by Nalini Singh
This man, she thought, would never taunt her in a fight or take her dancing through the skyscrapers. He was too distant, too inhuman. He was also hers and she wouldn’t surrender him to anything or anyone. Raising her own hand on that fierce vow, she placed her palm against his cheek, the power seeping into her potent enough to steal her breath. “Raphael.”
“It’s a storm inside my skin.” His voice echoed with the same whispers she’d heard in their shared dream.
Her mind shuddered, reminded of the screams she’d heard in Lijuan’s voice . . . but this, it was different. It made her skin chill in a way that had nothing to do with the falling snow, yet there was no instinctive revulsion, no horror, no sense of evil. No, all she sensed was power, of a kind she’d never touched, even after coming in contact with the Cadre. “The storm came with the blood river?”
“Yes. I felt it form as the tide rolled in, grow stronger when my fingers touched the water.” The whispers still there, he kissed her and she felt the ice of his newfound power seep into her bones, the cold bitterly painful. But she held on, her hands spread on his chest and her love for him a passionate fire.
“Such fear I feel in you, Elena,” he murmured, his eyes on her mouth before he kissed her again, the cold blade of him searing her flesh. “Do you think I’ll cause you harm?”
“No.” Breath harsh from the bands of ice that crushed her rib cage, she wrapped her arms around his neck and spoke against his lips. “I’m worried about you.”
“There is no need.”
“No offense,” she said with a scowl, “but it’s hard to accept that when your skin is glowing and I’m about to turn into a freaking icicle!”
He laughed, the breeze playing through his hair and the snow caught on his eyelashes. “I’m digesting the power, for lack of a better word.” Another kiss, this one rawly sexual. “Is that better, hbeebti?” It was a private whisper, his hand on her breast in the cocoon created by his wings.
She shuddered, her breast seeming to swell to fill his palm. “One way to heat a woman up.” The ice of his new strength remained, but she could feel his cock against her abdomen, sense her Raphael beneath the power-laced skin of the archangel. “I want to take you home and lock us in our bedroom until you’re no longer so cold.”
A squeeze of her breast, another demanding kiss before he dropped his hand and folded back his wings. “Later. For now you must go and help Illium calm the populace.”
Not wanting to leave him when he was still not quite right, but conscious they had to get the mood of the city under control, she kissed him again before flying off. If you get the sudden urge to raise flesh-eating dead, she said from the air, let me know so I can come snap you out of it.
You have my promise.
Still not sure she was happy about the whole river-of-blood/strange-influx-of-power situation, she landed on a rooftop not far from the river’s edge just as the snow stopped falling, the sun’s rays refracted off a city covered in a fine, featherlight blanket of white. The rooftop had a direct line of sight to the river, and she could see swarms of people on the piers, gesticulating wildly as they gathered around camera phones that had no doubt caught the weirdness.
Blue feathers with glittering silver filaments filled her vision a second later, followed by the wings of an angel with eyes of gold abundant in their mischief. “Come on, Ellie.” He threw her a baseball mitt, his own left hand already gloved, a ball in his right. “Let’s go play catch above the Hudson.”
Elena stared. “That’s your grand plan for managing people’s fear?”
“You ever seen angels playing catch?” A raised eyebrow. “Exactly.”
Figuring what the hell, she followed him to the river, where they were joined by three other angels from the Tower, all of whom grinned and saluted her before calling out to Illium to stop delaying and prepare to get his ass kicked. Illium shot back a colorful insult . . . and then they played catch, angel-style.
“Holy hell!” She dived and rose as the ball went in every possible direction, the players attempting to beat one another to it and/or stop it from hitting the water. Elena wasn’t anywhere near as fast as Illium or the others, but she held her own by using her brain to calculate angles, even making a couple of surprise intercepts that put her on the points table.
Less than two minutes after they began, the people on the bank stopped staring at the Hudson and started cheering for their favorite player. Factions formed, an enterprising group finding a blue scarf to wave for Illium. The idea quickly picked up steam, and soon there were five different scarves for the five players, Elena’s a distinctive hunter gold.
