Archangel's Kiss (35 page)

“Were your men able to discover anything else?” he asked his spymaster.

“Whatever it is that she kept in that room in her stronghold,” the black-winged angel told him, his voice crystal clear, perfectly pitched, “it has been shifted here.”

“One of the reborn?”

“Yes, but a special one—extreme care has been taken to protect it on the way here.” That perfect pitch altered just enough to telegraph Jason’s revulsion. “There are reports of young women missing along the caravan route.”

“She’s feeding her reborn with the living?” Killing humans was no taboo, but for this, in this way . . . it might disgust even Charisemnon.

“We haven’t been able to find any remains to confirm,” Jason said. “But the disappearances match the caravan route—and had they wanted the dead, bodies had recently been interred in all the villages.”

“Lijuan is considered a goddess,” Raphael said, remembering another time, another angel turned god. “The villagers would’ve raised no complaint.”

“No.” Jason’s jet- black hair, unbound, caught the light as he bent his head, took a deep breath. “That isn’t the worst of it.”

“There’s more?” Elena’s voice was openly shocked.

Jason raised his head. “There are rumors, strong rumors, that those mortals in her inner court who weren’t chosen to be Made . . .”

“Dear God,” Elena whispered. “They’re asking to be reborn?”

“It seems they are being seduced by the newer reborn,” Jason confirmed. “The ones who’re being kept long- term in a physical state akin to life by being fed flesh.”

“The young or the old?” Raphael asked.

“Older—but I don’t think that’ll last.” Jason shook his head.

“Why?” Elena looked at Raphael, her eyes uncomprehending. “They must know or guess that they’ll likely have much shorter lifespans than if they’d allowed nature to take its course.”

Jason answered before Raphael could. “It’s the promise of immortality, the hope that Lijuan will find a way to keep them alive for eternity. Some would give up everything for that.”

Elena heard something in that statement, an undercurrent that held a wealth of meaning. She looked at the angel who was always a shadow, his exotically handsome face inscrutable, his wings a sooty charcoal that let him blend seamlessly into the night. “For the promise?” She shook her head. “I just can’t understand when the reality is that they’d become less than slaves.”

“You’ve never chased immortality,” Raphael answered. “You don’t comprehend the hunger of those that do.”

That made her pause. “Maybe I do,” she said, and wished she didn’t. “My brother-in-law loves my sister . . . but he didn’t wait for her to be accepted as a Candidate. He wanted to live forever more than he wanted my sister beside him.” And now Beth would grow old while Harry remained forever young.

Harry had vowed to stay beside Beth, and for some reason, Elena believed him. But she wondered if
Beth
would accept his devotion. Would her sister’s love survive the knowledge that she’d been second best to immortality, that one day she’d die, leaving Harry to meet someone else, love someone else?

Her gaze locked with Raphael’s, her heart a painful fist in her chest. Because she, too, would have to watch her sister die.

The raw honesty of the answer, of the emotion behind it, rocked her.
I forget, and then I remember and it hurts all the more.

She gave a jerky nod, met Jason’s gaze, realizing for the first time that his eyes were black, so black it was almost impossible to distinguish pupil from iris. “Will the courtiers turn against Lijuan if we prove to them that there’s no immortality in being reborn?”

Jason’s wings rustled as he resettled them, but even here, in this room full of light, he’d managed to find a shadow, until she had to concentrate to see their outline. “We may turn a few, but most are too used to seeing her as their goddess. They’ll follow blindly where she leads.”

Giving Lijuan an endless supply of bodies for her army of the dead.

E
lena lay in Raphael’s arms, her body exhausted in the most sexual of ways. The archangel had kept his promise. He’d made her scream. Her heart was still thumping with the echo of searing pleasure when she fell into the warm darkness of a peaceful sleep. So peaceful that it took her a while to understand what it was she was hearing.

Elena woke choking.

Black spots hazed her vision, threatening to tip her into unconsciousness until the scent of the rain, of the sea, infiltrated her mind. Fresh and wild and far from the horror she could feel in her mouth, it wrenched her out of the loop of nightmare and had her sucking in air as she turned desperately into Raphael’s arms.

They locked around her, an absolute, unbreakable haven. “Shh, I have you.”

“Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

Raphael held Elena tight, so tight he had to be putting bruises on her. But still she trembled, her words garbled, her fear so thick he could taste it. “Elena.” He kept saying her name, kept brushing his mind across hers until she seemed to see him, to know him. Continuing to hold her, he swept his hand down her wings over and over, soothing her, reminding her that she was here, with him, not locked in a past she couldn’t escape.

He kept his own anger, his rage, contained behind iron shields. Archangels could do many things, but not even he could turn back the clock and erase the evil that had ravaged Elena before she’d had a chance to grow.

“He fed me Belle’s blood.” It was a husky whisper, as if her throat was torn from screaming.

“Tell me.”

“My sister’s blood. He kissed me, feeding me Belle’s blood.” Rage and horror and a bewildered kind of pain. “I tried to spit it out but he covered my mouth, my nose, and I drank it. Oh God, I drank it.”

Sensing the hysteria beginning to retake hold of her, he tugged her head from his chest, taking her mouth in a kiss that was pure, untrammeled demand. She froze for a fractured instant before her hands thrust into his hair, before her body twisted until she slid beneath him, her legs wrapping around his waist.

