Archangel's Enigma (Guild Hunter)

by Nalini Singh

  She threw a pillow at him.

  Catching it, he laughed in unhidden delight, his claws apparent on the softness of the pillow. His unrepentant badness made her lips twitch as she fell back onto the bed and pulled up the sheet, programming her mind to wake in a few hours so Naasir, too, could rest. He was older and stronger than her, but he still needed rest. As he needed blood.

  Her mood sank again as she thought of him feeding from another woman.

  But that, too, was the natural order of things. Naasir was a sexual creature and women were drawn to him. There was no room in his life for a scholar who’d taken a vow of celibacy before she’d ever understood what it was to need, to so desperately want . . . to look into eyes of molten silver and see a future far more extraordinary than the one written in her blood.

  * * *

  Andromeda and Naasir left the cottage after nightfall, fully dressed in their dry clothes. Naasir had ordered her to cut up a sheet and use the strips to wrap up her feet, since her slippers had fallen apart during the final hours before dawn. She’d used the oldest sheet she could find, the one that looked as if it had been forgotten in the cupboard.

  Rejuvenated by sleep and food, with her feet protected enough that stones didn’t cut into her soles, she was able to trek for hours without flagging.

  “Why did you rescue me?” she asked Naasir partway. “I gave Jessamy a copy of the details of my research for safekeeping.”

  Silver eyes glinted at her. “Stop insulting me.”

  Scowling when he turned back around and kept on walking, she poked at his shoulder with the tip of her sword, being very careful not to break his gorgeous, strokable . . . pettable skin. “It was a perfectly reasonable question. I’m an apprentice, and I’m not part of any court.” A lie, but it was a lie she’d chosen to live . . . would live for the days of freedom that remained.

  “Jessamy belongs to no court and to every court and so do all who work for her.” He snarled when she went to poke him again. “I’ll bite you if you’re not careful.”

  Thighs clenching, she tried to think cold, nonsensual thoughts. Except her discipline seemed to have deserted her. When she strode past him in an effort to outrun the desire crawling over her skin, he came up next to her, drew in a long, deep breath and smirked. She held up the sword before he could open his mouth. “Say a single word and I’ll put this right through you.”

  “You’d hurt me?”

  “You’re a six-hundred-year-old vampire. You’d recover.”

  He flashed his fangs at her and they carried on walking. It took her what felt like an eon to get her body back under control, and even then, it was a shaky control at best. Every time she saw him move, every time his scent came to her nose, every time he said something in that low, growly voice that felt like a rough caress, the sensual part of her nature sat up in quivering attention.

  She stepped up the pace, pushing herself to the edge.

  Naasir spotted a vehicle three hours later, but there was no way her wings would fit in it, so they continued walking till dawn began to shimmer through the sky again. Hunkering down in the shadow of a mountain, they rested in turns while the sun burned overhead.

  The search squadrons appeared to have turned back, but she and Naasir couldn’t afford to lower their guard. Should they be spotted by villagers who reported it to their goddess, a citadel squadron would come at them from one side, while border squadrons would angle in from the other. They’d be caught in between with no way out.

  Watching Naasir sleep while she sat guard, on watch for any other signs of life, Andromeda couldn’t help herself. She bit her lower lip and reached out very, very, very carefully to touch his hair. It was cool silk and far softer than she’d imagined it might be. She wanted to—

  He snapped up a hand to capture her wrist, his eyes still closed. “Andi, what are you doing?”

  19

  Andi?

  It wasn’t an angelic name, not at all . . . but she liked it. “Touching your hair,” she admitted, since she’d been caught red-handed.

  Yawning, he released her hand. “You can.” Then he seemed to fall right back to sleep.

  Not quite believing it, she reached out and wove her fingers through the lusciously soft strands. He didn’t wake, didn’t even stir, though she had the awareness that he was like a great big cat who slept with one eye figuratively open. He was even striped like a tiger.

