Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(32)

Hope and trust and love. So much love.





17


It was two years later, while Zanaya was to be in her archangel’s territory for a significant duration that Alexander flew to see his brother again. Osiris greeted him at the door to his sprawling laboratory with mussed-up hair and a dreamy look in his eyes. It faded to be replaced by crisp clarity when he recognized Alexander.

“Little brother!” He embraced Alexander with the joyous warmth of a man to whom Alexander would never be anything but his younger brother, no matter how old or powerful he became.

Grinning because that was exactly how it should be, Alexander hugged him back. Osiris’s body was thinner than optimal, but from the strength of his embrace, he wasn’t forgetting to eat to the point of it becoming dangerous.

“Isn’t it a bit dark in there for experiments?” he said when they drew apart. “Why have you covered all the windows?”

Osiris grinned. “Come and see.”

Alexander sucked in a breath after his brother shut the door. The entire space glowed with specks of light. “Osiris, what is this?” It was glorious, whatever it was.

“An oceanic organism I discovered recently. Astonishing, isn’t it?” He opened the door again. “But you’re right. I’ve been in the dark too long. Let’s go for a swim and get fresh air into our lungs and you can tell me what you’ve been up to these past years.”

Alexander wasn’t quite ready to leave the wonder of Osiris’s lab, but he didn’t like the paleness in his brother’s face—Osiris really must’ve been locked in there for days. “I’ll have to come see this wonder again before I leave.”

“Anytime you like.” Osiris beamed. “I must admit to a vainglorious pride in my success in replicating the organism—getting them to breed so to speak.”

With evening about to fall, the air was warm rather than uncomfortably hot, and the black sands had cooled to a bearable temperature. Alexander had stripped off his sandals and tunic when he first landed, wore nothing but a short leather skirt that protected his modesty. Not that he had much of that; most warriors didn’t. But it was the accepted way of things in this season of life.

Osiris wore one of his sleeveless thigh-length tunics, but he, too, kicked off his sandals so he could walk barefoot on the sand. It was enough of a pleasure that neither one of them mentioned taking to the air and flying to their favorite little oceanside cliff—from where they’d always loved to dive into the tropical blue.

Alexander drew in the warm air and said, “When did you start to become interested in living organisms? I believed your chief interest lay in chemical reactions?”

“I’ve always enjoyed animals,” Osiris said, just as a brazen bird with feathers of red and green screeched overhead. “Even that bad-tempered scold.” Laughing when the bird screeched again, he said, “I suppose it’s just time. I’ve been alive a lot longer than you. Altering the focus of my studies keeps my mind interested and energized.”

Alexander nodded, for he, too, thrived on challenge. “You continue to keep no lovers?” He wouldn’t usually ask such a question but he was beginning to worry about Osiris’s isolation; these days, his brother employed a bare skeleton staff and didn’t interact much even with them.

Alexander knew that because he had a loving spy among the staff—Osiris’s vampire housekeeper had been with him so long that Alexander considered her family. She felt the same about him and Osiris, and so had no compunction in reporting her worries about Osiris’s lack of interaction with others to him.

“I think I’m beyond all that,” Osiris said right then. “No interest whatsoever.”

Alexander didn’t make a knee-jerk reply, instead thinking on the topic; he was aware of immortals who did indeed have no interest in the carnal side of life. He’d grown up with a battlemate who’d never had any inclinations that way—and didn’t to this day.

Unlike that angel, Osiris obviously hadn’t always been thus, but he was older, had once lived a life full of concubines and carnality; it might well be that he’d glutted himself and was now done. Fair enough—but that didn’t ease Alexander’s mind when it came to his general reclusiveness. “You’re not lonely spending so much time on your own?”

A slap to Alexander’s shoulder. “Never! My mind loves the silence, and I come up with my best breakthroughs in that space with no other voices.” His smile wicked and affectionate, he said, “I know Lemei complains to you, but she has no need to worry. I feel I’m becoming . . . a more centered being, one content in myself.”

As Osiris appeared happy and balanced except for his pale skin and thin frame, Alexander left it at that, and the days they spent together passed in laughter and the easy conversation of brothers.

“You came at a good time,” Osiris said as they swam in the cold waters of a river pool one day, the jungle a vibrant tropical green around them and the screeching bird rebuking them from the shore. “I was attempting to fix a problem by smashing my head against it over and over and that never works. Today, I find myself seeing a solution and I wasn’t thinking about the problem at all.”

“I would visit more often, brother, but the Cadre is in flux.” They were short two archangels, the world not in a position where he could vanish for long periods.