Archangel's Consort (Guild Hunter #3)(60)

“Did I ever tell you about my snakeskin boots?” A savage grin, and she knew Venom was about to bear the brunt of whatever haunted the blue-winged angel.

Venom swirled his blade in hand. “I do think I need some new feathers for my pil ow.”

Illium shifted into a combat stance. “Cal the winner, Ellie.”

Stepping out to the side of the circle, where she’d placed a bottle of water, she put down her weapons and took a seat on the grass. “Ready? Go!”

Her heart was in her throat within ten seconds, the water forgotten. Because neither Venom nor Illium was holding back now, and they moved at the speed of death. The tip of a blade a bare mil imeter from an eye, a foot about to snap a spine, an edge about to sever a head. It was like watching a fight in fast-forward, Illium’s wings bril iant splashes of blue, his hair a wild sweep of black dipped in sapphires, Venom’s skin shimmering golden brown as sweat glimmered and caught the light.

Rising to her feet, she kept her eyes glued on them, trying to catch moves, figure out vulnerabilities. “Stop!”

They broke apart to glance at her, chests heaving—two half-naked males covered in sweat and holding wicked-sharp blades by their sides. Illium was beautiful, Venom so other as to be strangely compel ing. Together, she thought with one part of her mind, they created a damn nice view. Sara would cal them eminently lickable.

“Venom took it,” she said.

That slight English accent of Illium’s was very apparent as he said, “Hell he did.”

“He had his teeth on your jugular.” She knew enough to know that while Venom’s poison wasn’t lethal to angels, it would’ve hurt like hell , breaking Illium’s concentration.

Venom rocked back on the ball s of his feet, a slow taunting smile on his face that had Illium threatening him with dismemberment. That only made the vampire’s grin widen and then they were at it again, moving with a fluidity and grace that turned them into living pieces of art.

It was tempting to simply watch, but she began to note down moves and countermoves she thought she could utilize—because one way or another, she was getting her name back on the Guild roster as a ful y functioning hunter.




Raphael stood on the very edge of the Tower roof, looking out over Manhattan. The city bore few scars from the destruction caused during his battle with Uram. It had stood firm and proud against the quakes and the storm winds that hit a week ago, and now sparkled bright beneath the sun’s rays.

“Shh, my darling, shh.”

Images of the young girl’s bloodied body surrounded by long, green grass intertwined with his mother’s voice, but the memories didn’t suck him under.

Not today. This was his city. He had built it, and he would hold it, no matter if his mother thought to wrench it from him. “Boston?” he asked Dmitri. “Any further problems?”

“No,” the vampire answered from beside him. “The calm has held since the earthquake.”

No calm, this, Raphael thought. It was more akin to the unnatural quiet that settled over an area before all hell broke loose. “I—” He hallted as his senses picked up something so unexpected as to seem impossible. “Dmitri, we’ll have to continue this later.”

Most others, even in his Seven, would have retreated, but Dmitri looked up to the sheet blue clarity of the sky. “Who is it?”

“Lijuan.”

The Archangel of China . . . and of Death.





Chapter 21





Dmitri hissed out a breath. “I’ll put the Tower on alert.”

Spreading his wings, Raphael rose into the air above this chaotic, beautiful city of steel and glass and humanity that had been the center from which he’d claimed all the territory he now held. Lijuan was waiting for him in the high reaches, where the air was thin enough to kil a mortal—backlit by the cutting intensity of the sun, she was as eerily inhuman as ever, with those strange pearlescent eyes and hair of purest white.

He came to a stop across from her, noting that she wore flesh today. “I’m honored.” After the destruction of Beijing and Lijuan’s “evolution,” no one had seen her except in the pools of water she seemed to enjoy utilizing for contact.

“Of course I would come to you,” she murmured in that voice that screamed the truth of her descent. “None of the others are of any interest.”

Elena, where are you?

On my way to Guild Academy to see Eve. Do you need me?

Stay away from the house until I say otherwise. I don’t want you in Lijuan’s line of sight.

A pause, but she didn’t argue—though he knew very well she didn’t like him anywhere near the Archangel of China. Be careful, Archangel.

Having handled the conversation at the same time that he exchanged meaningless pleasantries with Lijuan, he angled his body toward the serene waters of the Hudson, light refracting off its surface in a thousand broken shards. “Come, we will speak at my home.”

“So very civilized of you, Raphael.” She laughed, the sound incongruously sweet for a woman who had made the dead rise, whose power was tinged with a putrid darkness. “Is it any surprise I prefer you above the others?”

Raphael said nothing, and neither did she, not until Montgomery closed the library doors behind himself after serving the tea. Lijuan had chosen one of the armchairs in front of the fireplace, and Raphael sat opposite, acting the host—with Lijuan, the small courtesies must always be observed. If they were, she would follow her own peculiar code. There would be no bloodshed, not while she was a guest in his home.