by Nalini Singh
Horror was an acidic taste on her tongue. Raphael, she only fed on a few people when in New York and she was nearly unbeatable. It was stating the obvious but she had to state it, had to get the horror out of her head.
At least we have warning. He held out his hand, an act he never did when speaking to the Cadre.
Wildfire arced between them as she slid her hand into his, and it was cold, so cold. She tightened her grip, set her jaw, and accepted it. Accepted him. Raphael sucked in a small breath at the same time. His skin warmed, his wing brushing across the lightning storm of her own.
On another screen, she saw Elijah turn to drop a kiss on Hannah’s black curls as she, too, came to stand next to her archangel. Unlike Elena’s hand-combed locks and old Guild sweatshirt, Hannah wore an elegant green-striped blue gown and her hair was braided in a complicated and lovely pattern twined with thick golden threads.
Dismay was a heavy darkness on the face of the only other—living—consort in the Cadre. That was when it struck her: Is the Hummingbird Aegaeon’s consort?
No. Raphael’s grip grew stronger, his voice a whip. The arrogant fool never understood the treasure he’d been offered.
“Lady Caliane?”
Caliane nodded at Neha’s query. “Tasha’s squadron is on the deck of a ship I ordered moved near a port border and their drone machines are about to reach land. Ah, to be young and to quickly comprehend a new world.” A turn of her head. “Avi, we wish to see through the eyes of the machines.”
The feed cut into static before it switched to an oceanside view. Water lapping against a shore, ships raised up on blocks in a nearby yard, in the process of repair. Nets crumpled on the sand. Baskets piled up on a dock where a small-time fisherman might pick them up to throw back onto a boat.
A view shift to a different drone. Elena clenched her gut. What they’d just seen had been nothing but the tiniest edge of a huge port. Hundreds of containers sat ready to be loaded onto massive ships that sat waiting in the deep water against which the port had been constructed. Large fishing trawlers sat alongside the container ships. Cranes arched overhead, all of them motionless and silent in the sunlight.
No forklifts or other vehicles moved in the container area, industrious ants going about their business. Day or night, no major port was ever this quiet. Someone was always coming in or shipping out.
The drone pilot flew deeper into the city.
The only sounds picked up by the drone’s systems were the lap of the waves and a dull banging that sounded as if a loose piece of wood was whacking up against the metal side of a ship.
The drone zeroed in on a large warehouse emblazoned with Chinese characters. It had huge openings on either side where roller doors had been pulled up.
It is the fish market such as on our own port, Raphael translated silently for her.
The noisy, busy place where restauranteurs and shopkeepers came early in the day to bid on fish auctions and haggle over the freshest catch. Of course, a few other locals always wandered in, too—you could often get the “leftovers” for trade prices.
The drone flew inside the market.
Bodies lay everywhere. Behind the large display counters full of a mix of rotting and desiccated fish, in the wide aisles, near pallets stacked with boxes ready for the refrigerated trucks that had to be waiting out back, under a massive central scale the market must’ve used for its showier auctions.
Unlike in the villages, these people had been afraid when they died.
Their corpses lay huddled against walls or curled up in balls on the floor, arms around one another and faces contorted.
Elena didn’t realize she was crying until the wet streaked her cheeks. She let the tears fall—some things were beyond politics or games of power. The desiccated body of a small dog lay cradled in the lap of a woman hunched protectively over her pet. A woman’s mouth was open in a scream as she reached out a hand in a futile cry for help.
Elena dashed away her tears. “Go back there.”
Caliane didn’t hesitate to give the drone operator the order despite the abrupt way Elena had made her demand. “What do you see with your hunter’s eyes, Consort?”
“That woman”—Elena’s face burned hot, then cold—“she’s wearing a baby carrier. The ones mortals and young vampires wear in the front so the baby can be up against their heart.”
The drone operator zoomed in on Caliane’s orders, but there was no dead child in the carrier. The woman’s outstretched hand took on a terrible new meaning.
“They stole her child.” Michaela’s voice, tight with rage.
The drone flew out of the market. Its mechanical eye soon discovered haunting evidence of more lost children: abandoned marbles outside a shop, a rattle lying on the street, balls sitting in gutters, a small and sparkly shoe drowning in a puddle, a schoolbag dropped on the ground.
Then the drones hit what should’ve been a heavily populated port city.
Silence.
Corpses.
A reign of death.
48
Elena felt as if she’d aged five hundred years by the time Neha and Caliane told the drone operators to stand down.
“We can do nothing at this instant,” Caliane said at last, lines of sorrow carved into her features. “Lijuan remains within her borders and we have no way to penetrate the fog.”
“We wait,” was the consensus.
Elena managed to keep her silence until the Cadre was gone from the room. “How can you all still say she has a right to her territory! Look at what she’s done!” Her voice shook, her muscles bunched.
“These are our laws, Elena.” Raphael’s jaw as hard as stone, his eyes metallic in their remoteness. “Else war would be a constant and the world awash in blood.”
Giving a scream, Elena turned and kicked a wall. “Titus and Charisemnon have been fighting forever! And we hunted Uram!”
