Archangel's Heart

33

Pissed off at the idea that they might be trapped in this place with its ugly secrets and its dark whispers and its walls that watched them, Elena stalked through the corridors with Raphael by her side. They were taking a shortcut to their suite that she and Aodhan had figured out, one that involved passing through hallways so narrow, she and Raphael couldn’t have walked side by side had they minded their wings overlapping.

Water dripped from her hair down her back and onto her face, while their wings tracked water through Lumia despite the fact they’d both shaken off those wings before heading to their suite. Not that it mattered—as wet as they were, it wasn’t as if they could avoid leaving a watery trail.

Lumia was eerily quiet around them, though, despite the lightning-seared darkness, it wasn’t that late. “Wonder if people are prepping for dinner,” she said, one of her throwing knives in her hand without her conscious volition.

“Perhaps.”

Yeah, clearly her archangel didn’t buy that explanation, either.

Wiping off the water dripping into her eyes, she stifled a sneeze. “Damn it. Shouldn’t I be immune to sneezes by now?”

Raphael’s smile made her want to kiss him.

Instead, she wove her fingers through his, uncaring of who might see. If people didn’t know they adored each other by now, they had rocks in their head, she thought just as she turned the corner and saw a robe-clad body crumpled on the ground. The fallen angel lay on his side, his wings exposed and limp, another distressed-looking angel kneeling beside him, his trembling hands hovering above that crumpled body.

“Ibrahim!” Knife held in readiness against a threat, Elena strode to the downed angel’s side . . . and saw Ibrahim’s bloodied face, the crushed pulp of his right hand. That wasn’t the worst of it. His robe was sunken in on the side she could see, as if his ribcage had been crushed inward.

She knelt down beside him.

Sliding her hand gently under his head after putting away her knife because, trained response aside, Raphael had her back, she looked hard at the angel with eyes of dark gray and hair of silver who knelt on his other side. The one she’d met on the lower floor of the Gallery: Donael. “What happened?”

“I do not know,” he said, his features stark. “I’ve just found him. This is Lumia.” His voice shook. “There is no violence here.”

Jaw tight, Elena took in Donael’s spotless robe, the lack of injuries on his knuckles or anywhere else on him, and was forced to believe him. Ibrahim’s injuries looked very recent from the lack of any apparent healing, and she didn’t think the strong young angel would’ve gone down without trying to fight back.

Raphael’s wing was heavy over hers as he knelt down beside Ibrahim, the warmth of the still-healing tip pulsing through her own feathers. “He is badly hurt,” he murmured. “Crushed windpipe. That’s what’s keeping him under.”

And Raphael’s healing ability was wiped out for the moment. “What can we do?” The idea of just leaving Ibrahim to hurt was not something she could accept.

“Make him comfortable so he can heal. And keep him safe.” Sliding his arms under Ibrahim, Raphael rose with the broken male in his hold. Can you scent another angel or a vampire on him?

Elena tried, shook her head. No vamp but I don’t know about an angel. Her ability to scent normal, non-toxin-maddened angels continued to be hit and miss.

“His quarters are through here,” Donael began, but Elena shook her head, her crossbow in hand so she could watch Raphael’s back as he carried Ibrahim.

“We’re taking him to our suite,” she said, having no need to check with Raphael on that—she knew her archangel, had heard the fury in his tone.

Donael didn’t argue. “Of course, of course.” His breathing was ragged, white lines bracketing his mouth. “I don’t understand. We do not have violence at Lumia.”

The repetition of the patently untrue words had Elena snapping. “Yeah?” she said, her tone harsh. “What about the violence visited on the townspeople? That’s apparently okay?”

Donael looked at her with a complete lack of comprehension as he tried to keep up with her and Raphael’s long strides. “I have no reason to go to the town. There is no peace there, as is oft the case with mortal places. Always moving this way and that, always living their lives in fast-forward.”

The sea rolled into her mind, touched with floes of ice. He is old, Elena. Truly old. He may not ever go into the town.

Maybe. And maybe he’s just a really good actor.

“Why would anyone harm Ibrahim?” Donael’s voice had settled, but his expression remained shaken. “He is a child, one with a calling, but a child nonetheless.” A careful look at Raphael. “We have many non-Luminata here.”

“And I’ve seen Gian and others practicing martial arts,” Raphael’s consort bit out. “Violence isn’t off-limits in Lumia.”

“Controlled violence,” Donael protested. “A form of movement to aid meditation. It’s different from this atrocity.”

“True,” Raphael responded. “But we can debate who it was that hurt Ibrahim later. For now, do you have a healer in Lumia?”

“There is only the one called Stillness.” An angling of his head, a pause that said he was riffling through his memories to find the correct one. “The boy had another name once, and under that name, he was a student of healing.”

