Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(51)

Hissing when Raphael moved toward him, the boy scuttled back, leaving tiny footprints in blood on Osiris’s wing, and dropping his prize of Osiris’s liver on his brother’s blood-splattered feathers. Those silver eyes darted toward Raphael, then at the liver, back again. The child was trying to calculate if he could get to it before Raphael.

A starving creature ready to fight for his food even against a bigger predator.

Alexander’s brain finally processed how the boy’s bones pushed against his skin, how his cheeks were hollowed out. The child needed to eat. Before he could say anything about getting food from the kitchen, Raphael crouched down, picked up the piece of liver . . . and held it out to the child.

Alexander knew he should intervene, should kill Raphael for treating Osiris with such callous disregard, but he had the sick feeling that his brother owed this child his blood and his flesh. So he stood in silence as the child weighed up Raphael’s offer before racing forward with inhuman speed to grab the offering; he then scuttled to hide in the shadows under a large table to gobble it down.

Raphael looked over at Alexander as Alexander came down at his brother’s right side, his gut a wrench of agony. “I believe,” Raphael murmured, “the child has already taken bites of Osiris’s heart.” It was a low murmur, the kind a person used if they didn’t want to startle a wild animal. “He has near-archangelic speed.”

Silver eyes glinted at Alexander from under the table, the child’s face once more a striped ripple that wasn’t quite human. “Brother,” he said to Osiris, and took his hand, “what have you done?”

Osiris replied mind-to-mind. I succeeded, Alexander! I have fulfilled the promise of my melding gift! I have made a chimera! Such excitement in eyes that were surrounded by dried blood and crusted viscera. The orbs had been clawed out, Alexander realized, then regenerated. But there was nothing of pain in Osiris’s tone, only joy, such joy. My name will be known throughout angelkind! Will be written forever in our history.

Alexander glanced once more at the tiny starved child who behaved more like an animal, and felt his heart tear in two. How did you do it? What was the cost?

It was worth it, brother-mine! I have made a new creature! A new being! A stable meld of a tiger and a mortal!

As Alexander fought the tears that burned his irises, he saw Raphael rise and turn to explore the rest of the laboratory. The child’s eyes glinted and then he was scrabbling out of his chosen hiding spot to tag along behind Raphael. Jumping up on tables with the ease of a cat, the boy prowled along with curious eyes.

Leaving behind a pinkish-red trail of footprints and handprints.

The child was astonishing and wild and he should not have existed. “A mortal is not meant to be a tiger and a tiger is not meant to be a mortal,” he said to his brother, his voice like gravel.

I see two dead wolves in a large cage to the left, Raphael told him at the same time. From the stiffness of their bodies, they died some time ago. They appear to have been torn apart by claws. Old blood coats the inside of the cage.

Alexander tried not to think of the boy shut inside the cage with wolves, but his brain refused to stop making the connection. Why would Osiris do such an ugly thing?

The child has fangs. Raphael’s grim voice in his mind again, the other angel standing close to the far wall with the feral child up on a shelf above him. That extraordinary silver hair hung around the boy’s face as he leaned out to see what Raphael was doing.

Did you Make him, brother? That would be an even worse abomination. Children weren’t meant to be turned into vampires. Ever. It was a crime so grave that the only and irrevocable punishment was death.

Mortals were firefly flickers in an immortal world, but children were still children, to be protected and loved. Never to be abused and broken.

No, Osiris said, but he wouldn’t hold Alexander’s gaze. I simply used a droplet or two of the Making toxin as part of the experiment. His hand spasmed on Alexander as he mentioned the dangerous toxin that built up in angelic bodies, and could only be purged into a mortal—thus leading to the creation of vampires.

Osiris continued to speak into Alexander’s mind. It has merged with his blood. Feverish excitement, a stunned and bright joy. He’s not angel, mortal, animal, or vampire. He’s a true chimera. Bloody coughing as the sound of Raphael tearing the back wall apart filled the air. Help me, Alexander . . . little sib.

“I will,” Alexander said gently. “I will, Osiris.”

A growling sound.

He glanced up to find the child staring at Raphael with fangs bared as Raphael stood in front of a section of the back wall that he’d torn away to reveal what lay beyond. Stone bricks. The odd thing was that each brick was a unique shape—as if the stone had been worked by angelic power.

“What lies here?” Raphael asked the child, as if the feral boy could understand.

Osiris’s eyes shifted again, and Alexander knew. His already broken heart suffered a death blow. Still, he had to be sure beyond any doubt. “Where did you bury the other children? The other wild creatures? The failed chimeras?”

Nothing from his brother.

But Alexander could read Osiris’s bloody face. They are coffins, Raphael. My brother has surrounded himself with the bodies of all those children and animals he tortured. Tears rolled down his face, his wings slumped to the floor.

Alexander, it hurts. Osiris sucked in a harsh gasp of air. Please take me from this cold place so I can heal.