Authors: Nalini Singh

Archangel's Kiss (26 page)

BOOK: Archangel's Kiss

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Galen scanned her shoulders, her arms. “You’re stronger than a normal mortal.”

“I’m no longer mortal,” she pointed out, only just keeping the claymore upright.

“No one has records on an angel Made, but if the same principles apply as with vampires, then your strength won’t increase to immortal levels for a significant period.”

Shrugging, she left it at that. The fact that the hunter-born were slightly stronger than ordinary humans wasn’t exactly a secret, but neither was it advertised. And while she might now be an immortal, she was still hunter-born, still a member of the Guild. Those were loyalties she’d never betray.

“Throw it to me.”

She narrowed her eyes and walked across the snow-sprinkled ground to hand him the blade. “What? Do you want to prove to me how weak I am? You can do that with one punch.”

“But then Raphael would kill me.” An imminently practical response as he took the claymore and turned to retrieve something from a small table in the corner of the training area. He was shirtless once again, but still wore that thin metal band around his left arm, the metal a solid gray with the slightest sheen. A small amulet of some kind hung from the center, but she couldn’t put a handle on its origins.

Norse? Maybe.

She had no trouble seeing him as part of a bloodthirsty warrior culture. Glancing away from the armband, she found herself the focus of at least twenty pairs of curious eyes. “We’ve got an audience again.”

To her surprise, Galen frowned. “We don’t need one—not in the condition you’re in.” Raising a hand, he made a sharp downward gesture.

A silver blue bullet dropped out of the sky, streaking toward the ground like lightning unleashed. Illium’s landing was wildly showy, a hard, fast drive that left him grinning on one knee, his wings spread in blatant display. “Vain,” she told him, figuring her heart would stop trying to leap out of her throat any minute now.

He rose to his feet. “It’s not vanity if it’s truth, Ellie.”

Shaking her head, she looked to Galen. “What’s Bluebell going to teach me?”

“Nothing. Illium is going to play butterfly.”

Elena had no idea what the other angel meant until he ushered her inside the huge building that overlooked the ring of beaten earth they’d been using for the past weeks. An indoor training salle, she realized as Galen closed the doors, locking out their audience. “Impressive.” The ceiling soared, reminding her of an amphitheatre stripped down to its very basics.

“
Voles-tu, mon petit papillon.
”

Illium laughed at Galen’s instruction to “fly, little butterfly” and gave the other angel a desultory finger, replying in a language Elena thought might have been Greek.

She was shocked to see a grin crack Galen’s face. That grin disappeared the instant he turned to her. “Good, you’re wearing arm sheaths.” He came closer, examined them with the quick, careful hands of a weapons expert. “Excellent quality.”

“Deacon’s the best.”

Those pale green eyes locked on her. “You know Deacon personally?”

She tilted her head to the side. “He’s married to my best friend.”

Illium gasped. “Now you’ve got Galen by the short and curlies. He has wet dreams about getting into Deacon’s . . . weapons shed.”

Another rapid-fire exchange of Greek and French, Galen’s French too fast for her to follow. She didn’t need to understand—it was obvious the two were ribbing each other. Friends, she thought suddenly. For some reason, Illium, with his laughter and his heart, was friends with this cold-eyed angel who seemed hewn out of stone.

“I thought,” she said when Galen turned back to her, “close-contact fighting was a no-no?”

“You won’t be close. Illium.”

Illium rose up into the air, not stopping until he was hovering at the very top of the salle, a bolt of blue against the dark grain of the wood.

“Hit him.”

She took a step back, shook her head. “These knives are real.”

“He’s immortal. A minor knife wound won’t hurt him. And if you can do it with a knife, you’ll be unbeatable with a gun.”

“He might be immortal, but he feels pain.” And Illium had already hurt for her.

“I can take it, Ellie.” A shout from the roof. “But you’re not going to hit me.”

“Oh yeah?” She played a knife in her hand.

“Yeah.”

Still, she hesitated. “You sure?”

“I dare you.”