  What?

  Blinking, she looked again at his arms and face. The illusion held. She glanced up, wondering if it was a particular combination of tree branches that was causing it, but saw nothing that could explain the shadowy pattern beneath the gold-stroked deep brown of his skin. “What are you?” she whispered, but he didn’t wake this time—or if he heard her, he chose to keep his secrets.

  She stroked his hair for a long time, her pleasure in the act bone-deep. It felt exactly like petting a wild animal who had decided to permit her close. He wasn’t tame and anyone who made that mistake would regret it, but for now, he’d decided he liked her. She knew that would change the second she took up her enforced position in an enemy court, and that, too, was inevitable.

  Her heart felt as if it was being crushed in a giant metal fist.

  * * *

  Naasir had to feed that night. Leaving Andromeda to wait in the thick stand of trees next to a small village, he walked in, found his prey, fed, and walked back out. The entire exercise took him six minutes at most, but even that felt too long. He knew Andromeda could defend herself, also knew that if he didn’t feed, he’d no longer be able to protect her, but it still felt wrong to feed from another when she was in his life.

  Andromeda wasn’t where he’d left her when he returned. Not that it took him long to track her to a small stream nearby. Her body was stiff, pretty wings patterned like a bird’s held off the ground. “Done?” she asked without turning around.

  “Yes.”

  She fell in beside him to continue their journey, but he could feel the wrongness in the air. As he’d demonstrated to her, he could put on a civilized skin when necessary. Most of the women he’d taken to his bed had never once seen him in anything close to his real skin. They had seen only the cool, cultured avatar who made them shiver with a primal fear that heightened their sexual pleasure.

  It was a game that wasn’t a game but a kind of a lie, and it didn’t come instinctively to him. He’d learned how to pull it off only after realizing women wouldn’t otherwise allow him near their soft bodies and delicate skin.

  Don’t act with me.

  Andromeda might jump when he playfully scared her, but she hadn’t flinched once when it counted. She’d been happy he’d brought her meat, had let him touch her with his claws, hadn’t looked at him with terrified abhorrence just because he wasn’t like other men. No, she looked at him as if she wanted to pet him and bite him and play with him.

  Except tonight. Tonight, she wouldn’t look at him at all.

  “I chose a man.”

  She stumbled over something in her path, righted herself. “Oh.” A long pause before she said, “I didn’t think you liked men that way.” Her voice was tight, as if she wasn’t breathing properly.

  “Food is food.” As long as it wasn’t diseased like the blood that ran in the veins of Lijuan’s reborn, it would keep him alive.

  Andromeda shot him a knife-edged glance that made him happy his mate had claws—and angry she was using them on him when he hadn’t done anything wrong. “I’ve heard the women in the Refuge talk about how sensual it is when you feed from them.”

  Naasir shrugged. “Cooperative food is better than noncooperative food.” When he needed to hunt, he went after meat prey. For blood, he took no one who wasn’t consenting. “But the Refuge food is too cooperative,” he grumbled. “How much blood do they think I can drink?”

  Mouth falling open, Andromeda shook her head. She’d braided her hair again so it was as restrained as possible, but her eyes sparkled with wildness. Then she began to
laugh, clapping her hand over her mouth to stifle the sound. Fascinated, he just watched those bright, sparkling eyes. Every time she tried to speak, she started to laugh again, so he just let her until she’d tired herself out. And he enjoyed her pleasure.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked when she finally spluttered into giggles.

  “All those women,” she whispered, eyes crinkling up again. “They boast about how you feed from them, the implication being that you find each one deeply attractive—and you think of them as food!” She doubled over again, shoulders shaking as she tried futilely to stifle the sounds.

  Not that it mattered; there was no one to hear but him.

  Grinning at the wicked glee he’d glimpsed in her, he stroked his hand down the center of her wings in a petting gesture. “They have different-tasting blood,” he told her. “I think it has to do with their diet. I like the variety. Like going to different restaurants.”

