by Nalini Singh
Breaking their handclasp, she grabbed his face in her hands and slammed her mouth over his. Her entire body keened at the deep sense of homecoming, of being exactly where she needed to be. I missed you, Archangel. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she held him tight and deepened the kiss.
Raphael’s mind cleared in a single passionate second, the taste of Elena slicing through the grasping cold of enormous power. He’d never been this powerful, not even prior to the chrysalis. Until he felt that his mind could reach all corners of his territory. Until he could be a god.
Elena licked her tongue across his.
Carnal need and searing love collided, and he was once more very much a man, earthy and of this world. Not an archangel with delusions of godhood. Not Lijuan’s mirror. He was Raphael and he was with his strong, stubborn, dangerous consort. There was no distance with his hunter, and never would be.
Thrusting one hand into her hair, he gripped the strands in a powerful fist, and drank her in. He was furious with her for being so hurt, for making him slice off her wings. Knowing she’d had no control over it didn’t matter. Not in this moment.
He couldn’t hold the fury inside.
She felt it—and kissed him back even harder, the steel and warmth of her in his mind and sharp tugs on his scalp from the hands she’d locked in his hair. Running his palm down her side, he flinched at the barely sheathed bone of her rib cage. “You need food.” His breath was harsh pants; inside him, the power continued to rage, a hurricane without end.
Elena stared at him for a long second . . . before throwing back her head and laughing from deep within her belly. If her kiss had grounded him, her laughter owned him. He just watched her, drinking in a sight he’d feared he’d never again witness.
When she finally managed to bring herself down to snorting giggles that kept on setting her off again and caused his cheeks to crease, he said, “What is so amusing?”
A loud snort.
Raising her hand to her mouth, she tried to stifle her giggles and failed. His own smile cut deeper into his cheeks. Both wings spread over her now, he shifted his hand to her hip. The bone was sharp and hard, her skin beyond thin, but Elena put her hand on his and said, “Hold on as you always have.”
Raphael went to argue—and saw the implacable determination in her laughing gaze. We are us. Warm steel in his mind. Damn Cascade doesn’t get to mess us up. And if my bones are hollow, I’d rather know now.
7
Raphael was the one who gritted his teeth this time. “Your bones are not hollow. Or I would’ve crushed your hand earlier.” Shoulders easing at the reminder that she’d come out unscathed from his brutal hold, he curved his hand more firmly over her hip. “I reserve the right to change my mind at any moment.”
“You’re sounding very Archangel of New York. It’s hella sexy.” She kissed him again, the edges of laughter on the corners of her mouth, crumbs of mortality that she’d carried through an impossible transition.
He fell into the kiss. Lightning-infused power arced around them, going from him to wrap around her, only to return back to him. The power felt . . . warmer on each return, as if it was being kissed by her as he was being kissed.
He didn’t know how long they kissed, but glittering angel dust coated her lips when they drew apart. Her taste coated his.
Branding one another all over again.
“I was laughing because food’s like a persistent and highly annoying ghost haunting me.” She traced the lines of the Legion mark, which Raphael could feel burning with a cold immortal power. “I’ve been eating for an eternity and still lost all this weight.”
She snapped her fingers. “I’m gonna write a lifestyle book to go with my reality show. It’ll include what I call the Cascade Diet. Eat everything—including the kitchen itself if you like—and come out with a negative weight.”
“I am not amused.”
Her lips kicked up, her eyes dancing. “But you are gorgeous.” Another kiss, her arms wrapped loosely around his neck like they were lying lazily in their bed. “How’s the power?”
“Becoming mine.” His consort’s kiss had cut through its initial attempt to shape him while he was overwhelmed by the sudden violent boost. “The Cascade is foolish to believe it can mold me in the image it desires.”
“You’re speaking of it like the Cascade is a living thing.” She chewed on her lower lip. “Though, yeah, it did keep throwing obstacles in my path when I was chasing Archer. Definitely seemed like a mind behind it.”