Reassured by the playful goad, she tracked his lazy movements as he hovered . . . and threw. He was gone before the knife left her hand. And she understood why Galen had called him a butterfly. Illium could move incredibly fast in a contained space, seeming to need little to no room or time to turn, zip in another direction.

Sweat was pouring down her face by the time she ran out of knives—her own and the ones Galen had given her. Illium blew her a kiss from his perch on a rafter. “Poor Ellie. Want a nap?”

“Shut up.” Wiping her face, she shook her head at Galen. “How the hell can he move like that?”

“They call his mother the Hummingbird.” Galen caught a knife Illium threw down, one of several that had lodged in various parts of the salle. “You have some skill—it’ll make it easier to get you to a point where you can consistently hit the neck.”

She rubbed her own throat. “Most vulnerable spot?”

A nod. “But that’s going to take time. For now, if you can pin or shoot an angel coming at you, you’ll disorient him long enough to run.”

A pause, and she realized he was waiting for a response. “I’m not too proud to run. My legs have kept me alive more times than you know.”

Those ice green eyes seemed to gleam with subtle approval, but that was probably wishful thinking on her part. “If you’re trapped in a situation where you have no choice but to fight, a good aim will give you a slight advantage.”

“Emphasis on ‘slight.’ ”

Galen pulled a knife out of the wall, his biceps flexing. “You’re playing with archangels. Slight is an improvement on certain death.”

J
ason stood across from Raphael on the balcony off Raphael’s office, the buildings of the Refuge spread out below.

“What have you learned?” Raphael asked his spymaster.

The tattoo on Jason’s face appeared complete, but Raphael knew that while the chunk of flesh that had been ripped out by one of Lijuan’s reborn had healed, the markings were only temporary, so as to betray no weakness. Jason was having the ink redone step by painful step. “She’s keeping a secret.”

Raphael waited. All archangels kept secrets, but for Jason to comment on it had to mean something.

“It’s a secret she appears not to have shared with anyone, but I think the Shade knows,” he said, referring to Phillip, the vampire who’d been with Lijuan longer than Raphael had been alive. “He’s like a pet to her—she hasn’t forbidden him from entering the sealed room as she has everyone else.”

“Do you think you or one of the others can get a glimpse inside the room?”

Jason shook his head. “She has a ring of reborn around it night and day.” He touched his face. “I’m fairly certain they’d tear any intruder limb from limb.”

Total dismemberment was one of the very few ways that
might
lead to the death of an angel Jason’s age. However, if the head was left whole, there was a chance of regeneration. “Have you been able to confirm how many of Lijuan’s reborn eat flesh?”

“It’s no longer the old ones alone—I saw a pack of younger reborn feast on the bodies of the newly dead,” the angel replied. “They did it out in the open.”

“So, she crosses another boundary.” It was one more indicator that her mind was no longer functioning as it should. “Tell me about this sealed room.”

“It’s in the center of her mountain hold, hidden deep within the core. The reborn roam all the corridors around it, and the ones that roam are the ones with eyes that shine—the ones who eat of flesh.”

“Do you have any idea what she might be hiding?” It could be nothing good, that much was certain.

“Not yet. But I’ll find out.” Jason resettled his wings. “I did as you asked and had Maya work her way into Dahariel’s domain. Something is going on, but whether it relates to the events at the Refuge, it’s impossible to say. There are rumors that Dahariel killed several of his vampires recently, but that could’ve been a legitimate punishment.”

“Have Maya remain where she is. I have people inside Nazarach’s and Anoushka’s homes.”

“If it does prove to be Nazarach?”

“I’ll execute him.” Nazarach ruled Atlanta, but only under Raphael’s grace. “Dahariel is the strongest of them all.” And the most coldly intelligent. Leaving that decapitated head in Anoushka’s bed was the kind of calculated threat Dahariel might make.

“If it is him,” Jason said, “he’s begun to strike close to home—one of Astaad’s favorite concubines was found eviscerated yesterday. She was branded inside. All indications are that she was alive at the time.”

“So . . .” It seemed nothing less than death—brutal, merciless—would satisfy this would-be archangel now. “Astaad hasn’t informed the Cadre.”

