Archangel's Prophecy (Guild Hunter #11)(6)

For once in harmony, the two of them turned their backs to the blooming that should not be and met Taizaki in Damian Hale’s room. It turned out the ex-CEO had taken two guns and a crossbow. Imani confirmed Hale had enough of a facility with both types of weapons that Elena would have to take care.

That done, the angel left to walk in her creepy rose garden. “Change is disruptive,” she said when Elena arched her eyebrows. “But such dark beauty will not long survive the ice. Not even an immortal can stop the rot of time.”

Elena stared after the angel for long moments. A shiver rippled down her spine.

Shaking it off, she called Vivek and got him to remotely hack into Damian Hale’s computer—which the vampire had left passcode-protected. Vivek discovered evidence of multiple international airline tickets all booked for the same time and day. The most interesting find, however, was that Hale had managed to gain access to the household account and siphon off a significant cushion of money.

“He’s no ordinary runner.” Elena’s blood heated, her pulse faster. “I don’t think he’ll be on the planes, either. He left this trail for us to find.”

“I’m on it.” An exhilaration in Vivek’s voice that justified her decision to call him rather than the Guild’s own tech team.

She was by the mansion’s front door with Taizaki when Vivek confirmed her hunch. Damian Hale hadn’t boarded any of the ticketed flights. “I’ve set up a notification alert across every possible system. Anything else pops up, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, V.” Elena secured her phone in a zippered pocket, then opened the bag that held the exemplar of Hale’s scent and took a deep breath. “The brush of aspen trees entwined with a hint of ripe peach.”

Taizaki blanched at her murmur.

Elena shrugged. “Vampiric scents often have nothing to do with the strength or dangerousness of a vampire.” She decided not to tell the snooty majordomo that he smelled of burnt sugar candy and curdled milk.

See, she was being all political and nice even though Taizaki had curled his lip the first time she’d ever met him. As if mortality was catching. Montgomery would’ve never been so tacky as to betray his personal feelings. The first time she’d met Raphael’s butler, she’d been a rough-and-tumble mortal hunter, but he’d offered her tea or coffee with utmost politeness.

But, she admitted, Montgomery was the gold standard. Every other butler—or majordomo—was going to suffer by comparison. Poor Imani would be mortified if she ever realized Taizaki’s lapse.

Handing the exemplar back to the majordomo, she turned to begin the hunt in earnest.

Roses, opulent and intoxicating and hella-creeptastic.

Elena gritted her teeth against the overwhelming perfume that stained the air and shouted omen, omen, omen! She began to walk out from the mansion in increasingly large semi-circles and finally caught Hale’s scent about fifty yards out from the front door, heading into the trees that surrounded the property.

Twenty minutes later, the scent came to an abrupt halt. When she crouched down to dig lightly through the dirty snow that had been protected from the light morning snowfall by a heavy tree canopy, she spotted a drip of oil. “Smart guy.” She rose, walked out from under the canopy.

Bunching up her wings, she went to go airborne to see if the oil leak had left a trail . . . and felt an excruciating wrenching in her muscles.

Breathless, she froze then tried again.

She got airborne, but her shoulders and inner wing muscles hurt as they hadn’t since she’d first become strong enough to pull off vertical takeoffs. The pain throbbed through her like an infected tooth.

Damn it.

She must’ve inadvertently moved the wrong way and twisted or torn a tendon or muscle. Hopefully it was small enough that her body would heal on its own. Angelkind’s healers were gifted, but while they could help the healing process, they couldn’t magic away major injuries.

As for Elena’s own capacity to heal, it was more than she’d had as a mortal but nothing in comparison to even baby angels. No one knew how long her journey from post-mortal to immortal would take. Keir, a gifted healer respected by immortals, and Jessamy, their trusted historian and librarian, had been digging for information about the previous angels-Made, but so far all they had to show for their efforts were a lot of dust sneezes and reddened eyes.

The frustration was even worse because everyone knew those once-mortals had existed. They were the flesh and blood reality behind the legend that when an archangel loved true, his body would spontaneously produce a sweet, erotic golden substance called ambrosia. Raphael had kissed her with ambrosia as she fell, her back broken and the rest of her wounded beyond repair, and now she soared in the sky.

Ambrosia was accepted as a given among immortals. Researchers had even attempted to study it. Unfortunately, they were hampered by the lack of records—or an actual sample. It wasn’t as if Raphael had been in any condition to save them a drop; he’d given it all to Elena.

You must live.

Elena’s heart stretched on the echo of memory, of the raw determination in her archangel’s voice, of the piercing love that had marked them both. But what of the other lovers true who’d come before them? Where had they gone?

The prevailing theory was that the last angel-Made had been born so very long ago that the angel-Made and all those who knew his or her name were lost to deepest Sleep. Elena wondered at times about what it would be like to meet one of her predecessors, uncertain if she wanted the opportunity or not. What if those predecessors had lost their humanity after an eon of existence? What if she recognized nothing of mortality in them?