Archangel's Kiss

30

“He has no right to your apologies.”

Her head jerked up. “How did you know?”

“The guilt is a stain on your soul.” Running his fingers down her face to close around her throat, he leaned in until their lips were a heartbeat apart. “You will not crawl for him.”

Elena flinched. “But I’m the reason Slater chose our family.” That, nothing could change.

“And your father’s the reason that what remains of your family is broken in two.”

She had no answer to that—because he was right. Jeffrey had splintered their family the day he threw her out, her things so much garbage on the manicured grass verge of the Big House. The neighbors on their tony street had been too well mannered to stare openly, but she’d felt their watching eyes. It hadn’t mattered. All that had mattered was that he’d destroyed what little remained of the relationship between them when he tried to break her.

“Get on your knees and beg, and maybe I’ll reconsider.”

“It’s a festering sore between us,” she said, placing a hand over Raphael’s heart. “I know now that he hates me because Slater was drawn to me.” Like Dmitri, Slater had been able to entrance hunters with scent, but that hadn’t been his only gift. “Can Dmitri track me?” she asked, something clicking into place inside her.

“Yes.”

No mortal, she thought, no hunter knew that. “That’s what Slater did. He scented me somewhere and changed course toward our neighborhood.” Slater shouldn’t have gained the scent ability—he’d been too young. But the vampire hadn’t been normal in any way, shape, or form. “I could feel him getting closer, taste his scent on the wind.” She’d tried so hard to convince her father, begging, pleading, screaming at the end.

“Enough, Elieanora.” An angry command. “Marguerite, I think you need to stop with the fairy tales.”

“But Daddy—”

“You are a Deveraux.” A steely gaze. “No one in this family has ever been a common hunter. You’re not going to be the first and telling me tall tales isn’t going to help your case.”

Later, her mother rocking her, telling her she’d talk to Jeffrey. “Give him time, azeeztee. Your father was brought up with tradition—it takes a while for him to accept new ideas.”

“Mama, the monster—”

“Maybe you sense them, my darling. But they’re simply living their lives.” A mother’s gentle teaching. “Being a vampire doesn’t equal being evil.”

At ten, Elena hadn’t had the words to explain that she knew the difference, that what was coming was evil. By the time she found the words, it was too late.

The remaining days passed in a blur—most of it spent in flight training with Raphael. Any free time she had, she spent walking the Refuge, learning and listening. According to Jason’s intel, both Anoushka and Dahariel were unaccounted for during the time the Guild daggers were stolen, but there was no way to narrow it down to either one. On the good news side, the daggers had stopped turning up, and word was that Anoushka and Dahariel—along with Nazarach—had left for their territories, but she didn’t drop her guard.

The constant vigilance, added to the rigorous flight training, was exhausting, but she welcomed it, unable to think about, to accept, the truth of the part she’d played in her sisters’—and ultimately, her mother’s—deaths. So she focused on the hunt, and on the upcoming ball, with regular visits to Sam. It was as she was heading down the corridor after one such visit that everything went wrong.

“Michaela.” Her eyes widened as she saw the bodies strewn behind the archangel. At least one was the angelic version of a nurse, his hair matted with something slick, a line of red on the wall where he lay slumped.

“Hunter.” The archangel began to move forward, her body clothed in a flowing burgundy dress that ran over her breasts in a lush caress before parting a third of the way down her left thigh to display a sleek length of flesh. No one would ever call Michaela less than stunning.

But today . . . Elena swallowed. That dress wasn’t burgundy. It had been white. It was blood that drenched it, parts of it still wet enough to slick against Michaela’s flesh. The archangel’s face was clean, her hair straight and gleaming with health, but her fingernails, too, were encrusted with rust red. Death clung to her.

“I’ve come to see the child.”

Elena didn’t make the mistake of thinking Michaela was explaining herself. No, what she was hearing was a decree. She should have let the archangel go, but—and quite aside from the insanity of her dress—there was something supremely vicious about Michaela right now, something that couldn’t be allowed near a defenseless child. “Has the visit been cleared?” Her hand closed around the butt of the gun she’d slipped into the side pocket of her pants.

Michaela flicked a hand at Elena as she had once before. But this time, Raphael wasn’t there to stop her. A line of wet seared across Elena’s cheek, her flesh parting as if it had been slit with a razor.

“I do not need anyone’s permission.” A slow smile. “Did you know there are ways to scar even an immortal?”

Elena thought she saw something alien in those eyes for a second, a flicker of red. But when she looked again, it was to see only that bright, blinding green. “You may,” she said, taking out the gun, “have had nothing to do with Sam’s injuries, but the boy is under Raphael’s protection. You’ll terrify him if you go in like this.”