Jason didn’t comment except to say, “Pride.”

“Yes.” The archangel who ruled the Pacific Isles had to be enraged that someone had managed to breach the walls of his harem. “One more archangel bested.” In the most cowardly of ways, but drunk on vicious pleasure, the angel behind the assassination wouldn’t see it that way. He, or she, would, Raphael was certain, view it as a true victory.

“Sire—there is more.”

“Yes?”

“They found another Guild dagger in her chest cavity.”

“L
ittle hunter, little hunter, where aaaaaarre you?” Playful, singsong, horrifying.

Wrapping her arms around her raised knees, she ducked her head, making herself even smaller. The cupboard smelled of blood. Ari and Belle’s blood. On her feet, in her hair, on her clothes.

Go away, she thought, please go away. Please, please, please, please . . . It was a litany in her head, her voice small and weak. Where was Daddy? Why didn’t he come home? And why wasn’t Mama in the kitchen like she was every morning? Why was there a monster there?

“Where are you hiding, little hunter?” The creeping footsteps stopped for a second. An instant later came an even more chilling sound—lips smacking together. “Your sisters are most delicious. Do excuse me while I go take another bite.”

She didn’t believe him, terror and a frustrated, clawing rage keeping her locked in position. The giggle came three seconds later.

“Smart little hunter.” A deep breath, as if he was drawing in the freshest of air.

Her own nostrils burned with the pungent aroma of a spice for which she had no name, mixed with ginger . . . and a golden, pure light. It nauseated her that this foul creature, this monster, smelled like summer days and a mother’s warm embrace. He should smell like rot and pus. It was another affront, another pain to add to the ones he’d already carved across her heart.

Ari. Belle. Gone.

She blocked her sobs with a fist, knowing her sisters would never dance with her across the kitchen floor again. Belle’s legs, those beautiful, long legs had been broken until they twisted in a way that was simply impossible. And Ari . . . the monster had nuzzled into the nightmare that was her neck before Elena found the courage to follow her sister’s dying command to run. But the blood, the blood would give her away.

She waited, listened. He was moving around. She thought he might’ve gone upstairs, but her pulse was pounding too hard in her ears. She couldn’t trust the sounds, couldn’t run. Not when he could be standing in the corridor waiting for her. Then it was too late. His footsteps came back into the room.

“I’ve got a suuuuurprise for you.” A sly, scraping sound, the knob of the cupboard where she was hiding being twisted away. She pushed back into the wood but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run.

“Boo!”A single perfect brown eye stared mischievously through the hole made by removing the knob. “There you are.”

She stabbed out with the knitting needle she’d picked up from her mother’s basket in the living room, spearing that eye dead center. Liquid spurted onto her hand, but she didn’t care. It was his scream—high, piercing, agonized—that mattered. Giving a savage little smile, she pushed out of the cupboard as he stumbled back, darting past him and up the stairs.

She should have gone outside, found help. But she wanted her mom, needed to see that she was alive, was breathing. Shoving through her parents’ bedroom door, she slammed it shut behind her, turned the lock. “Mama!”

There was no answer.

But when she looked around, relief poured through her. Because Mama was just sleeping. Running over on feet that continued to leave fading red imprints on the carpet, she shook her mother’s shoulder.

And saw the gag around her mouth, the knives that pinned her wrists and ankles to the sheets. “Mama.”Her lower lip quivered, but she was already reaching to undo the gag. “I’ll help you. I’ll help you.”

It was the terrified warning in her mother’s eyes that made her turn.

“Bad little hunter.” Shaking the bedroom key at her, the monster pulled the needle out, and looked at it with a single curious eye, the other a bloody ruin down his cheek. “Do you think Mommy would like a present?”

“W
ake up, Elena! ”

She jerked into a kneeling position in one go, reaching for the knife she’d slipped under the pillow out of habit. Raphael looked up at her as she stared down at him, knife held high, ready to go for his throat.

Red hazed her vision, her tendons quivering with the need to strike out.

Elena.
The scent of the sea, of the wind.
You’re safe.

BOOK: Archangel's Kiss

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