Had to be someone from the Guild down there, she thought with a grin.
Elena wasn’t the least surprised when a media chopper appeared in the sky, a harness-bound cameraman hanging out the side, though the crew stayed at a respectful distance. Funny how they’d been doing that since Illium made it clear that in a chopper-versus-angel fight, the chopper would come out worse. Much worse.
“Got it!” Managing to catch a throw that would’ve otherwise hit the center of the cheering crowd, she fired it high and to the left . . . where it was intercepted by an angel with eyes of splintered green and wings of icy sunlight. When he rocketed the ball toward Illium using his left hand, the blue-winged angel tumbled head over feet from the force of the powerful missile before thrusting up his hand with a grin, ball firmly in his grasp.
Elena and the other three players exchanged looks and silently retired from the game, their chests heaving as they took a seat on the edge of the nearest roof, happy to watch Aodhan and Illium showcase their extraordinary skills in the air. “Have you seen them do anything like this before?” she said to the angel beside her, an older squadron commander she’d never seen laugh before today.
“Not for two centuries.” The solemnity of his response was erased by his roar of approval when Aodhan scooped up the ball as it actually hit the water and fired it back over his shoulder without looking, his body and wings turning him into a living diamond under the piercing winter sunlight.
Stunning, Elena thought, just as her phone vibrated with an incoming message from Sara. Illium caught the ball before it would’ve hit the roof of a car crossing a nearby bridge, but his body appeared to be on a collision course with a bus. Someone screamed, but the blue-winged angel executed a perfect turn through the girders of the bridge to launch a throw that sent Aodhan flying backward with the might of it.
Ransom is taking bets on which of the two “pretty boys” loses the ball first.
Elena grinned and messaged back: Put me down as backing Illium to win. Aodhan’s too well behaved to expect Bluebell’s more sneaky moves.
Turned out she was wrong. Aodhan seemed to know Illium’s tricks inside out and vice versa. By the time it ended in a draw caused by the recall of both players to the Tower, the city had well and truly awakened to the fact that there was an extraordinary new angel in their midst. The horrifying news of a bloodred Hudson had been relegated to a secondary news item, the entire city—heck, the entire country—in fascinated discussion about Aodhan and, of course, the game.
Every single channel had roped in a baseball commentator to discuss the angels’ technique, and speculation was rife about a possible rematch, with the Manhattan-based reporters smug as cats in the cream as they said, “Watch this space for further news about our angels.”
“I’d say Illium’s ploy was a success,” she said to Raphael later that night, in the privacy of the large bath in their Tower suite. “Aodhan’s appearance topped it off.”
“He surprised all of us.” Raphael no longer looked as “other” as he had after the river ran red, but every so often she’d hear a hint of those strange whispers in his voice. “Why are you sitting so far?” he asked now, his arms spread along the tiled edge of the tub the size of a small pool. “I assure you, I haven’t been overcome by the urge to make the dead walk.”
Floating across to him, she rested her han
ds on his thighs below the waterline. “The power, it’s holding?” No matter if it freaked her out, he needed to grow stronger if he was to stand against the others.
A darkness in the cerulean blue, shadows shifting under the sea. “No. It filled me to overflowing, but it has drained away ever since. I will return to myself by dawn.”
“Damn.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Yes, quite. If I need to wait for another extraordinary event to taste such strength, we may, as you put it, be screwed. Especially given the other factor.”
Eyes going to his right temple, she said, “Show me,” having kept her silence in Amanat for fear his enemies would get wind of what might be a sign of fatal weakness.
Raphael removed the mask of glamour to reveal the speck, except it was no longer a speck. It had spread in a fine line over the bone, become about an inch long. And—“Raphael.” Heart stuttering, she touched her finger to his skin. “It’s turned a deep, deep red.”
