Angels' Blood (13 page)

Switching direction, she jumped onto the back and held on for dear life.

Dmitri’s hand brushed her shoulder as the motorcycle peeled away. She turned to find him standing at the curb, watching her go. He blew her a kiss.

 

 

Raphael closed the door to the black-on-black room. For a
second, he stood in the utter lack of light and considered what he was about to do.

Lijuan was totally removed from humanity.

What had happened between him and Elena had been very human, very real.

He set his jaw, knowing he had no other choice. Not with Caliane for a mother. If this was the beginning of some kind of a degeneration . . .

Walking instinctively to the center of the room, he focused his angelic abilities to a shining beam deep within. Like the glamour, this was something only an archangel could do. But unlike the glamour, it demanded a far heavier price. For the twelve hours after he did this, he would be Quiet, ruled by a part of his brain that had never known mercy and never would.

It was why he rarely used this form of communication. In the aftermath, he became something far closer to the monster that lurked in his heart, in the hearts of all archangels. Power was a drug and it didn’t only corrupt, it destroyed. It was during one of these Quiet periods that he’d punished the vampire who had ended up in Times Square.

The punishment had been nonnegotiable. But the Quietness in him had changed the timbre of it to something close to evil. Now, Raphael made sure not to schedule anything that could turn destructive during these periods. The problem was, once he went cold, he saw things in a different light and could very well change his mind.

But this had to be done.

Centered, ready, he spread out his wings to their fullest extent. The tips just barely touched the edges of the room and he could taste the blackness of the walls in his throat. Most humans and vampires believed that angel wings weren’t sensitive except at the arched line above the shoulders. They were wrong. Some quirk of angelic biology meant that an angel was fully conscious of any impact on his wings, whether it be in the center or at the very edge of his primaries.

Now he soaked in the blackness as if it were power. It wasn’t. The power came from within him, but the lack of stimulation—a kind of sensory deprivation—amped up his awareness of that power to excruciating levels. First it was a hum in his blood, then a symphony, then a thundering crescendo that filled every one of his veins, stretching his tendons to breaking point and lighting him up from within. It was at that instant—before an internal implosion that could leave him stunned for hours—that he raised his hands and threw power at the wall in front of him.

It buckled, then liquefied into a churning pool that reflected nothing in its ebony depths. Quickly, before the power could grow restless and seek to shove itself back into his body, he directed it into a searching pattern set to Lijuan. The ability to communicate over vast distances came from the same root as their mental gifts, but unlike those mental gifts, it was so potent it required a vessel to contain it. The walls within this room provided the most efficient of those vessels, but he could use other objects and surfaces if pushed.

If he’d tried this sending—to the other side of the world—using only his mind, he’d probably have shattered parts of his brain and destroyed this building in the process. In front of him, the swirling slowed, then stopped completely. The liquid smoothed over to black glass. Within was a familiar face and only the face. The searching was very specific—it would show him nothing but Lijuan.

“Raphael,” she said, her surprise open. “You chance the use of this much power while Uram is in your state?”

“It was necessary. I’ll be back to full strength by the time he devolves to the next stage.”

A slow nod. “Yes, he hasn’t crossed the final line, has he?”

“We’ll know when he does.” The whole world would know. Everyone would hear the screams. “I need to ask you a question.”

Her eyes were fathomless when she looked at him, so pale the iris was almost indistinguishable from the white of the eye. “There is a monster inside us all, Raphael. Some will survive, others will break. You have not yet broken.”

“I lost control of my mind,” he told her, not questioning how she knew what she did. Lijuan was more ghost than human, a shadow who moved seamlessly between worlds the rest of them never glimpsed.

“It is evolution,” she whispered, a smile that was not a smile creasing her face. “Without change, we would turn to dust.”

He didn’t know if she was talking about him or herself. “If I keep losing control, then I’m useless as archangel,” he said. “The toxin—”

“This has nothing to do with the Scourge.” She waved a hand and he saw wrinkles. She was the only angel who showed even such small marks of age and she seemed to revel in them. “What you are experiencing is something else entirely.”

