Archangel's Enigma

46

Naasir hated the cold. Hated it. But he had to go into it to find the Grimoire. Everyone thought it was a legend, but during the flight home from Alexander’s territory, he’d finally realized why it seemed familiar: he’d seen it.

It had been long, long, long ago, when he’d still been two. The tiger cub was the one who’d seen the red book with the golden etching on the front. It wasn’t something that would’ve registered on the cub except that the chimera experiment had happened that night, the boy and the tiger forcefully merged into one. The tiger’s memories had become the boy’s and the boy’s had become the tiger’s, but because they were two such different species who should’ve never been one, nothing had made sense for a long time.

It had been a confusing, terrifying period and the chimera he’d become had long forgotten the book the tiger had seen. But when Jason had described the Grimoire, the memories had surfaced as all parts of him worked together to win his mate. So he knew where that book had once been and where it should still be. Unfortunately, that place was now buried under tons of ice and snow.

Running over the cold white stuff, his body protected by thick clothing and his feet by insulated boots, Naasir growled at the snow that hit his face and wasn’t the least surprised when a black-winged angel landed not far from him. He was at the end of the world, but it made perfect sense to him that Jason would be able to find him. That was what Jason did—know secrets.

“What are you doing in Antarctica?” Jason asked, folding back his wings. “How did you even get here?”

Naasir shrugged. “I jumped out a plane.” Far, far from his actual destination on the continent, which was why he’d had to run so long and spend two nights on the ice. And because it was important to keep this secret, he’d asked Illium to make any eyes in the sky look away until he was out of here.

No one but his family and his mate could know of this place.

“You should’ve worn white clothing and dyed your wings,” he pointed out to the member of his family standing in front of him. “You stick out in this place without shadows.”

“There’s no one to see me except you—and you hate the snow.” Jason didn’t budge. “So what are you doing here?”

“I’m going to get the stupid Grimoire book.” He growled as a flake of snow touched his nose. Brushing it off, he looked to Jason and caught his sudden stillness—as close to betraying surprise as Jason ever got.

“You know where it is?” the spymaster asked.

“I know where it once was.” And since Osiris had a habit of clinging to his possessions, and the entire stronghold had been buried as it was, it should still be there. “Do you want to come with me?” Jason was sneaky in ways Naasir appreciated—he might be able to think of a faster method to get under all that ice and snow. “Will your mate be angry?”

“Mahiya’s the one who ordered me to go find you when Illium told us where you’d disappeared to. My princess likes you.” The other man spread his wings in readiness for takeoff. “Why didn’t you ask one of us? We would’ve come with you.”

“Illium wanted to come, but the healers wouldn’t let him, and I knew you’d find me.” Jason had as much curiosity inside him as Naasir, only he hid it better.

A faint smile. “You understand people better than anyone realizes.” He took off in a wash of cold wind that drove snowflakes into Naasir’s face. Gritting his teeth, Naasir growled up at him. He almost thought Jason laughed. That intrigued him because Jason never laughed.

Unless . . . he did it with his princess.

Making a note to visit Jason and Mahiya so he could catch Jason laughing, he began to run again, the pack on his back doing nothing to slow his speed. He had frozen blood in that pack. It hadn’t started out frozen, but this place was a giant refrigerator. He hated frozen blood. Unfortunately, before Jason’s arrival, there’d been no one around he could’ve fed from . . . and he didn’t think Andromeda liked it when he took blood from others.

Because he was her territory.

He grinned. He liked being her territory. If she wanted him to feed only from her, he would feed only from her. Until then, he’d drink bottled blood—or eat the disgusting cold ice cubes currently in his pack. And he’d dream of feeding from her while his cock was snug inside her and he’d already come once so that she was sticky with him and had his smell deep in her skin.

Heart thumping both from his speed and his arousal, he carried on into the white.

“Are you lost?” Jason yelled down several hours later, Naasir having forced himself not to go at full-tilt because he couldn’t afford to just stop to allow his body to recover.

“No!” he yelled back. It was as if he had a homing beacon inside him, leading him to the place where he’d been created. “Another hour!”

Jason rose up above the clouds again, no doubt escaping the light snow that was irritating Naasir. Andromeda had better pet him a great deal for this—he’d gone into snow for her.

