Everything crashed open, emotion threatening to tow her under. "That's not the answer I expected."
Picking up a towel, he moved behind her and began to dry her wings with slow, soft strokes. Too late she realized that with her holding the towel to her front, her entire back was bare to his eyes.
"The color sweeps up your back." He slid her hair over one shoulder, pressing a kiss to the delicate skin of her nape.
She shivered, tried to lift her wings so she could slide the towel around her body.
"No." Stroking his hand down the curve of her spine and over her buttocks, he trailed his fingers back up.
She found herself rising on tiptoe to escape the delicious torment. "Raphael."
"Will you tell me your secrets?"
Her feet lowered to the ground on a ripple of pain and fear. Leaning back into him, she let her head fall against his chest. "Some secrets hurt too much."
He ran his hand down her wing again, but this time, the sensation felt more like comfort.
"We have eternity," he said, one arm coming around her neck from the front.
She felt her heart skip a beat at the certainty in his tone. "In that eternity, will you tell me your secrets?"
"I haven't shared my secrets for more sunrises than you can imagine." He tugged her even closer. "But until I met you, I'd never claimed a hunter, either."
There was something strange about scent-tracking through the Refuge. It wasn't only that she seemed to be developing the ability to track angels - that came and went, the new scents static in the back of her mind - it was that she could feel eyes on her every step of the way. "You'd think they'd never seen a hunter before," she muttered under her breath.
Illium, walking beside her, vivid interest in his own eyes, took her words for a question.
"Many of them haven't."
"I guess." She frowned as she caught a hint of a scent that tugged at her instincts, but it whispered away so fast, she couldn't pinpoint the elements that made up the whole.
"Maybe they're just checking you out." Bare-chested and with the lithe muscle of a man who knew how to use his body, he was, as Sara would put it, "deliciously bitable."
A wicked smile. "Your wings are trailing in the snow."
Glancing behind her, she saw the white tips encrusted with ice. "No wonder they feel numb." She pulled the wings back up, realizing they'd entered one of the main thoroughfares. It bustled with activity, but beneath it all was a hum of lethal anger. "Do all vampires know about this place?"
"No, only the most trusted."
Which made the assault on Sam all the more egregious. But of course, everyone knew the vampire had been nothing but a tool. It was the angel who mattered, the angel who'd be put to death in the most painful way known to immortals - and they'd had a long time to come up with methods of torture. Catching a minute hint of citrus, she angled left, to a section almost free of angelic eyes. "Any orange groves in this direction?"
"No. They're in Astaad's and Favashi's parts of the Refuge."
Chocolate. Oranges. Faint, so faint.
Going down on one knee, she brushed aside the snow with her bare hand, having learned that while she felt the cold, she was in no danger of frostbite.
"I could dig for you," Illium offered, crouching across from her, his forehead almost touching hers as he leaned in. One of his feathers floated to the ground, an exotic accent against the pristine white. "Should I?"
She shook her head. "I need to go down layer by layer, in case the snow trapped his - "
Her fingers scraped against something hard, colder than the snow. "Feels like a pendant or a coin." Brushing off the white flecks that melted at contact with her skin, she angled it to catch the light.
Her breath turned to ice in her chest.
"That's Lijuan's symbol." Illium's voice was low, hard, her laid-back escort replaced by the man who'd amputated his enemies' wings with clean efficiency.
"Yes." She'd never forget that kneeling angel with a deaths-head face as long as she lived. "What kind of an archangel uses that as her personal symbol?"
Illium didn't answer, and she hadn't really expected him to. Fighting her instinctive urge to throw the disturbing thing into the deepest crevice she could find, she brought the medallion to her nose, and drew in a long breath.
Bronze.
Iron.
Ice.
Oranges glazed in chocolate.
"The vampire touched this." Wanting no further contact with the artifact, she placed it in Illium's outstretched hand. "Let's go."
"Have you got the scent?"
"I might have." She could feel it tugging at her, buried beneath all the snow, in constant danger of being melted away if the winter sun turned blazing in one of the rapid transitions she'd come to expect up here.
Pulling on that faint thread, she began to walk. "What's down there?" Her target was a covered passageway between two neatly shut-up buildings. It appeared a black hole into nowhere.
