"But scars remain."
"Sometimes, the scars are what make us who we are."
Elena wondered at the scars that marked the son of two archangels, whether he'd one day share them with her. She wouldn't push, knew exactly how bad old wounds could hurt. A year. A century. It had little bearing when it came to the heart. The scars formed in that suburban kitchen when she'd been barely ten had indelibly marked her. They'd marked her father, too, but in a different way. Jeffrey Deveraux had chosen to deal with it by wiping his first wife and two eldest daughters from his memory.
Her nails dug into the palm of her hand. "I'm going to go see if I can find any trace of the vampire." The city was huge, but she might get lucky - and it was better than doing nothing.
"I'll return with you," Raphael said. "Keep well, Keir."
The other angel lifted his hand in a small wave as they left.
"Do your healers have special abilities?" Elena asked.
"Some do. Some are more akin to human physicians."
"They'd have seen things go from leeches to transfusions to organ transplants." Arriving at the waiting area, she wrapped her arms around Raphael and let him take her up to the ledge.
Illium's wings were shadowed blue against the snow when they walked out, his face turned up to the flakes falling soundlessly from the night sky "The water, Ellie," he said,
"it'll wipe away the scents."
"Damn." Water was the one thing that ended any hope of a scent trail. Melting a few flakes in the palm of her hand, she tried to think positive. "Sometimes, snow isn't so bad - I once successfully tracked a vamp because the snow trapped his scent instead of washing it away."
"Then you need to hurry." Raphael spanned her waist with his hands. "Illium, Naasir thinks he may have found something in the north quadrant."
Illium's eyes almost glowed against the clean lines of his face. "I'll go and help him check it out."
Pressing her lips to Raphael's ear as they rose into the air, Elena asked a question that had been simmering at the back of her mind. "Is Illium getting stronger?"
He was badly injured by Uram, went into a deep healing sleep known asanshara. It was the first time he'd done so - sometimes, there's a change in a man afteranshara.
"How strong will he get?"
Unpredictable.He swept down, the wind frigid across her cheeks.We're in the area around Sam's home.
"Nothing in the air. Put me down - I'll see if I can track him through the snow."
But that, too, proved futile. "It's not a total loss." She blinked away a flake caught on her lashes. "It's so cold, the snow won't melt anytime soon. That gives me time to search across the Refuge."
"How far through snow can you pick up a scent?"
"A couple of feet at most."
Raphael looked up. "The skies will open tonight."
"Then I guess we'll be staying up." Elena met the midnight storm of his eyes, felt compelled to reach up, cup his cheek. "We'll find the bastards."
He didn't soften under her touch, didn't become any less distant. "The fact that they dared take a child, it speaks of a deep rot, a rot that must be excised before it infects our entire race."
"Nazarach and the others?"
"They were all in open sight."
"Of course they were."
"It doesn't matter if the angel driving this didn't participate in the physical act - their corruption is the root. What was done to Noel merited death. What was done to Sam . . .
death would be a mercy."
Light edged her fingertips where they touched Raphael's skin. She feared his power, would've been a fool not to. But she couldn't let him cross that line, couldn't let the hunt drag him into the abyss. "Raphael."
"There is," Raphael murmured, his eyelids lowering to hood the ice of his gaze, "a dark music in the screams of your enemies."
"Don't," she whispered, trying to reach him. Cruelty, as he'd once told her, seemed to be a symptom of age and power. But she refused to surrender to that, to let him be consumed by the violence of his own strength. "Don't."
But he wasn't listening. "Would you not like to stroke a stiletto across his throat, Elena?"
His own hand closed around her neck, sensual, gentle, lethal. "Would you not like to watch him beg for his life?"
Chapter 16
"Part of me," Elena whispered, admitting to the angry need within, "wants to do exactly that, wants to torture the bastard until he whimpers, until he crawls."
"But you will pity him when the time comes."
"My heart is human." And that heart was his. Ignoring the hand he still had around her throat, she pulled his head down to hers. As their lips met, she felt the slow burn of his power grow until it pulsed against every inch of her flesh. It was a reminder that no matter if she now had wings, she was very much mortal in comparison to this archangel.
His energy surrounded her, soaked into her very pores, his lips taking hers with a terrible, beautiful cruelty. There was no attempt to harm, no pain. No, Raphael kissed her like the immortal he was - with the heartless skill of a man who'd kissed so many women across the ages, their faces had to be a blur by now. It was a direct, unmistakable display of the ruthless heart that beat within his chest.
You can't scare me, she thought to him.
A lie, Guild Hunter. I can feel your heart thudding like a trapped rabbit's.
I'd be stupid not to be afraid. But I'm not going to back away from us just because you're feeling a little extra snarly.
A split second when his lips stopped, then she felt them curve, his hand rising from her throat to cup her cheek. The white-hot burn of his power faded, was replaced by the erotic touch of his skin.Only you would ever dare say that to me.
Needing to breathe, she broke the kiss, her entire body a humming flame. Man, but the archangel knew how to kiss. "We have to go."
A small nod, his hair sliding across his forehead before the wind pushed it back. "Where do you want to start?"
"How about the school - he might've been watching Sam or the other kids to decide which one to take."
Raphael's face went quiet, but though his eyes turned a deep indigo lit from within, he didn't flame with power again. "I'll fly you to the school grounds."
However, though Elena searched until the early hours of morning, when the snow began to come down in white sheets, she didn't find even the faintest trace of the vampire who'd laid brutal hands on a child in a place meant to be the safest of havens. More angry than anything else, she walked into their bedroom and began to strip off snow-wet clothes, her bruises stiff with cold.