Archangel's Prophecy (Guild Hunter #11)(7)

Today, she felt mortal down to the bone, but the pain in her wing had faded from pulsating abscess to throbbing bruise, so she decided to continue the hunt and swing by the infirmary when she got back.

There were no visible oil stains on the road, anything once there long erased by the passage of other cars. This hunt would have to be more technical. But when she asked Vivek to locate Damian Hale’s phone, he told her it was back in the general area of Imani’s mansion. “He probably hid it on the grounds, hoping to send everyone on a wild goose chase.”

A flock of starlings flew off the trees right in front of Elena. Hundreds of tiny bodies and sharp beaks and unblinking dark eyes. Thousands of wings hitting her skin. Endless shrills of sound bursting against her eardrums.

She dropped on a bitten-off sound, barely managing to catch herself before she fell too far.

“Ellie!”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she muttered into the phone while the birds flew in a spiral around her before scattering to the winds. “Have there been any other seismic events since I left?”

“No, all calm.” Vivek’s voice was sharp. “You’re really okay?”

“Yes.” The Cascade might be stretching awake again after this latest bout of dormancy, but Elena wasn’t planning to dance to its tune. No one knew how long the power surge and accompanying chaos would last. It could be decades for all they knew. None of them could stop living their lives.

Today, Elena’s life included finding Damian Hale. “How about his car?”

“Guy’s got no vehicle registered to him,” Vivek replied without pause. “I called and talked to Imani’s majordomo vamp—he confirms none of their vehicles are missing.” A sudden pause. “Hold on. Our clever rabbit might’ve forgotten something.”

Elena stayed aloft while Vivek worked, her eyes sweeping the ground.

“A lot of the angelic homes have surveillance directed out to the road,” Vivek said in her ear, “and the Tower’s got access to those eyes in case of enemy threats. I picked up your runner’s face in a red sedan, and I’m tracking him using various cameras and toll points. Hacked those years ago, so it doesn’t even count.”

“Point me in the right direction, partner,” she said, her skin going burning hot then searingly cold. Every hair on her head felt electrified. “V,” she said before he could answer. “Is there a lightning storm on the horizon?”

“No, weather report says clear skies with limited chance of weirdness.” Shifting focus, he began to give her directions; he stayed with her all the way to a small cabin-style hotel at the foot of the Catskills. She ate three energy bars in the air as lunch, drank water from the slim water packet she kept in a lower pants pocket.

“I’ve got nothing beyond the cabi—” A quiet exhale on the other end of the line. “You know that small chance of weirdness?”

“Yeah?”

“Seismic report came from a sensor located near those cabins.”

“Of course it did,” Elena muttered even as her skin tingled as if a current were arcing through her cells. “I’m about to land. Call you after I have something.”

It took her two tries to zip up her phone in her pocket again, the sensation of electricity was so distracting and disorienting on her fingertips. Her cheeks felt burned with ice, the tips of her ears red-hot.

“Normal thoughts,” she ordered herself. “Normal thoughts.”

When the starlings surrounded her as she looked for the best spot to land, she ignored them . . . even when she could swear the birds were whispering to her. She couldn’t hear the words, the shape of them just out of hearing range, but the tone was a warning.

The birds flew up higher now and then to dance in intricate patterns that kept her airbound as she looked on in fascination, but they never went far from her side. A strange, murmuring escort.

That winged escort stayed in the sky when she did finally land—in the large area in front of the hotel that was probably full of wild grasses and flowers in summer; today, it was a sheet of white barely marked by life. A single draw of the bitingly cold air and vampiric scents touched her nose, each line clean and unentangled with others.

There, a brush of aspen and the juicy extravagance of ripe peaches.

Strong. Rich. Not just a residue. Damian Hale was here.

Taking another breath while trying not to notice the electric prickling on her face, Elena triangulated the source of the scent to a particular cabin. She’d just stepped foot in that direction when the electricity vanished. The birds stopped singing. The air froze.

And the earth trembled under her feet.

She came to a halt. An unknown sound made her look up. The starlings were circling in a constant wheel as they whispered their frantic and incomprehensible warning inside her skull.

The earth jolted violently.

Bunching her wings and gritting her teeth against the renewed pulse of pain, she rose up off the shaking ground. Cabin doors flew open below her, people spilling out like disoriented ants to run in the direction of the lawn.

The ground under the cabins began to crumble.

Elena swept down to grab a young woman who was a frightening half step ahead of the disappearing earth. Elena wasn’t strong enough to carry a full-grown adult any real distance, but she managed to haul the woman to where the other guests could grab her, then yelled at everyone to go farther.