“If it is an agent of chaos, then it doesn’t have to be sentient. It simply has to stop that which would stop chaos—and buttress that which encourages it.”
“A single-minded and relentless force.” She blew out a breath that caused a tiny feather to dance in the air. “I wish it was real so I could kill it.”
“Yes.” His vision was shattered lightning, his heart an organ that beat strong and true—it had healed fully the instant the golden lightning thrust into him. “Right now, however, we have a more pressing problem.” Turning over onto his back, he looked up and up and up and up. “Do you see blue skies?”
Elena squinted up. But she got distracted before she found the skies Raphael had seen. “Is it my imagination or is that half a chair sticking out of the top of the . . .” She looked around, really seeing their environment for the first time. Yes, she’d noticed the dirt, but her neurons had just processed it as, “Dirt, okay.” Apparently, said neurons thought it was usual to wake up on hot dirt.
In her defense, she had just escaped a chrysalis that wanted to eat her brains. And the hovering Cascade power had blocked out the dizzying sides of the small cavern in which they lay—a cavern lit only by her glow and his, with the dirt adding in some ember red for ambience.
“Are we at the bottom of a hole in the earth?” She poked at the wall closest to her, came away with hot dirt on her fingers. It didn’t burn—maybe because she was glowing brighter than the dirt. “Where’s our bed?”
“Burned to cinders by now.”
Worry, hot and sharp, spiked again—not for the bed or their home, but for their friends and family. “Do you think Deacon will put me at the top of his list again?” she said, because it was easier to think about innocuous things than to give in to the frantic voice of fear that their survival had meant death for those they loved. “I mean, I am best friends with his wife.”
“We lose our home and you mourn the loss of your weapons. Truly, I know you are my Elena.”
“I mourn my amber earrings, too, and your ring’s gone.” She scowled. “I will rectify that at once.”
“Here.” As she watched dumbfounded, he reached into the overheated dirt and pulled out a particular glowing piece. “I believe this is amber.”
Her mouth dropped open. Actually dropped open. Forcing it shut before it froze in that position, she said, “Did you make amber?”
“We had many trees on our land. Amber is fossilized tree resin.”
Her wonder took a nauseating dive. “So either the surge of supercharged archangelic power speeded up the process . . . or we’ve been asleep a gazillion years?” Everyone they knew might be gone, the world changed in ways they couldn’t comprehend.
“I can’t get through to anyone, so it’s possible, but I do not think the latter can be true.” He put the cooled hunk of clear amber into her palm. “We stopped the chrysalis process early, and the entire aim of it was so you could be a power reservoir when Lijuan rose. I do not think your favorite archangel plans to Sleep an eternity.”
Exhaling, she nodded. “Smart man.” She lifted the amber in front of her face. “This is beautiful.” Not pristine in its clarity as she’d first thought, but with bubbles inside that looked like miniature explosions caught forever in motion. It seemed appropriate for how the piece had been formed. “No house, no weapons, no . . .” She moaned. “My greenhouse.”
>
Raphael put his arm out so she could lie on it. “I’ll gift you an even bigger one.”
“All your things, Raphael. That gorgeous painting by Aodhan.” Her heart hurt at the idea of all that beauty destroyed.
“He will paint us a better one.”
Her shoulders began to shake. “Is that going to be your answer for everything? We’ll make a better version?”
“Yes,” said the archangel who’d once had no sense of humor—but who was now joking with her with deadpan seriousness despite the cold, heady power that filled him to the brim—it spilled from his eyes, danced in his hair.
“Montgomery’s not going to be pleased with the new décor.” Because this was their home around them. That half-buried chair high above, the random piece of stained glass welded to the dirt, an astonishingly well-preserved little statuette sitting at the end, near Raphael’s feet.
“I shall tell him to steal us treasures for refurnishing.”
