Archangel's Heart

26

“I’m Elena,” she tried again, keeping her tone friendly and hoping he spoke English. “What’s your name?”

His Adam’s apple bobbing desperately, the boy found the courage to say, “Riad.”

Waving him over, Elena didn’t make any sudden movements.

Sweat broke out over his face, but he came. Then he blurted out, “You want me?”

It could’ve simply been his grasp of English, but the blunt question struck her as subtly wrong. “Just to talk,” she said once he was close enough that she could speak to him without raising her voice—though the friends who’d come along with him in a silent statement of solidarity could no doubt hear her. Good. “I don’t harm kids. If you know who I am, you know that to be true.”

Swallowing again, Riad whispered, his eyes wide, “Hunter angel.”

Elena groaned at the moniker that haunted her. “Yeah, yeah.” Putting her hands on her hips, she glared. “Guild Hunter, if you don’t mind.”

For some reason, that seemed to make the teenager relax.

A faint smile emerging out of the fear, he said, “I heard stories. You fought ten vampires all together.” He lifted one hand, punched the air. “Pow!” Another air punch. “Pow!”

Grinning while his friends nodded as if synchronized, she said, “I might have.” She glanced around the area before turning her attention back on Riad. “Why so scared?”

“No reason.” Scuffing at the dirt, he stared down, his face pale once more and his pulse so rapid, she could see it jumping in his neck.

Elena decided to let it go for now. “How about being my tour guide?” she said instead. “Show me the best stores.”

Taking out the scarf, she wrapped it around her head like a Moroccan hunter friend had shown her. This pattern of wrapping would provide shade, protecting her face. It also had the side effect of hiding her hair, which might be a benefit if she didn’t want to freak people out with her resemblance to Majda—that is, if there was anyone still alive who’d known her. And if she’d had any connection to this town at all.

Mouth falling open, Riad said something in the local tongue that had all his friends daring to step closer. All five boys stared at her. When she raised an eyebrow, four blushed and pulled back. Riad was the one who spoke. “You look like . . .” A scowl, a quick discussion before they seemed to decide on the right word. “Like a cousin,” he finished. “Like us but different.”

“My grandmother was Moroccan.”

The excitement that lit up their faces was a bright, innocent thing. “Really?” another of the teens asked, seeming to forget his fear in the face of this unexpected piece of knowledge.

“Really,” she confirmed. “Who knows, maybe I have ancestors here.”

They all laughed, taking it as a joke, but she had an escort of five teenagers when she walked into the market proper, the others of her group having spread out until she couldn’t spot anyone in the immediate vicinity. Her impromptu escort seemed to confuse the wary storekeepers and citizens until the boys chattered at the adults and a few smiles began to cut through the heavy miasma of fear that shadowed every face.

She figured out soon enough that the boys were sharing her Moroccan heritage. To her disappointment, however, no one looked at her in a way that hinted that they saw her as anything other than a foreign angel. Interesting maybe, but that was it. Definitely no sense of being recognized.

It had been a long shot anyway. Morocco was a big place and the woman who might be her ancestor could’ve come from any part of it. Just because Majda had been at Lumia and known Gian didn’t mean she’d been a local.

Then came the carpet maker.

The elderly man stared at her with faded brown eyes, his frown so deep that it dug dark furrows into the wrinkled skin of his forehead. “You wish to buy a carpet?”

“Not today.” Elena ran her fingers over the handwoven threads. “I come only to admire.”

The carpet maker made a noise at the boys that was clearly an order that they stay out of the store, the interaction so familiar she guessed the boys belonged to market families and had grown up running wild through its streets.

Scuttling out, the teens yelled that they’d wait for her outside.

She laughed, went to make a comment about teenage exuberance, and as she turned, her scarf slipped down to reveal her hair. The carpet maker sucked in a breath, staring at her as if he’d seen a ghost.

“Did you know her?” Elena asked softly, not wasting time. “Majda. Did you know her?”

Terror stole all the color from beneath his skin, his bones seeming to shake. “Lady, I think my store is too poor for you.”

Glancing around to make sure no one was lurking inside with them, Elena said, “I will do you no harm.”

The whites of his eyes showing, the man—who had to be seventy-five at least—went to a corner that held a little table set with tea things. “I will make you mint tea,” he said, but his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn’t handle the stainless steel pot that held the hot water, clattering it to a stand on the similarly brightly polished tray.