Michaela ignored the last part of Elena’s statement. “Are you waiting for Raphael to rescue you?” A tinkling laugh. “He’s with Elijah, flying over the opposite end of the Refuge. Apparently, there was word of an angelic body found there.”

“Was there?” Consigning pride to Hades, she sent out a mental call for help, hoping her archangel wasn’t out of range. Raphael!

A lithe shrug. “I will see the child now.”

Elena found herself smashed against the wall, her teeth slamming down on her lower lip as her head snapped back, hitting the wall hard enough to make her vision blur. She struggled against the invisible bonds holding her to the stone, even as she tried to blink the dizziness from her eyes. The gun fell to the floor with a dull thud.

“Oh, you’re bleeding.” Michaela pressed her lips softly against Elena’s, a macabre kiss flavored with malice . . . and something else.

Musk and orchids . . . touched by a jagged bite of acid.

Horror spread its wings inside her. Because that last note, the acid flavored by sunlight wasn’t Michaela’s scent. It belonged to an archangel who’d been executed above a pitch-black Manhattan. But Uram had had Michaela alone long enough to remove her heart. The question was—what had he put in her?

“I could kill you now,” the female archangel murmured against Elena’s mouth, “but I think it’ll be rather amusing to watch you after Raphael tires of you.” Another line carved into Elena’s opposite cheek, the scent of iron filling the air as Michaela’s words drew heart’s-blood. “You’ll just be meat then, easy prey for anyone who wants to taste an angel-Made. We’ll have lots of time to play.”

She was gone down the corridor in a swirl of rust-colored fabric an instant later, her words reverberating in Elena’s skull. But it was Sam who was important at this moment—the female archangel might actually physically harm him in her current state of mind, one which seemed to hold nothing of sanity and everything of a sadistic kind of pleasure.

Beyond scared for the boy, she was fighting uselessly against her bonds when Galen and Venom swept past at preternatural speed. “Ugh!” It was an ungraceful cry as the power holding her to the wall evaporated at almost the same instant. Getting to her feet, she grabbed the gun, raced after the other two . . . and came to a screeching halt a few feet behind Michaela.

Galen stood in front of the archangel, bleeding from several cuts on his body and face. Venom was getting up from a corner where the stone itself had been shattered by the impact of his body. Blood dripped down his face, but his eyes were a hypnotic slitted gold-green, the cobra rising to the surface.

Michaela stared at Galen. “You think I would harm the child.”

“You’ve already done violence in a place of healing.”

Elena sucked in a breath at the faint glow around Michaela’s wings. Jesus. “If you release that power here,” she said through lips that were starting to swell, “you’ll probably collapse the building, killing not only Sam but any other children inside.”

Michaela turned to pin Elena with a gaze that was pure light, no pupils, no irises, no longer in any sense human. Of course, Michaela had never been that. But today the difference between angel and archangel was a heat that left Elena fighting to hold her gaze, her own eyes streaming with tears.

It was tempting, so tempting, to fire the gun, but if the bullet went through Michaela’s body, there was a chance it could ricochet off the walls and shatter the glass of the patient rooms a breath away. She put it away, dropped a knife into her hand, her eyes on Michaela’s throat.

“I will not hurt the child.” It was Michaela’s voice, but so choked with power, it thundered with rage, a thousand voices contained.

Elena fought the urge to step back, knowing she was way out of her league, but also knowing she had to help delay Michaela long enough for more powerful help to arrive. “If you don’t tamp it down, you will.”

The female archangel continued to look at Elena, her head cocked in a way that was creepily inhuman. Elena had the feeling of fingers crawling across her mind, trying to pry their way in. Bile rose in her throat, but she held her position, realizing that if Michaela had to try to find a way in, it meant Raphael was protecting her. She wasn’t stupid enough to rebuff that protection.

“So weak.” A statement almost without malice—as if Elena was simply below her notice. That scared Elena even more. Because no matter what, Michaela had always been very human in her emotions. Right now, she could have been in the Quiet.

Turning back to Galen, Michaela raised a hand. Galen swayed as if hit by a blow, but stood his ground. Michaela laughed, made a hard slicing motion. This time, the big, heavily muscled angel slammed into the wall, saving his wings only by dint of twisting his body so he hit that wall face-first.

Blood smeared the stone, but Elena’s attention was on Venom. The vampire had struck while Michaela’s attention was on Galen, burying his fangs in the archangel’s neck the moment after Galen hit the wall. Elena released her blade at the same instant. It hit home on the other side of Michaela’s neck.