“A conflict between two archangels is a far different thing from the Cadre interceding in another territory.” Lightning cracked his skin, but his eyes were frost. “Uram broke a far more fundamental law prior to the hunt order being decided, you know this. That law stands above all others but it does not apply here. Lijuan’s madness is not the kind for which it was written.”
She knew he was right. That just made it worse. No matter how ugly and awful an atrocity Lijuan had committed, if the rest of the Cadre breached her borders in a martial strike, they permanently destabilized the world’s power structure. Once an archangel was assigned a territory, it was theirs to rule as they saw fit.
No exceptions but for the one that had tripped up Uram.
As long as Lijuan kept her evil confined to her territory, the Cadre couldn’t touch her without throwing open a door that could never again be closed. Because what had been done once, even if done under exigent circumstances, could be done again and again—no archangel could ever again be sure of their status so all would make war to hold on to their right to rule.
“You know mortals are the losers when archangels battle.” Steel edged Raphael’s voice. “It would be their annihilation.”
She stalked back to him. “Do you think I’m mad at you? Argh!” Gripping his hair in her fists, she rose up to kiss him hard and deep before stalking back to kick the wall again. “I’m mad at Lijuan. If she’d been content with the biggest fucking territory in the world, we wouldn’t be looking at mummified bodies and hunting for lost babies.”
“I would argue that, if the Primary is correct about the trigger for the Cascade, it may have all ended up this way regardless.” Raphael’s hair mussed from her fingers, his lips wet from her kiss. “It could’ve been Uram had he managed to keep his blood treachery hidden.”
Elena thought of the naked, violated bodies the dead archangel had discarded like trash, the amputated limbs inserted into the wrong places, the glistening eyeballs held in cu
pped hands, and shoved a fisted hand against her gut. “Or Charisemnon.”
“Disease run rampant.” Raphael nodded. “Yes, the Cascade would’ve found a receptive mind one way or another.” Eyes of Prussian blue, violent in their purity, locked with her own. “Before you, it could have been me.”
She thought of the cold archangel who’d made her close her hand over a blade, watched her blood drip to the floor, an archangel who’d seen mortals as nothing but pawns to be used and forgotten, and swallowed hard.
“It is a terrifying thing to consider, is it not? We all have a monster inside us Elena, each and every archangel in the world. It is the flip side to such blinding power.” He backed her up against the wall, his hands braced on either side of her head. He was big, had always been big, but it was only at times like this that she really became aware of it—became aware that he was deadly strong, far stronger than her.
But their relationship wasn’t built on such basic lines. “You never broke me even when you could.” She wasn’t about to allow him to believe such dark lies about himself because toxic seeds took root and dug in. “A pet hunter would’ve been far more convenient for you, but you didn’t steal my mind.”
“I played with you as a cat does with a mouse.”
“This mouse has claws, in case you’ve forgotten.” She had a blade at his jugular before he realized it—wearing sweats or not, she never went anywhere without a knife or ten. “I’m the one who shot you, hurt you.”
A slow blink . . . followed by a smile so devastating that it knocked the air right out of her. “I concede this round, Guild Hunter.”
Slipping away the blade, Elena knew the battle was far from over. They’d be dealing with it for eons yet. Both of Raphael’s parents had gone mad. It wasn’t an easy history to bear. “Smart man.”
Raphael pushed off the wall, stripped to the waist, then kicked off his boots; neither of them had bothered to put on socks. “I think it is time we sparred again.”
Blood heating, Elena nonetheless raised an eyebrow. “Around all this ridiculously expensive equipment?”
A shrug. “We will make it a rule. Any equipment damage is an automatic forfeit requiring the loss of a piece of clothing.”
The man was only wearing pants.
Her breasts swelled; her clitoris damn near did the foxtrot. “You sure know how to talk dirty to me, Archangel.” Toeing off her trainers, she got into a ready position opposite him. “Walls, floor, ceiling don’t count,” she added. “Only equipment.”
“Accepted.” He followed her subtle movements as she dropped a blade into her hand. They’d worked out the rules long ago—she got whatever weapons she wanted while he remained bare-handed. It was the only way to fight an archangel.
“A little hesitant today, hbeebti?”
“Keep up the trash talk and see how many holes I poke in you.” She threw a blade with pinpoint accuracy but he evaded it with flawless effort and it slammed home in the opposite wall, an inch away from a communication screen. Raphael lunged to grab her arm in the same movement, but she was already dancing out of the way.
In the process, she knocked over a small thingamajig. She didn’t know what it did but it had lots of blinking lights. Or had until her unfortunate contact. “Shit.” Stripping off her sweatshirt to Raphael’s slow smile, she threw it in the corner with her trainers. Now she was down to her tank top and sweatpants.
Panties hadn’t seemed important at the time.
“Go,” she said, to restart the bout.
The damn sneaky archangel made a move that meant she had to throw a blade or get taken down hard. The blade ended up quivering in a communication screen. The one that had recently held Charisemnon’s face. She felt a momentary pleasure in that before her archangel lifted his hands, palms up. “Rules are rules.”
