Angels' Blood (26 page)

“Yes.”

Elena wanted to hate him for that, but she couldn’t. “Four years ago,” she found herself saying, “there was a rash of killings on the banks of the Mississippi. Young boys strangled; their eyes removed.”

“A human.”

“Yes. A hunter.” Bill James had been her friend once upon a time, her trainer before that. “We—me, Ransom, and Sara—had to find and execute him.” Hunters always took care of their own.

A cool whisper of a breeze as Raphael unfurled his wings and curled them back in. “So many nightmares in your head.”

“They make me who I am.”

“Did you kill this hunter?”

“Yes.” It had come down to the two of them. “Sara was badly injured, Ransom too far away, and Bill was about to kill a terrified young boy. So I stabbed him through the heart.” No time to get her gun, so much blood everywhere, the look of betrayal in Bill’s eyes as his heart pulsed one last time, a chaos of memory. Now she looked up into another pair of eyes. “If that girl’s become a monster, she needs to die.”

“Am I a monster, Elena?”

She looked into that perfect face and saw the echoes of cruelty, of time. “Not yet,” she whispered. “But you could be.”

His jaw was a harsh line. “It’s a symptom of age—cruelty.”

It hurt her to know that the humanity in Raphael—buried deep, but there—might one day cease to exist. Yet at the same time, she couldn’t help but be glad for his immortality. Someone this magnificent shouldn’t die. “Tell me about the Quiet.”

His wings extended to their full width. “We must go to Michaela’s home and see if you can pick up a scent—there’s a good chance he spent hours watching her before today.”

She blew out a frustrated breath. “Fine. We flying?” Her heart hitched—she was becoming used to being carried in Raphael’s arms, the sound of his wings steady and powerful.

“No,” he said, lips curving as if he’d read her excitement. “Michaela’s American home is next door.”

“Convenient.” For sneaking into Raphael’s bed.

He finally moved enough that she could hop down. “Michaela has been many things through the centuries—scholar, courtesan, muse—but she’s never been a warrior.”

She wondered how many of those women had been as foolish as her—foolish enough to walk into his arms knowing that if push came to shove, the archangel would end her life with a single, final thought. “It’s time for this warrior to earn her keep.”

Elena wasn’t the least surprised when Michaela’s mansion
turned out to be a place of beauty and grace. The archangel might be a two-faced bitch, but she hadn’t earned her reputation as the muse of artists across the ages by accident.

“This was where we found the . . . gift,” the vampire guard told her, pointing to a patch of bloodstained grass.

The bite of acid was sharp here despite the other vampire’s presence. Either Uram had mingled some of his own blood with the hearts, or he’d landed on the lawn itself. Talk about brazen . . . and creepy. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. “Can you move out of the immediate area?”

He gave a short nod but didn’t take a step. “I was hunted once.”

Elena looked up to where she could see Raphael and Michaela talking on a high balcony overlooking the lawn, and wondered if either angel would mind if she simply coldcocked the idiot at her side—she didn’t have time to deal with this kind of shit. “Can’t have been too bad if you’re still here.”

“My mistress flayed the skin off my back and made it into a purse.”

She wondered how well that info would go down with the faction who ascribed heavenly origins to the angels. “Yet you serve her even now.” It sounded like something the bitch goddess would do.

The vampire smiled, showed teeth. “It was a very nice purse.” Then he finally walked away. She’d have to watch her back around that one, she thought. Whatever else Michaela had done to him over the centuries, he was no longer all there.

“Immortality has way too many drawbacks,” she muttered, adding the possibility of becoming a purse to her mental list. Her eye fell on the bloody grass again. Kneeling, she confirmed the scent, then began walking out in ever-increasing circles.

Uram’s scent blanketed the area. The archangel had most certainly touched down, standing there cloaked in glamour while Michaela’s guards remained clueless. Elena would’ve worried about running into him, but the scent, while pervasive, wasn’t as strong as it would’ve been had he been in the immediate vicinity. That made her wonder—were other archangels able to sense their brethren through the glamour?

