Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(50)

At this moment, however, Alexander didn’t have time to look at walls. “Osiris must be downstairs.” He’d spotted stairs to the right, just beyond what appeared to be his brother’s kitchen and dining area.

He went that way, Raphael next to him. They looked down into a windowless stairwell to see ice dripping from the banister, the scene lit by the greenish glow of bioluminescent moss that was dead in large patches. “The cold,” Alexander said. “The moss isn’t designed to survive it.” But enough remained to light the stairs.

No water, no ice on those stairs, but neither was there any extra space to maneuver. Alexander glanced around, frowned. “The interior of this home isn’t as large as it should be if we measure by the size of the external structure.”

“As if there’s space hidden all around.” Raphael turned those familiar eyes toward the wall next to them. “But what I touched behind the wood paneling was stone. Would your brother build stone tunnels around his home?”

“It would mean an enormous expenditure of power for no discernible reason,” Alexander muttered. “It’s not as if he needs to hide things from intruders—aside from Osiris, we’re likely the first angels who’ve ever set foot here.”

“Do you believe he built this place with his own hands?”

“Yes. Osiris has many gifts, many strengths—and he’s patient.” To keep his home a true secret, he’d have ferried every single piece of building material here piece by careful piece. “I’ll go first.”

Again, Raphael didn’t attempt to stop him. Because this was a matter of family.

He heard the susurration of the other angel’s wings as he followed, but all else was silent . . . until just before he was about to turn the corner into the final part of the stairs—which widened out enough to permit them to stand side by side.

Do you hear it? he said mind-to-mind to Raphael, for unsurprisingly, the child of two archangels had exhibited the ability to communicate in this fashion far too young.

Alexander rarely initiated mental contact with those outside his inner court, but it was easy with Raphael—because Alexander had spoken to the boy before this way, in the years after Caliane’s disappearance. Sharine, who had always been Callie’s closest friend, had taken the lead in helping Raphael recover from the catastrophic injuries his mad mother had inflicted on the son Alexander knew was a piece of her heart, but Alexander had been there in the shadows.

He’d made sure no one dared ostracize or ill-treat Caliane’s boy—because there were those in angelkind who’d begun to whisper that surely the boy would soon end up mad, what with both his parents having fallen to that affliction.

He wondered if Raphael remembered. The talkative child who’d once ridden on his shoulders as Alexander walked with Callie and Nadiel had been . . . damaged by his mother’s actions, and Alexander wasn’t sure he’d been truly present for much of the immediate aftermath.

Not that it mattered.

While Alexander liked Raphael—upstart pup or not—he’d done what he had for Callie, the friend who’d stood by him through eternity. The friend who’d allowed him to scream out his rage and his loss when his Zani went into Sleep.

Small sounds, Raphael said now. Movement.

Yes, but not of an adult angel. These movements were smaller, almost . . . secretive. It’s likely an animal.

You’re probably right.

No more words, the two of them moving silently down to the wider section of the stairs . . . and then they walked into a large laboratory lit by multiple flickering lanterns. The oil was about to run out, Alexander thought as Raphael scanned the right half of the room, Alexander the left.

They both saw Osiris at the same time.





25


Alexander’s brother lay flat on his back on the floor, his arms and legs splayed . . . and his face a clawed-out mask of blood. Flickering shadows danced over the nightmare of him. His throat was gone, torn to pieces until it was near to a decapitation. But that wasn’t the most horrifying thing.

A small, small mortal boy, naked but for the blood that coated the warm dark of his skin, crouched on Osiris’s left wing, over the torn-open cavity of his chest. His shaggy hair was a shock of silver, striking in its purity of color. The boy held something dark and wet in his tiny hands, was taking quick ravenous bites of it.

The child is eating my brother’s liver. The mental words came out cold with shock, with the impossibility of what he was seeing.

How could this tiny child have ended Osiris?

Then a gurgle sounded from the angel on the floor and Osiris began to rise, his fisted hand moving with brute intent, as if to punch the boy.

A bolt of power—Raphael’s power—slammed into Osiris, shoving him back down before he could make contact with the child. Alexander made no move to stop Raphael. All the other man had done was protect a child. Angels didn’t hit the young.

Why had Osiris, this big brother who had always shielded the child Alexander had been, even tried such an act?

Brother. Osiris’s mental voice, shaky and weak. Help me.

At the same time, the child whipped his head toward Raphael and Alexander. A growling sound emerged from deep in his chest. Even as Alexander stared, trying to make sense of this situation, a kind of . . . ripple shadowed the child’s skin. Stripes. Like a tiger’s. And for a moment, the boy was a tiger given human form, his eyes a silver as pure as Alexander’s own but far more feral.