Angels' Blood (Guild Hunter #1)(30)

"Raphael," she said, her surprise open. "You chance the use of this much power while Uram is in your state?"

"It was necessary. I'll be back to full strength by the time he devolves to the next stage."

A slow nod. "Yes, he hasn't crossed the final line, has he?"

"We'll know when he does." The whole world would know. Everyone would hear the screams. "I need to ask you a question."

Her eyes were fathomless when she looked at him, so pale the iris was almost indistinguishable from the white of the eye. "There is a monster inside us all, Raphael. Some will survive, others will break. You have not yet broken."

"I lost control of my mind," he told her, not questioning how she knew what she did. Lijuan was more ghost than human, a shadow who moved seamlessly between worlds the rest of them never glimpsed.

"It is evolution," she whispered, a smile that was not a smile creasing her face. "Without change, we would turn to dust."

He didn't know if she was talking about him or herself. "If I keep losing control, then I'm useless as archangel," he said. "The toxin-"

"This has nothing to do with the Scourge." She waved a hand and he saw wrinkles. She was the only angel who showed even such small marks of age and she seemed to revel in them. "What you are experiencing is something else entirely."

"What?" He wondered if she was lying, drawing out the conversation in order to weaken him. It wouldn't be the first time two archangels had worked in concert to topple a third. "Or do you know nothing and play at being a goddess?"

Frost in those blind eyes, flickers of emotion so other as to be nothing known. "I am a goddess. I hold life and death in my hand." Her hair flew back in that ghostly wind she alone could generate. "I can destroy thousands with a thought."

"Death does not a goddess make or Neha would be beside you at this moment." The Queen of Snakes, of Poisons, left a trail of bodies in her wake. No one disagreed with Neha. To do so was to die.

Lijuan shrugged, an oddly human gesture. "She is a foolish child. Death is only half the equation. A goddess must not merely take life . . . she must give it."

He looked at her, felt the insidious beauty of her words, and knew what he'd only before suspected-she'd gained a new power, a power whispered of but never believed. "You can make the dead walk?" Not alive, they would not be alive. But they would walk, they would talk, and they would not rot.

Her only response was a smile. "We are talking about you, Raphael. Are you not afraid I'll use your problem to destroy you?"

"I think you have little interest in New York."

She laughed, a cool sound that whispered of the grave and sunshine in one. "You are a clever one. Far cleverer than the others. Here's what you need to know-you did not lose control."

"I forced a woman to want me." His tone was vicious. "It may be nothing to Charisemnon, but it is to me." The other archangel held power over most of North Africa. If he saw a woman he wanted, he simply took her. "What is that if not a total loss of control?"

"There were two people in that room."

For an instant, he didn't understand. Then he did and it made his blood turn to ice. "She has the ability to influence me?" He hadn't been under any creature's control since escaping Isis's tender mercies ten centuries ago.

"Would you kill her if she does?"

He'd killed Isis-it had been the only way to break free of the powerful angel bent on keeping him prisoner. He'd killed others, too. "Yes," he answered, but part of him was no longer so sure.

Is rape what turns you on?

The impact of those words still reverberated in the endless night he called a soul. His eyes flicked over Lijuan's face. "If she was controlling me, it wasn't conscious." Otherwise, she wouldn't have accused him of rape.

"Are you sure?"

He stared at her, in no mood to play games.

It made her smile widen. "Yes, you are a smart one. No, your little hunter does not have the power to bend an archangel to her whims. Are you surprised I know who it was?"

"You have spies in my Tower, like you have spies everywhere."

"And do you have spies in my home?" she asked, her tone a razor.

He threw up a shield, reflecting back her cutting power. "What do you think?"

"I think you're far stronger than the others realize." Calculation filled her gaze, even as she dropped into less formal speech.

Raphael would've cursed himself for having made a mistake except that he knew this was part of Lijuan's modus operandi. To speak with her, you had to be, if not an equal, at least strong enough to make things interesting. "If you weren't a woman, I'd say you have a need to prove whose cock is bigger."

She actually giggled but the sound was somehow . . . off. "Oh, that I'd found you when I was still interested in such things." She waved a hand. "You would've made a fine lover." Her lips turned sensuous, some faded remembrance lighting sparks in the winter chill of her eyes. "Have you ever danced with an angel in flight?"

Memory hit Raphael like a body blow. Yes, he had danced. But it had not been in pleasure. However, he said nothing, simply watched, listened, knowing he was her audience.