Elena narrowed her eyes. “You don’t want to win. You just want me to fight you naked.”
A slow, so slow smile that had her going slick between the thighs. “Off.” A nod at her tank top.
Not about to go down easy, Elena smiled and took off her sweatpants instead. Her loose sleep tank just brushed the top of her thighs. Raphael’s abdomen tightened, all rippling muscle she wanted to lick, his arousal rigid against his pants. “Go,” she murmured while he was still distracted . . . but her archangel obviously had priorities that involved getting her bare ass naked.
He spun toward her without warning, coming at a speed no one could avoid . . . except Elena did. One minute she was right in his path, the only way to evade him to go low and attempt to sweep out his wings, and the next, she was two feet to the left.
They both froze. Stared.
Elena blinked. “Did you see that?”
“More to the point, I didn’t see it.” Raphael lunged toward her again, at the same speed.
Elena found herself crouching on the top of an equipment dolly, like a damn mostly naked bat. She fell off the instant she realized what she was doing. “Ouch,” she said when she landed on the carpet, her wings crackling with lightning on either side of her.
Coming around the dolly to look down at her, Raphael kicked up his lips. “Did you know your favorite tank is so old it’s transparent?” He held out a hand.
Taking it, she hauled him down on top of her instead of letting him haul her up. She succeeded because she’d hooked her foot around his ankle at the same time. He caught himself on his hands before he crushed her.
“I could break your bones.” A dark scowl, but the heat of him was a kiss all over her aroused body.
“Nah. Your reflexes are too fast.” She pressed a wet kiss to his pectoral muscle and that quickly, it wasn’t about play anymore—if it had ever been. “I want you. I need you.” It was a painful ache within, below the momentary amusement of their sparring session. “Everything else can wait.”
His wings began to glow. His kiss was pure raw sex, the hand he thrust under her tank possessive and rough on her breast. Elena licked her tongue against his even as she tugged apart the closures on his pants. She wanted his cock inside her, wanted to close herself around him, wanted to reaffirm the beauty of life after all the death, all the evil.
Shoving up one of her thighs the instant she’d freed the thickness of him, he thrust into her while looking into her eyes. Her back arched, her hands gripping at his body, and her eyes never leaving his. Wrapping her other leg around his waist, she held him tight as he pounded her into the carpet, each stroke hard and deep and relentless.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t distant. It wasn’t the least bit cold.
Sweat slicked their bodies. His throat tasted of salt and Raphael. His groan as he drove deep into her before his body stiffened was nothing eerie or strange. It was life stripped to the core. As was the way her inner muscles clenched convulsively around him as he began to orgasm, the muscles of his body beautiful under the shimmer of sweat.
Pleasure wrecked her.
He collapsed on her afterward, his breath hot against her neck and his body heavy. She could barely breathe, but who cared about that when Raphael was stroking the side of her body and moving slightly in her as they both rode out the aftershocks. “I think I have carpet burn on my butt,” she said when she could speak again.
His shoulders shook under her hands.
And for a few more stolen seconds, they didn’t think about Lijuan or death or the fact Elena had become faster than an archangel.
49
A one-minute shower to hide evidence of their quickie from the smartasses in the Tower, a change into proper sparring clothes, then they went down to the large windowless training ring on a lower floor. “Vivek set up a recording system here for if we want to play back certain moves, figure out weaknesses.” She made her way to the control box and started the system. “I want proof.”
The two of them began as usual, but every so often, Raphael would rush her at full
archangelic speed. Her body reacted to get her out of the way the first five times. The sixth time, he’d have smashed her into a wall if he hadn’t pulled himself up.
No matter how many times they tried after that, it didn’t work.
“Seven times,” Elena said, her hands on her knees and her exercise tank plastered to her body—though the stormfire of her wings never faded. “I can do it seven times in a row before it fails.”
“The problem is that you can’t control when it happens.”
“Yep, I don’t feel anything. I just go poof.” She put her hands on her hips. “Let’s invite the others to watch the footage with us.” Their senior people needed to know how she might react if startled in battle. The idea of just disappearing and dropping a fellow fighter in the shit made her grind her teeth, but at this point, all she could do was warn them it might happen.
“First, you need more sleep,” Raphael said. “This can wait a few hours.”
Illium, Dmitri, Janvier, Ashwini, and Honor proved to be in the Tower when she woke. Raphael met her in the training room and they viewed the footage again before asking the others to join them.
Elena was the one who located Honor—the other woman wasn’t far, had just finished up a session with Suyin in a smaller training area. As always when Elena ran into the architect, she felt a visceral punch. The shining hair of ice white, the sharp cheekbones, the striking upward tilt of her eyes, Suyin could’ve been Lijuan in another life.
Except that Suyin’s gaze held a bruised pain Lijuan would never comprehend. “Ellie,” she said with a soft smile that didn’t banish the sadness that shadowed her.
Elena fought the urge to hug her. Suyin was an intensely private angel, her grief and pain contained and held tight. “You’re a lot better than the last time I saw you.” The woman responsible for some of the greatest architecture in angelkind had the type of instinctive understanding of movement that made for gifted athletes and dancers.
