by Nalini Singh
Her stomach fluttered, her skin hot.
Another woman gave him a flirtatious smile right in front of Andromeda. Her hand clenched on the hilt of her sword.
None of these doe-eyed beauties, she reminded herself, would last an hour with him in his real skin. He was too wild, too strong, too demanding, and too aggravating.
He was perfect.
While Andromeda was a fool, judging these other women when she, herself, was the most unsuitable of them all.
“We will break bread,” Tarek said as he took a seat on one side of the table after handing off the girl in his arms to a mortal woman of about forty.
Andromeda and Naasir slid in on the opposite bench.
His troops, meanwhile, scattered around the village, but they didn’t go far, clearly ready to go on the offensive the instant either Naasir or Andromeda made a threatening move.
A tiny, steaming cup of hot, strong coffee was placed in front of Andromeda, a fresh bowl of flatbread put in the center of the table. At the same time, a villager brought over two small glasses of blood for Tarek and Naasir, the condensation on the glasses showing the blood had been stored somewhere cold. Leaning in toward Naasir after placing his glass in front of him, the curvy and quite frankly beautiful woman whispered something in his ear, her face falling when he shook his head.
Andromeda knew it must’ve been an offer to feed him, found herself both pleased that he’d turned down the offer and angry because she’d soon be out of his life while countless other women wouldn’t.
In front of her, Tarek lifted his glass after giving the lingering server a sharp look that had her hustling away. “To honor.”
“To honor,” Andromeda and Naasir said together and drank.
Placing her cup back on the table, Andromeda took a piece of the bread and tore off a small bite for Naasir. His consuming the ceremonial piece seemed to please the sentinel leader. Finishing off the blood in his glass then eating a small piece of bread himself, Tarek folded up the sleeves of his sand-colored shirt, the fabric shadowed with slightly darker blotches that allowed him and his men to blend into the landscape.
The tattoo on his left forearm, the lines inked in an impossible silver, caught Andromeda’s eye.
A raven.
That wasn’t a surprise. Alexander’s symbol had been a raven. Legend said that on his ascension, a raven had flown high with him, only to die in the blaze of his power. To Alexander’s people, the raven symbolized courage against all odds. But this particular stylized rendering of a raven . . .
Andromeda narrowed her eyes, sure she’d seen it before.
“You say you are friends,” Tarek said into the quiet, “but you bring Lijuan’s people with you.”
Having caught Naasir’s eye, Andromeda was the one who spoke. “Our task is to find and warn Alexander before the enemy locates him.”
The sentinel’s face grew austere. “In seeking Alexander you break a taboo so old, its origins are lost from memory.”
Andromeda knew her next words could lose this man’s trust and possibly endanger her and Naasir’s lives. “Yes,” she said. “We break a law, but if we don’t, then Alexander will be helpless against Lijuan. You can’t protect him against her.” Even weak as she was, Lijuan could easily annihilate this village—if Xi didn’t take care of that first.
“You will die if beheaded, and once you are gone, no one will stand between Lijuan and the Ancient.” She held the man’s gaze. “We cannot lose him from the world. He is the greatest angelic statesman who ever lived. He stopped wars and created cities that stand to this day. His battle strategies are taught to young soldiers and his political strategies studied by archangels themselves.”
Tarek looked at her very carefully, the intensity of his gaze making the hairs rise on the back of her neck. “How do you know so much of Alexander?”
“I am a scholar.”
The male’s eyes went to Naasir. “I’ve been long from the Refuge, but I know you have never claimed to be a scholar.”
Naasir’s fangs flashed in the sunlight as he grinned. “I can read.” Laughter in his voice. “I am a bloodhound and, like you, a guard dog.”
“You’re so much more,” Andromeda said, unable to keep the words within. “You’re extraordinary.”
“Yes,” Tarek agreed, his tone difficult to decipher. “There is no one else like you—the silver-eyed vampire who has hair and eyes the same unique shade as Alexander’s wings.”
