Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter #7)(34)

Icy fury filled Raphael at the thought of the archangel who’d sought to harm his people in her lust for power. He wanted no taint of her in his territory. That thought uppermost in his mind, he turned at the bottom of the steps and made his way to the library.

The man who stood facing the sliding glass doors that looked out to the Hudson, and beyond it, the million pinpricks of light that was Manhattan, held himself like a fighter, his stance light. He wore a white T-shirt and over it, a holster that crisscrossed his back. That holster wasn’t the weathered brown one Raphael had previously noted; the supple leather of this was golden in color, the blades it held distinctive.

Those blades had been lethal in combat.

Raphael was well aware that Janvier, along with Naasir and Ashwini, had done far more behind enemy lines than was known even among their own troops. The three had a way of making it all seem a game, not to be taken seriously. A number of their actions during the battle might have appeared foolish to others, but he’d seen the strategic calculation behind it—distracting, annoying, or frustrating the enemy at a critical juncture could be as deadly a strike as a cleaving blow with a sword.

Turning the instant Raphael stepped into the room, Janvier put his hands behind his back, his stance altering to that of a soldier with his liege. “Sire.”

“Janvier.”

The other man didn’t dally, giving him a crisp, clean report of the night’s discovery. “While the final state of the victim’s body hints at Lijuan,” he added, “the scars and bruises point to long-term abuse.

“As it is, we all know Lijuan can’t have regenerated already. Even if she had, she’d hardly be interested in prowling the streets, attacking pets and women—but I also can’t see Lijuan sharing this particular power.”

Raphael had witnessed Lijuan fly apart into a thousand shards and, regardless of her attempts to convince the world that she was a goddess, he was certain she needed her physical body. He’d injured that body multiple times during the battle and the only reason she’d been able to so quickly erase the wounds was because she’d fed on the life force of her soldiers.

And for that, she’d needed her mouth.

Even an archangel couldn’t regenerate the mouth without first regenerating the brain and all the systems of the body that kept that brain alive. Lijuan wasn’t dead, of that he was in no doubt, but neither was she a goddess. It would take her considerable time to repair her physical form, especially taking into account that he’d obliterated her using a combination of wildfire and angelfire.

The former was a new, Cascade-born gift, and it had proven to have a debilitating effect on Lijuan. Raphael hadn’t mentioned it to anyone but Elena and Dmitri, but he believed the wildfire had caused damage it would take Lijuan much longer than usual to rectify.

“You’re right about her not sharing this ability,” he said to Janvier. “She’s both too used to controlling her people through the leash of doling out power, and too greedy. You say this victim wasn’t an empty husk as you witnessed in battle?”

“No, she still had a sense of humanity and of flesh about her, enough that we could immediately identify her as female.”

Whereas Lijuan’s victims had been so shriveled into themselves, determining gender had been impossible from a visual scan of the high-resolution photographs Janvier’s hunter had taken. The shadow team had all three reported being unable to make the determination at the scene, either—except, of course, for those they’d personally witnessed being consumed.

“Fang marks?” A vampire could conceivably drain a victim of all her blood, given a long enough time frame.

“Yes, but not at the site of the fatal throat wound. There was too much damage to determine what caused that injury—similarly to the dog, she appeared gnawed on.”

That didn’t exclude vampires; it could be one of the Made who’d given in to bloodlust, torn and ripped and chewed at the flesh in his feeding. “Can the situation be contained?” Raphael had to be ruthless; a mortal had lost her life and deserved justice, but that justice could not happen on a public stage. Not this time.

“I’m confident Ash and I can deal with this quietly, with help from the Guild and Tower as necessary. The two witnesses, responding officers, and crime scene techs can be trusted to keep their silence.”

Before Elena, Raphael would’ve made a hundred percent sure of that by wiping the memories of the people involved, but now he’d seen mortals through her eyes, understood that these people were her friends and colleagues and she would protect them—because memories were what made a person.

I would rather die as Elena than live as a shadow.

The echo of what she’d said to him soon after they first met, paired with her passionate words before the battle, made him no less ruthless when it came to his city, but he did consider other options before taking this particular measure.

“I’ll have Dmitri put a watch on all their communications as a contingency.” Greed could sink its hooks into the most unexpected of people, and this information had value to the media. “Do you expect to uncover any further information tonight?”

“Non. The late hour means we’ll have to explore other avenues come morning.” The languid rhythm of Janvier’s voice belied the hard edge in his eyes. “Even the victim’s fingerprints can’t be used to search for her identity until the pathologist rehydrates her fingertips.”