She stepped aside.
To her surprise, he prowled forward and inserted the key into the lock without further jerking her chain. Her eyes were drawn to the droplets of blood on his shoulder. “You bring out the worst in me.”
Nudging open the door, he turned, a faint smile on that face meant for silk-sheeted bedrooms and blood-soaked fields of battle. “Thanks.”
“Did you come inside before I got here?”
“No.” He leaned in the doorway while she walked through and into the living room. “I hear your Bluebell is here.” A pregnant pause.
Neck prickling in warning, she shifted to keep him in her line of sight. “What?”
“Be careful with Illium, Elena.” A soft caution. “He’s vulnerable to the humanity you carry within.” He was gone the next instant.
Frozen by the impact of the unexpected words, she started when she heard the whisper of angelic wings. “Stay there.” She kept her back to Illium as she spoke. “I want to do a walk-through first.”
“Your wish. My command.”
His unruffled agreement cut the taut rope of tension running up her spine. Glancing over at him, she saw that he was playing a carved silver knife in and around his fingers, each flick blindingly fast. Her friend, she thought. He was her friend, just like Ransom, just like Sara, and she wouldn’t damage that friendship with false worries.
He has a fascination with mortals.
Raphael had said that to her before she’d woken with wings of midnight and dawn.
“Why are you staring at me, Ellie?” Illium said without taking his eyes from the blade dancing around his fingers.
The words were instinctive, something she might as easily have said to rib Ransom. “You’re so pretty, it’s difficult to resist.”
A flashing grin, a hint of that aristocratic English accent in his response. “It’s hard to be me, it’s true.”
Snorting, but with her composure restored, she began to inspect the apartment. It was much as she’d expected. Ignatius had been neat enough, but not obsessive about it. She could see a glass in the sink, a sweater thrown over the sofa, and the bed, though made, was done so in a way that said he was more worried about comfort than anything else. There was even a flower in a vase on the bedside table—a bit exotic for her taste, but vampires tended to go for the dark and lush.
Returning to the living area, she nodded Illium inside. “There’s nothing weird here. No scents that shouldn’t belong, no signs that he was losing his mind.” Vampires in bloodlust often destroyed their homes during the first surge. “Supports what we saw at the scene—that he was in control of his faculties when—”
“Elena.” Illium’s voice was as lethal as the sword he wore along his spine.
Guard up, she walked to where he stood in the bedroom doorway, followed his gaze to the glossy black of the hothouse orchid that stood on the bedside table. “Tell me what that means.”
He didn’t reply, his gaze focused inward.
An instant later, the wind and the rain, crisp and clean, filled her mind. Illium tells me it is a pale, scentless facsimile of the original, but it is nonetheless her symbol. Raphael’s voice was so strong, she knew he had to be in the Tower. My mother is waking.
Sucking in a breath, she stared at the luxuriant black of the petals, a color so deep and rich she’d never before seen its like. She was controlling Ignatius?
Perhaps. It’s more likely she simply took advantage of urges he would have otherwise kept contained.
Elena blew out a breath, biting down on her lower lip. It’s a little pat, don’t you think, Archangel?
A pause. Wait there. I will join you.
Turning to Illium, Elena raised an eyebrow. “How did you know about the orchid? You weren’t born until hundreds of years after Caliane’s disappearance.”
“I did read some of my history books in school.” A disgruntled look. “Jessamy used to threaten to tie me to a desk unless I did my homework.”
She could just see him, a blue-winged boy with eyes of gold and a smile full of mischief. But tempting as it was to follow that thought, she focused on the death that seemed to be stalking those closest to her. While she wasn’t convinced that Caliane had anything to do with this, about one thing she had no doubts whatsoever. “Raphael is the ultimate target.”
Everyone else was collateral damage.
Her hands fisted against the cold-blooded malice of that truth just as Raphael walked into the room. Brushing his wing over her own, he moved past her to pick up the orchid. “Illium,” he said, “leave us.”
“Sire.”
Only after Illium was gone did Elena walk over to put her hand on Raphael’s arm, her eye on the flower that had seemed an innocent decoration minutes earlier. “Even if your mother is waking,” she said, having had time to think things through, “the turmoil around the world says that that awakening is hardly a calm, ordered thing. But going after my half sisters? That was very much a calculated act—a conscious act.”