Sounds outside, two women bustling into the store and freezing when they saw Elena. The terror on their faces was a visceral stab, a dagger of ice. But the younger one, she found the courage to run past Elena. Dropping the package in her hands to the floor, she placed those hands on the carpet maker’s upper arms as he stood facing the tea service. “Abba?”

Father.

Elena had learned that word on her own during her travels. Jeffrey had always been Papa to her as a child, Marguerite Maman, her mother far more at home in her adopted language.

Whatever the man said, his voice trembling, the daughter turned to Elena with a fear-pinched face that held a courageous determination. “My father is old and tired. He wants only to live in peace.”

So take the trouble you bring to our door and go.

The girl had no need to speak those last words—Elena heard them loud and clear. Disappointed but not willing to terrorize an old man for her answers, she pulled up her scarf, once more covering the hair that had triggered his response.

“I’m sorry I distressed him,” she said. “If he ever wants to speak to me, he can find me through New York’s Archangel Tower. My name,” she said, not assuming that the doings of a faraway city were of any interest here, “is Elena.” Moving past the older woman, who still stood frozen near the doorway, she found her escort of teens lounging around sharing a packet of candy.

“Elena! Elena!” They swarmed around her the instant her foot hit the street.

She let them show her their market, and she listened, and she watched.

And she learned that though no angels lived in the town, everyone here was terrified of them—but beneath the fear burned a cold hatred. She was insulated from most of it because of the boys’ enthusiastic adoption of her, but she caught dangerous hints in the eyes that turned her way when they didn’t think she was looking, saw it in the twists of countless pairs of lips, felt it in the subtle way they avoided her, their shoulders stiff and their hands clenched.

It wasn’t hard to do the math.

Archangel, can you hear me?

His response was delayed by about two seconds. Of course, hbeebti. I am arguing with Astaad—he is beginning to be swayed by Charisemnon’s arguments.

Elena made a swift decision. This isn’t urgent. Do what you have to do—we’ll discuss things tonight.

A kiss of the tumultuous sea in her mind as Raphael retreated, rippling waves of sensation left in his wake as the minute amount of wildfire that lived in her blood reacted to his voice.

“Wow.” Riad’s whisper and wide eyes had her angling her head in a silent question.

“Your eyes just”—a frustrated pause, a debate with his friends—“grew fire,” he finally said. “White fire around the black center.” He opened his fingers out in a burst then closed them. “White fire then no white fire.”

Great, her eyes were acting even weirder.

She spotted Xander around the same time that the thought passed through her mind; he was walking toward her with Valerius at his side. While Valerius’s face gave nothing away, Xander’s distress was obvious. He tried to hide it, but he was young, and she suspected that what had set him off was totally outside the realm of his experience.

Heading over to him, she told her five teenage guides to come along with her. They did, but stayed safely behind her, their faces wary once more. “Xander,” she said. “I’d like you to meet my escorts.” Then she introduced each boy by name.

Xander’s face glowed with an inner light, the anguish retreating. “I am Xander,” he said with a small incline of his head. “My grandfather is Alexander.”

Gasps went from boy to boy, making it clear they all knew the legend of the silver-winged archangel who had risen from a long Sleep. However, in contrast to their nonstop chatter with her, and though it was obvious they had a thousand questions for Xander, the boys didn’t voice any of them.

“Xander is only a little older than you,” she said in an effort to “humanize” the young angelic male. “In human terms, he’s—”

“About twenty, perhaps twenty-one on a very mature day,” Valerius unexpectedly supplied.

“Yes,” Xander said. “I am in training.” He winked out of sight of Valerius. “And because my father was a great general”—a fast swallow, a hitch in his breath—“and my grandfather is Alexander, I can’t miss a single session without being called on the carpet.”

A tentative set of grins from the human teenagers before one dared to ask what kind of training Xander was doing. He immediately began to tell them about crossbow drills and aerial maneuvers. Ten minutes later, Elena left him happily surrounded by fascinated teenagers and being bombarded by questions on every side, and came to join Valerius where he stood a short distance away.

“He is a young man growing into his strength and will soon be considered a true adult, but he found himself lost today—he is not used to being looked upon with hatred and fear,” Valerius said under his breath, a humming anger to him that she sensed only now that she was standing right next to him. “Not after growing up in his father’s territory, training in Titus’s, only to return to the wave of love and respect commanded by his grandfather.”