Andromeda frowned at the explicit connection, her thoughts once more on that metallic feather in the Archives.
“Alexander didn’t Make me,” Naasir said, answering the unasked question. “It was his brother, Osiris.”
Andromeda sucked in a breath as Tarek’s expression turned deadly. “Osiris was purged from the family line, all traces of him erased.”
“Except me,” Naasir said unworriedly, accepting a second small glass of blood brought out by an older woman whose smile held simple courtesy.
“Except you.” An unblinking gaze. “How did you survive the destruction of all that was Osiris?”
“I helped that destruction along,” Naasir said before he drank from the glass. “I ate his liver and his heart.” A sideways look at Andromeda. “Osiris kept me hungry to test my strength.”
Andromeda closed her hand over his. “Then he was a stupid angel who deserved to get eaten.”
Smile deep and wide, Naasir wove his fingers into hers and turned back to a grim-eyed Tarek. “I never called Osiris sire and I never would have even if Alexander hadn’t executed him.” Naasir’s loyalty was Raphael’s.
The sentinel stared at him. “Two hundred years ago, I ventured briefly to another part of the world and met a learned man. He told me there were rumors of a living legend, of a chimera with silver eyes who is not one but two, asked me if I knew the origins of it, for only Alexander and Osiris had eyes of true silver and both were gone from the world.”
“Such things are myth.” Naasir’s eyes laughed when Andromeda glared at him.
Lifting her hand to his mouth, he kissed her knuckles, then tipped her gaping mouth shut.
She pursed her lips. “I am not talking to you.” Turning to face the openly amused sentinel, she said, “If you don’t believe we’re here to oppose Lijuan, you should find out what’s happening at Rohan’s palace right now.”
The amusement disappeared. “Is that a threat?”
She held her ground. “I had to tell Lijuan something when she kidnapped me and asked for Alexander’s location. I tried to lead her away from this territory, but given the presence of that squadron, the distraction clearly didn’t take.”
“We got a warning to Rohan,” Naasir added. “He won’t have been caught unprepared.”
“Rohan can look after himself.” A confident statement from Tarek. “But even if you are here to oppose Lijuan, we can’t break our vow and that vow is to hold the line.”
“In that case,” Naasir said, “I’ll have to incapacitate you all.” He sounded like he was joking but Andromeda knew he was dead serious.
“Even the silver-eyed beast can’t take on the heart of the Wing Brotherhood.”
Of course. That’s where she’d seen the tattoo before. Usually on clean-shaven scalps.
Tarek must’ve seen her eyes flick to his hair because he said, “We all take the mark on our eighteenth birthday. Those who leave here shear their hair as a rite of passage, a reminder of the discipline and honor in which they have been forged.”
“Your people have gone far from your homeland.” The reclusive and deadly Wing Brotherhood worked on tasks for various individuals and groups, but always on a contract basis. Until now, no one had ever known from where they came—the guess had been that they belonged to an angel who preferred to stay in the shadows.
“Some of my younger brethren like to fly,” Tarek said. “We do not stop them. All return eventually, for this is home. Often, they bring mates who understand our ways, and who rejuvenate our bloodli
nes.”
“No one has spoken the secret in four hundred years?” Andromeda whispered. “How can that be?”
“Honor and loyalty and a crucible that does not forgive the weak of soul.” He rose. “You can either fight us or you can leave. We will escort you out.”
Naasir rose, hand linked to hers. “You need to think for today, not stand in the past.”
The leader of the Wing Brotherhood didn’t say anything, just put his hand on the butt of his crossbow. Polite, elegant skin suddenly on, Naasir glanced at Andromeda. “It appears we have worn out our welcome—and Alexander’s guard hasn’t fallen for my bluff.”
She shrugged. “We had to make the attempt.” Meeting Tarek’s gaze, she said, “If you won’t allow us to go to Alexander, then you must warn him yourself.”
