Archangel's Heart

39

The murders of her sisters and the effective murder of her mother—Marguerite Deveraux had never truly left the room where Slater Patalis had tortured her—was why Elena was so deeply protective of Eve, Amy, Beth, and little Maggie.

It squeezed her heart each time she held her sister’s baby. Beth, sweet, sometimes feckless Beth, still carried hurt in her soul. But she’d named her baby not in sorrow, but in love. “So Mama, Ari, and Belle don’t get forgotten,” she’d whispered. “So they know we remember them. And Maggie, she’ll know all about her grandmama and older aunts.”

Marguerite Aribelle Deveraux-Ling.

Such a big name for such a tiny little girl. Elena would help her niece grow into that name, had already started teaching the two-year-old how to hold a weapon.

Those faux-weapons came courtesy of Sara and Deacon. Deacon had been building little Zoe baby-appropriate weapons for a while, and as Zoe outgrew them, they kept the painstakingly crafted pieces to pass on to friends.

Maggie was currently learning to bang things with a polystyrene hammer.

“I thought Beth would freak when I brought Maggie the first weapon, but she was so happy.” It had made her realize once again that her baby sister bore more scars beneath her sunny personality than most people would ever know. “She said she wants her baby girl to grow up to be like me. Strong. So no one can hurt her.”

“Your sister is a good mother.”

“Yes, she is.” Maggie was always full of smiles, a gorgeous little girl with a shock of silky black hair and sweet brown eyes who knew she was deeply loved. And who had been rocked to sleep in an archangel’s arms more than once.

The first time Beth had asked Elena to babysit, her sister’d almost had a heart attack when she came to the Enclave to pick Maggie up, only to find her baby snuggled up happily in Raphael’s arms. Beth was better about handling things now, but she still had trouble with the sheer amount of power that lived in Raphael.

Maggie, meanwhile, like all children, had no trouble at all.

Speaking of power . . . “Can you blast these walls open if we need to?”

“Yes, but if there is someone alive behind a wall, it could kill them.”

Elena nodded, muscles tight. “So that’s out.” Even if there was a slim chance the area wasn’t just a graveyard, she wouldn’t risk going in with violence—the Luminata could be keeping captives, or just hiding their peccadilloes. “Any groupies who came voluntarily could’ve still been trapped in Lumia by the storm, been hidden away until they could be snuck back out.”

“If the Luminata were indeed arrogant enough to bring these mortals here while the Cadre is in session,” Raphael said, “then the entire Cadre will be united in any punishment. There will be no debate.”

Elena needed no explanation as to why. It was all about respect and the chain of power. She wished immortals would simply treat mortal lives as important, but immortals had had millennia to build their prejudices; nothing was going to change that overnight, if ever. She was realistic enough to accept that and be satisfied that punishment would be meted out for any abuse.

“Did you hear that?” She froze, her head angled in the direction from which the noise had come. There it is again.

It sounded like wind whistling into the hallway from the outside—but they were deep inside Lumia. Communicating with a single glance, she and Raphael moved silently toward the sound . . . until it cut off with a clipped suddenness. As if the wind had been blocked. A door?

Possible, Raphael responded, the two of them continuing to move. The more interesting question is, who is moving about during the Luminata’s time of contemplation?

Yes, they’re very serious about that. So serious that all the good Luminata are shut up in their rooms, contemplating their personal luminescence, leaving the hallways clear for the ones who are interested less in luminescence and more in their own power over others.

Because this wasn’t about sex or about the sadism that drove so many jaded immortals. These Luminata were drunk on power, on being able to live outside the boundaries set by their society—and at present, being able to flout those rules right under the noses of the Cadre of Ten. That had to be a rush. Far too addictive of a rush to abstain from regardless of the danger.

There is no door where Laric indicated it should be. Raphael crouched down in front of a wall, his hair gleaming blue-black.

As she watched, he tugged a downy inner feather from his wing and held it near the bottom edge of the wall. The delicate filaments didn’t move. Rising, he did the same test two feet over. The movement was minuscule, but there should’ve been no movement in this corridor devoid of motion but for the two of them.

Sucking in a breath, Elena took the feather from him, slid it into a pocket. They wouldn’t leave anything for those who might be coming or going to find—and she’d give the feather to Maggie, who loved to stroke them with her small, soft fingers. Zoe already had several of Raphael’s in her growing collection. Do we go in?

