Archangel's Kiss (21 page)

“So one of us is brave enough to say it.” Elijah nodded. “She is not insane in the accepted sense.”

“Her mind isn’t broken,” Raphael agreed, “but the things she’s using that mind for—they’re not what she would’ve done had she been truly thinking.” Lijuan was no longer anything close to what was known, but she’d always played the political game with a clear head.

“Are you sure?” Elijah bent down to pick up a pebble that had somehow ended up on the otherwise barren ridge. “None of us witnessed her youth, but there are whispers that she was fascinated with death even then. Some say . . . no, I cannot lay that slander on her without proof.”

Raphael said what the other archangel wouldn’t. “That she took the dead to her bed.”

A sharp glance. “You’ve heard the rumor?”

“You forget, Elijah, both my parents were archangels.”

“Caliane and Nadiel knew Lijuan in her youth?”

“No. But they knew those who had.” And what they’d told his parents had been whispered behind the thickest veil of secrecy. Because by then, Lijuan had already become a being to be feared.

“Now she’s the only ancient,” Elijah said, his voice contemplative. “They call us immortals, but we, too, eventually end up dust on the sands of time.”

“After millennia,” Raphael pointed out. “As Elena would say—are you not curious about what awaits us on the other side?”

“According to many humans, we are the messengers of their gods.”

Raphael glanced at Elijah. “After Lijuan, you’re the oldest among us. She’s a demigoddess in her territory. Did you ever consider setting yourself up as one?”

“I’ve seen what happens to those who take that path.” Elijah didn’t look at Raphael, but his meaning was clear. “Even had I not, I have Hannah. What I feel for her is far too real, far too much of this world.”

Raphael thought of the way his parents had loved each other, that powerful, almost exalting love, compared it to what he felt for Elena. There was nothing exalted about the hard ache of his cock when he touched her, the pulsing lust of his need. “Titus and Charisemnon will slaughter hundreds,” he said at last, “but it’s Lijuan who remains the true threat.

“My men tell me her army of the reborn has doubled in number over the past six months.” And there were disturbing rumors that some of her soldiers were the very newly dead—as if they’d been sacrificed to feed the cold embrace of Lijuan’s power. “If she unleashes them on the world, it will augur the start of another Dark Age.”

The last Dark Age had devastated civilizations that had grown up over thousands of years, destroying buildings and works of art so magnificent, the world would never again know their like. Millions upon millions of humans had fallen—collateral damage in a war between angels.

But then, they hadn’t been fighting armies of the dead, nightmares given flesh.

 

 

E
lena watched child after child accompany Jessamy into Sam’s room. Keir had brought the boy up into a half-awake state where he was aware of what was happening but felt no pain. A chaotic mix of happiness and rage tore through her as she watched him beam at the gifts his classmates had brought him.

How could anyone be immoral enough to hurt such innocence?

Pain shot through her jaw as she wrenched herself back to the present, but it wasn’t enough; her daylight hours were no longer safe from the long hand of nightmare. She could see Ari’s eyes staring into hers, that bright turquoise gaze going slowly dull as Slater fulfilled his monstrous thirst. Ari had whispered at Elena to run, but her older sister hadn’t been able to run herself, her legs not just broken like Belle’s, but torn off altogether, a barbaric amputation.

Kindling.

That’s what the broken bones sticking out of her thighs had looked like, the blood drying as it came into contact with the air.

“Would you like to see him?”

Swiveling on her heel, Elena stared unseeing at Jessamy’s startled face, her mind locked in that kitchen awash with a suffering that would stalk her for eternity.

Jessamy touched her with a hesitant hand. “Elena?”

“Yes,” she said, forcing the words out past the brutal hammer of memory. “Yeah, I’d like to see Sam.”

“Go on in.” Jessamy’s eyes held a quiet concern, but she didn’t pry. “I’m herding the other children back to the classroom.”

Digging up a smile from somewhere, Elena shut up everything else and walked inside Sam’s room. “So,” she said, “this is how you get out of writing Jessamy’s essays.”

A sparkle in that gaze she’d worried would go forever dull. According to Keir, Sam remembered nothing of his abduction—likely as a result of the head wound. There was a good chance he’d remember later on, but the healers and his parents planned to prepare him for that eventuality. By then, he’d be stronger, hopefully more able to process the events of that terrible night.

“No,” Sam said, his voice husky. “She said I have to catch up.”

“Sounds like her,” Elena whispered, then gestured at the gifts. “You got a good haul.”

“Did you bring me a present?”

Elena grinned. “Did I ever? I even asked your parents if I could give it to you.”

Excitement had him straining forward. “What is it?”

“Hey, careful.” Settling him back on the bed, she reached into her pocket to bring out a small dagger tucked into an intricately designed metal sheath.

Sam’s eyes went huge as Elena put it into his hands. “I was given this after I completed a hunt for an angel in Shikoku, Japan. He told me it was a thousand years old.” She touched the ruby at the bottom of the hilt. “The legend is that this ruby was once part of the eye of a dragon.”

Small fingers ran reverently over the jewel. “What happened to the dragon?”

“He was such an ancient being that one day, he simply decided to sleep. After a while, he turned to stone, becoming the biggest mountain the world had ever seen.” As she spoke, she couldn’t help but remember the times her mother had told her and her sisters stories as they lay tumbled in their parents’ bed.

