Archangel's Consort (Guild Hunter #3)(105)

Reaching out, he touched the quilt, felt a quiet hum of power. “Elena.”

Elena looked up at the strange tone in Raphael’s voice, the heavy weight of memory easing for a fraction of a second. “What is it?”



His eyes turned a stunning cobalt as he rubbed his fingers across the soft old cotton. “There is power in this, the kind of power that comes only with blood.”

“This was on my bed,” she said with a frown. “Until Jeffrey packed away everything of my mother’s one winter while I was away at boarding school, this quilt covered my bed. Slater never went into that room. There can’t be blood on here.” She didn’t want the evil to have defiled this, too.

“No, not his blood.” Dropping his fingers from the quilt, he touched her wing. “It is the blood of the maker.”

Elena ran a finger over the fine stitching. “She created it by hand, probably pricked herself.” That scent was long gone, buried under the ghosts of the gardenias she wanted to keep fresh.

When Raphael said nothing, a warning sensation skittered up the back of her spine. “Archangel? Talk to me.”

“This kind of blood,” Raphael murmured, “this kind of lingering power ... it is not a mortal thing.”

“My mother was very much mortal.” Elena had seen her dead, her face bleached of color, those beautiful, laughing eyes turned forever dul .

Raphael closed his hand over her nape. “As a human, you once pushed me out of your mind. It should’ve been an impossible task.”

“Raphael, she wasn’t an angel, or a vampire. Only one thing left.”

“Not quite.” Eyes on the quilt, he said, “Vampires under two hundred years old can sire children. Those children are mortal.”

Elena blinked, stared at the quilt, back at him. Her life shifted on its axis with a grinding screech. “You’re saying I’m part vamp?”

“No, Elena. You were mortal before you became an angel. But your mother carried within her blood something powerful enough that it survived her passing. There is a vampire somewhere in your lineage.”

“I need to sit down.” But what she did was lean against Raphael, the quilt clutched to her chest. “My father ... he can’t know.” Jeffrey hated vampires, only put up with Beth’s Harrison because of business ties with Harry’s family. “I think it might break him.”

“There is no reason he should know.” Raphael stroked her hair off her face. “I would see more of your childhood—there is time enough for other things.”

“Yes.”

Then, as the most powerful being in the city, in the country, knelt by her side, one of his wings spreading over hers with heavy warmth, she showed him shining, laughing pieces of her life before Slater Patalis broke it into a thousand bloody pieces. Along the way, he told her how he’d run wild through the flower-lined streets of Amanat, how he’d been the pet of an entire city. “Tell me more,” she said, enchanted.

Raphael had never spoken of these memories to any living being, but he told Elena all she wanted to know. In turn, she shared with him the joy she’d found in being the third daughter of four, the one who was young enough to get away with everything, and old enough to be allowed privileges her youngest sister was denied.

Much later, as they stood on the cliffs by their home, looking across at the stark beauty of the Manhattan skyline after nightfall , she kissed his jaw and gave him another gift. “She lives, Raphael. There’s hope.”

Hope. Such a mortal concept. For you, Elena, I will accept that this hope might not be a foolish thing.

“Ah, you know us mortals—or recent-mortals—have a tendency to be foolish.” A heartbreaking smile. “It makes life interesting.”

“Then come, Guild Hunter.” Putting his arms around her, he lifted them into the crisp night air. It is time to make your life very interesting.

She laughed, played, and later sighed as he took them into the ocean. Knhebek, Raphael.

And he knew no matter what happened when the pale rays of dawn hit the earth, it would not defeat them. Knhebek, hbeebti.



Turn the page for a special preview of

Nalini Singh’s next book in the

Psy-Changeling Series





Kiss of Snow





Coming June 2011 in hardcover from Berkley

Sensation!





X





1979.

The year the Psy race became Silent.

Became cold, without emotion, without mercy.

Hearts were broken, families torn apart.

But far more were saved.

From insanity.

From murder.

From viciousness such as unseen in the world today.

For the X-Psy, Silence was a gift beyond price, a gift that allowed at least some of their number to survive childhood, have a life. Yet over a hundred years after the icy wave of the Silence Protocol washed away violence and despair, madness and love, the X-Psy are, and remain, living weapons.

Silence is their safety switch. Without it ...

There are some nightmares the world will never be ready to face.





1





Hawke folded his arms and leaned back against the solid bulk of his desk, eyes on the two young females in front of him. Hands clasped behind themselves and legs slightly spread in the “resting” stance, Sienna and Maria looked like the SnowDancer soldiers they were—except for the fact that their hair straggled in a wild mess around their faces, matted with mud, crushed leaves, and other forest debris. Then there was the torn clothing and the sharp, acrid scent of blood.