There was a wild kind of desperation in her kiss, a kiss flavored with the salt of her tears. She wanted to forget. He’d do anything in his power to help her find what peace she could. He took her as hard as she wanted, pinning her wrists to the sheets with one hand, shoving her thigh aside with the other, and sliding into her welcoming sheath in a single thrust.

Her scream echoed into his mouth. He kissed her through the taking, through the raw, almost painful emotion of their joining. He kissed her until she gasped for breath, until her eyes went blank with pleasure, with passion, with ecstasy. And then he kissed her as she came down from the peak.

“Again,” he whispered into her mouth.

She met him stroke for stroke, her hips rising in welcome, in demand. Tugging her hands free, she held him to her, trailing her mouth over his cheek, his jaw, his neck. At the end, she buried her head in his neck and simply held on . . . let him hold her, let him protect her.

It was her trust that brought him to his knees, that shoved him over the edge and into her arms.

 

 

“T
hank you.” Elena refused to let Raphael move off her body, her lips brushing his ear as she spoke, the dark silk of his hair cool against her flesh. “Thank you.”

“I would take your nightmares, Elena.”

“I know.” And that he hadn’t forced them from her when she could feel the savage need he had to wipe away her pain, it made her heart expand impossibly more. “But they’re a part of the package.”

She hadn’t voiced the question, but he knew.

“It’s a package that belongs to me.” No hesitation, no sense of him pulling away.

“I’m so messed up. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“You have lived.” Untangling his arms, he used them to brace himself above her, his forearms forming a bracket around her head. “As have I. Would you throw me back?”

The idea of losing him was a violent pain in her heart. “I told you—you’re mine. No getting away now.”

Lips on her own, a slow, so slow, kiss that curled her toes, made the nightmare seem a lifetime away. Her breasts rubbed against his chest as she drew in deep, trembling breaths. “Something in this place . . .” Shaking her head, she pushed damp strands of hair off her face. “The death, all this death. It’s fertile ground for my imagination.”

“You don’t believe it was a true memory?”

“I don’t want it to be.” A whisper, because deep inside she knew it wasn’t just a figment of her mind. “If it’s true . . .” Her eyes burned. “He came for me and he left a piece of himself inside me.”

“No.” Raphael forced her to meet his gaze, the cobalt having overtaken his irises until it was all that remained. “If he made you drink your sister’s blood”—he spoke through the cry she couldn’t hold back—“then you carry a piece of her.”

“How is that any better? I can taste her.” Her hand went to her own throat. “It was thick, rich, full of
life
.” The horror of it was a noose around her neck.

“Even my mother,” Raphael said, one hand cupping her face, “no matter what she became at the end, never blamed me for that which couldn’t be changed. Your sister, I think, was a far gentler creature—one who loved you.”

“Yes. Belle loved me.” She needed to say that, to hear it out loud. “She used to tell me all the time. She would’ve never called me a monster.” It had been her father who’d done that.

“Tell me something about your mother,” she blurted out, her soul too brittle to handle the memories of the night her father had first hurt her with his words.

It had been a month after they buried her mother. Awash in a black wall of anguish, she’d brought up something she hadn’t even whispered about for three long years. Her hunter sense had been the only constant in her life by then, and she’d thought Jeffrey would understand her need to cling to it. But his anger that night . . . “Something good,” she added. “Tell me a good memory about your mother.”

“Caliane had a voice like the heavens,” he said. “Not even Jason can sing as beautifully as my mother.”

“Jason—he sings?”

“His is perhaps the most magnificent voice in all angelkind, but he has not sung for centuries.” He shook his head when she glanced up. “Those are his secrets, Elena. They’re not mine to tell.”

It was easy to accept that—she understood about loyalty, about friendship. “Did he learn from your mother?”

“No. Caliane was long gone by the time Jason was born.” He dropped his forehead to hers, their breaths mingling in the most tender of intimacies. “She used to sing to me when I was but a babe, a child who could barely walk. And her songs would bring the Refuge to a standstill as every heart ached, every soul soared. They all listened . . . but it was me she sang to.

“I was,” he said, falling into memory, “so proud to know that I had that right, the right to her song. Not even my father fought me for it.” Nadiel had already been losing pieces of himself by then, but there were a few joyful memories of the time before the madness stole him from Raphael, from his mate. “He used to say that my mother’s song was so beautiful because it was formed of the purest love—the kind of love only a mother can feel for her child.”

“I wish I could’ve heard her.”

“One day,” he said, “when our minds are able to truly merge, when you’re old enough to hold your own, I will share my memories of her song.” They were his most precious treasures, the biggest gift he had to give.

Her eyes shone even in the darkness, and he knew his hunter understood.
One day.

They stayed that way, entangled in each other for the rest of the night. She turned to him more than once, and he willingly gave her the oblivion she sought.

 

 

T
he next morning found Elena glancing again and again at the angel who walked beside her, half certain he couldn’t be real. His hair was the color of the mist, of the blinding heart of the sun. It was the most fair blond hair she’d ever seen, whiter than her own. If she had to, she’d label it white-gold, but even that spoke of color. This angel’s hair had no color but it shimmered in the sunlight, as if each strand was coated with crushed diamonds.

His skin matched the hair. Pale, so, so pale—but with a golden sheen that turned him from stone to a living, breathing man. Alabaster touched with sunshine, she thought, that might possibly describe the color of his skin.