If not, no wonder Michaela was spooked.

Unsurprisingly, the scent was particularly intense near the edge of the lawn. Looking up, Elena found herself with a direct line of sight into the bank of windows on the third floor. Michaela’s bedroom was smack in the middle.

If this had been an ordinary hunt, Elena would’ve been grinning ear to ear by now. With this recent a trail, she could’ve run her prey to ground by sundown. But vampires didn’t fly. Still, she thought, eyes narrowed, now she knew Uram’s Achilles’ heel. His compulsion toward Michaela would constrict the breadth of his hunting grounds. She glanced up again, her mind pure, focused hunter. She needed the map of Michaela’s movements that Raphael had promised to get.

 

 

Raphael was aware of Elena moving farther and farther
away as she performed a methodical search. He kept his eye out for Riker, Michaela’s favorite guard. Riker did whatever Michaela told him to—it would make no difference to the vampire that Elena was under Raphael’s protection . . . though he probably should’ve killed her the second he recovered from the shooting. Because if Lijuan was right, then Elena was his fatal weakness.

Death was a concept he hadn’t considered in centuries. But Elena had made him a little bit mortal. As she was. She’d die if Riker tore out her throat. And Michaela was capricious enough to have given such an order. She knew Raphael wouldn’t start a war over a mortal.

An image of the ancient treasure danced in his head. In all his centuries of existence, he’d never once considered giving it away. Until Elena. His mortal. Perhaps he’d fight Michaela over her after all. “You have safeguards in place?”

“Of course.”

Those safeguards were obviously not enough—the entire Cadre had expected Uram to come for her, and yet she’d been caught unprepared. “Do you need more men? You’re far from home.”

“No.” Pride dripped from the single word as she strode to the edge of the balcony and stared down, following Elena’s progress. “If your hunter has the scent, it means he was watching me long enough to have left a discernible imprint.”

Raphael could have asked Elena to confirm, but after the incident that had led to the Quiet, he was making an attempt to stay out of her head. A sign of the weakness Lijuan had warned of—an attack of human scruples? Perhaps. But Raphael had never liked what he became in the Quiet. And this time . . . it had been a fraction too close to Caliane’s madness. “You’re still as you were?” he asked, burying that ancient memory.

Michaela’s skin tightened, the sharp lines of her bones almost cutting through her skin. “I’m an archangel without glamour, yes.”

“Unfortunate.”

She laughed, a low sound designed to make men think of sex. The first time he’d seen Michaela, she’d had her mouth on the cock of the archangel who’d ruled ancient Byzantium. Her eyes had met his as she drove the archangel to his little death and Raphael had known she would one day rule. Two decades later, the Archangel of Byzantium was dead.

His eyes picked out Elena as she entered the wooded area that divided his property from Michaela’s. “Have you spoken to Lijuan about it?” he asked, even as he watched Elena purse her lips in concentration. Her mouth was lush, seductive. He was very interested in having it all over his body. But like all warrior women, she’d have to be tamed to his hand.

“She talks in riddles,” Michaela spit out, “has no explanation for why the glamour eludes me.”

Under normal circumstances, that lack wouldn’t be much of a concern—Michaela had other skills, some known, some not, but no one could doubt her status as archangel. However, in this one situation, she was at a lethal disadvantage, because along with glamour came an immunity to it. Raphael couldn’t hide from Uram but the Angel of Blood couldn’t hide from him either. “Call Riker back.”

“Why?”

“You can’t see Uram, but Elena can scent him.”

Michaela’s next words were dismissive. “Riker is watching her, nothing more. And there are other hunters if he loses control.” A pause. “She’s human, Raphael. She knows nothing of the pleasures I could show you.”