An impassive face. “The Ancient Sleeps. No living being can enter his chamber and survive.”
“Not even Lijuan?”
No flicker in his expression. “She may style herself an Ancient, but she is no power in comparison to Alexander.”
“You haven’t seen her since the Cascade began,” Andromeda said, but knew she was wasting her breath—Alexander’s sentinel was too locked into the idea of what should be to see what was happening to the world today.
They walked out with a strong Brotherhood contingent as escort. It was an hour out from the village that Naasir let go of her hand. Dropping her pack, Andromeda had her sword out within the next two heartbeats but was still deathly slow in comparison to him.
Using his claws, he took down three of the wing brothers before they knew what was happening. There was blood but no death, only incapacitation. Andromeda was hampered by the fact she, too, didn’t want to do real damage with the sword, but she wasn’t fast enough or nimble enough to fight the highly trained wing brothers hand-to-hand.
Who, despite the name, were both male and female.
Wanting to ensure she didn’t end up a hostage, she stayed behind Naasir and acted as cleanup for the men and women Naasir pushed off balance or otherwise slowed down; in the end she managed to take down several by whacking their heads with the hilt of her sword. Even in the midst of battle, she took care to use less force with the mortals.
Alexander wouldn’t forgive those who’d fatally harmed his people.
“Andi, fly!”
Everything in her rebelled against the order, against leaving him surrounded by fighters with death in their eyes, but she’d made a promise to obey him in such situations. Gritting her teeth, she put her trust and faith in his skills and took off.
Crossbow bolts fired in her direction in a sharp whistle of air.
34
Naasir bared his teeth when he saw he’d slowed the Brotherhood just enough that none of the bolts reached Andromeda. The instant he’d confirmed she was safely out of range, he swung up into the trees and ran.
Bolts came up into the foliage but the wing brothers couldn’t move as fast as he could and the bolts thudded in where he’d been seconds before. Trusting Andromeda to go in the same direction, he headed right back to the village. It was the fastest way through to the other side.
He wasn’t arrogant, well aware the wing brothers were some of the most highly trained warriors in the world. The only reason this had worked was because they thought Andromeda a scholar despite her sword, and hadn’t been watching her as carefully. The backup she’d offered had given him just enough of an edge—one more minute and the fight would’ve turned against them.
His heart pumping at full strength, he’d crossed the village using the trees on one side, well before the sentinels’ cries alerted the fighters left within. He saw them mustering behind him, heading in the wrong direction, but he didn’t drop his alert status; the wing brothers were scattered throughout this area, were no doubt also in the caves themselves.
His muscles were tight, his lungs burning but he kept going.
There were no trees in the final stretch to the caves, the sunlight bright on the fine desert sand. Even at his speed, a sniper positioned atop the cave system might take him out. If he ran in this skin. Not being stupid, he stripped and slipped into a skin that was his own, but that he hadn’t yet shown Andromeda.
He wanted to surprise her.
To anyone watching, he was now a striped mirage they couldn’t quite focus on. Thanks to the pack he decided not to abandon, a sniper did still spot him, but his aim was off by several feet. Naasir was never where he should be, the combination of his speed and the fact that his body was lower to the ground, not to mention his natural camouflage, making him the perfect predator.
He only stopped once he was on top of the mountain that hid the cave system, far from the frustrated sniper. Finding a supply of water by following his nose until he located a hidden stream, he threw some on his face before taking a drink, then pulled on his pants.
His senses cut out to below-human levels the next instant.
He had to wait for his heartbeat to settle before he could track Andromeda. It was frustrating, but at the pace he’d run, his body needed time to “recalibrate.” Keir had said that to him when he grew old enough to understand such words and things—apparently, his unstable state after a sudden full-strength burn was a design flaw. But since the flip side was incredible speed unseen in any other terrestrial being, four-legged or two, Naasir didn’t usually complain.
Today, he had to fight fury.