From the sounds we heard, someone entered only moments ago. Raphael stared at the wall. No one exited or we’d have caught sight of them as they turned the corner.

Elena’s pulse raced. She didn’t want to wait, didn’t want to give any more time to whatever evil was going on behind those doors. Because it was nothing good if it had to be so darkly hidden. We have to wait, she forced herself to say. We don’t know how to get in and we can’t risk harming someone by using your power.

Raphael nodded, but his gaze held unrelenting determination. Storm or bloodlust, we will not leave until we have the answers, hbeebti.

Swallowing her furious impatience, she satisfied herself—for now—by dropping a blade into her palm. We’d better hide so we can try to see how to get in.

Raphael smiled and opened his wings.

Her eyes widened. I am an idiot. Walking into his arms after he shifted to put his back against the opposite wall, she let him close his wings around her as she faced forward, her own wings against his chest. She couldn’t feel the glamour, but she knew from the outside, they no longer existed. Good thing the Luminata didn’t think to have security cameras. She’d checked.

Being hidebound is an immortal’s greatest weakness. Raphael closed his arms around her shoulders, held her close to the muscled warmth of him, his scent so deeply familiar to her that it settled her on the innermost level.

He was hers. She was his.

And together, they were something far better than either one of them was alone.

Stroking the underside of his wings, Elena stared at the wall on the other side, willing it to open. She jerked when it did only five minutes later. The Luminata who walked out was the tall and thin one who’d been their guide the first night.

Gervais. Gian’s best buddy.

His hood was off and he had a smile on his saturnine face that was more a smirk.

Pulling up his hood with spidery fingers, he glanced back over his shoulder and spoke in that rough voice she’d noted the first night. “You’d better hurry. You know he doesn’t like anyone else inside when he goes into the special chamber to see his pet.”

“. . . got here.”

“You should’ve come earlier. Of course, you can delay if you want to stay in there permanently.”

A second angel huffed out, this one short and stouter than any angel Elena had ever seen. Angels just generally didn’t carry any extra fat on their bodies—partly because of the immortal metabolism and partly because winged flight took serious energy. This one wasn’t so much overweight as just really solid and round. Hard fat, she realized. A man who’d been fit but who’d let it go.

For that to happen to an angel, it meant he wasn’t bothering to fly much.

Right now, his face was hot red and he was in the midst of pulling on his robe over what looked like a pair of pants and a tunic. “That’s the quickest coupling I’ve ever had in all my centuries of existence.”

Gervais clapped him on the shoulder. “Never mind. You’ll have plenty more time once the Cadre has left us in peace. The sluts and toys will spread their legs on command or pay the price.”

Elena didn’t realize she’d pulled out the knife she’d slid away until Raphael closed his hand over her wrist. Later, Elena. We will take care of them later.

Her body vibrating with rage, she somehow managed to keep her blade from leaving her hand. Then, as Gervais and the other angel walked away, the wall beginning to shut behind them, she and Raphael moved. Not so fast as to create a gust of air that would alert the two Luminata, but not so slow that they’d miss the door. And then they were in and at the top of a flight of stairs that wasn’t as steep as it should’ve been.

The door shut behind them in smoothly oiled silence. However, what was a seamless part of the wall on the hallway side was clearly a door from this side. Having separated from Raphael so that they could move independently, she tucked her wings back tight against her spine. The staircase was easy to navigate side by side, the lights on the walls guiding their way.

And then they reached the bottom.

Raphael’s fingers clamped on to her forearm. Since she’d begun to fling out that same arm against his chest in an unconsciously protective move, she figured they were even. Both steady now, they looked over the edge of the doorway into nothingness. The only way to tell that they were looking down a deep shaft dug into the earth were the lights placed a regular distance apart going down.

“We’re next to the Gallery,” she said, the words a whisper. “Why would the builders dig a hole but not utilize all of it?” This shaft was nowhere near the diameter of the Gallery—maybe a tenth the size—but it was significant. And while it had exposed beams, it was structurally shored up.

“I think it was to provide a back way for the archivists to enter different levels of the Gallery.” Raphael pointed out what looked like an old door across the way, the wood a little warped and not appearing as if it had been opened anytime recently. “It may have been specifically created so the archivists could reach the final, hidden section without disturbing any guests in the Gallery.”

