He knew what he was. He knew what he was capable of. He also knew that if he broke her, he'd despise himself for all eternity. "You'll do exactly as I say."
An immediate nod. "This is unfamiliar territory - I'm not going to go off half-cocked."
Descending in a gentle dive, he came to an easy landing a few feet from the body - in the shadow of a dual-level home that bore the soft patina of age. Elena held onto him for a couple of seconds, as if getting her muscles under control before turning to kneel beside the badly beaten vampire. He crouched beside her, reaching out to place his fingers on the vampire's temple. A pulse wasn't always a good indicator of life when it came to the Made.
It took him several seconds to sense the dull echo of the vampire's mind, a sign of how close the male was to true death. "He lives."
Elena blew out a breath. "Dear God, someone really wanted to hurt him." The vampire had been beaten so severely he was nothing much more than ground meat over bone. He might've been handsome, probably had been from the sense of age pressing against Elena's skin, but there wasn't enough left of his face to tell.
One eye was swollen shut. The other . . . the eye socket had been shattered with such vicious thoroughness that if you didn't know he was meant to have an eye there, you'd never guess where his cheek ended and his eye began. Oddly, his lips had been left untouched. Below the neck, his clothing was driven into his flesh, evidence of a sustained and repeated kicking. And his bones . . . they stuck out - bloody, broken branches through what had once been a pair of jeans.
It hurt to see him, to know what he must've suffered. Vampires didn't lose consciousness easily - and, given the savagery of the attack, she'd bet his attackers had kicked his head last. That way, he would've been conscious for almost the entirety of the ordeal. "Do you know who he is?"
"No. His brain is too bruised." Raphael slid his arms under the vampire, a carefulness to his movements that made her heart squeeze. "I need to get him to a physician."
"I'll wait and - " She froze as he shifted the body to get a better hold. "Raphael."
The air was suddenly kissed by frost. "I see it."
There was a square of jarringly unbruised skin on the vampire's breastbone, as if it had been left specifically unharmed. The cold-blooded nature of the beating made her stomach curdle. These peoplewould have attacked his brain last. "What is that?" Because while the vampire's skin wasn't bruised, it wasn't unmarked. A symbol had been burned into his flesh. An elongated rectangle, slightly flared at the bottom, sat atop an inverted curve, which in turn covered a small bowl. Holding it all up was a long, thin line.
"It's asekhem , a symbol of power from a time when archangels ruled as pharaohs and were called the scions of the gods."
Elena felt her face flush hot and cold. "Someone wants to take Uram's place."
Raphael didn't tell her not to jump to conclusions. "Do your track. Illium will watch over you until I return."
She looked up as Raphael rose but couldn't isolate Illium's blue wings even against the light show of the approaching sunset. Thankfully, her legs waited to tremble until after Raphael had left. Her archangel had finally seemed to hear her today - she had a feeling he'd think long and hard before ever again forcing her to act against her will.
But there was nothing to stop him from picking her up bodily and dumping her in bed if he realized the extent of her exhaustion. Her wings felt like hundred-pound weights on her back, her calf muscles so much jelly. Blowing out a breath, she dug up a fraction more stamina from somewhere and started circling out from the spot where they'd found the body, glad that this area, while not abandoned, appeared shut up.
As a result, there weren't a lot of scents to muddy the trail. The tree in the corner, some kind of a cedar, its branches bowed with the weight of its foliage, didn't trump the smell of pine trees in autumn, their needles littering the earth. And that scent belonged to the vampire who'd been beaten into an unrecognizable pulp. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't find a single other new scent.
There was also no evidence of activity on the ground, the paving stones clean, but for a few stray leaves and some clearly delineated spots of blood near the dark smudge where they'd discovered the body. Examining the scene with extreme care so as not to compromise any trace evidence, she confirmed the splatter was contained within a radius of about one foot.
"Dumped from a low height," she said to Raphael when he landed beside her. "And since this place is rife with wings . . ." Her body swayed.
Raphael had her in the iron of his embrace before she could even register the lapse.
"Then you can do nothing. We'll speak to the vampire when he wakes."
"The site? Needs to be processed, just in case."
"Dmitri's on the way with a team."
