He raised his hand to her wings, stroking one hand down the sweep of black and indigo.
"Raphael." It came out husky, a censure.
"I haven't spoken of my parents in centuries." Another lingering stroke along her wings.
"My mother executed my father."
The words cut through the haze of pleasure with ruthless precision. "Executed?" Images of broken, decaying bodies filled her mind as she was catapulted back into Uram's depraved playground.
"No," Raphael said, "he didn't turn bloodborn."
There was no scent of the wind, of the rain, in her mind. "How did you know?"
"The horror is painted across your face." His eyes shifted to a color that had no name, it was so heavy with memory. "Uram revered what my father was."
"Why?"
"Can you not guess, Elena?"
It wasn't hard, not when she thought back to what she knew about Uram. "Your father thought angels should be worshipped as gods," she said slowly. "That mortals and vampires should bow down before you."
"Yes."
There was a knock on the balcony doors before she could formulate a reply. Glancing over, she saw only darkness. "Is it Jason?"
"Yes," Raphael said, rising off the bed, his expression grim. "And Naasir awaits below."
She watched him step out onto the balcony, and though she knew Jason was there, she still couldn't make out anything of the black-winged angel's form.
Elena, get dressed.
Caught by the urgency of the command, she got out of bed and pulled on a pair of cotton panties, ignoring the bruises that had already begun to turn a nice putrid purple on her back and thighs. Over the panties, she donned a pair of black pants made of some kind of tough, leatherlike material, and - after shedding the shirt - a top that wrapped around her in a complicated pattern of straps, but ended up covering her chest while leaving her arms and most of her back bare. The fit was snug, leaving her free to move without worrying about extraneous material getting in her way.
Having felt the approaching cold front, she slipped on long, tight sleeves that fit securely just below her shoulders - they'd provide warmth while ensuring her arms remained unrestricted. As she grabbed her boots, she arrowed her thoughts to Raphael, aware he was no longer on the balcony.Where?
Dmitri will escort you.
The vampire was waiting for her in the hallway, and for once, there was no hint of sex about him - unless you liked your sex lethal. Wearing black leather pants, a black T-shirt that hugged his leanly muscled frame, and a long black coat that swept around his ankles, he was death honed to a gleaming edge. Straps crisscrossed his chest and she recognized them as a dual holster.
"Weapons?" he asked.
"Gun and knives." The knives sat on either side of her thighs, but the gun she'd tucked into her boot after debating whether to put it in the curve of her lower back and deciding she wasn't yet confident enough in terms of getting her wings out of the way fast enough.
"Let's go." Dmitri was already walking.
The sky was a brilliant, exotic black when they exited, the stars so clear it felt as if she could reach out and touch them. The first snow to hit the Refuge glittered underfoot, having fallen with stealthy silence in the interval since she'd gone inside.
"How bad are your injuries?" A cool glance, his eyes assessing her as nothing but another tool.
"I'm functional," she said, knowing she could work through the muscle stiffness, the dull ache in her chest. "Nothing's broken."
"You may need to track."
"That part of me never stopped working. As you know very well."
"Wouldn't want you to get out of practice." Casual words, but his eyes were those of a predator on the hunt, his strides eating up the ground as they walked toward a section of the Refuge that seemed made up of midsized family dwellings.
Lights blazed in every window they passed, but the world was eerily hushed.
"Here." Dmitri headed down a narrow pathway lit with lamps that appeared as if they'd been transported from mid-nineteenth-century England. Mind swirling with possibilities, she kept her eyes firmly on the path as it twisted this way and that, leading finally to a small home on the very edge of a cliff.
A perfect location.
The cliff would provide for easy takeoffs, and there was plenty of space in front when it came to landings. But, given the terrain, there appeared to be only one way out for those on foot - the path they'd just traversed. A stupidly easy trail. So why would Raphael need a scent-tracker?
Elena.
Following Raphael's mental voice, she headed to the house . . . to the smell of iron turning to rust. Her body froze on the doorstep, her foot refusing to step over the threshold.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
"Come here, little hunter. Taste."
It was a shock of memory, shoving her into the past with such brutal swiftness that she couldn't fight the descent.
Belle, still alive when she walked in. But only for a fragment of a moment, her eyes filming over with death even as Elena reached out -
Waves of scent, the most decadent chocolate and champagne, promises of pleasure and pain. Arousal uncurled, and it was so wrong for this moment that it snapped the loop of nightmare. Taking a shallow breath, she stepped over the threshold, forcing herself to walk into another home stained with the kiss of malice.
Dmitri's scent began to fade almost immediately and at rapid speed. He was leaving, she realized, aware she couldn't track effectively with his intense scent bleeding into the air.
But he'd remained long enough to give her that mental slap when she hesitated on the doorstep.
It put her in his debt.