Elena blinked. “This shaft is an angelic elevator?” Which meant that final level had once had a legitimate use, likely for handy Gallery storage as Laric had assumed when he saw the staircase.

“Aptly put.” He turned to take her into his arms. “We arrive together.”

“Done.”

With that, Raphael jumped off the edge and opened his wings in silence. The lights flashed up one after the other and they landed on square paving stones in a matter of seconds, the pavers set neatly into the dirt, as if they’d just been laid—though it was clear from the discoloration that they were old. The door to the hidden level was propped open with a rock, the corridor stretching out beyond well made but narrow.

Too narrow for Elena and Raphael to walk down it together.

Elena pulled out her gun, aimed it forward as she took the first step. I am not going second this time, Raphael, she said when she felt him shift behind her. Don’t even try it.

A pause. If there is danger you cannot handle, drop.

That I can do. It’d give him a clear line of sight.

The passage was clean of dust and well maintained, clearly a place that was used often. Other than professionally installed electric lights every two feet—lights that told her some poor, hardworking electrician probably lay buried nearby, since this was a place no one outside a clandestine group could know—there wasn’t anything on the walls or on the floor to give them any clues. Definitely none of the faint carvings that marked the navigation pathways around the rest of Lumia.

Then she caught the first hint of a scent. Perfume, she said to Raphael.

Female, he replied. Heavy enough to linger—or to sink into another’s skin during intimate contact.

Elena thought of the two Luminata who’d recently exited, felt her jaw go tight. Musk, she said, breaking down the scent in an effort to think past the anger that lay hot and heavy in her gut, rich on the oils, expensive. It was the kind of scent that was overwhelmingly opulent, the kind you simply couldn’t ignore. Getting used to it took a little doing for a born hunter, since scent was her business, her nose more sensitive to it even when it had nothing to do with identifying a vampire, but Elena had a lot of experience.

Pushing it aside so it no longer dominated her senses, she carried on.

And came to a halt at the outline of a door on the right-hand side of the passageway. Be helpful if you could see through stone walls.

I can scan mortal minds with ease.

Elena shook her head at the implied offer. No, we don’t cross that line. Not even if it would make this easier—some lines were bright lines, and this one, the two of them had negotiated during a prior investigation. And while it was important to Elena’s sense of honor, it was also important in keeping Raphael “human.” Can you tell if there are mortal minds behind the door without scanning them?

No. If I search, I’ll scan.

Shit. Elena bit down hard on her lower lip. Ideas? It was never a good plan to go into a room with unknown threats.

It’s highly unlikely that anything this close to the entrance is beyond the expected. Unethical and ugly if the people within are coerced rather than volunteers, but nothing dangerous.

Elena nodded. Right. It’s all about easy access. Exhaling quietly, she twisted the handle with care and stepped inside, going low so Raphael could see over her.

Her mouth fell open.

She—Raphael, too, when he came in behind her—stood in a lush living area. It was nice and spacious, the carpet beneath their feet a thick, velvety gray, while what looked to be priceless paintings hung on the walls on either side. The settees—definitely not sofas—were an exquisite, deep burgundy with curved wooden arms and legs.

The furniture was clearly meant to accommodate wings.

A waiting area, Raphael said.

Or one where the sick bastards hang out. Scanning the three doors to their left and seeing no differences between them, Elena decided to go from closest to farthest. She walked in silence to the first door while Raphael stayed slightly back so he could cover her from threats from the other two doors or the one through which they’d entered.

This time when Elena opened the door—after turning the key in the lock—she scented the opulent perfume . . . and came face to face with a small and curvy young woman dressed only in a towel, her hair damp. Her mouth opened, as if to cry out in shock, but Elena was already moving, her hand clamped over the woman’s mouth before the sound could escape.

The mirror in front of them reflected their images, Elena’s golden-skinned hand covering the woman’s mouth—a woman who had her own hands, her skin a rich cream, holding on tight to her towel. Her eyes were huge amber orbs.

Shaking her head in the mirror, Elena lifted her free hand and pressed a finger to her lips. “Shh.” A sound and an action understandable in any language.

The woman gave a jerky nod. Releasing her but ready to react at any hint she might scream, Elena watched as the brunette spun around to face her.