Archangel's Light (Guild Hunter #14)(93)

Better that than the bringer of death she’d once become.

“We are not mortals,” he said to Suyin. “Our lives are endless in comparison to theirs—as a result, our minds and hearts have a far longer period over which to heal. I think, if this child has spent decades in the dark, we should give them that same time in the light, to find a better path.”

“You speak what is in my heart, Raphael.” Suyin’s quiet voice held untold agony. “I will hope for him—and I will ensure that those who died at his hands have a respectful burial according to their rites. I will not simply ignore their lives as Lijuan might’ve done.”

A solemn pause before she said, “Jinhai didn’t—doesn’t—truly grasp what he did. He knows people are dead, but he seems to have no comprehension of such being a bad thing. And to orchestrate that while yet a boy? Not only murder, but the rest.”

“Yes.” Raphael, too, worried about what lived in the boy. “I won’t stand in your way if you decide he can’t be permitted to live—but, Suyin, I think I know you well enough to predict that such a decision will haunt you.”

“No, I will not let Lijuan make me an accomplice to the murder of a child.” This time, it was rage that vibrated through Suyin’s voice. “Jinhai never had a chance, did he? It’s as if he grew up surrounded by toxic sludge. The cancers were inevitable.”

After Suyin hung up to deal with the situation, he turned to his hunter, who’d arrived while he was speaking to the other archangel, but had stayed quiet. Damp tendrils of hair curled at her temples, the near white of it dark with sweat, and her body clad in black hunting leathers bristling with weapons.

Her wings were a magnificence of midnight and dawn.

A vampire had gone bloodborn a couple of hours to the south, and she’d volunteered to handle it. “Got to keep my hand in,” she’d said. “Being a hunter is part of who I am.”

He’d caught a slight panic in her gaze, tied to her awareness of just how much her life had changed since they’d fallen together. In her lived the knowledge that one day in the future, she might no longer have the right to call herself a hunter. Raphael didn’t believe that to be a true threat—she was hunter-born, the hunt in her blood. She could no more stop being a hunter than he could stop being an archangel.

She would, however, one day lose the friends with whom she’d grown into her hunter self. But that day existed in a far distant future. Her compatriots were currently in the prime of their lives. Her partner today had been the irreverent Demarco, a mortal who reminded Raphael of Illium.

He didn’t know Demarco well, but he would remember him long after he’d passed beyond the veil immortals so rarely crossed.

“Elena-mine. A good hunt?”

“Yeah, we got the vamp.” Arms folded as she leaned against one side of the doorway, she shook her head. “Older one. Stupid to allow his control to fray after all this time—and for what? A bad breakup that left him enraged to the point he surrendered to bloodlust.”

Unfolding her arms, she straightened up. “I was just going to wave at you to let you know I was home, then head up for a bath, but then I heard you mention Her Evilness. What’s happened?”

When he told her—for she was welcome to all he knew, his consort in the truest sense—she hissed out a breath. “I thought I understood evil, but this . . .” Striding over, she cupped the side of his face. “You okay, Archangel?”

No one else would’ve thought to ask that question. Elena alone understood how the specter of madness haunted Raphael. Both of his parents had gone mad. One had died. One had survived. Each had caused carnage.

“Yes.” He wrapped her up in his arms and in his wings, needing her close.

“Raphael, I’m sweaty and—”

“Hbeebti.”

She locked her arms around his torso, the lithe muscle of her warm and possessive. “Not that I’m not happy to see you,” she said softly against his neck, “but that’s a knife hilt that’s digging into you.”

He laughed, the sensation unexpected after the ugliness of what he’d just discussed with Suyin. Then, surrounded by the fierce life of his Elena, he told her the full extent of what Aodhan and Illium had discovered.

“Fuck.” A shake of her head against him, tendrils of her hair clinging to the white of his shirt. It had grown out in the time since she’d woken, the tiny feathers at the ends now all gone, and the length enough for her to braid it back out of the way as she’d done today.

Every so often, however, he’d catch a glimpse of light arcing through her wings. She’d told him she didn’t feel anything, and as far as they’d been able to determine, her power levels remained appropriate to her age as an immortal—though the Cascade had left her one lingering gift: she healed faster now, the archangelic cells in her body having accelerated her immortality.

“It disturbs me that I interacted with Lijuan as an elder archangel during the time she was torturing her child,” he admitted. “Because that was what it was: torture.”

“You won’t get any disagreement from me.”

“But I never saw any signs of such depravity. I saw that she was old and wise and not necessarily ‘nice’—but so few of the old ones are. It makes me question my ability to judge my fellow members of the Cadre.”