by Nalini Singh
“I don’t think you have the capacity to be intimidated,” came the icy response, but his eyes, they were violent blue flames. “What are you hiding, Elena?”
Relentless and used to getting answers to his questions, he wouldn’t drop this, she knew, but the thought of telling him the truth was a rock in her gut. “Leave it,” she said, jaw clenched. “I’m asking you to just let it go.”
“When it puts shadows under your eyes and makes you swallow your words?” He strode across to grip her jaw. “No. You’re hurting and I will know why.”
“But I didn’t and he could not help me once others learned of my transgression.”
Illium’s words dashed cold water on the heat of her self-protective response. She couldn’t do the same to Raphael, couldn’t make him helpless in the face of her pain. Taking a shaky breath, she placed a fisted hand on his chest and knew it was time to stop hiding from the damage she’d done.
• • •
About to tell Elena that they wouldn’t leave this balcony until she told him the truth, Raphael was silenced by the light weight of her fist against his chest.
“In the Refuge,” she began, “I heard what they said: that you were the most powerful youth anyone had ever seen.” Her voice was raw emotion, her features bleak. “You became Cadre at the end of your first millennium—it makes you extraordinary. And now . . .”
He saw it then, the torture she’d been inflicting on herself, and had to willfully temper his anger that she’d do this, cause herself harm in such an insidious way. Releasing his grip on her chin so he wouldn’t inadvertently hurt her, he ended the statement she’d begun, not bothering to conceal his fury. “Now others are gaining vicious powers, while I appear to have gained only a negative ability.”
Stubborn as always, his consort held his gaze. “It’s true and it’s because of me.” Visceral pain. “I’m your assassin—no one else!”
16
Elena could push him to the edge faster than any other, but Raphael fought his rising anger to say what she’d forgotten. “My ability is the only one that has had any impact on Lijuan.” The Archangel of China had been stunned that he’d managed to cause her physical harm.
“Yes, but we both know it won’t be enough.” Skin pale from the way she held herself, all taut muscle and tendon, Elena dropped her hands to her sides. “Not against Lijuan’s reborn and not against Neha’s ability to create fire and ice, just to name two of the others. You said it yourself.”
He’d never meant for her to take his words as an indictment. Even more, he’d never expected Elena, brash and honest, to hold such damaging thoughts within . . . but he should have. His hunter, after all, had held the horrific loss of her family inside herself for nearly two decades, keeping it even from her trusted best friend.
“I,” he said, infuriated with her even as he wanted to bring Slater Patalis back to life so he could send him to a torturous death, “do not make a habit of hiding accusations behind the words I speak to my consort.” That she may have believed such of him had rage lacing a film of red across his vision. “And I will not tolerate you concealing your thoughts from me in this way.”
A glint in his consort’s eye. “I told you—don’t speak to me like I’m some soldier you’re disciplining.”
“I would break every bone in the body of any soldier who dared lie to me.” Elena had never held her tongue around him, even when it might’ve been the smarter option, and he had no intention of allowing that to change.
Violence in those eyes of silver-gray. “You’re making me want to go for a blade.”
He raised an eyebrow, well aware she’d read it as a taunt.
Releasing a hissing breath, she thrust her hands into his hair and, tugging down his head, pressed her lips to his instead of slicing cold steel across his flesh.
He took the kiss, demanded more, demanded everything. Even angry and on edge, she was his, would always be his. Wrapping his arms around her as their tongues lashed against each other, their bodies primed for a furious intimate battle, he said, Tighten your wings, and took her into the air, spreading his glamour to cover her, until they were invisible to the world.
• • •
Chest heaving, Elena broke the kiss to see that Raphael was flying them across the river toward Manhattan. “Let me go. I have my own damn wings.” And she was pissed with him for the way he’d spoken to her.
“Not yet.” He kissed her this time, the hand he thrust into her hair unraveling her braid as he used the grip to hold her mouth to his own.
She could’ve escaped if she’d truly wanted to, her training as a hunter as well as that under Galen having given her more than one dirty trick, but she wanted to fight with him. So she bit at his lower lip and when he responded by deepening the kiss, his arms steel around her, his tongue licking at the roof of her mouth, had to battle her body’s instinctive response, the place between her thighs slick.
Wrenching away her head, she glanced down . . . and saw he’d taken them high, high above Manhattan, to an altitude she couldn’t yet reach on her own. Her eyes widened. “No.” She glared at him. “I told you I will not dance with you above the—” Her words ended in a scream as he flipped them so their heads pointed toward the city . . . and closed his wings.
“Raphael!” The wind was a roar in her ears as they plummeted like a bullet shot from the sky. “I’m going to kill you if we survive this!”
His laughter dark and dangerous and sexy, he snapped out his wings to shoot them through the narrow space between two high-rises, the early morning skies almost empty. “Almost” being the operative word. “Home, now!” she ordered, but he took them back up into the sky, his body hard and muscled and flexing against her in ways that made her breasts swell, her entire body an erotic zone.
Baring her teeth, she gripped his hair once again and forced him to meet her gaze. “Home, or we’re never, ever having sex again.”
