Archangel's Consort (Guild Hunter #3)(30)

Obeying the order, Deacon bent to put her on the floor. Feathers in hand, Zoe toddled over to the coffee table and put her treasures on the glass so she could admire them one by one, the dol held close to her side. Slayer, having been banished to sit by the mantel, sidled around to stand next to his favorite human being.

Sara touched her hand to Deacon’s heart when he wrapped a heavily muscled arm around her shoulders. “Didn’t you have something for Ellie?”

“Let me go grab it.” Kissing his wife on the nose, the former bogeyman of the Guild prowled out of the room after ruffling Zoe’s tiny curls.

“I got you and Deacon gifts as well ,” Elena said. “From the Refuge. Found a gorgeous col ar for your monster dog, too.”

Sara took her hands, squeezed. “The best gift is you, here. I missed you so much.”

Elena had to look down for a second to blink away the surge of emotion. Sara wasn’t her blood, but she was her sister in every other way that mattered.

“I had a run-in with Jeffrey.” It spilled out, the one subject she hadn’t been able to talk about when they’d met earlier, the wound too raw. “He’s furious that the girls have been targeted because of me, and I can’t blame him.”

Sara’s jaw tensed. “That’s—”

“He’s right this time, Sara.” Guilt twisted through her, a hard, abrasive rope. “But at least that’s something I understand. What I don’t know is why he wants to meet me tomorrow.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No, I—” That was when she felt a small , baby-soft hand patting at her feathers with unhidden wonder. “Hey, sweetheart.” Looking down into that adorable face, she decided to push Jeffrey, the murders, her frustration with Raphael’s protectiveness, out of her mind and just enjoy spending time with the family of a friend who’d opened her heart to Elena when she’d been nothing but a scared girl without home or hope.

I’ll watch over you, she promised Zoe silently, though the thought of surviving her best friend was an aching sorrow in her heart. Over you and all who come after you. Sara’s blood.




Having received the message of Aodhan’s arrival, Raphael swept down across the sparkling nightscape of Manhattan to land on the wide Tower balcony outside his office—where the angel stood waiting. Unlike Illium, who even with his remarkable wings and eyes of gold, managed to walk among mortals, Aodhan would never fit easily into this world. He was cut in sparkling ice, his wings so bright as to almost hurt human eyes, his face and his skin seeming to be created from marble overlaid with white-gold.

Michaela, that devourer of men, had once said of Aodhan, “Beautiful—but so very cold, that one. Still , I would like to keep him as I would a precious gem. There is no other like Aodhan in the world.”

But Michaela saw only the surface.

Raphael walked to the edge of the space that had no railing, running his eyes over his city. “What did you discover?”

Aodhan tightened his wings to avoid any contact as he came to stand on Raphael’s left. “I cannot understand,” he said instead of answering, “how you can live surrounded by so many lives.” A stark curiosity underlay his every word.

“Many cannot understand your preference for solitude.” He watched as a number of angels came in for landings on lower balconies, their wings silhouetted against the night sky. “You surprise me with this visit, Aodhan.” The angel was one of Raphael’s Seven for a reason, but he was also damaged.

“It is . . . difficult.” Aodhan’s expression was haunted in a way that not many would’ve understood. “But your hunter ... She is so weak, and yet she fought the reborn with unflinching courage.”

“Elena will find it amusing that she is an inspiration.” Yet she would also understand what it meant for Aodhan to take this step, his hunter with her mortal heart.

Aodhan was silent for another long moment. “East,” he said at last. “Naasir and I both believe the Ancient Sleeps in the Far East.”

With Galen in charge at the Refuge, Raphael had set Aodhan and Naasir the task of searching for clues as to the location of the Sleeper who might well be his mother. However, he hadn’t expected any kind of an answer so soon. “Why?”

“Jessamy tells me that when an Ancient awakens, it is not a process of a few days or even weeks. It can take up to a year.” His crystal ine eyes, fractured outward from the pupil, reflected a thousand shards of light as he spoke. “Yet not one of the Cadre sensed this.”

Raphael understood at once. “Because the region fall s in Lijuan’s shadow.” Any fluctuations in power in that area had been attributed to Lijuan’s evolution. “Keep searching.” The temptation to join the hunt was strong, but after having been absent from his Tower for so long, he couldn’t leave it for what might turn out to be weeks—too many covetous eyes were trained on his domain.

Aodhan bent his head. “Sire.”

As the angel began to expand his wings in preparation for flight, Raphael stopped him with a single touch on the shoulder. Aodhan froze.

“Talk to Sam.” Knowing the demons that tormented the angel, Raphael broke the contact. “Elena gave him a dagger. Legend says the ruby in the dagger was a gift from a sleeping dragon. It may be nothing—”