The instant his blood stopped rushing through his ears and his heartbeat settled, his senses flickered back to life. It took him mere seconds to catch Andromeda’s scent.
Loping over the mountain’s craggy surface in his secret skin and staying low again, he looked down to find her just below an outcrop. He grinned; his mate was clever. She was hidden from aerial view and she was nowhere near the cave mouth the wing brothers had to be watching.
About to jump down, he remembered Honor’s shock that day he’d jumped onto her balcony, and looking around, found two small pebbles and threw gently. When they hit Andromeda’s shoulders and she jerked up her head, her smile at seeing him was luminescent.
Jumping down to join her, he cupped her cheek with a clawed hand slightly chafed from his low-ground lope. “Did you get hit?”
She shook her head and threw her arms around him, holding on tight. He wrapped his own arms around her and squeezed, breathing in her scent. Her life.
Drawing back after a long time, she pushed at his shoulders. “A chimera? And you couldn’t have told me? You pretended it was a ridiculous thing!”
“The one in the legends is ridiculous,” he grumbled. “A lion with a goat’s head on its back? What idiot thought that up?”
She glared at him, then blinked and shook her head. “You weren’t an ordinary tiger, were you?” she whispered, seeming to notice his secret skin for the first time.
He realized at that instant that Andromeda saw him, regardless of the skin he wore.
Gentle fingers brushing over his chest, her honeyed skin dark against skin of a silvery white striped with black that made him all but impossible to spot in the glare of sunlight.
“A white tiger?” An even softer whisper.
He grinned as he allowed his usual skin to emerge. “It’s a good skin for daylight, but I don’t look ‘human’ when I wear it, so I normally wear my night skin.” One came from the boy. One from the tiger cub. Both belonged to Naasir now.
“You are a walking, talking impossibility.” In spite of the temper in her eyes, she kept stroking his hair, his shoulders.
“There’s a reason for that, a reason my kind doesn’t exist in nature.” He made her spread her wings so he could confirm she hadn’t been hit. Walking around to check the surface of her wings, he said, “I could as easily have been an insane beast or a crippled monster.”
Pain and vicious fury tore through him so suddenly that he had to press his chest to Andromeda’s back and bury his face against her neck. “There were many before me . . . my brothers and sisters in a way, though w
e were never alive together. I saw many of their twisted skeletons.”
Andromeda’s hands closed over his where he had them locked around her waist.
“Osiris executed all the others when they proved flawed. Of three thousand attempts, I was the only one who was physically whole and appeared sane.”
Andromeda’s fingers trembled. “He killed three thousand children?”
Nuzzling her, Naasir shook his head. “He killed six thousand children. Not all wore a human skin.” Like the tiger cub who had given Naasir his secret daylight form. “To be a chimera requires two ‘base’ entities, one human, one other.”
Tears rolled down Andromeda’s face. “How? Why wasn’t he stopped?”
Hugging her close, rocking a little, he said, “I will answer all your questions, Andi, but we must first complete our task.”
Wiping away her tears as he went around to pull on his T-shirt, his mate nodded. “I saw a possible entry into the cave system when I flew over. It looks like it’s relatively new, perhaps caused by a rockfall or a small earthquake, but it could still be a trap.”
“Show me.”
They crawled over the rough, craggy landscape, Naasir on alert for any wing brothers who might be posted this high, and Andromeda having to be careful not to get her wings caught. “There.” She pointed up ahead.
“Watch our backs.” Leaving the sole surviving pack with her, he went to the hole in the mountain.
The blazing sunlight made him wish he’d kept on his secret skin, but it worked best when he was naked, with nothing breaking the pattern. He didn’t particularly want to be naked on craggy rocks that tore at his clothing and scratched his arms.
“So?” Andromeda asked when he returned.
“There are no scents around it from living creatures. The wing brothers apparently do not yet know of this new entrance.”
Crawling with him to the hole, she winced. “It’s going to be hell on my wings. Angels aren’t meant to go through small holes into underground caverns.”