Raphael flared out his wings in preparation for flight. “I would have thought Charisemnon would appeal. He was your lover once.”

Green eyes met his as he went to the very edge of a balcony made for angels—no railing, nothing to prevent a deadly fall. “But you I’ve never tasted. I can do things that will make eternity an erotic dream.”

“The trouble is, your lovers seem to have very short life spans.” He flew down, across the yard, and over the wooded area.

Riker was standing a few feet from Elena, his smile full of menace.

Far from appearing frightened, Elena was flicking a knife through her fingers, her stance that of someone trained in hand-to-hand combat. As she opened her mouth as if to speak, Raphael flew down to land behind Riker, one hand on the vampire’s shoulder, the other on his back.

“This is my territory,” he said. “Your mistress is a guest.” That was all the warning he gave before he thrust his hand through Riker’s clothing, flesh, and muscle to grip his panicked heart. A second later, that heart was in Raphael’s hand and Riker was twitching facedown on the ground.

“Why?”

He looked up to meet Elena’s horrified gaze over the continued pulse of Riker’s vampire heart. “There are boundaries. It’s better for mortals and immortals alike if those boundaries are not crossed.”

Her grip on the knife was white-knuckled. “So you killed him?”

Raphael dropped the heart to the ground and looked at his bloody hand, wondering if Uram had taken his victims’ hearts the same way. “He’s not dead.”

“I—” She swallowed as he approached, took a step back. “I know they can heal a hell of a lot of damage but completely removing the heart?”

“You fear me again.” He hadn’t seen that look on her face since that first meeting on the roof.

“You just ripped a vampire’s heart out with your bare hand.” Her voice echoed with shock. “So yes, I fear you.”

He looked down at the blood coating his skin. “I wouldn’t do this to you, Elena.”

“You saying my death will be short and sweet?”

“Perhaps instead of killing you,” he said, “I’ll make you my slave instead.”

“I hope to hell that’s your twisted idea of a joke.” Biting words, but she put away the knife. “We might as well head back so you can wash off the blood. I’ve lost the trail anyway.”

“He flew?”

“I’m guessing, yes.” She folded her arms, nodded toward Michaela’s house. “You get the map of her movements?”

“It’ll be delivered within the next hour.” As they walked, he wondered why a mortal’s opinion of him mattered. “Do you plan to walk those streets and see if you can sense him?”

“Yes.” She strode forward with determined steps. “If he’s as fixated as you guys think—and hell, he
is
wooing her with bloody hearts—he won’t go far from her.”

“No, he won’t.” The bloodborn
always
killed another angel before devolving completely. In most cases, it was the angel who had been closest to them—a macabre sacrament, as if they were cutting away everything they’d once been.

Elena nodded. “Then we might be able to beard him in his lair while he’s sluggish from the amount of blood he took. Unless that’s different with you lot?” She glanced at him, her eyes sliding to his bloody hand and forearm before she sucked in a breath and looked away.

“From what we know,” he said, hand curling into a fist, “the bloodborn—”

“Bloodborn?” She scowled. “You have a name for whatever it is Uram’s become? That means it’s not an isolated incident.”

“The bloodborn,” he said, ignoring her implied question, “are affected as the vampires are by overindulgence. He’ll be lazy, sleepy, vulnerable.”

Elena’s fury at his refusal to answer her question was un-hidden, but whatever it was that she might’ve said was lost as her cell phone rang. Pulling it out of a pocket, she flipped it open. “Yes.” Her eyes turned chaotic. “What?” A pause. “I—” For the first time, he saw her look unsure. “Yes. I’ll be there.” She closed the phone. “I need to take off for a while. I’ll be back by the time Michaela delivers her map.”

“Where?” he asked, disliking the expression on her face.

A hard glance. “None of your damn business.”

He should’ve been angry. Part of him, the part with over a thousand years of accumulated arrogance, was. But the rest of him was intrigued. “A taste of my own medicine?”