Terror sought to squeeze the breath out of her chest. Fighting it, she found her voice again. “It doesn’t look swollen or infected, though, more like ink beneath your skin.” Except, unlike his spymaster, Raphael didn’t have a facial tattoo. “Do you feel anything?”
“There is no weakness, no sense of sickness.” He ran the back of his hand over her breast, his knuckle touching her nipple. “It’s done no harm thus far.” Both hands sliding down her rib cage to her waist, he brought her over his thighs, his erection rubbing against her, the blunt steel making her nails dig into his shoulders.
Molten heat in her navel. “God, how can I be so ready for you so quickly?”
“Because you’re mine.” With those stark words of possession, he lifted her, then brought her down so the head of his cock pushed at the slick heat of her opening. “Fuck me, Elena.”
Even as she took him with a moan of exquisite pleasure, part of her scrabbled to fight the rising passion, to think. That was near impossible when Raphael hauled her lips to his, one hand fisted in her hair, the other molding her breast in a caress both bold and possessive as his tongue thrust deep into her mouth.
It wasn’t the roughness that had her brain scrambling. Raphael was often raw, and she loved it, loved that he didn’t hold back, but this, today . . . That was when she felt it, the “cold” in his kiss, the ice that penetrated her own blood through their intimate physical link. Even at his most sexually demanding, Raphael always made her feel unbearably cherished. Tonight his touch felt remote, for lack of a better word, and when she opened her eyes, she saw he watched her even as he played her body.
No way in hell.
She bit down hard on his lower lip, and when his hands dug into her flesh, his wings beginning to glow, she licked her tongue over the hurt and ran her lips down his throat, squeezing him with her internal muscles at the same time. His body went taut, his cock pulsing inside her.
Oh yeah, she knew exactly which buttons to press, too.
The instant she felt his hand fisting in her hair again in preparation for taking back the reins, she gripped the tendons along his neck between her teeth. A growl, the glow off his wings intensifying, but he let her control their next kiss, his tongue dueling with hers as she pressed her breasts to his chest, well aware he loved the feel of her aroused nipples rubbing against his flesh.
Flexing his hips, he urged her to go faster, harder. When she resisted, he tipped her back over his arm without warning and sucked one of her nipples into his mouth, rolling the taut little nub over his tongue like a succulent berry. The stab of sensation went straight to her womb. Pulling at his hair, she tried to stop the erotic torment, take back control.
The touch of teeth on her sensitive flesh.
She tightened around the thickness of him and was rewarded by a lavish lick, his mouth releasing her nipple only to brand the other with the scalding heat of his kiss. It was near impossible to think now, but she needed to know this was her Raphael. Clamping down hard on his cock, she held him possessively as he released her nipple to throw back his head, his jaw a brutal line.
Dangerous man. Gorgeous man. Her man.
Easing her sexual hold on him, she used her internal muscles to caress him again as she leaned in to kiss his throat, one hand on his chest, the fingers of the other rubbing at the highly sensitive inner edge of his wing. It was the final straw. Raphael gripped her jaw, bringing her in for a kiss that might as well have been sex, it was so untamed, so deep, so fucking hot.
Then there was no more strategy, no more battling for the reins, only a passionate engagement that had her screaming soundlessly as she orgasmed around the heated steel of his possession, her eyes locked with those of heartbreaking, unshadowed blue.
27
Raphael patted Elena’s wings dry, his consort having wrapped her body in a fluffy blue towel as she stood in the bathroom glaring at him via the mirror. “You were weird,” she said, succinct and to the point. “Like that time when you went Quiet.”
Raphael didn’t like who he became in the Quiet, that state of being where he acted with a cruelty driven by cold reason untempered by emotion. In the last and what he’d decided would be his final period of Quiet, he, who had once watched over angelic nurseries, had threatened a babe in pursuit of his goal. “Did I cause you harm?” he asked, dropping the towel to clasp his hand around her nape.
“Of course not.” An irritated scowl that to him was a kiss. “You did fuck my brains out, but since I did the same to you, I’m not complaining.”