Running on, his mind full of memories of the ways she played with him, he came to a stop almost exactly an hour later. Jason landed beside him. “There’s nothing here. It looks just like any other part of the landscape.”

“There was a house here once,” Naasir told the other man. “A stronghold. The angel who lived in it liked the cold because it stopped his experiments going far if they escaped. Inside his stronghold, though, it was warm—because children and small animals die when it’s too cold.”

Jason’s dark eyes held his, and in them, Naasir saw dawning realization. “Raphael buried it, didn’t he?”

“No. Alexander did.” While on the cusp, Raphael hadn’t yet become an archangel; he’d been able to incapacitate Osiris, but he couldn’t bury this place of horror. “Raphael told me Alexander sank it into the snow, but he left it whole.” Naasir began to walk around. “Here.” He scuffed his foot over a spot. “There is a door here. If I can get inside, I can get what I need.”

“Step back.”

Naasir scowled but did as asked. “I was going to dig down.” His claws were very strong but he’d also brought sharp digging tools. “You can help me. It’s far down.” So far that no one would ever accidentally discover the buried stronghold in this landscape inhospitable to life.

“Or,” Jason said, “I could do this.” Black lightning came from the fingers of one hand.

Naasir had seen Jason’s lightning before—it created shadows that could encompass anything within their depths, suffocating and killing if Jason wished. Today, he saw that Jason’s lightning could also act like what it seemed.

The heat of it sizzled through the snow and ice as if it was nothing. It took Jason time only because he was being careful not to accidentally damage what lay beneath, but he drilled a tunnel to an incredible depth within the next ten minutes.

“Wait,” Naasir said and took off his pack. “I’m going to go down, see if it’s far enough.” As he spoke, he took a small package from the pack and put it in a pocket of his snow jacket.

“If it is,” Jason said, his eyes on the hole, “come back up enough to signal me so I know you haven’t been buried in snow down there.”

Making the promise, Naasir didn’t jump down into the hole but climbed down, using his claws to get a good grip. If Jason had drilled too far, he would feel the door as he went down. As it was, it was still a few feet below, but he decided to dig that out with his hands, pressing the extra snow to the sides of Jason’s tunnel.

Then he climbed back up so he could yell to Jason. “Throw down the ax in my pack! I need to hack through the ice in front of the door.”

Finding the ax, Jason told him to hug the wall before the black-winged angel dropped the tool into the snow tunnel.

Naasir picked it up and began to hack away the snow and ice that blocked him from the door on the other side. It took time, sweat rolling down his back under the layers of warm clothing. Even then, the door wouldn’t open, it was frozen so hard. He used the ax again to chip at the ice, but he was careful not to destroy the seal.

When he left, he’d close it up again.

Because the reason Alexander had submerged rather than destroy this place was because it was a burial ground. Naasir’s brethren, who he’d never met in life, wouldn’t mind him coming in to take something. He was one of them. But no one else was welcome here, and he would permit no one to defile it.

A black feather drifted down.

Realizing Jason had to be growing concerned, he climbed back up so he could wave at the spymaster. Then he dropped down once more and, after a little more careful chipping, twisted the handle of the door and pushed as hard as he could. A creaking groan sounded. He slammed his shoulder against the door. Once, twice . . . and he was falling into the frigid place where he’d been born and where so many had died.

“It’s only Naasir,” he said to the ones who slept here in the stone coffins Osiris had created one by one around a small home, until they became the walls and the floor of a large stronghold. Each square block held a twisted child who was two, or broken bodies who were still one.

“I’ve come for a book,” he said, able to sense them all around, curious and excited that he’d come. “It’s red with a golden design on the front, and it has a lock stamped with the shape of a griffin. That’s a kind of half bird, half lion.” His breath frosted the air as he spoke, his claws having sliced out of his boots to grip at the ice that covered all surfaces.

Icicles dripped from the ceilings. Stalagmites grew from the floor.

It was a cold, desolate place, but Naasir felt no sense of danger or unease. Only his brethren lived here now. Alexander had incinerated Osiris and taken his ashes far from here before the Ancient buried this place. “I brought you something.” Reaching inside his pocket, he pulled out a toy that made music and kept it in his hand as he walked down the iced-over stairs to the lower level.

