel inclined his head in a slight nod.
“Elena.” She slid her hand into a pocket, closed it around the gun. The short sword she and Galen had decided on as best fitting her style hung from her waist, along her right thigh. But even Galen had agreed it was to be a last choice weapon—she simply wasn’t fast enough to take on most other angels.
“I am Nazarach.” Those distinctive amber eyes went to Aodhan. “I haven’t seen you in public for decades.”
Aodhan didn’t reply, but Nazarach didn’t seem to need one, his attention returning to Elena. “I look forward to dancing with you, Elena.”
Elena was very sure she wanted those hands nowhere near her. She might not have been born with the extra senses that haunted Ashwini, but the way Nazarach looked at her . . . as if he was imagining her scream. “Sorry, but Raphael’s claimed them all.”
A smile that made her female instincts scream in warning. “I’m not one to give up so easily.”
“Then I guess I’ll see you tonight.”
“Yes.” His eyes flicked to their right. “I must speak to my men.”
Glancing at Aodhan after Nazarach walked off, she realized the angel’s spine was rigid. “Are you alright?”
He gave her a look of surprise. Then, a slight inclination of his head.
Figuring Nazarach was enough to give even one of the Seven the creeps, she pointed to a narrow passageway that would take them away from Nazarach’s current position. “Let’s go this way.”
Aodhan followed her without a word, their wings touching as they turned. “Sorry,” she said, stepping away in a quick movement.
A jerky nod, his wings held tight to his back.
It looked like Aodhan really didn’t like having his wings touched. His wings . . . or anything else. She belatedly realized he’d made no contact with anyone in the time since Raphael had introduced him to her. Making a mental note to keep her distance, she blinked as her eyes adjusted to the brighter light on the other side of the passageway.
They’d exited into a small, empty square surrounded by intricately painted wooden walls, each panel showcasing a scene from outside the Forbidden City, from farmers in their fields, to young girls running through a market, to an old man sitting in the sun. There was peace here, a number of small evergreen trees placed strategically to create a soothing mix of shade and sunlight. Color dappled the paving stones and when she glanced up to find the source, her eye was caught by the bubbled glass of an old stained glass window.
Pretty. And distracting.
That was why it took her a fraction too long to realize the scents she was picking up were too close, that the small object she glimpsed buried in the trunk of a nearby tree was a Guild dagger . . . and that the sound she barely caught was that of a crossbow being cocked.
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.
Eld
erberries 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.
