“Are you certain?”
“I have acted the coward for centuries. No more.”
Raphael had been there when Aodhan was found, had carried the other angel in his arms the hours it took to reach the Medica and Keir. “You are no coward, Aodhan. You are one of my Seven.”
Aodhan glanced back toward the office, in the direction of the wide shelves of deep ebony that lined one wall. “Why do you not display one of my feathers? My wings are as unusual as Bluebell’s.”
Raphael raised an eyebrow. “Illium is a performer.” While Aodhan, like Jason, preferred the shadows.
As he watched, Aodhan pulled out a perfect, glittering feather and walked inside to place it beside the heavenly blue that was Illium’s. Raphael inclined his head when the angel returned. “After this task is done, you will move here.” Manhattan was still reeling from Elena’s return—Aodhan’s presence might just bring the city to a standstill. But that was a problem for another day. “If you and Naasir are able to narrow the search area to a specific locality, call and wait for me. Do not approach.”
“If it is her . . . you believe she will kill.”
“My mother is the specter in the dark, Aodhan, the nightmare that whispers in the hindbrain.” And he was her son ... the son of two archangels gone insane.
11
It was after Zoe had been put to bed, and the adults had finished dinner that Elena opened the box Deacon had brought down and saw the weapon he’d created for a hunter with wings.
“Ooooh.” Delirious with pleasure, she picked up what seemed to be a modified crossbow, so small and light that—“It’s meant to be strapped to my leg?”
“Yeah.” Deacon grabbed the harness and got her to stand so he could buckle it around her thigh. “I decided it would be problematic on the shoulder—your wings would be too close, too easy to damage.”
Nodding in agreement, Elena checked the weapon. “Balance shouldn’t be an issue in flight, given its weight. But what the heck is this?” She pulled out a small, circular blade, its serrated edges razor-sharp and felt her eyes widen. “It shoots these things? Like the weapon you’ve got?” The weapon she’d lusted after since the day she’d first seen it, in the middle of a junkyard crawling with vampires.
“Yep. It’s also designed so you can use it one-handed if required.” He tightened the harness. “Slot it in.”
Flipping the safety, Elena did so, then took a few steps. “Light, portable.”
“He tested it on me,” Sara said from where she was curled up on the couch, bowl of strawberry ice cream in hand. “Since I’m shorter and not as strong, I thought you’d have no problem.”
Elena stroked the weapon, felt her hunter instincts sigh. “It’s perfect. Deacon, come here.”
When he stepped close, she reached up and smacked a kiss on his beautiful lips. “You’re wonderful.”
“Hey,” Sara said from the couch, waving a spoon in the air. “Mine.”
Grinning, Elena shifted the harness a fraction higher as Deacon went to sit beside Sara and steal her ice cream. The moment was so normal that for an instant, she could almost believe she’d never left New York, never fallen into the arms of an archangel.
Then her cell phone rang.
Having followed Illium to the location, Deacon’s gift strapped to her thigh, Elena took extreme care as she angled in to land—tired, she was liable to make mistakes, and this was not the time for a broken arm or leg. Below her, the green heart of Manhattan lay swathed in darkness but for the old-fashioned lamps along the pathways that meandered through the park.
“Oof.” Coming down hard, with a power that made her knees ache, she closed the distance to where another one of Raphael’s Seven stood beside an indistinct lump on the ground.
Poison, the pungent stink of bowels evacuated, viscera ... and below it, the whisper of violets dipped in ice.
Gorge rising, she nonetheless made herself look at the body. The male—a vampire from his scent—had been beheaded, but that had been done last if she was any judge, after his organs had been ripped out then thrust back into his body in the wrong places. As far as brutality went, it wasn’t as bad as anything Uram had done, but the bloodborn archangel had made a vicious art form out of murder.
“Who is he?” she asked Venom.
The male had been at death’s door not long ago, but you couldn’t tell that from his current appearance. Dressed in his usual black on black suit, his reptilian eyes shaded by wrap-around sunglasses even in the darkness, he looked like he’d stepped out of the pages of some exclusive magazine. “The accountant Raphael sentenced to go to ground.”
Elena didn’t need him to spell out the fact that someone was playing games here. “Where’s Raphael?”
Venom continued to give her straight answers for once. “At the site where this man was supposed to be buried tonight. Since this murder is unlikely to be a chance event, the killer may have staked out the other location. But this site is your best bet of catching a scent.”