Aodhan, Raphael said, reaching out with his mind. We need a healer. Can you find Laric?

I’m with him at this moment, sire. Where shall I bring him?

To our suite.

When they reached their rooms, Raphael laid Ibrahim down on the bed he and Elena had moved to the living area, and as he did so, Ibrahim’s right arm slid down the injured male’s side. The movement was so strangely fluid that Raphael gently pushed up the sleeve of the man’s robe.

“His arm is in pieces,” Elena gritted out, her free hand fisted, the one holding her crossbow pointing it safely down and away from anyone in the vicinity. “Like it’s been deliberately smashed.”

Elena was right. It was as if whoever had harmed Ibrahim had focused his rage on this one arm after taking the angel down. But the rest of Ibrahim’s body hadn’t escaped insult by any measure. When Raphael opened Ibrahim’s robe and tore open the fine tunic he wore beneath, he saw the man’s ribs had been crushed inward, likely perforating his organs and causing bleeding on the inside if the swelling in his abdomen was anything to go by.

His face, too, was battered and fractured.

Bruises bloomed on every part of him that Raphael could see.

Though Donael called Ibrahim young, he had to be over a thousand years old to have been permitted to become a Luminata initiate. “He’ll survive,” Raphael told Elena, because his hunter knew very well that immortals could be killed. “He may, however, go into anshara.” The healing sleep might be the best thing for him.

Aodhan entered the room without knocking, the hooded Luminata by his side short of stature and small of form with shoulders that were hunched in and a gait that was hesitant. Laric came to Ibrahim’s side at once, the hands he placed on Ibrahim’s broken body an icy white marked with ridged scars of dark pink.

Stepping back to give the healer room to work, Raphael and his hunter both turned to Donael. It was Elena who spoke first. “Did you see or hear anything before you found him?”

A deep frown before Donael nodded slowly. “Yes. I heard muted thumps.” Dark gray eyes lingering on Ibrahim. “Such as could be made by punches being thrown into flesh. I did not like the sound, knew it was wrong in this place, so I called out.” His hands trembled as he tucked them into the sleeves of his robe. “I soon heard footsteps moving quickly away and there was no one but poor young Ibrahim in the hallway when I arrived.”

If Donael was telling the truth, he’d surprised Ibrahim’s attacker. That, however, brought up another question. “How long would that hallway usually be empty at this time of night?” Raphael asked.

“Close as it is to the dinner bell, it is not a time for contemplation for most of us,” Donael said slowly. “And the hallway is a crossroads for many. A ‘shortcut,’ the young ones call it.” The angel released a quiet breath. “I wouldn’t expect it to be empty for more than five minutes at most.”

“I don’t think this was a five-minute beating.” Elena’s voice was gritty. “An angel as old as Ibrahim couldn’t be so badly hurt so quickly . . . unless it was more than one person.”

“No,” Aodhan interrupted. “Laric says it was only one.”

Raphael turned to the angel, not asking how he was in communication with the silent healer. “Why?”

“He’s no expert, but there doesn’t seem to be enough variation in the blows.”

“Then someone else, more than one someone, must’ve seen Ibrahim being beaten,” Raphael said with grim understanding of exactly how deep the rot was in Lumia. “Given that it is a Luminata shortcut, the likelihood those bystanders were Luminata is near to a hundred percent certain. As is the fact they chose not to stop it.”

Or were too scared to, Elena said mind to mind, the steel of her a gleaming blade today. There are always people who have more power than others in any given situation. Old and respected as he is, Donael has power of his own, enough that the attacker didn’t want to take the risk of being seen by him.

Raphael considered it, realized she was right. The Luminata clearly give way to Gian, but as you’ve just pointed out, the old ones like Donael also hold considerable power—and he’s not the only one of his generation here.

Elena’s nod was reluctant. Yes, much as Gian creeps me out, I can’t see him just losing it like this. He’s always in control, the kind of angel who’d take his time, be subtle.

And what had been done to Ibrahim was in no way subtle.

“He is in anshara,” Aodhan said, and this time, Raphael saw how he was speaking to the healer.

Laric was using his scarred hands to sketch fluid, shallow movements into the air. It was an old language that relied on understated motion rather than sound. Rarely spoken these days, it was used mostly by those who wished to withdraw from the world, including vampires who chose seclusion. Aodhan had never used it as far as Raphael was aware, but clearly, if he knew it so well, he’d thought about it.

Rising, the healer continued the purposeful movements.

“Ibrahim needs to be in a safe place,” Aodhan translated. “Laric is happy to watch over him in his own quarters, but believes he shouldn’t be moved until the dawn. His body will have knitted together a little by then and movement will not cause him further harm.”