It went against the grain to give up without a fight, but her body was shutting down on her, her wings threatening to drag their way through the blood. "I want to know what the victim says." The words came out slurred, her last thought that anyone cold-blooded enough to brand a living being as a message was probably not going to be an improvement on Uram.
Sire.
Easing quietly from bed less than an hour after he'd placed Elena on the sheets, her wings spread out in a caress of midnight and dawn as she lay on her stomach, Raphael pulled on a pair of pants and met Dmitri in the hallway outside. The vampire's face was expressionless, but Raphael had known him for hundreds of years. "What did you discover?"
"Illium recognized him."
"How?"
"Apparently the male was wearing a ring he won from Illium in a game of poker."
Raphael had seen the vampire's fingers. Most had been shattered so badly they'd been nothing more than crushed pebbles in a sack of skin. And yet, that skin hadn't been broken. That level of brutality took both time and an emotionless kind of focus. "Who?"
"His name is Noel. He's one of ours."
Raphael felt his anger turn granite-hard. He'd allow no one to butcher his people. Before he could speak, Dmitri said, "Why didn't you tell me he'd been branded?" The words fell like mines between them, a scab hiding still raw wounds.
Chapter 5
"The burn will fade." Raphael held the vampire's gaze. "It will fade."
Dmitri said nothing for several moments before drawing in a long breath. "The healers found something stuffed in Noel's chest cavity. The ones who took him broke him open, then allowed him to heal enough to conceal it."
It was another example of the methodical nature of the beating. "What was it?"
Dmitri withdrew a dagger from his pocket. It had a small but distinctiveG on the pommel, the symbol of the Hunters Guild. A cold blade, rage unsheathed, sliced through Raphael's veins. "He plans to become Cadre by destroying what another archangel created."
The old ones saw Elena as exactly that - Raphael's creation, his possession. They didn't understand that she held his heart, held it so utterly that there was nothing he wouldn't do, no line he wouldn't cross to keep her safe. "Did you find anything at the scene that could lead to the identity of the one behind this?"
"No, but there aren't many who'd dare taunt you," Dmitri said, putting the dagger back into his pocket. "Even fewer who'd think they could get away with it."
"Nazarach is in the Refuge," he said, knowing the other angel was more than old enough to be dangerous. "Find out who else might consider themselves a contender."
"There's only one on the verge of becoming an archangel."
The Cadre alone was supposed to be privy to that truth, but Raphael trusted Dmitri far more than he trusted his fellow archangels. "He also has no need to play these kinds of games." To be an archangel was to be Cadre. It was as simple - and as inevitable - as that.
"It's one of the old ones." Angelic history told of a few rare instances of those who were not archangels becoming Cadre. They never lived long. But the fact of their existence gave dark hope to those who craved the drug of power without understanding the price it inevitably demanded. "Someone strong enough to seduce others."
"There's something else," Dmitri said as Raphael was turning to go back to Elena.
"Michaela" - he named another member of the Cadre of Ten - "has sent a message to say she's about to arrive at the Refuge."
"She waited longer than I expected." Michaela and Elena were like oil and fire. The female archangel couldn't stand to be anything but the center of attention. And yet when Elena, with her rough hunter clothing and pale hair, walked into a room, the balance of power shifted in the most subtle of fashions. Raphael didn't think Elena was even aware of it - but it was why Michaela had despised her from their very first meeting.
"Whether it's against Michaela or this pretender, she" - Dmitri glanced at the closed door at Raphael's back - "isn't strong enough to defend herself. It would take very little effort to end her life."
"Illium and Jason are here. Naasir?" He'd trust only his Seven to watch over her.
"On his way back." Dmitri, as the head of Raphael's security, knew exactly where each of his men was at any given time. "I'll make sure she's never alone."
Raphael heard the unspoken words. "And will she be safe with you?"
The vampire's expression altered. "She weakens you."
"She is my heart. Protect her as you did once before."
"If I'd known the consequences of that decision . . . But it is done." When Dmitri gave a curt nod, Raphael knew his Seven wouldn't move against her. Some archangels might have killed Dmitri for daring to stand against him, but the vampire had earned that right.
More, Raphael understood the value of what Dmitri and the rest of his Seven had given him. Without them, he may well have become another Uram, another Lijuan, long before Elena was even born. "Give Illium the majority of the shifts. Elena's less likely to object to him."