Archangel's Enigma

2

Naasir hated traveling in the metal bucket of a jet, but it was the fastest way for a non-winged traveler to get most of the way to the Refuge. He paced the cabin the entire time and was out the door almost before it was fully open once they landed. The sun on his face, the kiss of wind, it was pure pleasure.

Breathing deep for the first time in hours, he shook himself to settle his skin back into proper place, then grabbed his duffel when the pilot threw it out. He grinned and saluted one of the two men—the other being the co-pilot—whom he’d driven crazy over the flight. The other vampire was used to him and flashed Naasir his fangs before disappearing back inside.

Naasir laughed and, duffel slung over his shoulder, loped to the private parking garage that housed his motorcycle. He could see mountains in the distance, clouds touching them, but they weren’t of the Refuge. He was still far, for the angels had nothing of civilization close to them.

Any unauthorized vampire, or mortal who accidentally entered Refuge territory, soon forgot about it, the memory taken quietly away. The landscape itself was so forbidding that it kept most at bay, and the powerful angels who lived permanently in the Refuge were able to do something that swathed the approaches to the angelic haven in heavy fog.

The stubborn climbers who insisted on venturing farther found themselves in an icy, inhospitable region that equaled broken limbs a hundred percent of the time. Anyone who returned a second time didn’t leave alive: angelkind did not play games when it came to protecting the place that sheltered their young.

Nodding at the mechanic on duty, Naasir went straight to his bike.

“She’s ready to go,” the vampire mechanic said in the local tongue, coming over to pat the electric-blue side panels. “I envy you the ride. The weather’s perfect for it.”

Naasir had learned to ride motorcycles with Janvier after the machines first became fast and exciting. They’d both fallen off more than once. Never during that time or afterward, had Naasir worn a helmet. He picked one up today, though—the last time Ashwini had seen him riding without a helmet, she’d gotten so angry that he’d apologized then gone out with her and bought a helmet.

Janvier’s hunter mate had lost her brother and sister less than a year earlier; she’d been so sad for so long that it had hurt Naasir to see it. He wasn’t going to be responsible for making her sad again by getting so damaged even his immortality couldn’t save him—because unlike what the mortals believed, Naasir knew no one was totally immortal.

Then there was Lijuan.

The Archangel of China had a nasty habit of coming back from the dead.

Considering once again what might keep her dead, he put on the helmet then started up the bike. It came on with a silken roar. Gear stowed, he gave the mechanic a thumbs-up and headed out. He’d fed from bottled blood and cold meat on the jet, and it would fuel him for the next stage of the journey. The bike would also need fuel later on, but he, Janvier, and a few others who used this method of transport had hidden caches in a number of discreet locations.

For now, he could just ride the mountain pathways and glory in the wind pressing against him. It threatened to push him right off his bike and into a massive gorge halfway through. Teeth bared at the challenge, he bent lower over the bars and kept going. At one point, after he’d slowed down to admire a sparkling river, he saw a sign that warned of tigers in the area.

It reminded him of Elena’s attempts to find out his origins.

Laughing so hard he almost fell off the bike, he gunned the engine and took off again. He didn’t stop when the hard, clear sunlight turned to shadows, then to midnight, his night vision as good as his ordinary sight. Utilizing a fuel cache when necessary, he continued on. He had to stop and hunt a few hours later, but even if he hadn’t found prey, he was in no danger of starving, old enough that his body didn’t burn through as much fuel as a younger vampire.

Not that he was a vampire exactly, but it was the word most people used to describe him. Elena called him a “tiger creature” and had no idea how close to the truth she’d inadvertently come. He liked teasing her by making her guess, but what intrigued him most was that Raphael played the game, too. The sire refused to tell Elena, either.

Naasir had never seen Raphael play games. Not that way.

Secret rules between mates.

Like the secrets he’d have with his own mate once he hunted her down and growled at her for hiding from him. Or maybe he wouldn’t growl. He might just bite her instead.

Thoughts of his elusive mate in mind, he rode through the night and the next day, resting only when the sun was hot and uncomfortable. During that time, he found a tree, settled on a branch and went boneless. Dmitri had once discovered him in the same position as a child, called up to ask Naasir what he was doing.

“I was sleeping!” Naasir had scowled at being wakened from his nap.

Dressed in pants of a tough black material, boots, and with his upper body sweaty from a combat session against Raphael, Dmitri had raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you worried you’ll fall?”

“No. That’s why I sleep like this.” He’d pointedly waved his arms and legs, which straddled the branch, hanging down below his prone body.

“In that case, rest well.”

Naasir rested well today, too, and when he woke, found some water and drank it. Not as good as blood, but it was fine for now. Riding on through the afternoon, he finally brought the bike to a halt in another garage. This one was built into the side of a mountain and hidden so well that no one who didn’t know it was there would ever see it.