“What?” He wondered if she was lying, drawing out the conversation in order to weaken him. It wouldn’t be the first time two archangels had worked in concert to topple a third. “Or do you know nothing and play at being a goddess?”

Frost in those blind eyes, flickers of emotion so
other
as to be nothing known. “I am a goddess. I hold life and death in my hand.” Her hair flew back in that ghostly wind she alone could generate. “I can destroy thousands with a thought.”

“Death does not a goddess make or Neha would be beside you at this moment.” The Queen of Snakes, of Poisons, left a trail of bodies in her wake. No one disagreed with Neha. To do so was to die.

Lijuan shrugged, an oddly human gesture. “She is a foolish child. Death is only half the equation. A goddess must not merely take life . . . she must give it.”

He looked at her, felt the insidious beauty of her words, and knew what he’d only before suspected—she’d gained a new power, a power whispered of but never believed. “You can make the dead walk?” Not alive, they would not be alive. But they would walk, they would talk, and they would not rot.

Her only response was a smile. “We are talking about you, Raphael. Are you not afraid I’ll use your problem to destroy you?”

“I think you have little interest in New York.”

She laughed, a cool sound that whispered of the grave and sunshine in one. “You are a clever one. Far cleverer than the others. Here’s what you need to know—you did not lose control.”

“I forced a woman to want me.” His tone was vicious. “It may be nothing to Charisemnon, but it is to me.” The other archangel held power over most of North Africa. If he saw a woman he wanted, he simply took her. “What is that if not a total loss of control?”

“There were two people in that room.”

For an instant, he didn’t understand. Then he did and it made his blood turn to ice. “She has the ability to influence me?” He hadn’t been under any creature’s control since escaping Isis’s tender mercies ten centuries ago.

“Would you kill her if she does?”

He’d killed Isis—it had been the only way to break free of the powerful angel bent on keeping him prisoner. He’d killed others, too. “Yes,” he answered, but part of him was no longer so sure.

The impact of those words still reverberated in the endless night he called a soul. His eyes flicked over Lijuan’s face. “If she was controlling me, it wasn’t conscious.” Otherwise, she wouldn’t have accused him of rape.

“Are you sure?”

He stared at her, in no mood to play games.

It made her smile widen. “Yes, you are a smart one. No, your little hunter does not have the power to bend an archangel to her whims. Are you surprised I know who it was?”

“You have spies in my Tower, like you have spies everywhere.”

“And do you have spies in my home?” she asked, her tone a razor.

He threw up a shield, reflecting back her cutting power. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re far stronger than the others realize.” Calculation filled her gaze, even as she dropped into less formal speech.

Raphael would’ve cursed himself for having made a mistake except that he knew this was part of Lijuan’s modus operandi. To speak with her, you had to be, if not an equal, at least strong enough to make things interesting. “If you weren’t a woman, I’d say you have a need to prove whose cock is bigger.”

She actually giggled but the sound was somehow . . . off. “Oh, that I’d found you when I was still interested in such things.” She waved a hand. “You would’ve made a fine lover.” Her lips turned sensuous, some faded remembrance lighting sparks in the winter chill of her eyes. “Have you ever danced with an angel in flight?”

Memory hit Raphael like a body blow. Yes, he had danced. But it had not been in pleasure. However, he said nothing, simply watched, listened, knowing he was her audience.

“I had a lover once who actually made me feel human.” She blinked. “Extraordinary, isn’t it?”

He considered what kind of a young angel Zhou Lijuan might’ve been and found he didn’t like the answer. “Is he with you still?” he asked for form’s sake.

“I had him killed—an archangel can never be human.” Her face shifted, becoming less and less of this world, a caricature of angelic features, paper-thin skin over bone glowing from within. “There are some humans—one among half a billion perhaps—who make us something other than what we are. The barriers fall, the fires ignite, and the minds merge.”

He stayed absolutely silent.