Elena snorted out a laugh . . . but the darker, bleaker possibility she didn’t want to face clawed at her mind. The one where Raphael’s warning hadn’t been heard. The one where Montgomery and Sivya had been in the house when it was destroyed. The one where the explosion wiped out Manhattan.
She couldn’t think that and survive. She needed one fucking win over the Cascade, a big finger raised up to the force that would destroy their lives in its quest for whatever the hell it was questing for.
“Your anger is sparks in my mind. I have missed your fury, Guild Hunter.”
Elena hadn’t realized she’d maintained the mental connection between them. It had been so effortless. “Huh, looks like your insane heart transplant’s boosted my mind-to-mind strength.” A good bonus when she wasn’t too sure about the rest of her. Because what if she literally couldn’t put on weight? What if the interrupted process meant she’d be a slightly gussied-up skeleton forever?
No need to panic just yet. Save it for later. Plenty of things to stress over before we get to that.
With that cheery pep talk to herself, she looked up again, squinted. “That might be the sky, though don’t quote me on that.” If so, it was a miracle they weren’t swimming in lava because they were down deep. “Were you trying to melt us a tunnel to China so we could attack Her Evilness by stealth?”
“It is a thought.” He dug something else out of the soil next to them. “Look, Elena.”
It was another chunk of amber, but this one held a perfectly preserved flower. Her heart flowered just like it. Rising, she put both chunks next to the statuette, then lay back down against her archangel. The tattoo brushed against something and sensation rippled through her as if she’d snagged a feather on a protuberance.
Clenching her jaw, she forced herself to breathe. And decided to ignore that whole situation for now. Because, on the list of panic-inducing items, there was currently one clear champion. “Why is no one poking their head over that hole?” she said, and it came out a rasp. “Why isn’t Bluebell yelling down at us already?” Her throat grew thick, her eyes hot. “Why isn’t Sara ripping a strip off me for doing this to her again? Where is everyone?”
8
The Legion
The blinding blast had sent the Legion spiraling into the waters of the river, their wings unable to deal with the massive crush of energy. The Bluebell had gone in beside them. But they all came up through the churned-up water, having been far enough from the explosion that the impact had been painful but not catastrophic. No vessels had been close enough to suffer damage, all weaker angels already far distant.
It did take time for them to regain their ability to fly; the concussive shock of the blast was yet ringing in their heads when they began to rise up out of the water. And though the Bluebell had feathers, his wings far heavier in the water than the Legion’s sleeker shape, he reacted the fastest. Water streamed off his wings in a shimmer of droplets that reflected the sunlight.
Rising up beside the Bluebell’s hovering form, the Primary followed his gaze.
Where the aeclari’s house had once stood was now a bubble of what appeared to be molten lava.
Lava does not form huge bubbles above the earth.
Lava does not hold its shape.
Lava is of the earth, a luminous secret.
Lava should not be here.
As his brethren spoke inside his mind, he and the Bluebell rose higher in silence, high enough that they dared fly across the impossible construct. The lava was alive, sliding and moving with languid grace in hues of red and orange and yellow and everything in between. Yet it held its shape. In the very center was a small clear circle but it was overrun with molten heat before they could get close enough to view what lay within.
Any closer and the Bluebell’s feathers would singe, the Primary’s skin begin to ulcerate and slough off.
“Remind you of anything?” the Bluebell murmured, as sweat rolled down his face, steam a halo around him. His wet wings no longer dripped, the heat evaporating the water before it left his feathers.
The Primary considered the furnace below, sent the question to his brethren. They all said one word and so did he: “Cassandra.”
“Yeah.” The Bluebell drew back from the heat, an unreadable emotion on his face. “The last time she created a lava sinkhole, it swallowed a vampire. This time . . .” Darkness in eyes the color of aged coins the Primary had seen in the deep. “We wait. We watch.”
“We wait. We watch.”
9
Err, Archangel? That doesn’t look like blue sky anymore.” She hoped it wasn’t sky at all—because a world with a sky molten and deadly wasn’t a world in any kind of good shape.