Opening it using his palm print, he rolled the bike into the silence and parked it next to a number of rugged all-terrain vehicles and familiar bikes. Behind him, the mountain closed again, enclosing the garage in unrelieved darkness, as he hadn’t activated the lights when he walked in. He tugged off his helmet and hung it carefully from the handlebar of his bike so others would know it was his, then grabbed his duffel and, running a hand through his hair, began to make his way to the back of the cavernous space.

He hated the tunnel part of the trip, but at least it was a wide tunnel.

Teeth gritted, he broke into a run to more quickly navigate the underground passageway. It was just over a mile, according to the records Jessamy had once looked up for him. Nothing really, not to Naasir, except that he hated being shut inside.

He stretched once he was finally outside, then began to lope across the landscape, his lungs expanding to cope with the thinner air. Having a strong dislike for the cold, he curled his lip at the ice and snow that covered the approaches to the Refuge—though the Refuge itself was generally kept clear of snow by means no one fully understood.

Once, when Naasir was very young, Raphael had answered his curious questions by telling him a story of the Ancestors who Slept below the Refuge. “The very first ones of our kind,” he’d said, his muscular arms on either side of Naasir’s body as he taught Naasir how to use a crossbow. “The ones from before recorded history, before all known Ancients, so old that they are almost another species.”

Legend said it was the influence of the Sleeping Ancestors that kept the Refuge’s weather mild, but for irregular seasons of snow and ice. “When winter comes,” Raphael had murmured, “it’s because an Ancestor is distracted by a dream. Or that’s the story my mother told me when I was a babe.”

No one knew if there was any truth to the legend, but something was different about the physics of the Refuge. Nothing at that high an altitude should be free of the icy lash of subzero temperatures.

Naasir’s secret aerie was outside the Refuge proper, but Aodhan had put in heating for him, including underfloor heating, which kept it at the temperature he liked. All of it was powered by discreet solar panels placed some distance from the actual aerie so no one would discover it by accident.

Today, he avoided going up into the colder altitudes for as long as possible.

When it was no longer avoidable, he washed himself clean in a glacier-fed stream that made him hiss out a breath, then dried off and changed into fresh clothes. On top, he wore the black cashmere sweater he’d bought in New York, below that a dark gray shirt with silver studs that Honor had bought for him. Leaving the tails of the shirt hanging out over his jeans, he threw on the battered leather jacket Janvier had gifted him a decade earlier.

Thick socks, his scuffed and worn-in boots with their special ice-grip soles, and he was done.

It wasn’t that he really needed any of it. He wasn’t going to freeze, his blood too hot. But who said not freezing was the only thing? He fucking hated being cold. He hoped his mate wasn’t someone who liked the cold and wanted to live in snow without heat to offset the natural temperature. That would be terrible. He’d have to persuade her to move to an in-between climate that was cold but not subzero, but if she didn’t want to come, he’d stay. Of course he’d stay.

If he could ever find her.

Shoving his dirty clothes into the duffel, he saw a glint inside. When he tugged on the glint, he found it was a thick identity bracelet in brushed metal. Admiring the way his name scrolled across the bar, he tore off the little card attached to it.

Be careful and don’t forget to wear your scarf. I also swapped out your socks for better ones and put gloves in the front pocket. ~ xo Honor

He smiled and put on the bracelet before tucking the card carefully into an inner pocket. One tug, two, and the lined black leather gloves were on. Flexing his toes inside the socks, he wrapped the dark green wool scarf around his neck and lower face, then slung the duffel over his shoulder again. “I’ll be careful,” he promised. “My mate is waiting for me.”

He could almost hear Honor’s laughter. The last time he’d said that to her, she’d asked him a question. “What if she’s annoyed with you because you made her wait all this time? What then?”

Naasir had been stumped for a while—he’d never really thought about the fact that maybe his mate had lived longer than him, had been waiting for him to be ready. Things like that did happen. Honor was younger than Dmitri, but Jessamy was older than Galen.

“I’ll court her,” he’d said after careful thought. “I’ll convince her the wait was worth it.”

That in mind, he filled the remaining hours of his journey to the Refuge with courtship plans. It almost made him forget the brittle cold and the sheer danger of the ice, the jagged rocks around him not looming threats but familiar adversaries. Unlike the hapless climbers who, between them, had broken countless limbs before ever getting this far, Naasir knew how to navigate the sharp natural teeth that guarded the angelic stronghold. He didn’t need to walk. He could run, his booted feet sure on the glaciers and ice sheets he preferred over the deep snow, and his eyes seeing every risk.