There, in the laboratory, he placed his gift on the large table where, according to the notes Raphael had taken and held in trust until Naasir was ready to read them, Osiris had cut up countless misshapen and twisted bodies, many while they were still alive. “I have a mate,” he told the others, thinking not of the evil things that had happened here, but of how it had been reclaimed. “The book is for her. She’s a scholar.”

A stalactite fell from the ceiling in the dim depths of the laboratory. Taking the cue, he went to the spot and discovered that everything was encased in ice. Going back upstairs, he found his ax and returned. He was careful as he chipped here, too.

The book lay on the floor in a block of ice.

Cutting through until he could pick it up, but while it still had a protective coat of ice, he held it in his gloved hands. “Thank you,” he said to his friends. “One day, I’ll bring my mate here. She has wings, but she’s brave and she’ll come down.” He didn’t think Andromeda would find it strange that he knew his friends were still here, happily playing among themselves—she understood him, knew that his mind wasn’t the same as hers.

Another stalactite fell in a tinkling symphony.

Smiling, he turned and walked out. As he climbed the stairs, he heard the music start to play behind him and knew his toy was welcome. Tucking the iced-over book in his jacket, he closed the door and made sure the seal was tight. Then he spent time packing snow all around it.

Climbing to the surface, he said, “We have to fill the hole back up again. No one can know what lies here.” His brethren had earned their peace.

“The falling snow will do that itself, but we can help it along.”

Together, the two of them began to manually fill the hole using the extendable shovels Naasir had in his pack. Meanwhile, the icy book began to melt against Naasir’s body heat. Realizing it might get damaged, he put it on top of the pack so it would remain cold.

Night fell and still they shoveled.

Even after the hole was no longer visible, they stayed, waiting to make sure they’d left behind no trace of their visit. By the time dawn whispered softly over the landscape, there was no sign anyone had ever been here but for Naasir’s footprints as he walked away from the site. Those were quickly filled in by the fresh snow that fell in a gentle rain from the sky.

His friends were safe again.

And he had the Grimoire.

Andromeda didn’t know how she’d survived the past five days. Her parents were exactly as she’d left them, their excesses changed only in the specifics. Lailah and Cato still indulged in vicious sexual torture with “willing” playmates who may simply have been too scared to protest, and every so often, they meted out violence just because it was a “fun” way to break the ennui that colored their every action.

Even today, a hapless young angel screamed in her mother’s quarters while her father sat in the great living area dressed only in pants of red silk while two naked vampires danced for him. He’d invited her to sit with him, watch the show—Cato was so jaded that he’d forgotten what it was to be a father.

Andromeda had been barely beyond a toddler the first time she’d seen her father having sex with a woman not her mother. He’d been strangling the whipped and bleeding woman at the time. Shocked, she’d cried. That day, her father had stopped and carried her out of the room. He hadn’t bothered the times afterward, and she’d learned not to come unannounced into any room in the stronghold.

As for Lailah, Andromeda’s mother had met her on arrival, and told her she’d placed a special triptych in Andromeda’s room. Immediately nauseous, Andromeda had hoped she was wrong. She wasn’t. She’d found three naked men waiting in her bed.

An angel. A vampire. A mortal.

A triptych. Her mother’s little joke.

Andromeda had ordered the three out on the point of a blade.

This noon, the sixth since her arrival and the seventh since she’d left the Refuge, she fisted her hands, her spine rigid at the idea of another five hundred years of an existence mired in bone-numbing fear, brutal violence, and empty indulgence. Unlike her parents, her grandfather would not accept defiance. And as Andromeda wouldn’t mete out torture on his orders, he’d turn the violence on her, brutalize her until she was nothing but an empty doll.

“Let it go, Andi.” She forced her fists to open, shoved aside her frustration and anger, and smiled, grimly determined not to allow the dark future to steal this day from her. “Today, you’re Andi, and today, you’ll be happy.”

Picking up the basket of food she’d prepared, a picnic blanket already over her arm, she exited into the back courtyard and rose into the sky.

Her lungs expanded, clean air rushing into her body.