“Yes.” From the pattern of blood, the churned up dirt and grass, this was where the victim had been murdered, which meant the killer’s scent should be a violent stain across the entire area.
Filtering out Venom’s vampiric signature, she picked up the scent of violets and crushed ice again ... but with this much carnage, there was no way to be certain it was the victim’s at a distance. Girding her stomach, she went to her knees—careful to avoid the splatter—and bent. But she couldn’t reach the body without placing her hands in blood-soaked evidence. “Venom, hold me at the waist.”
Strong, cool hands around her waist an instant later. She fought the instinctive urge to throw off the intimate hold and, trusting him to keep her from falling on the body—and yeah, that trust came hard—leaned in close enough to sniff at a patch of unravaged skin.
Violets. Ice. And a hereto hidden undertone of something light, fruity. Watermelon?
“Enough.”
The vampire’s hands tightened for an instant, and she almost hoped he’d attempt to drop her. But he behaved, and she was on her feet moments later. “I have his scent,” she said, gesturing to the body, “and I’ve weeded out yours. Anyone else been on the scene?”
He pointed up. “Just Illium and he hasn’t landed.”
Good, she thought, that meant the caress of poison had to belong to the killer. Focusing on that element, she began to pull apart the notes to create a more detailed profile.
Oleanders, rich and sweet, with a thread of darkest resin humming a discordant note, and below that a touch of juicy red berries bursting open. But the scent of oleanders in full bloom overwhelmed, it was so very, very intoxicating.
She was following the trail even as the thought passed through her head, barely aware of Venom remaining beside the body while Illium flew overhead. The scent meandered through Central Park, as if the killer had taken a stroll. Given his confidence, she more than half expected to lose him as soon as she hit the pond, but surprisingly, he hadn’t gone into the water.
Instead, she found herself following him to the edge of Fifth Avenue. Where the sensual whisper of oleanders snapped off with such suddenness that she knew he’d gotten into a cab. Blowing out a breath, she waved Illium down. “Trail’s cold,” she said when he landed. “Might as well lead me to the other site just in case he did scope that out.”
It was only as they were flying over the Hudson that she realized they were heading toward Raphael’s estate. Figuring the burial site had to be somewhere beyond, she found herself deeply shaken when Illium dove down to land on the edge of the wood that separated the mansion from Michaela’s U.S. home. He stayed in position as she walked in. Archangel?
Slightly to your right, about fifty meters ahead.
Raphael held out a hand when she reached him, but she didn’t take it, staring at the rectangular coffin-sized hole in the earth. “When exactly,” she said, “were you going to tell me he was going to be buried on the grounds of our home?” She understood that he had to control his vampires in ways that might seem cruel to her, but this ...
A chrome blue gaze met hers, vivid even in the night shadows. “I needed him close enough that I could maintain a mental watch.”
“How many others?” she whispered, feeling sick to her stomach. She’d walked these woods before, might well have stepped over them.
“None, Guild Hunter.”
The ice in his voice should’ve scared her, but she was too furious. “You know this is wrong, Raphael, keeping this from me. Yet you did it intentionally.” His expression didn’t change, but she knew without a doubt that she was right. “Why?”
“Because you have a mortal heart.” A pitiless statement.
She shook under the verbal blow. “Is that so wrong?”
“It is not a matter of right or wrong”—metallic blue, so very, very inhuman—“but of fact. This would have disturbed you to an extent that would’ve made it impossible for you to live here.”
It was the absolute truth, made no less so by the fact that he’d seen it with such cold clarity. Anger battled with other, deeper emotions, and it took her almost half a minute to find the control to say, “I want to ask you for something, Archangel.” He’d given her his heart, given her power over him, but until now, she’d never gambled anything on that power.
“What would you have, Guild Hunter?” So formal, so distant.
The part of her that was still the child abandoned by mother and father both was terrified of pushing him too far, until he left her, too. It was a nauseating sensation—but this was a stand she had to take. “Strike this punishment from the books. Surely there are other ways?”
Raphael was as unmoving as stone in front of her for a long, long moment. “Is it a boon you ask, Hunter?”
“No,” she said with slow deliberation. “I ask this as your consort. This . . . it’s not worth tainting the relationship between us.”