When the shadow of large wings swept over him as the sun was about to sink below the horizon, he looked up. Vivid red hair lit to scarlet brilliance by the final rays of the sun and dark gray wings striated with white, Galen dipped his wings to acknowledge Naasir’s wave, then circled around to land not far away.

“Were you watching for me?” Naasir asked upon reaching the wide-shouldered male.

“I was expecting to have to go out to the foothills.” The weapons-master embraced Naasir in a backslapping hug that almost knocked him off his feet, Galen was so strong. “You must’ve cut at least two hours off your previous time.”

“I’m faster.” He was growing in ways even Keir didn’t understand and the healer understood many things; all anyone knew was that while Naasir was an adult full grown, his abilities and gifts hadn’t yet settled into their final form.

You are the only one of your kind ever to survive to adulthood. There is no blueprint for your development, no way of predicting your ultimate strength.

“When you have time, we’ll have to test how much faster.” Galen’s voice broke into the echo of Keir’s words. “Are you planning to run the entire way in?”

“Yes.” Naasir had been carried by angels as a child and he’d liked it. No longer. Now he wanted the ground beneath his feet—he didn’t even like riding in the baskets the squadrons utilized to ferry in non-winged guests. “Tell Jessamy I’m coming for dinner.”

His smile reaching the unusually pale green of his eyes, Galen spread his wings. “She’s been watching for you since dawn.”

That delighted Naasir. Waiting until Galen had taken off in a powerful beat of wings that drew a flurry of snow up into the air, Naasir stepped up his pace even further, until to anyone watching, he’d have been a blur. More wings passed overhead an hour later, the aerial traffic increasing steadily until he began to hear the rush of landings, the beat of takeoffs, the laughter and conversation of people going about their lives.

The sky was a soft black broken only by several early stars when the snow suddenly ended, warmer air against his chilled face.

He went straight to Jessamy and Galen’s house on the cliff.

“Naasir!” A vampire, his poison-green eyes slitted like those of a viper and his dark, dark brown hair having grown to touch the collar of his T-shirt, caught him in an embrace on the paved yard outside the house.

Slapping Venom on the back, Naasir dropped his duffel to the paving stones, the small yard edged with pots bursting with flowers. “I see Galen hasn’t broken you yet.” He took in the younger man’s jeans and simple black T-shirt. “No more suits?” Venom was well known for his dangerously elegant appearance, his grace as liquid as it was lethal.

“Who cares about suits when I’m getting my ass handed to me in the training ring every day.” Venom winced and pointed to a blue-black bruise on his jaw, the color vivid against the warm brown of his skin. “Sometimes I’m not sure if Galen’s teaching me or trying to kill me.”

Naasir bared his teeth. “If Galen was trying to kill you, you’d know.” The weapons-master didn’t fight like Naasir or Venom, his style heavier and more steady, but he was a brutal and deadly force. “He’ll toughen you up.” Venom was a dangerous cub who had the gift of deadly poison in his blood, but at just over three hundred and fifty, he was the youngest of the Seven.

He needed a little more tempering.

“There you are!” Jessamy ran out of the cottage, the misty yellow of her airy ankle-length gown frothing around her legs and the chestnut waves of her hair woven into a loose braid. Her lush brown eyes glowed with welcome against the cream of her skin, her smile luminous.

Grabbing her tall and delicately slender form up in his arms, his skin brushing the insides of her wings, Naasir spun her around and around until she protested. “Oh, I have missed you,” she said with water shining in her eyes, before cupping his face and kissing him on both cheeks. “Come inside. I have a drink waiting for you.”

His stomach rumbled right on cue, but he hadn’t forgotten his mission. “The scholar, she’s safe?”

“Yes, she’s working in the Library. I thought you could rest and have a snack before I introduced you two—I’m planning on inviting her to dinner with us.”

Walking with Jessamy and Venom into the cottage just as Galen landed behind them, Naasir released a quiet breath. It was good to be with family again.

Andromeda tried to focus on the illuminated manuscript she’d placed on a stand at the back of the Library, but all she could see were the words of the letter that had come for her an hour earlier.

In twenty-two days, you turn four hundred. You have had many years of indulgence. We have allowed you all of it—even when you chose to forsake your bloodline.

It is now time to return home and undertake your obligation to your family and to your archangel. We shall expect you for the start of the ceremonial celebrations six days prior to your day of birth, following which, you will go to your grandfather’s court to take up your position by his side.

He has little use for scholars, but you are his sole grandchild, and as such, he is willing to overlook your failings as long as you conduct yourself as a princess of the court during your time of service. Do not disappoint him, Andromeda. Your grandfather’s mercy is not endless.