An arrogant smile as he shifted her so his rigid cock pushed against her soft slickness, the clothing between them no barrier to the sexual heat. “Could you resist me?”
“Push me and find out.” She narrowed her eyes as they shot through the clouds and higher. Higher. And then—“God damn it!” Hair streaming down her back, she stared down at the skyscrapers getting closer at violent speed . . . and felt the adrenaline junkie in her take over, the dangerous pleasure a drug.
When she demanded another kiss, Raphael’s response was hot and hard. But he broke the connection far too soon. “Hold on.”
Elena had thought she’d seen Raphael fly. She hadn’t.
Skimming down the side of a high-rise, he flipped them backward in a spiral that had her gritting her teeth to hold back a scream of exhilaration. Just when they would’ve kissed pavement, he snapped out his wings and swept back up, slicing through a gap so narrow that his wings brushed the edges of the buildings on either side, the early risers inside having no idea the Archangel of New York was giving his consort one hell of a ride.
That was nothing in comparison to the way he spiraled around the Tower, so fast she thought they’d smash through the glass more than once, then punched into the sky in a burst of incredible speed. “Raphael, watch out for the plane!” They were on a direct collision course with a commuter jet.
Raphael’s smile was lethal. Shooting past the nose of the plane with inches to spare, he brought them down light as a feather until her feet touched one of the metal wings, the thin film of precipitation slippery. “Careful.”
Wobbly for a second until her boots gained traction, she said, “Got it.”
Releasing her, he flew over and across to the other wing, so the plane wouldn’t unbalance. The young ones sometimes do this—they call it jet surfing.
Elena laughed, her arms spread to hold her balance against the roaring wind that caught at her wings. I read a report once in a newspaper, but I figured someone had had a few too many margaritas on a flight.
It’s highly discouraged, but I loo
k the other way every so often.
“Whoa!” She almost slid off when the plane banked, and Raphael was there, his arms locking around her as he lifted off before she could be sucked into the engines. Strong and protective against her, he was her everything and, all at once, she’d had enough playing. Kissing his throat, she whispered, “No more.”
No response, but less than a minute of breathtaking speed later, they were in the privacy of their bedroom. Tugging off her clothes as he kissed her, Elena then pulled at his own until he got rid of the impediments to her touch, his body heat rough against her own. Hushed whispers and hungry caresses, their language that of lovers who know each other’s every pleasure point, they moved together with raw intimacy.
Holding himself inside her toward the end, his thickness stretching her flesh, Raphael held her gaze. “Eternity would mean nothing without you. For no power on this earth would I trade my Elena.”
Heart splintering at the piercing tenderness of his words, she touched trembling fingers to his lips and hoped his choice wouldn’t doom him, this man whom she loved until she couldn’t breathe.
• • •
With the donor blood coming into Blood-for-Less being tested around the clock, they had a hit on the tainted donor at three the following morning. Getting out of bed, Elena was dressed and at the blood café within fifteen minutes, Raphael by her side. He hadn’t slept, having escorted a fuming but compliant Michaela out of the territory, then returned to speak to Galen and Venom via a visual link to the Refuge.
Landing at the back of Blood-for-Less so as not to alarm its customers, they met Marcia in the shadows. When the woman couldn’t get a word out at the sight of Raphael, her fear so potent that Elena saw Raphael’s expression alter in subtle anger, she took over the questioning.
She’s probably never been near an archangel. Cut her a break.
It’s not Ms. Blue who is the target of my anger. My angels are instructed to be brutal if necessary to keep their vampires under control, but this one’s record is clean.
Elena hadn’t realized he’d checked Marcia’s file. You think she was abused? Given the violence and cruelty she’d seen in the immortal world, she hadn’t thought vamps doing their hundred had any rights.
Damaging a useful tool until it’s too fragile to function is a waste, was the coldly practical answer. It seems I may need to remind certain angels of that fact.
Sensing that Marcia was failing in her attempt to force words out through her terror, Elena motioned for Raphael to disappear farther back into the shadows and caught his raised eyebrow before he complied. I’ve got a theory—if she can’t see you, she can pretend you’re not here.
It seemed to work.
“We’ve had only two other donors in the time since the tainted donor, and the Tower is testing their blood now,” Marcia said in response to her question, the vampire’s eyes turned scrupulously away from the shadows that swathed Raphael.
“Surveillance images?”
Proving her intelligence and preparedness, Marcia held out a photograph of a thin young woman with stringy brown hair. “She has the blood that’s been marked as bad by Tower personnel.” The image shook as her fingers began to tremble.
Elena took it before it dropped to the ground. “You’re certain?”
Immediately hiding her hands behind her back, Marcia nodded. “I marked the time of each donation and printed out a still from the surveillance footage as soon as the donor left.”
“Anything else we need to know?”
Marcia swallowed, but got the words out. “I take sick donors all the time—they often need the money, and blood’s blood. Usually.” Sweat beading on her brow. “But she looked half-dead—much sicker than the last time I remember seeing her.”
It was possible the carrier wasn’t a true carrier, simply someone who could withstand the effects of the infection for longer. “Can you pinpoint the time of her previous donation?”