“You must kill her.” Her pupils had expanded to devour the irises, her eyes black flame, her face a burning skeletal mask. “Unless and until you do, you can never be certain when the barriers will fall again.”

“What happens if I don’t kill her?”

“Then she will kill you. She will make you mortal.”

Ransom stopped the motorcycle in the bowels of Guild
HQ. Pulling off his helmet, he hung it on the right handlebar. “My, but you lead an interesting life, Elieanora.”

She rubbed her cheek against the braid hanging down his back, too happy with him to tell him to stop using that stupid name. Not only was it not her name—okay, maybe on her birth certificate—it made her sound about a hundred years old. According to Ransom, she’d been drunk the night she confessed her secret shame. She thought it was more likely he’d hacked into some database and stolen the intel.

Reaching back, he patted her thigh. “Am I going to get lucky tonight?”

“You wish.” Grinning, she slapped away his hand and got off the bike.

His too-handsome-to-live face bore a wide grin. “It was worth a try.” With high cheekbones and rich copper-gold skin inherited from his Cherokee ancestors, not to mention green eyes from Ireland—via a short sojourn in an Australian penal colony—he was pretty enough to lick up like ice cream.

It was almost a pity they were just friends. Almost. “The night I sleep with you, you’ll cry like a baby.”

His eyes widened as he unzipped his leather jacket. “I know you’re into knives, but in bed? Isn’t that taking it a little far?”

Leaning in, she put her hands on his shoulders. “The instant we have sex, we stop being friends. Tear-time, honey pie.” It was a relief to be doing something as normal as bantering with Ransom.

He wrapped an arm around her waist. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“I’ll survive.” She knew full well he didn’t really want to mess up their friendship. And the second sex intruded, that’s exactly what would happen—Ransom didn’t deal well with intimacy. He might not be sleeping with Elena, but she bet she knew him a hell of a lot better than his girlfriend did. “And I won’t even tell Nyree you were hitting on me.”

Shadows moved across his face. “She left me.”

“Well, that’s a new one. It’s usually you doing the cutting and running.”

“She said I had commitment issues.” He squeezed her waist in emphasis. “Where the hell does she get that from?”

“Er, Ransom”—she patted his cheek—“your longest relationship, not counting me or Sara, was with Nyree and that was what, eight weeks?”

He scowled. “Who the fuck needs commitment? We had good times. I can find another piece of ass the second I walk into a bar.”

Despite all the problems in her own life—certain-death job, kinky vampire, superpowerful archangel—she felt her attention switch completely. “Wow, hell froze over while I wasn’t looking. You care about her.”

He dropped his arm. “I let her leave
stuff
at my place. Girly shit.”

Which, she assumed, was as good as a marriage certificate to him. “And?”

“And what?”

Sensing that line of questioning would get her nowhere, she changed gears. “That’s your plan—to go out and find an easy lay?”

“You’re the morality police now?”

The shrug made her muscles protest, threatening to remind her of how she’d overstretched them in the first place. “Hey, none of my business if you and Nyree decide to find new bed partners.”

His skin turned white over bone. “She lets any other fucker lay a hand on her, he’ll be singing soprano the rest of his miserable life.”

“Maybe you should let Nyree know.” Elena decided that was about the limit of the advice she was capable of right then. It was time to return to the nightmare of her life. “Now get your cute butt up off there. We need to powwow with Sara.”

“She’s on her way,” he told her, sprawling back on the bike with an easy grace that made most women drool. “When you called for a retrieval, she told me to haul ass and to make sure you stayed hidden until she knew what was going on.”

Elena remembered what Sara had implied about spies in the Guild. Raphael’s spies. Her hands fisted. “I hate men.”

Ransom sat back up, face absolutely expressionless. “What happened?”

And she knew that if she told him, he’d be ready to go archangel hunting with her. She called him her sometimes-friend because they tended to fight half the time, but when push came to shove, Ransom would stand at her back. But this was a private war. “Personal stuff,” she answered, just as the elevator doors opened to reveal Sara.