Raphael’s response was unexpected. “Cassandra may still be falling into Sleep.” Gold lightning lived in his eyes, eerie and unfamiliar. “I lost her right at the end, before I earthed the power, but the descent into Sleep is a long process. If some vestige of her remains awake, she could be protecting us.”
Elena stared up at the dot far above, saw in it echoes of the sinkhole that had begun all this. “As long as she isn’t whispering creepy prophecies in my head, I have no problem with Cassandra.” The Ancient was just a messenger.
She sat up on a wave of effort. And belatedly realized a pertinent fact. “I’m buck naked.” All glowing skin, electrified hair, and breathless lungs. “Assuming that is Cassandra and she’ll allow us through, can you use your glamour, hide us?” She had no wish to flash New York with her bony ass.
“Glamour is child’s play with the amount of power currently in my system.” Hair yet afire at the ends and lightning cracking his skin, Raphael sat up beside her, looked up. He was beautiful beyond compare. He was also dangerous and deadly and a power.
His jaw muscles tightened. “Part of me does not wish to surface.”
Chest constricting to the edge of pain, she followed his gaze. “We have to have hope.” She was speaking as much to herself as to her archangel. “Without hope, the Cascade wins.”
“Hope.” Raphael brushed his wing over her back and the tattoo whispered sensation through her—as if she had feathers, too, over a wing understructure of bone and tendon and muscle and nerves.
Her ghost wings were torturous in many ways, but this? Elena gloried in it.
They rose to their feet together . . . and that was where she hit the first snag. Her spindly toothpick legs couldn’t support her body. She would’ve crumpled if Raphael hadn’t caught her, held her close. “Hope,” she said again when cold fury seared his features.
“Hope,” he gritted out, and it wasn’t the most heartfelt pledge—yeah, her archangel was pissed—but she’d take it given the circumstances . . . and try not to let her own anger take root. Elena P. Deveraux, Guild Hunter and consort to an archangel, was not about to let the Cascade twist her personality to bitterness and despair. She was going to fucking own this new chance at life.
“Wait!” Elena nodded to the area behind the glory of his wings. “The amber and the statuette.”
Raphael lowered himself on one knee, his arm locked tight around her hips to stop her from falling. He used his free hand to grab the precious items and pass them up to her. Clutching them to her naked chest, she said, “Let’s do this.”
A last glance from eyes that were the wrong color and alive with deadly power before Raphael scooped her up in his arms. Elena pressed a kiss to his left pectoral muscle and hoped.
Flaring out his wings, he rose in an effortless vertical takeoff.
Elena whooped at the sensation—flight was beautiful and she’d never be jaded about it. And this, it might be their final moment of happiness if what lay beyond was a devastated wasteland.
Dipping his head, Raphael kissed her and she tasted power, love, Raphael, before they broke apart and turned their faces upward. “Together,” she said, her voice firm.
His response was immediate and absolute. “Always.”
The red-orange “sky” began to disappear as they got closer to the top, falling away on either side like molten doors sinking back into the earth. The two of them shot up and out. The temperature was just on the edge of cold, the sun bright.
Gold met silver . . . and they turned as one to look down.
Their home was gone. So was the greenhouse. Blast damage was evidenced by broken trees and what looked like a car flung upside down in a tangle of shattered wood, but their nearest neighbor was some distance away and that house appeared undamaged except for shards of glass that glinted in the grass around it. Its windows had blown out.
Nothing moved in that direction. No birds, no people, no cars.
The skies were empty.
“We must look toward the Tower.”
Elena clenched her abdominal muscles. “Do it.”
All the air rushed out of her a heartbeat later. Directly in their line of sight and not ten meters away hovered two familiar faces. “Bluebell.” A whisper. “And the Primary.” Both looked a touch worse for wear, but otherwise fine. At that instant, they appeared to be arguing—as much as the Primary argued with anyone.