Even Belle, far too cool for everything, had sprawled on the floor, painting her toenails or reading magazines. But she’d never turned a page while Mama told her stories. Blinking away the bittersweet images, Elena continued to tell the tale she’d originally heard from an old Buddhist monk as they sat drinking green tea beside an immaculate sand garden. “His eyes turned to rubies, his scales to diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds. Only one warrior was brave enough to venture near the sleeping dragon.”

“Did the dragon wake?”

“Yes.” She leaned close, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. “And because the warrior had been so brave, the dragon gave him a piece of his eye.”

“The rest?”

“They say the dragon still sleeps, and that if anyone is ever smart enough and brave enough to find it again, the dragon will give him the world’s riches.”

“I’m going to find the dragon.” Sam’s eyes turned as bright as those mythical jewels. “And I’ll take good care of your present.”

“I know you will.” Reaching out, she brushed tumbling black curls off that sweet face, keeping a tight hold on the rage that had her hunter senses humming for blood. “Sleep now. We’ll talk again later.”

Keir came in as Elena rose. She watched him soothe his pianist’s hands over Sam to lull the boy into a deep sleep. “He’ll treasure it, you know,” the healer said, placing the dagger carefully on the bedside table. “It’s the kind of thing a child takes into adulthood.”

Elena gave a small nod, barely keeping her feet under a sudden avalanche of memory—as if her subconscious had just been waiting for Sam’s eyes to close. Why here? Why now? Neither Ari nor Belle, nor her mother, had ever made it to a hospital. Only to the morgue.

“Elena?”

Mumbling a hurried good-bye when Keir looked at her with a too-perceptive gaze, she made her way out and into the corridor. Her mind couldn’t stop circling around the truth her subconscious had just disgorged—Jeffrey had taken her to see her sisters. He’d fought her aunt, fought the hospital staff, fought everyone . . . because she’d needed to see that Arielle and Mirabelle truly were gone, that they hadn’t been dragged into Slater’s foul world.

Ari and Belle
had
appeared at peace in spite of the way their lives had ended, their eyes closed in rest, their bodies looking whole beneath the white sheets. Elena had pressed her lips to each cold cheek, patted their hair, and said good-bye. They’d stayed beside the bodies for over an hour until . . .

Elena staggered into a side corridor, her hand shaking as she braced herself. She’d always believed she’d lost her father the day it all ended in blood, but she’d been wrong. He’d still been her father that afternoon at the hospital, still been a man willing to fight for his daughter’s right to say good-bye.

When had it all gone wrong? When had her father begun to treat her as an abhorrence he couldn’t stand to look at? And how many more memories had she buried?

“Elena?”

Turning, she found herself face-to-face with Keir, his expression careful. “Would you—”

But Elena was already shaking her head. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.” She almost ran to the waiting room, taking the hidden stairs to the top level. Her wings dragged on the steps designed for vampires, but she made it up and out into the icy air without being stopped by anyone else.

The wind was a cold slap against her overheated cheeks, the fresh air a welcome balm. “I don’t want to remember.” A cowardly thought, but she wasn’t strong enough to bear the knowledge hanging heavy on the edge of her horizon. Because it was bad. Worse than anything else. And she was already struggling to survive the memories.

A cough from her left. “I’d ask if you were stargazing, but it’s only five.”

Her back went stiff. What had she said? Anyone but Galen. “Venom.”

T
he vampire was wearing his signature black sunglasses, his lips holding a familiar mocking edge. “At your service.”

She realized he had to have left New York as soon as Dmitri arrived. “Do vampires suffer from jet lag?”

Venom removed his sunglasses, giving her the full impact of those eyes slitted like a snake’s. It didn’t matter that she’d seen them before—her skin still crawled in visceral shock, a gut-deep response to the alien intelligence in those eyes. Part of her wondered if it was only his eyes that had been changed when he was Made—did Venom think like a human, or was his intellect a far more cold- blooded thing?

“Offering to soothe my aches, hunter?” the vampire said, flicking his tongue over one long incisor and coming away with a golden droplet full of poison. “I’m touched.”

“Just being friendly,” she said, matching snark for snark.

Venom’s pupils contracted the instant before he slid his sunglasses back on.

She couldn’t help it. “Why isn’t your tongue forked?”

“Why can’t you fly?” A smirk. “Those things on your back aren’t accessories you know.”

She gave him the finger, but part of her was glad for his annoying presence. He’d pulled her firmly into the present, the past locked in that cupboard where she preferred to keep it the majority of the time. “Aren’t you supposed to act as my guide?”

He waved a hand. “Follow me, milady.”

Despite his words, they walked side by side as he led her to Raphael’s main office, something she hadn’t even known existed until then. “What’s the mood like in Manhattan?” She’d spoken to both Sara and Ransom about it, but a vampire’s take on things, especially a vampire as strong as Venom, was likely to be different from a human’s.

Of course, Venom didn’t give her any kind of a straight answer. “People are starting to believe the rumors of your resurrection were greatly exaggerated. Most think you’re dead and buried somewhere. So sad.”

She ignored the deliberate provocation. “The truth still hasn’t gotten out? I know Raphael’s people wouldn’t tell, but the others? Michaela?”

“All jealous. Raphael’s the first archangel in living memory to have Made an angel.” A glance at her from those mirrored frames that showed her nothing but her own face floating in darkness. “You’re a unique prize. Be careful you don’t get bagged and put up on some wall.”

 

 

R
aphael was sitting behind a huge black desk when she walked in, Venom having left her at the door. Déjà vu hit her with relentless force. He had a desk like that in his Tower, too.