“I am truly sorry, Consort.” Marcia’s teeth began to chatter. “We a-allow anonymous donations so all I can say is that it was with-with-within the l-l-last week.”
Elena sent the vampire back into her café before she had a fear-induced heart attack, then turned to Raphael. “I hope you terrify the fucker who did this to her, or I’ll find him and personally cut off his balls after I beat him bloody.”
“An excellent punishment. Be assured it’ll be carried out.”
Passing the stills to Raphael without any feelings of remorse at the sentence she’d just passed, she set aside her simmering anger and, after checking to make sure the area was clear, went over to the donor doorway. It was a carnival of scents, not unexpected given the number of vamps who no doubt moved in and around the building—the real problem was that the tainted donor was human and Elena was a bloodhound attuned to vampires.
On the other hand, she’d sensed the presence of the disease in the drawn blood, so perhaps the carrier’s blood chemistry had altered enough to highlight her to Elena’s nose.
This Marcia is indeed a valuable tool, came Raphael’s voice into her mind. She e-mailed the photo to the Tower as soon as the alarm was sounded and Aodhan is following up on it. Ransom Winterwolf, however, may have the better contacts when it comes to the humans and vampires who frequent this area.
Elena stopped what she was doing to meet the painful blue of his eyes, extraordinarily pure, extraordinarily lethal. If I bring Ransom into this, she said, keeping the conversation on the mental level to avoid it being caught by the surveillance equipment, and he ends up with information you can’t permit a mortal to have, you’ll wipe his mind.
You know our laws, Elena.
Exactly. She thought of Illium’s punishment and knew she couldn’t ask special favors for Ransom. Raphael had already gone far beyond what could be expected of him when he’d permitted Sara into the Refuge. If Elena wanted to protect her friends, she was the one who had to put up the boundary walls . . . even if it meant they’d stop being a part of her life. Better that painful rupture than to watch them be treated as puppets by the immortals. Knowing those laws is why I won’t bring Ransom into this.
You’d let innocent vampires die?
That isn’t fair. Stepping up until they were toe to toe, she stood her ground. Ransom’s life is worth as much as that of any vampire—and I won’t be involved in stealing any part of it from him.
Some of the vampires who may yet die will be friends of his. The wild wind, the dark sea, crashing into her mind. Do you believe he’d protect his own life at the cost of theirs?
She knew Ransom, how loyal he was, how he’d bleed for others, but she was cut from the same cloth. You wouldn’t know about his connections if it wasn’t for me, so this decision is mine. And I won’t bring him in.
Elena, my city is under a stealthy attack. Raphael’s tone was a blade, his face coolly expressionless in a way that made her want to push at him until he dropped the mask. I can’t allow you to protect a friend at the cost of losing my territory.
Is that a threat you’ll go over my head? Aware her temper had been hair-trigger of late, she tried to maintain her grip on it. You’d make me an accomplice in the betrayal of a friend? It was a breach of trust she’d never expected. What if it was one of your Seven?
He isn’t. He’s a mere mortal.
17
The cold response was an emotional slap, another reminder that when push came to shove, mortals remained disposable to Raphael.
Fine, she said, conscious that something precious was about to break between them, a fracture that could never be repaired. You do what you like, but you have to know I’ll never again trust you the same way.
A faint glow, his wings white fire in the darkness. Emotional blackmail?
No. No anger now, simply a spiraling sense of incipient loss that made her chest hurt, her jaw clenched so hard that pain shot up her temples. I’m fighting to retain my sense of honor, of loyalty. If I can’t trust you not to abuse the information I give you
about my friends, how can you ask me to tell you anything?
Our conversation isn’t over. Hauling his consort bodily around when she turned back to the donor station, Raphael extended his glamour to cover her.
What else is there to say? A hardness in her eyes that he hadn’t seen since the very beginning of their courtship. A mere mortal, isn’t that your final judgment?
No one could push him to the edge faster than Elena, slamming right through centuries of unyielding control. I allowed Sara into the Refuge. It had been an act that went against their most deeply held laws, permitted only because he took full responsibility for Sara’s silence. The others believe I erased her memories. Only for you did I leave her mind untouched.
That’s supposed to make me grateful forever? A red flush high on her cheekbones, the ring of silver around her irises glittering against the paler gray. Love doesn’t work like that.
Yet it allows you to turn your back after throwing such words at me? A memory of the question she’d asked that had sent him hunting Jeffrey, a reminder of the poison that continued to act on her, years after it had been introduced into her life.
He realized he couldn’t allow her to remain blind to that toxic influence. I’m not your father, Elena.
Her breath coming fast and shallow, she shook her head. Jeffrey has nothing to do with this.
He has everything to do with it, Raphael countered, thrusting his hands into her unbound hair as she raised her own hands to grip at his arms, as if she would shove him away. We will not go through eternity with you expecting the worst from me.
A visible flinch, but his stubborn, furious consort refused to back down. That’s not what I’m doing. Her body trembling from the force of her emotions, she said, I know you, and I know how you see humans: as fireflies that live and die in a heartbeat, not worth anything.
I fell in love with a mortal! Until she was his eternity. Do you question that, too?
