Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(52)

Don’t worry, brother. Alexander turned his attention to Raphael. Take the boy from here, Rafe.

The younger angel didn’t argue. Neither did he try to grab the wild chimera. Instead, he just held out his arms, his hands streaked with dust from tearing apart the wall—and dried blood from when he’d picked up the piece of Osiris’s liver.

The boy watched him with suspicious silver eyes . . . before jumping straight into his arms and clinging to him with sharp claws. Not wincing even though Alexander could see that those claws had sliced right through his leathers, Raphael strode out without a backward look.

The chimera hissed and growled at Osiris as they passed, even swiping out a small—so small—clawed hand, as if he’d tear off even more pieces of his tormentor.

Where is he taking him? He’s my creation! Osiris struggled to get up, was too weak.

Don’t worry, my brother. All is well. Justice said Osiris should suffer pain and torture for what he’d done, that he should scream as his innocent victims must have, but Alexander couldn’t do that to the brother who’d once held his hand and taught him to swim.

Yet he knew Osiris couldn’t be permitted to live. It was clear that he believed he’d done a great thing, that angelkind would honor him. And the terrible truth was that some in angelkind would, should his atrocity of a deed become known. Because evil existed in every species, mortal and immortal. To allow Osiris to live would be to spread a cancer that would lead to more innocent deaths, more devastated parents and small broken bodies.

So he executed his brother with mercy, using a small pulse of archangelic power to still his heart and cut the connection to his brain. Before he did so, however, he went in with delicate grace and took all of Osiris’s memories to do with the chimera. That wild and angry boy, should he survive, should he be sane and capable of understanding, would deserve to know his history one day.

He made sure Osiris felt nothing, that he died believing he’d soon be feted as a pioneer of legend. He went in peace . . . but Alexander felt none. In taking his brother’s memories, he’d learned a thing even more terrible than what had gone before: Osiris did yet keep concubines, but they were nothing akin to clever and witty Livaliana, who’d once been so cherished of Osiris.

Rather, Osiris had specifically targeted women with simple minds and no curiosity, women who’d be happy with fripperies and a life of luxury and not demand anything more from him. He housed all four in a large stronghold far from other angels. Though he visited his lovers but rarely, the four concubines were all angels.

Osiris had attempted to sire an immortal child on whom to experiment.

Alexander crouched there with his dead brother’s hand in his, and he cried. For a loss that would haunt him forevermore. Each memory of Osiris tainted, their shared laughter a cruelty now. Everything hurt. “I’m sorry,” he said, speaking not to his brother but to all the dead children who lay in this place.

He could’ve sworn a cold whisper passed over his neck.

Looking down at his brother, he knew that Osiris was unwanted here. He was the intruder now. So after one last touch of his brother’s hand, Alexander turned Osiris to ash, then used his power to gather all that ash into one of the containers in the laboratory. “He won’t hurt you anymore,” he promised the small ghosts who stood staring up at him.

An icicle broke to crash onto the floor as he turned to leave and he knew he was unwanted, too. Blood of the man who had done this abomination.

Chest a spiderweb of cracks, he left his brother’s victims to their icy peace.

Stepping outside, he looked for Raphael and found him in the distance, the child in his arms and what appeared to be a sack at his feet. The angel had taken off his warm and heavily lined outer jerkin and put the child into it. That it had no sleeves mattered naught—the child was small enough that it enveloped his otherwise naked body. Not that the wild chimera seemed impressed with the item of clothing. He kept biting at the leather, but at least he wasn’t trying to escape Raphael’s arms.

Raphael had also wrapped the boy’s feet in something and was likely using his own angelic body heat to keep him warm. Still, from what Alexander had gleaned from his brother’s mind, the child wouldn’t last long in this cold. They had to get him out of here. But first—Raphael, I wish to transfer Osiris’s knowledge to you. I shouldn’t be the only one who knows the boy’s history. Even archangels could die—or go into Sleep.

I agree to the transfer, Raphael replied. I also took what appear to be your brother’s diaries from the bookshelf upstairs. The child may prefer to read them alongside, or rather than, being told of his history by you or me.

Alexander saw the awful sense in that . . . even as he felt a dark revulsion against so much as touching the diaries that he knew his brother had hunched over with fanatical passion. Those memories had been vivid imprints in Osiris’s mind. Osiris’s hand had flowed across the page, the ink threatening to smudge from the speed of his need to put down the thoughts of his breakthrough.

He had called the beginning of his descent into evil “a glorious moment of genius.”

Alexander didn’t challenge Raphael’s right to hold the diaries in trust for the boy. All he said was, I will complete the memory transfer now. So it was done, the terrible knowledge now a burden borne by two. I can’t destroy this stronghold, he said to Caliane’s son. It is a burial ground. But it can’t stay here to be discovered. What happened here can’t ever be known. With that, he rose into the air.