"A small internal garden." Illium's sword made ashush ing sound as he slid it out of its scabbard. "The angels who reside here are currently in Montreal, but there should be a lamp burning on the wall."
"Let's go." It got very, very dark less than a meter into the passage, but light appeared at the other end not long afterward. She sped up her pace, exiting into the bright white scene that awaited with a silent sigh of relief.
It was, as Illium had said, an enclosed garden, a private retreat from the world beyond. In summer, it likely overflowed with blooms, but it had a unique kind of charm even in the arms of winter. The fountain in the middle lay still, its two upper basins and pool filled with snow. More snow covered the statues that ringed the pool, some inside, some outside, all caught in motion.
Walking closer, she felt an unexpected delight spark to life inside her - the statues were all of children, each face drawn with a loving hand. "There's Sam!" she said, seeing a smaller version of the child angel, one foot in the fountain, hands on the rim, pure mischief in his expression. "And there's Issi."
"Aodhan used them as models." At her questioning look, he added, "One of the Seven."
"He's gifted." Each statue was meticulously detailed, down to the torn button on a shirt or the hanging lace of an abandoned shoe. As she circled the artwork, her smile faded, her gut raw with the knowledge that someone had defiled this place.
Oranges dipped in chocolate.
And below that . . .the putrid ugliness of rot just begun .
Chapter 18
Fury arcing through her in a cold wave, she brushed off enough snow from the rim that she could perch on it. She didn't have to clear much in the fountain itself before her fingers bumped against flesh gone blue with cold. Withdrawing her hand, she jerked her head at Illium. "I think we just found the vamp who took Sam."
"Another desecration." The bones of his hand cut white against skin as his fingers clenched on the grip of his sword. "I've told Raphael."
"Not Dmitri?" Raphael's second-in-command ran any number of things, and with Raphael having scheduled an early-morning "discussion" with Dahariel, she'd figured the vampire would be the one to deal with this.
"He left for New York soon after Sam was found," Illium told her, sheathing Lightning in a fluid motion. "Venom's the youngest among us. With Galen having been recalled from the Tower, there are some who may get ideas."
She thought of how much time Raphael was spending away from his Tower because of her, to give her time to become strong enough to deal with the world, wondered what it was costing him. "But, if necessary, Venom could hold off a challenge long enough for help to arrive?"
"Of course. He's one of the Seven." Illium's tone said everything about the requirements for membership in that very exclusive club. "The Tower is also built to be defensible.
There are over a hundred angels and the same number of high-level vampires either in or around the Tower at any time."
Quite an army, she thought. But archangels didn't rule because they were benevolent beings. They ruled because they had power and weren't afraid of using it to enforce their decrees. At that very instant, an example of that power landed in the garden - a full wing of angels led by Galen.
The red-haired angel walked directly to the fountain, and it was the first time she'd really had a chance to examine him. He looked, she was surprised to note, like a bruiser. Well over six feet tall, his shoulders were wide, his thighs thick with muscle, his biceps - one ringed by a thin metal band - that of a man who'd earned his body, and not through a workout in any gym. And his face - square jaw, sensual lips, the kind of mouth that made women think hot, sweaty, distinctly unangelic thoughts.
His eyes cut to the body. "You believe this is the vampire who took Sam?"
Shaking off her startlement at this angel who looked so very earthy, so very human, she nodded. "He has the right scent and as far as I know, no one's ever been able to mimic that well enough to fool a hunter-born."
A curt nod, red hair aflame in the sunlight. "Give us room to dig him out."
Shifting back, she watched as they uncovered then removed the body, taking care to ensure they overlooked nothing. As she'd expected, the head was missing - beheading was the most efficient way of killing a vampire, followed closely by burning. Leaving Galen and his troops to check the fountain and the surrounding area for the head, she began to crisscross the garden. "No trail," she finally muttered, staring at the now empty fountain. "Vamp was dropped from above."
"Either the leader or one of his angelic followers." Illium's familiar voice, his wings the most vivid point of color in all the white as the angels who'd come with Galen left, taking the body with them.
Galen's own wings reminded her of a northern harrier's - a dark gray with white striations that only became visible when he spread them in preparation for flight. "The head isn't here," the red-haired angel began when there was a gust of wind, the powerful backlash of wings raking up the snow.