Archangel's Legion (Guild Hunter #6)(29)

? ? ?


Leaving Elena happily exhausted and asleep in their bed, Raphael flew not to the Tower but toward the house that belonged to Jeffrey Deveraux and his family. A single expertly timed burst of angelfire and he could eliminate the mortal male from the face of the planet, while leaving his wife and children unharmed.

Or he could simply fly down and thrust his hand through Jeffrey’s rib cage to tear out his shriveled, useless heart. It would be intensely more satisfying than spilling the other man’s blood from a distance.

Except taking either action would break Elena’s faith in him, while doing nothing to seal the gash Jeffrey had torn in her psyche. It’d continue to rip open at unexpected moments, as it had this morning. It had taken every ounce of his considerable control not to respond in anger when he’d realized the import of Elena’s question—and that it was the same thing she’d asked him in more subtle ways in the past months.

Anger would’ve bruised and confused her, for his consort didn’t recognize the fear that drove her to ask such questions, a fear that could be encapsulated in seven simple words that formed a vicious sentence: Will this flaw make you reject me?

What Jeffrey had done, it had scarred Elena on a level beyond the conscious. She knew she held Raphael’s heart, she knew, and yet a wary, wounded part of her worried he’d change his mind one day, find her no longer worthy of loving.

Raphael. It was a murmur half drugged with sleep. Why are you growling in my head?

Teeth gritted, he made the deliberate decision to turn away from the Deveraux house and toward the Tower, not confident he could hold to his resolve not to murder Jeffrey if he saw Elena’s father. My apologies, hbeebti. I didn’t realize you could sense it.

’S okay.

Sleep, he said, and because he couldn’t bear to think of her in pain: As you dream, know that you are loved.

’Course I am. I’m yours.

The sleepy mumble was enough to soothe his rage, telling him that despite the fears that haunted her, Elena understood the truth of who she was to him so deep within her, she remembered it even heavy with sleep. No more growling in your head, he promised, but she was already gone, lost in slumber.

Sire, said another voice an instant later.

Yes, Aodhan?

Augustus will reach the meeting point in an hour.

Thank you. He’d already met with Nazarach and Andreas, two of his angelic commanders—each in charge of running a particular section of his territory. Augustus would be the third. Step by quiet step, he was making certain every one of his commanders knew to prepare their regions for a long absence in the near future. He’d need them in New York when war screamed into being, a war that had been inevitable from the instant Lijuan created the first reborn.

Should her perversions of life be permitted to run free, they’d infect the world, turning it into a charnel house before it became a monument to death given flesh.

? ? ?


Seven hours later, after five hours of deep sleep, followed by an hour’s teaching at the Academy and some high-visibility flying around office buildings, Elena landed at the Tower to find Raphael wasn’t yet back from a meeting with one of his commanders. Aodhan, however, was in the office from where Dmitri had run Tower operations before he left the city with his wife.

Seeing her, the angel held out a paintbrush, its handle wrapped in a piece of paper.

She accepted it, mystified. “Thank you, but why?”

“The Sire asked me to make sure you received it.”

Tearing off the paper, Elena found seven simple words written on the slim wooden handle: Each consort has her own unique weapons.

God, she thought, her entire face a smile, her Archangel had serious moves.

Happy, plain old heart-deep happy, she stored the slender brush carefully in a zippered side pocket of her tight cargos, where it would be in no danger of falling out. Seeing Aodhan’s quizzical look, she realized she hadn’t had a real conversation with him since his transfer to the Tower, this angel who was beautiful in the most inhuman of ways. Fractures of light, that was Aodhan.

His eyes splintered outward from an obsidian pupil in shards of crystalline blue-green, his skin alabaster stroked with gold, his hair so pale as to be colorless . . . and yet so bright it was as if each strand had been coated in crushed diamonds. The illusion of light was echoed by his wings, until in sunlight, he dazzled the eye beyond the human ability to bear, his beauty a painful blade. Though Illium had wings of blue, and Venom the eyes of a viper, it was Aodhan who was the most “other” of Raphael’s Seven.

He was also the most remote, his unseen scars leaving him averse to any physical contact. Elena couldn’t imagine a life devoid of touch, yet Aodhan had lived an eon divorced from that simple, necessary sense of connection. It had to have been something beyond vicious to have scarred him in such a violent way, but that was Aodhan’s story to tell and he hadn’t chosen to tell it to her.

“How are you liking New York?” she asked.

Walking out onto the balcony with her, he stepped to the very edge to look down at the city below. “I’m not yet certain.” Wings glittering in the sunlight, he appeared to be watching the streams of yellow cabs below. “I’ve never before experienced a place such as this. The Sire’s domain was not thus the last time I was stationed here.”

Elena hadn’t realized Aodhan had ever before been stationed at the Tower, but of course it made sense, given that he was close to five hundred years old. “It’s certainly one-of- a-kind.” She loved the energetic chaos of the city, but knew it wasn’t for everyone; though since Aodhan had requested the transfer after centuries at Raphael’s Refuge stronghold, something in New York had resonated with him.