Elena wasn’t familiar with how Xander’s father had treated the people in his region, but she knew Titus was beloved. Not just by the women he took to his bed, but by all his people—mortal and immortal alike. Elena could well understand why. The big warrior archangel was one of her favorite people in the Cadre. He believed in honor on the deepest level. “Titus never harms the weak, doesn’t consider it honorable.”

“Yes—and this lesson, Xander has learned from all three of the defining men in his life. I, too, seek to show him the same.” Valerius’s tone held a deep pride, but the anger remained. “As such, he has never been faced with fear in a child’s eyes or had a woman lose all color when he smiles at her. Like most pups, he is more used to smiles and flirtation in return.” A harsh exhale. “This town . . .”

“Yes,” Elena said though he hadn’t finished his sentence.

Together, the two of them stood watch over Xander. Valerius missed nothing. Neither did Elena. So she noticed that, around them, the hatred was morphing into confusion as the boys chatted with Xander, while she and Valerius stood nearby but didn’t interfere.

When Xander pulled out the short sword he wore at his waist, horror crept back into those faces with the suddenness of a bloody strike . . . only to fade into open bewilderment when he gave the sword to the awed teens to handle, even going so far as to show them the correct way to hold it.

Then a little girl maybe three years of age, dressed in an orange-red dress trimmed with thin gold rope, her black hair in two neat braids and her feet in pretty golden slippers, escaped her mother to run straight for Elena and grab at the edge of her wing.

Elena caught the look of primal terror on the mother’s face as she bent down to pick up the little girl. “What are you doing, azeeztee?” she said in a chiding tone that she totally spoiled with her smile. “Your mama is worried.”

Having gone to that pale-faced woman to ease her concern, Elena blinked in shock when the woman, who was maybe in her late twenties, dropped to her knees and, head bowed, began to speak very fast. Elena couldn’t understand her, reacted on instinct, dropping to one knee herself, her wings spread on the earth behind her. “Here,” she said, holding out the child. “She’s safe.”

The woman snatched at her daughter, kissing her face over and over again as tears streaked down her own cheeks. The child whimpered, scared by her mother’s fear. Again, Elena didn’t think—she reacted. Reaching for a feather she could feel was about to come loose anyway, she tugged it off and held it out.

It happened to be one of the shimmering pale feathers near the edge of her wings, the color most often described as dawn. “Here, azeeztee.”

The mother froze again, but the child gave a wobbly smile and closed tiny fingers gently around the feather. “Shokran.” It was a shy whisper.

Elena smiled. “You are welcome.” Rising to her feet, she held out a hand to the mother.

The woman remained distraught, but she took Elena’s hand with a shaky one of her own and allowed Elena to help her up. Then, swallowing, she met Elena’s gaze and said something in her native tongue.

Gesturing for her to wait, Elena looked over her shoulder to see Xander and the teens frozen in place, their attention on the small drama. “Riad!” she called out. “I need a translator.”

The teenager ran over at once, a redness in his cheeks that spoke of a fearful rush of blood only moments earlier. “What do you want to ask her for?”

Ask her for.

Again, a very telling construction.

“Nothing,” Elena said. “She spoke something to me. I didn’t understand it.”

Riad spoke. The woman replied.

“First, she says thank you for not hurting her baby.” A pause. “Then she says why you use this word, azeeztee?”

Respect bloomed inside Elena for the woman in front of her; she’d been terrified, was still scared, but she was asking a question. “My mother used it with me and my sisters,” she said, her voice growing thick as memory hit out of nowhere of her mother’s soft hands and sparkly eyes, the way Marguerite spoke in an accent all her own.

Looking away, she breathed deep while Riad translated.

When she glanced back at the woman, her dark eyes were soft with understanding, the words she spoke as soft. Riad sucked in a breath, but he translated. “She says when you first became Raphael’s and she saw pictures, her grandmother told her that you—” A deep frown, a sudden snap of his fingers. “That you put her in memory of a woman who lived here once. You understand? This is right word?”

Throat dry, she nodded. “What was her name?” she asked not Riad but the woman who still held her child in her arms, the little girl stroking her finger over Elena’s feather.

Dark eyes met her own. “Majda,” she said, and Elena’s heart turned to thunder.