Raphael dropped the orchid onto the clear glass of the bedside table. “You are forgetting my rage.”
“No, I’m not. That came out of nowhere, like the ice storms and other disasters. Who’s to say the rest of the Cadre isn’t feeling the same impact?”
Raphael went motionless. “You are right, Elena. I will speak to my people, find out if any of the other archangels have acted unlike themselves of late.” Lifting his hand, he stroked his fingers along the sensitive arch of her wing.
She shivered. “You ask me—someone is using the disruption caused by the waking of an Ancient to his or her own advantage. Everyone knows the possibilities, knows that the one who wakes might well be your mother.” And that even an archangel could be blinded by the black crush of memory. “They’re trying to rattle you.”
“They harm what is mine,” Raphael murmured, “by harming those you love.” His hand fisted in her hair. “It is a coward’s game.”
Hearing the cold condemnation in that statement, she knew the architect—or architects—of this vicious game would soon find themselves in the crosshairs of the Archangel of New York.
They were about to take off a few minutes later when Elena mentioned she was heading over to see if Sara had returned to the office.
“Illium will go with you.”
Elena blew out a breath, ready for battle. “Raphael.”
“I do not have time for this, Guild Hunter.”
She went to snap back a demand that he make time, but one look at his expression and annoyance was swept aside by a deeper, far more intense emotion. “Raphael, you look ...” Cruel. Heartless. “What are you going to do?”
His answer was austere. “A vampire thought to betray me. Now I must punish him.”
Ice trailed up her spine. Closing the small distance between them, she put her hand on the tip of his wing, holding him to her. His responding glance was that of the immortal he was—someone for whom mercy was a weakness. “Would you stop me, Elena?” A question asked without intonation as she moved to face him.
Spreading out her own wings to keep her balance on the edge of the roof, she narrowed her eyes. “I’m no innocent. You damn well know that.”
Midnight strands of hair danced over his face as the wind stroked through them, possessive as a lover. “Yet you stand in my way.”
“I know you need to control your vampires.” Every hunter knew the truth—that the almost-immortals were predators under the skin. Given free reign, they’d drown Manhattan in crimson, turn it into an abattoir devoid of life. “You have to deal with transgressions hard and fast to ensure no repeats.”
Raphael continued to watch her with that quiet, remote patience.
Frustrated, she growled low in her throat and grabbing at the white linen of his shirt, pulled him down toward her. She knew she’d startled him, but his hands locked tight around her h*ps to keep her from overbalancing on the ledge.
“You,” she said against those perfectly shaped lips that could turn cruel without warning. “You’re my priority. Punish who you must, but don’t do anything so terrible that it pushes you into the Quiet.” She hadn’t known him in that inhuman, emotionless state, was terrified of losing him to it even now. “Not that. Never again, Raphael.”
A shudder passed through him, his hands flexing on her h*ps as he tugged her to his body. “You hold me to the earth, Elena.”
Able to feel the heated strength of him against her abdomen, she nipped at his lower lip with her teeth, relief a whisper of rain against her senses. “Don’t you forget it.” Moving her hand down to play over the amber he wore on the ring finger of his left hand, she used those same teeth on his jaw. “You belong to me, Archangel. And I look after what’s mine.”
An hour after he’d watched Elena’s wings sweep out toward the Guild in a play of midnight and dawn, Raphael turned his attention to the vampire who huddled in a chair in front of the black granite of his desk, a weak, whimpering creature who’d sought to steal from an archangel. The stupidity of the act aside, the fact that he’d even considered he might get away with it argued to a greater rot. Raphael intended to excise that rot from existence before this day was done.
“Do you know what I’m going to do with you?” he asked softly from where he stood by the huge window that looked out over Manhattan. He’d punished and executed many over the centuries that he had ruled, but he had not expected betrayal in the heart of his territory and that honed his anger into a gleaming blade.
“Sire, I didn’t—I—” Blubbering words running together in an unintelligible babble.
Raphael let him speak until he ran out of words. “Tell me why,” he said, turning to watch for his hunter in the skies as he had a habit of doing.
A sniffle, a sucking in of air. “She said you would never know.”
Raphael swiveled to face the vampire. “Who?”