Scowling at the idea, she concentrated on her surroundings. This was clearly the main living area, with a vaulted ceiling and an overall impression of space. Books filled the shelves that lined the walls, and there was a handwoven rug in Persian blue beneath her feet. On her left she saw a cup sitting atop a small, intricately carved table, while underneath it lay what appeared to be a stuffed toy of some kind. The sight of the raggedy thing made her heart chill. Angels, as she now knew, did have children.
Setting her shoulders against the horror she might find, she ignored the doors on either side and walked straight down the hallway to the room at the very back.
White walls splashed with red.
The sound of a woman's sobs.
A tumbled glass, the scarlet of an apple on the counter.
Fragments of thought, images coming in like splinters of glass. Her throat locked, her spine went rigid, but she forced herself to stay, tosee . The first thing she registered was Raphael kneeling before another angel, a tiny woman with tumbling curls of glossy blue black, her wings a dusty brown streaked with white. Raphael's own wings spread on the floor, uncaring of the fluid that turned the gold to mottled umber.
Find him.A command laced with a violence of emotion.
Nodding, she took a deep breath . . . and was hit by an avalanche of scents.
Fresh apples.
Melting snow.
A whisper of oranges dipped in chocolate.
Unsurprised at what vampires smelled like to her hunter senses by now, she drew in that last scent, stripping it down to its very basics - until she could isolate that particular combination of notes even in the midst of a crowd of thousands.
However, the other scent, the fresh apples and the snow, that wasn't a vampire. The composition of it was unique, unlike anything she'd ever before tasted. She did a double check. No, categorically not a vamp. And not, as she'd first thought, merely a magnification of the scents floating in the atmosphere. It was another person.
The fresh, exhilarating bite of the sea. Wind scouring her cheeks.
A taste of spring, sunlight, and freshly mown grass.
And beneath it all, the flickering, familiar taste of fur against her tongue.
But it wasn't Dmitri playing with her this time. "Who lives here?" she managed to ask through the chaos of impressions. "Snow and apples and fur and spring." It made no sense, but Raphael was in her mind almost before she finished speaking. She fought her instinctive attempt to repel him, realizing he needed to know what she'd picked up.
Sam is the snow and the apples, his father the fur, his mother the spring.
Her heart froze in her chest as she met the excruciating blue of his eyes. "Where's Sam?"
"Taken."
The tiny female angel lifted a fist to her mouth, her hand so small it could've been that of a child's. "Find my son, Guild Hunter." The same words, said by Raphael, would've been an order. From this woman, they were a plea.
"I will." It was a promise and a vow. Hunkering down, she drew in the scents again, then stood, angling her head like the bloodhound she was.
The faintest trace of oranges.
Following the tug, she walked past Raphael and Sam's mother to place her hand on the back doorknob. The scent rocked through her. "Yes," she whispered, her hunter senses singing in recognition. Pulling open the door, she stepped out . . . into nothing.
Chapter 14
She'd fallen before. But then, she'd been held in the arms of an archangel. This time, there was nothing between her and the unyielding embrace of the rocks below. Panic threatened but was beaten into submission by her will to live. Elena P. Deveraux had never given up yet.
Gritting her teeth, she spread out her wings. They faltered, still weaker than necessary for flight, but managed to slow her descent. Not enough, she thought, her eyes tearing against the wind, her back muscles starting to spasm. Even an immortal - especially a young immortal - couldn't survive such a crippling fall.
Her body would be shredded by the velocity of the impact, her head separated from her body. That killed vampires. And Raphael had said - "Oh!" A wash of powerful air that sent her spiraling, terror a shock through her bloodstream. Then arms grabbing hold of her with a steely strength she'd never mistake for anyone but Raphael's.
They fell several more feet, their velocity accelerated by the impact, before Raphael steadied and they began to rise in a storm of speed. She wrapped her arms around his neck, shaking with relief. "Seems like you're always catching me when I fall."
His answer was a hard squeeze.
They landed on an empty section of the cliff, the nearest angelic home hidden from sight by the jutting teeth of the craggy rock face. "Okay, lesson number one," she said, trying to relearn to breathe as Raphael put her down, "never assume there's going to be earth beneath my feet."
"You must stop thinking like a human." Raphael's voice was a whip. "It could've gotten you killed today."
She jerked up her head. "I can't simply stop. It's all I've ever known."
"Then learn." He gripped her chin between his fingers. "Or you'll die."
Her first instinct was to strike back, but something stopped her. Perhaps it was the more important life at stake, or perhaps it was the way his wings came around her, sheltering her from the snow-laced wind even as he spoke to her in such anger. "I need to get back inside," she said, "see if I made a mistake in the track."
Raphael held onto her chin for another second before placing his lips over hers. They were still locked in the angry relief of the kiss as he rose into the air, flying her to the front entrance of Sam's home. Shaken but determined, she walked through the house, every sense on alert . . . and came to the same conclusion.