Her temper the ultimate reassurance, he released her. As she walked out into the bedroom and found a robe, he followed to pull on a pair of black pants. He wouldn’t sleep this night; there was too much to do—the reason they were at the Tower, not the house—but he’d work from the bedroom until she was past the first problematic hours of sleep.
“I go into the Quiet when I expend a certain level and kind of power,” he said, “but this felt like something outside myself.” As if he stood in the deepest ocean, insulated from the world.
“An assault?” Curling tendrils of near white around her face where the strands had escaped the knot at the back of her head, Elena closed the short distance between them.
“One that drenched me with power? No.” He had a feeling it had been something far more dangerous. “If I am coming into my power, it appears it has the potential to fundamentally change me.”
“Never going to happen.” A stubborn glint in his hunter’s eye. “I’m not gonna lose my man.”
“I know.” Even in the strange cold, he’d tasted her fury, her passion, the searing depth of her love, and it had wrenched him back into her arms, all distance erased. “Now it’s time for my woman to go to bed.” She had circles under her eyes from the string of tension-filled days and interrupted sleep. “If you do not argue, I shall send you into slumber with bedtime tales of blood and death and annihilation from the last Cascade.”
“Yippee.” Slipping off the robe to reveal a body lithe and golden, she snuggled under the blankets.
He lay on his side atop those same blankets, tugging her hair from its knot to play with the wild silk of it. “Have you heard of the lost city of Atlantis?”
“Of course.” Her eyes widened, soft wonder in the silver-gray. “It was real?”
“My mother says the legend springs from a water city that existed millennia upon millennia ago—a city of remarkable artistry created by an archangel who had abilities such as those we now believe Astaad to have, except this archangel’s powers were at their height at the time.”
Bleak realization stole the wonder. “It was destroyed, wasn’t it?”
“Caliane is uncertain if some part of it does in truth lie below the ocean, protected by its archangel, but it fell victim to the last Cascade wars, as did many other great civilizations.”
“Such wonders lost forever, Raphael. Things that eclipse the creations of this modern world, until the boastfulness of today is that of children who have never seen true grace.”
> Repeating Caliane’s judgment for Elena, he told her the rest, how the wars had circled the globe, soaking the earth in mortal and immortal blood both. “By the time they came to an end, a century after they began, half the world was gone and civilization had regressed by millennia.”
Elena shook her head, as if the knowledge was too terrible to bear. “These Cascades, there’s no way of telling how many have come and gone, how many times civilization has been all but erased only to start again.”
“Yes.” Shifting so his body covered her own, his hand in her hair, he told her the prelude to the final brutal fact. “Caliane has survived more than one Cascade.” That, he was certain, no one knew. “She says not all are equal, and that from the changes apparent in the Cadre so soon into the Cascade, this may be the strongest in all her eons of existence.”
Unhidden horror, his hunter’s arms holding him close. “If the last Cascade ended in the destruction of half the world . . .”
“Yes.”
• • •
Given Raphael’s ominous bedtime story, it was a miracle Elena slept as soundly as she did. When she woke, however, to a haunting quiet that told her more snow had fallen overnight, it was with a blinding need to escape the madness of the immortal world for a fragment of time.
Sara had the morning off—as much as a Guild Director could ever have time off—so Elena hooked up with her best friend and Zoe at a small neighborhood eatery for brunch. The owner and most of the regulars knew Elena from before her transformation and, while there were a few people who snuck photos, no one bothered them.
An hour and a half later, they stood in Central Park, watching a giggling Zoe try to catch the pigeons. Bundled up like a little polar bear in an orange snowsuit, the tiny girl would sit down in the snow every so often to rest, then be off again after the birds. Elena’s breath frosted the air as she laughed in delight at Zoe’s antics, the temperature freezing enough that Elena, too, was dressed for the weather, wearing a long-sleeved top underneath her black hunting leathers. Her immortal body might be tougher than a mortal’s, but it had become clear she was too young to shrug off this kind of cold—especially in flight, where she had to deal with wind chill as well.