Do you trust him, Aodhan?

Yes, sire. He isn’t like many of the others, is as guileless as Ibrahim.

The healer moved at that instant and a stray beam of light from the overhead lamp caught on his throat and lower face. The scarring was the worst Raphael had ever seen on an immortal. Angels simply did not scar that way.

He felt Elena go motionless beside him, knew she’d caught it, too, but neither one of them said anything, letting the healer move to Ibrahim’s other side to further check his injuries and do what he could to ease them.

Looking to Donael, Raphael said, “You should inform Gian what has happened.” His words were a command. “Tell him we’ll speak with him after my consort and I have had a chance to get out of our wet clothing.”

Inclining his head, Donael went to leave—but he paused on the doorstep. “We are not who we once were.” Melancholy in his tone. “This would’ve never happened in the time of Reed.”

Waiting until after Donael closed the door behind himself, Raphael left Aodhan on watch while he and Elena retreated to the bedroom to change. “Don’t waste energy on glamour,” Elena said, her eyes dangerously focused. “I’m going to check the walls, and this time, I’m not stopping until I figure out what the fuck is making my skin crawl in this room.”

Raphael did the same, but it was Elena who found it almost thirty minutes later.

Hearing her mutter a harsh word under her breath, he moved to join her. Wisps of her damp hair had begun to curl around her face, her clothing stuck to her, but her concentration was a laser. “Where?” he asked.

She pointed the tip of a knife at a detail in the painting at which she was staring; it was the artist’s impression of a knot of wood on a tree. The hole was a pinprick, but it was very much there. Wings glowing in blinding fury, Raphael pulled the painting off the wall and threw it on the floor, exposing the hole beyond.

Elena thrust her knife into it. “No screams. Too bad. I was hoping to stab out someone’s eye.”

Not satisfied with that, Raphael punched a hand into the wall with archangelic strength. It collapsed in a spiderweb of cracks about four feet in diameter. He tore out the pieces to expose the entire interior.

Elena looked inside the hole after waving away the dust. “It’s a goddamn hidey space built between two rooms.”

“Maybe so the spy or spies can watch both.” Raphael stepped inside, saw that the hole apparently connected to nothing on either end. But there was a door in the center. “The entrance is via the other room.”

Squeezing past him, Elena opened that door—which proved to be the back of a closet. “Bet you the room’s empty.”

It was—and there was no clue as to who’d been utilizing the hole.

“At least we frustrated the spy or spies the entire time we’ve been here,” Elena muttered in cool satisfaction. “I hope they enjoyed watching an empty room.” She secured the door by thrusting a blade through the locking mechanism so no one could open it from the other side, then the two of them stepped back fully into their room.

Staring at the wall that had concealed the hole, Raphael spoke through the ice-cold anger chilling his veins. “This will not go unpunished.”

“Your wings are glowing, Archangel.” Elena ran the edge of his wing through her fingers. “Don’t explode just yet. Keep it in reserve for when we find out who hurt Ibrahim and which of these assholes have been terrorizing the town.”

It took at least a minute for Raphael to get himself under control. Then he and Elena, in silent agreement, checked the other walls again. There were no more peepholes, but despite Elena’s admonitions to save his power, he threw his glamour around himself and his consort. He would allow no one to spy on her.

As for their voices, no one would be able to hear them if they kept the volume quiet.

Elena, her own temper still shimmering a silver light in her eyes after she finally stripped off her damp clothing, pressed her naked body to his in a silent statement that they were one. Always. It calmed him enough that he could think. “We’ll find the answers hidden in this place, hbeebti. Even if we have to come back a hundred times.”

Rising up on tiptoe, Elena kissed him soft and tender. It was a delicate touch from his tough hunter, but he was used to such kisses now and then. Because Elena had a well-hidden core of softness that only came out with the vulnerable, and with those she loved. Stroking his hands over the sleek line of her back, down to the toned lower curves of her body, he sank into the kiss, sank into her.

It felt as if she breathed life into him, washing away the darkness that lingered so heavy on the horizon. Closing his wings around them to protect her even further, though his glamour hid them from all eyes, he kissed his lover, his warrior, was kissed in turn.

“I love you, Raphael.” A whisper against his lips, eyes full of ghosts holding his. “Don’t ever go.”

“Elena.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “You are thinking of your mother and your sisters again.” The loss haunted her, made her afraid of losing the people who mattered to her as she’d once lost Marguerite, Belle, and Ari.

Shields down, her face painfully bare, Elena traced his Legion mark with a single fingertip. “My grandmother’s body was never recovered after the bus crash in which she was meant to have died, did you know that?”