Screaming in rage, Michaela tore Venom off, throwing him so hard, he ended up motionless and twisted at the other end of the corridor. Then she reached up to pull the knife out as if it was nothing more than a toothpick, her arteries sealing up before Elena’s eyes. The knife hit the floor with a metallic sound as she lifted a finger at Elena. “Which limb would you like to lose first?”

Jesus. Jesus. Elena knew there was no way she could stop Michaela when two much older immortals had failed—the archangel would crush her heart before she managed to get to the gun, much less pull the trigger. Where are you, Raphael?

The sea crashed into her mind, a violent storm. I’m on my way. Keep her calm. If she releases her power, it’ll destroy the Refuge itself.

Making a split-second decision, Elena wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, the cuts on her lips still seeping blood. “I’ll take you to Sam.”

The female archangel waited.

The hairs on the back of her neck rising in primitive warning, Elena took the lead, hearing the whisper of Michaela’s dress as she followed. Galen and Venom are both down. Galen’s eyes had blinked open in the last few seconds, but Venom looked bad, really bad. I think she broke his spine, maybe his neck. And a vampire could die from a broken neck if enough other damage had been done.

He’s not dead yet.

The last word was curt. A chill curled around her heart. She’d never thought she’d mourn his loss, but Venom had shown himself willing to lay down his life to protect a child. It made him better, far better, than an archangel who’d level the Refuge while enraged with power. It reminded her too much of another archangel—one bloated with toxin. Just how much of Uram did Michaela carry?

Heart thudding, Elena stopped in front of the glass enclosure where Sam lay in peaceful sleep. She saw Keir arrive out of the corner of her eye and tried to warn him off with a frantic movement of her hand, but Keir shook his head. “Sam’s resting,” he said in an easy tone, as if an archangel wasn’t about to go nuclear beside them. “The healing is progressing extremely well.”

“He won’t be scarred?”

Elena found Michaela’s question peculiar until she realized Michaela wasn’t talking about the boy’s superficial injuries.

“No, there’ll be no permanent damage.” Keir put an arm on Michaela’s, braving the heat that blazed from her skin. “He’ll grow up as he should.”

Elena watched Michaela place her hand on the glass. “He’s so fragile.” The blaze faded in a slow wave. “So breakable.”

“Children always are,” Keir said, his tone gentle, his eyes ancient in that youthful face. “It’s a risk we take.”

“Too much,” Michaela whispered. “The risk is too much.”

The tableau froze in Elena’s mind—an archangel of impossible beauty dressed in blood, her hand lying on the glass, her fingers trembling with emotions that brought tears to Elena’s throat. What would Michaela have been, she wondered, if she hadn’t lost her child? Would the selfishness that touched her every move have matured into something better? Or would she have become another Neha, creating her child as a poisonous mirror?

“Better to break their necks when they’re born.”

Elena slid out the gun. If Michaela made a single move, she’d empty the entire clip into the archangel’s wings before Michaela could turn, use her powers to disarm Elena. Because given the choice of a possible ricochet versus certain death for Sam, she’d chance the ricochet.

“Don’t you think so?” the archangel said to Keir in a voice that was jarring in its thoughtfulness.

“We do not kill our young.”

Silence. When the archangel drew back from the glass, her face was as Elena had always seen it—perfection without mercy. Turning away with a nod to Keir, she left in a sweep of bronze wings and white silk stained dark red, her beauty imprinting an afterimage that was hard to ignore.

Elena let out a shuddering breath. She’s gone.

Take Keir to Venom.

Elena was already moving in that direction, Keir at her side. They arrived to find Galen—his face a mess of blood and torn skin—kneeling beside the fallen vampire. “He’s severely injured. Snapped spine, fractured skull, collapsed lung. His heart may have been pierced by a broken rib.”

“He bit Michaela,” Elena said, not sure if that made any difference.

“Then he likely discharged the poison in his fangs.” Keir began to run featherlight fingers over Venom’s body. “That’ll make him easier to handle.”

“Can his poison harm an angel?”

“Not in an enduring way,” Galen responded, “but it causes violent pain in most.”

“He’s dying.” Sitting back on his heels, his face white with strain, Keir nodded at Galen. “Will you carry him to the treatment room?”

Galen slid his arms beneath Venom’s broken body. Elena bit back her negative response, born of the mortal knowledge that said the victim of a spinal cord injury shouldn’t be moved. Keir surely knew a lot more about treating such injuries in vampires than she ever would. As they moved to the room, she felt the scent of the sea, the wind, fill her mind. Relief kicked her like a bucking horse. “Raphael’s here.”

But could even an archangel save a vampire so broken? What would it do to Raphael to lose one of his Seven?