  She fell to the ground, she was laughing so hard by now. Tears leaked out of her eyes. “Stop it,” she managed to say between her giggles before setting her sword on the grassy earth and clamping both hands over her mouth as she lay on her back.

  Straddling his fierce, sparkling, delicious-smelling mate with his knees on either side of her thighs, he braced his body on his palms above her. “Shall I tell you a secret?”

  Laughter still holding her captive, she shook her head, but he could tell she wanted to know.

  He levered himself down until he was bare inches from the lush-lipped mouth over which she still had her hands. “If Dmitri hadn’t taught me to be civilized,” he whispered, “I’d probably have eaten some of the women by now.”

  When Andromeda’s eyes went huge, he realized he’d made a mistake, shown her too much of his nature. About to push off her before she screamed or acted terrified because he wasn’t sure he could handle the hurt, he was held in place by her grip on his T-shirt.

  Hauling him down, she whispered, “Are you making fun?”

  He knew he should lie, but he didn’t want to be with anyone who expected him to hide himself. Janvier and Ashwini didn’t hide themselves from each other. Honor knew all of Dmitri’s secrets. “No,” he said. “I’m fully capable of eating a person, but I’d have to hate them and be really hungry.” He thought about telling her what he’d done to the angel who’d created him, decided to see how she took this first truth.

  Tiny lines formed between her eyebrows. “Do you think of me as food?” It was a snarl.

  “No.” Muscles easing, he rubbed his nose over hers. “If I bite you, it’ll be in play. And if I eat you up, it’ll be because I have my tongue in your—”

  She slammed her hand over his mouth.

  * * *

  Pulse racing, Andromeda looked into the eyes of the feral, beautiful creature who was shattering every barrier she’d created in an effort to live a life of honor and discipline where she didn’t only use, but created and gave. He was so pure, with a core of primal honesty that drew her like a moth to a flame. She knew that she’d never again meet anyone like Naasir, not even should she live to be ten thousand years old.

  Part of her wanted to accept his invitation, to be with him, to hoard the memories against what was to come. She was bound to serve in Charisemnon’s court for five hundred years, and knowing her grandfather, those five hundred years would be one horror after another. Surely, whispered the desperation in her, surely she could have Naasir for just a little while?

  And what happens when you join Charisemnon’s court?

  The cold reminder was a slap. The idea of Naasir hating her or himself after they’d been so painfully intimate, it made her feel as if she was spun glass that would break with a single wrong touch. “Remember my vow,” she said after removing her hand from over his mouth, her voice husky with all the emotions she couldn’t set free.

  His expression turned icily serious without warning. “If you were mine, I wouldn’t let you rut with others.”

  She didn’t know if that was a threat or a promise.

  Pushing off her, he rose to his feet before she could decide how to respond. A single tug when he offered her his hand and he pulled her to her feet. “Tell me about your stupid Grimoire book.”

  Stomach tight, she blew out a breath. “You can’t find it.” Her eyes burned because she wanted him to find it, even if it wouldn’t change anything.

  “I can find anything.” His confidence was arrogant but in a way that made her want to kiss him. “How big is it? Where was it last seen?”

  “That’s just it,” she confessed. “It hasn’t been seen in the past hundred thousand years or more—before that, there are mentions of it in old stories that might as well be myths.” That was the reason she’d chosen it as her escape key. To ensure the door would remain permanently locked.

  Naasir scowled. “It’s not a real thing?”

  “No, it is.” Just of incalculable age. “Caliane is actually responsible for the most reputable report of its existence. Long before she was an Ancient, she made a casual note of it in a letter to a friend.” Somehow, that eons-old letter had survived and was kept in a special part of the Archives.

  “Where did she see it?”

  “In the house of an alchemist.” At a time when even angels had believed in such things. “The alchemist is long dead, the city he lived in no longer exists, and scholars have spent thousands of years trying to track down the fabled Star Grimoire without success.”

