After making sure the hunters-all of them-had left Tower territory, Dmitri returned to the room where they'd held the meeting and walked out onto the high balcony. There was a rustle of feathers and then Jason emerged from the shadows that had cloaked him till then. "You lied."
"A simple misdirection," Dmitri responded, staring out at the lights of a city still shaken by the death of an archangel. "They're not ready for the truth."
"What will you tell them when she doesn't appear within the next few months?"
"Nothing." His hands clenched on the railing. "Raphael will have healed by then."
A gust of wind swept across the balcony, bringing with it the familiar scents of a city that had been nothing much more than a few ramshackle buildings when Raphael first claimed it as his territory.
"I've never seen an archangel that badly injured," Jason said. "The angelfire ate through his bones far faster than it should have."
Dmitri thought back to the gunshot wound Raphael had sustained from Elena's gun. "He's changed." But whether that change would prove fatal, they'd have to wait and see.
"Some of the Cadre are starting to turn covetous eyes toward Raphael's domain."
Dmitri set his jaw. "We will hold it for him. Until it is certain."
Chapter 39
Three months later, when Raphael walked in to take his place at a meeting of the Cadre, the gasps of surprise were genuine. Even immortals, it seemed, had written him off. He slid into his chair and placed his hands loosely on the arms. "I hear you're debating how to divide my territory."
Neha was the first to recover. "No, of course not. We were speaking of Uram's successor."
He smiled, let the lie pass. "Of course."
"You did well in halting him," Elijah said.
Charisemnon nodded. "Pity it came to such a public end. For a while, the mortals speculated that he was the cause of the disappearances in your region-how did you turn the tide?"
"I have good men around me." It had apparently been Venom's idea to frame Robert "Bobby" Syles. He'd made the perfect fall guy-and given his sickening predilection toward children, no one had felt any guilt in blackening his name. A few judicial hints, some rumors of Bobby's depraved leanings, and proof of his having entered the United States was all it had taken.
The world, humans, vampires, and angels alike, didn't want to believe that an archangel had turned murderous. A battle between two archangels was something they could accept-most thought it had been a fight for control of the area, were happy with that understanding. To see Uram as a killer would've been too much, a fundamental shift in the fabric of the universe as they understood it.
Charisemnon humphed while Titus nodded. It was Favashi who spoke next. "We are glad to see you, Raphael."
He thought she might truly mean it. So he gave a small nod. She smiled, her face beautiful in a way that had made kingdoms fall. But he felt nothing, his heart given to a mortal. "So, you are discussing successors?"
"More accurately," Astaad pointed out, "the lack of them. There is one, as we all know, who may soon become an archangel. But he isn't yet."
"And Uram's territory needs guidance now." Michaela's gaze met Raphael's across the circle, a malicious delight in it that he understood too well. But all she said was, "I can undertake some of the work, but I have enough to handle in my own lands."
"Very magnanimous of you, Michaela," Neha murmured with an elegant trace of sarcasm. "Does your landlust know no end?"
Michaela's eyes flashed. "And I suppose you have no interest in it?"
So it began, the rounds of propositions and rebuttals, alliances and oppositions. Only Raphael and Lijuan, sitting next to him, took no part. Instead, Lijuan touched his arm with pale, delicate fingers. "Did you and Uram speak much before he died?"
"No. He was beyond speech."
"A pity." She moved her hand back to the arm of her own chair. "I would've liked to learn more about the subtle effects of long-term exposure to the toxin."
Raphael raised an eyebrow. "Surely you're not considering it?"
A soft laugh hidden in the sounds of the argument going on around them. "No, I value my sanity."
Raphael wondered if Lijuan could truly be called sane anymore. Jason had managed to gain more details of the other archangel's court-half her "courtiers" were the reborn, creatures who followed her commands with unswerving obedience. "I'm happy to hear that. Ending the life of an angel as powerful as Uram was difficult enough. I dare not think about what it would be to have you turn bloodborn."
Lijuan's eyes sparked with eerily girlish mischief. "Oh, such flattery will go to my head." She leaned back in her seat. "I was curious only because Uram seemed to have better control over his impulses than the young ones who turn. Is it not possible that he was right, that if we could traverse the problematic period, we might come out of it with enormous power on the other side?"
"The problematic period, as you put it," he said, watching the byplay between Neha and Titus, sweet poison against granite will, "turns us into killers without compare. Our most recent investigations indicate that, counting his servants, Uram killed close to two hundred people in less than ten days."
"But he was thinking."
"Only of more death." Raphael kept his tone temperate through sheer force of will. That Lijuan was considering this even on a peripheral level was a very bad sign. "Had we given him a year, he would've torn apart thousands, glutting himself each time. That is what makes an angel bloodborn, the inability to stop, to fight the lust for blood and power."
"I killed the last one, did you know? The one the humans call the father of all vampires." She laughed at the idea. "He was highly intelligent, evaded me for years, even ruled a sector."
"He bled the sector dry," Raphael reminded her. "He had no control over his instinct to kill-a puppet of his own desire. Is that what you would call power?"
Lijuan gave him an inscrutable look, a look filled with things such as he'd never seen and never wished to see. "You are a clever one, Raphael. Have no fear, I will not turn. It holds little interest for me now. As you well know."
He didn't apologize. "Only stupidity excuses ignorance."
That made Lijuan giggle again. "Now you are being cruel to the others."
He wondered over that. If the others truly didn't know about Lijuan's evolution, then they were going to get an extremely unpleasant surprise one of these days. "I believe they've reached a consensus."