Archangel's Light (Guild Hunter #14)(74)

Raphael felt no anger at the familiarity; he never would, not toward Jessamy. Yes, he’s home. But he’s hurt. I will have to break the news with care.

I will be a wall against all others, Jessamy promised.

Leaving her that trust, he strode toward the small stronghold. Trace, a vampire known for his suave ways and mild manner, stepped aside from the door he’d been guarding. He said nothing as he pulled that door open, but his eyes held the same red tinge as Dmitri’s.

All of Raphael’s people were angry.

Raphael had no need to ask for directions to Sachieri and Bathar. He could feel Galen’s rage like a beat in his veins. To his right hung the terrorized silence of a huddle of staff. Members of Galen’s squadron watched them with merciless eyes. Those eyes didn’t move off their quarry even when Raphael entered the space.

Leaving the warriors to their duty, he flew up to the mezzanine, then walked to the room that held the two people who had dared take one of Raphael’s own.





38


Galen’s pale green eyes flashed when he saw Raphael, his anger a flame as fiery as his hair.

Go, Galen. Watch over Lady Sharine with your Jess. Ensure no one gets to her.

I would see him.

Don’t get in Keir’s way—and, Galen? Be ready. They hurt him.

A curt nod and Galen was gone . . . but Raphael saw the shine of tears in the weapons-master’s eyes as he left. Raphael knew the angel’s huge heart was full of rage, Galen the most volatile of the six men he trusted most. Jessamy would help him find ease. Protecting Lady Sharine would further that aim.

He shut the doors behind Galen, then turned, looked.

Sachieri, she of the golden curls and sky blue eyes, sat on a heavy wooden chair, her arms twisted behind her back and tied tight. Her legs were tied as fast to the legs of the chair, each ankle secured with a separate rope. She was dressed in a gown of silken white that flowed like ice water, except where it’d been caught by the ties around her ankles. The cream hue of her skin bulged red-black around the ties.

No doubt, her wrists were as bruised.

The gag around her mouth dug into her skin and her eyes beseeched Raphael to set her free. She couldn’t touch his mind however, was too weak—and even had she not been, no one could touch an archangel’s mind that he did not permit.

Ignoring her for the time being, he glanced at the second prisoner.

Bathar had been hog-tied and left on the floor, discarded angelic trash. He was a follower, always had been. That Sachieri was behind Aodhan’s imprisonment wasn’t in question, but that didn’t make Bathar any less guilty.

Pulling over another chair, Raphael sat down in a spot from where he could see them both—and where they could see him. “You took one of mine,” he said with utmost calm. “What I will do to you in turn will make you forget that you were ever sentient beings, your minds and bodies a ruin.”

He used the barest flick of power to burn the gag from Sachieri’s mouth.

She began to babble at once in that pretty, high voice she used to make herself appear small and weak. Girlish. “I’m so sorry, Archangel Raphael! I didn’t want to do it, but he made me!”

Bathar bucked in violent protest, making stifled sounds behind his gag.

“I didn’t know he needed light to survive!” Sachieri continued. “If I had, I’d have made sure he had more! I tried to help him!”

Raphael smiled, and both angels went silent, the blood draining from their faces. “You do not need your mouths for me to learn what occurred. I’m considering obliterating your lower jaws to stop the whimpering and the lying and the begging.”

Silence now, huge eyes.

He went into their minds without warning. Small, weak, covetous minds. He saw that Aodhan had been Sachieri’s obsession, an obsession that caused an ugly jealousy in Bathar. Sachieri had driven the crime, yes, but Bathar had participated to the fullest extent.

He saw, too, how the two weak angels had captured Aodhan in the first place. Brave of heart and kind of character, he’d gone to help her as Sachieri feigned distress—a desperate broken-winged angel stranded on an isolated stretch of land between two courier waystations. They’d stalked him long enough to know his favored flight path on this route, had been willing to try again and again until they succeeded.

Bathar, concealed in a hide that made it impossible to spot him from the air, had shot a heavy-duty crossbow bolt into Aodhan’s throat the instant he landed. In the interim, Sachieri had retrieved the crossbow on which she’d been lying, and followed that first devastating blow with one to his heart, while Bathar shot another two bolts into his wings.

The wounds—especially the heart-wound—had been enough to weaken him for the next assault: the total removal of his heart. An angel could survive that, especially an angel of Aodhan’s age, but he couldn’t regrow his heart and fight for his freedom at the same time.

It was while he was unconscious that they’d clipped his wings and put him in a box of cold iron that they’d then had a squadron of their staff fly home. Raphael made note of each and every one of those faces, for they, too, would pay. The squadron had landed twice during the journey, so Sachieri could brutalize Aodhan’s healing heart.

Once at the stronghold, they’d taken the iron box inside via a wall from which the bricks had been removed. They’d then rebricked it, and flooded the room . . . and the box.