  “Tell me all about it,” he demanded again.

  Stupidly happy at his stubborn determination, she gave in. “It’s a book on fantastical creatures and hidden mysteries meant to have been written by an angel so long ago that her name has been lost from the Archives. Within its pages are said to be illustrations of utmost beauty hand-painted by the angel’s most beloved concubine.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Leather bound, with a golden clasp.” A frustratingly incomplete description. “No one ever seems to want to describe its physical appearance, just what apparently lies within.”

  Naasir looked at her so intently that she knew he wanted more. So she gave him more, and as she did, she learned that he liked listening to her tell stories of times long gone. He wasn’t bored by the history she held in her head and quite often said something that made her look at things in a whole new light.

  Yes, she would never forget Naasir. Not so long as she drew breath.

  20

  Elena walked into Raphael’s Tower office to find the Primary there instead of her archangel. The leader of the Legion was staring at a screen that showed Jessamy’s face. “Oh, sorry.” She began to back out.

  “Wait, Ellie,” Jessamy called out as the Primary turned to pin her with those eerie, beautiful eyes, translucent but for the ring of mountain blue around the irises.

  “Consort.” His greeting was toneless, but all at once, she could hear seven hundred and seventy-seven voices whispering to her.

  Braced for it, she nodded. “Hello.”

  The voices receded. Thank God. After a few hiccups, the Legion had come to understand that, unlike Raphael, she couldn’t hold all their voices in her head. They’d also started to learn that she saw them as individuals, not a single entity. Whether they’d take that on board themselves was an unanswered question.

  “Have you had contact with Amanat?” she asked, coming to stand beside the Primary.

  Jessamy’s soft brown eyes filled with sympathy. “Keir is there now. He says Suyin has fallen into anshara and it’s for the best—the repeated wing excisions without enough time to truly heal in between had a cumulative effect.”

  Elena couldn’t imagine the horror the other woman had survived. “None of Jason’s people have made contact with Naasir,” she told Jessamy, conscious the Historian had a deep bond with the silver-haired member of the Seven.

  Jason himself had flown to Titus’s territory, after hearing rumors of a border confrontation between Titus and Charisemnon that could break o
ut into war. The spymaster had been confident Naasir would make it out safely now that he and the scholar had escaped the citadel, but Elena wouldn’t be happy until she heard from the damn teasing tiger creature himself.

  “He is a being of stealth and shadow; this is what he was born to do.” The Primary had a way of being so motionless that it’d be easy to forget him, but when he spoke, he always spoke sense.

  Jessamy’s smile was shaky but real. “He’d agree with you. He loves nothing better than sneaking in and out of places.” She nodded at the Primary. “We’ve been talking history. Or at least I have.”

  “Our memories of what we heard in our time of slumber are fading,” the Primary told Elena. “It is a . . . side effect of being in the world.”

  “Yet he still won’t tell me everything he does remember so I can record it.”

  “Some things are not meant to be remembered.” The Primary’s voice held echoes of countless others. “Life becomes meaningless if all is known. This we have learned.”

  “But we could learn from past mistakes, not make them again,” Jessamy argued.

  “Each generation, each Cascade has its own rhythm.” The Primary’s counterargument was without passion, but it was no less potent, the eerie sense of endless age that clung to him coloring every word. “You cannot predict the future by looking at the past.”

  Slipping out as the two continued to speak, Elena made her way to what had been the infirmary floor. Most of the injured were now gone. The few that remained were in a small section to the northeast.

  She walked in to find the mini-infirmary empty but for one angel. Blond curls having grown back, a shirtless Izak was standing on trembling legs, determinedly lifting a heavy set of hand weights. The bones in his arms had been shattered into splinters in the Falling, but they’d fared better than the legs he’d lost below the thighs. Those legs had only just finished regenerating in a searing agony of sensation.