She gripped the sides of the stand, the wooden edges digging into her palms. “Indulgence” her mother called Andromeda’s centuries of learning, learning that had seen her offer help to countless immortals who came to the Library for assistance. She was a keeper of angelic histories and a teacher of their young. Yet after a bare three hundred and twenty-five years, give or take, she was a mere apprentice. There was so much more she had to learn.

And the journeys she’d taken . . . the world was ever changing and she wanted to continue to drink in every single part of it. But time had run out. She’d always known it would, always known that one day, no matter any other choice she’d made, she’d be four hundred years old and expected to return to the court of the Archangel Charisemnon—to fulfill the terms of a familial blood vow her parents had made on her behalf when she was a babe newborn.

Jessamy had asked her if she was bound by any such vows when Andromeda first came to the Refuge. Scared she wouldn’t be accepted into an apprenticeship should she tell the truth, admit she’d have to stop her studies at four hundred, Andromeda had lied and said Charisemnon had forgiven her vow since she was so clearly unsuited to court life. As the years passed, the lie had become more and more difficult to put right.

None of it mattered now. Allowing one day for the journey, she had fifteen more of freedom before she had to return to the stunning, heartbreaking land she’d left as a girl not yet an adult. Any other action would be considered high treason, death the penalty.

No one, enemy or friend, would offer her safe harbor. “Stealing” children from another archangel’s blood family was considered an act of quiet violence that could ripple out into war. She’d considered asking Raphael or Titus for sanctuary, since they were already at war with her grandfather, but she knew that even if they paid attention to the petition of a lowly apprentice, the two archangels could not give her what she wanted.

To do so would be to shock and disturb the more traditional archangels who were Raphael’s and Titus’s allies against the death and disease her grandfather and his own nightmare ally had spread across the world. And regardless, she’d be hunted to the end of her existence should she run. Far better to serve the five hundred years required of her and hope her soul was intact at the end of it.

As a princess of the court, she’d be expected to be a ruthless and vicious arm of Charisemnon. Her grandfather might not kill her the first time she refused an order to torture or to humiliate, but he’d do everything in his power to break her, make her his puppet. Charisemnon did not suffer defiance.

Fifteen more days.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she was attempting to focus on the manuscript again in an effort to find stable ground, when the hairs rose on the back of her neck. All at once, she wished she didn’t have her hair in a braid, that her nape wasn’t so open, so vulnerable.

Throat dry, she turned in wary quiet, reaching at the same time for the razor-sharp blade strapped to her thigh and accessible through a hole in the pocket of her gauzy raspberry-colored gown. When she saw it was only Jessamy heading toward her, she began to smile . . . then realized her mentor wasn’t alone.

There was a shadow next to her.

A shadow with silver eyes that watched Andromeda without blinking.

Every hair on her body stood up this time, or that’s what it felt like. She knew who he was—everyone knew Naasir, though like her, most had no idea of his origins or nature. He was one of a kind. Skin of a warm, deep brown that held golden undertones and that invited a caressing touch, eyes of silver and hair the same shade. Silver, not gray. It was as if his hair and his eyes had been formed out of the metal and polished to a high shine.

He stood out, made you remember him.

Of course, she’d never before been so close to him. Naasir had passed through the Refuge many times in the three and a quarter centuries she’d lived here, but Andromeda had ensured they never met. At first, she’d been too young and too determined to succeed at her studies to worry about anyone of the male sex. But later . . . Naasir incited things inside her that weren’t right for a woman who had taken a vow of celibacy, made the out-of-control animal within want to come out.

That didn’t mean she hadn’t watched him from afar.

He moved like a jungle cat, fed on blood and yet ate meat, had eyes that saw through the darkness, and seduced mortals and immortals alike with ease. Andromeda might not have ever surrendered to the same primal urges, but she understood that he was unique in his ability to entrance so many. Add in his feral beauty, so compelling and hypnotic, as well as the potent depth of his power, and he was a threat on many levels.

“Andromeda.” Jessamy tilted her head a touch to the side. “Is everything all right?”

Realizing she’d been standing frozen in place as she watched the vampire who wasn’t a vampire walk toward her, she forced her stiff muscles to move. “Yes, of course,” she managed to get out. “Just lost in thought.”

Jessamy took her words at face value, her concern segueing into an affectionate smile as she touched her fingers to Naasir’s arm. “I wanted to introduce Naasir to you before dinner. You’ll eat with us?”

Heart pounding as if she’d flown a hard physical race, Andromeda went to say that she’d rather be alone so she could finish her last-minute research, when Naasir moved. He was less than an inch from her before she knew what was happening. Nostrils flaring and that impossible silver hair sliding forward over his luscious skin, he lowered his face to her throat.

Her blood roared to that pulse point even as her hand closed over the hilt of the blade.