Archangel's Heart

41

The pavings on which we landed after flying down the shaft aren’t sunken into the earth as they should be after hundreds of years of angelic landings. They’re being lifted up on a regular basis.

Gut churning, Elena fought back her horror. We walked over the victims.

We came with clean hearts. Raphael ran his hand down her back. The ones who did this, however, chose that location because it is a final insult. Whatever happens, the insult ends tonight.

Elena went to reply, paused midstep without consciously understanding why, hunkered down . . . and realized she could see. The lights came all the way through here, though they weren’t the seamlessly integrated ones she’d seen in the earlier section. These were lightbulbs strung along the side of the passageway, the burned-out ones creating pools of shadow. It was a glimmer of white in one of those shadows that had attracted her attention: a feather.

Picking it up, she passed it back to Raphael.

Many angels have feathers of pure white, even if there are other shades mingled in with the white.

Yes, not exactly a smoking gun. Elena had no white feathers in her wings, but Raphael had the odd few that had no metallic filaments of white gold. Caliane’s were the purest white Elena had ever seen, and even Favashi had the odd downy white feather scattered among the sleek ivory of her wings.

Gian, of course, had a lot of white feathers in his wings. But despite the fact Gervais was his best bud, she couldn’t assume it was Gian she’d be facing at the end of this journey. If he had been obsessed with her grandmother to the point of writing her love poetry, it didn’t make sense to Elena that he’d switch so quickly—in immortal terms—to someone else.

Then again, maybe he was a psychopath who fixated on mortal after mortal. Feather’s not dusty, though, which means he passed through very recently.

And, Raphael reminded her, he hasn’t come back.

Elena looked at her crossbow, assessed the increasingly narrow passage, and decided she needed a close combat weapon that wouldn’t pose a risk to innocent bystanders. Strapping on the crossbow, she dropped a knife into her hand. Let’s go get the bastard.

Exactly one hundred steps later, she heard the echo of a scream, but it wasn’t one of terror. Frowning, she walked faster, driven by the pounding urgency deep in her gut.

Guild Hunter.

Raphael’s tone had her freezing. I’m not in control. She wasn’t used to this feeling, wasn’t used to hunting without a plan.

I will be your control.

Had anyone, even Raphael, made that offer a year ago, Elena might’ve bristled.

Today, safe in the knowledge he wouldn’t allow her to mess this up, she moved on. And when she felt the waves of his mind crashing into hers, she knew to pull back, to slow. The screams got louder the deeper they went, the emotion in those screams easy to identify now.

Someone’s having one hell of a tantrum, she said as they came to a narrow door with a padlock that was hanging open on the latch on one side.

Raphael touched her on her shoulder. When she glanced back, he made a motion. She nodded. She’d go in low, and he’d come up behind her.

“. . . going to be mine, too!” It was a male voice yelling, so much twisted emotion in it that it hurt Elena’s ears. “Did you hear me? I’m going to own your child as I own you!”

Movement, boots slapping on the floor, then, “Scream! Scream!”

The speaker switched languages on his next words.

You understand that one, Archangel?

It’s a mishmash of various languages. Not much sense. He’s continuing to demand that someone scream.

Elena smiled grimly. Which means whoever he has down here, that person is refusing to give him what he wants even though he’s threatening to take their child. Knife held ready in her hand, she unlatched the unlocked door and said, One, two . . . three!

Pulling open the door, she rolled in and took in the situation at a single glance. The shock of what she saw might’ve paralyzed her if she hadn’t been so angry and so well trained. Coming up in a fluid strike, she swapped the knife for the blade star at the same time. This brick-lined cell was much bigger than she’d imagined and Gian was way on the other side. Given his age and strength and training, he might be able to move fast enough to avoid a knife thrown at him.

The blade star was whirling from her hand even as those thoughts passed through her head, the calculations done on a subconscious level. It whipped through the air at lightning speed as Gian went to thrust his knife through the eye of a battered and emaciated male chained to the wall, one of his eyes already pulp, blood dripping down his cheek. His hair might’ve been blond once; it was now dry straw.

The knife fell with a clatter a heartbeat after the blade star embedded itself in Gian’s throat, blood spurting out to spray the face of the blond male . . . who lunged forward as Gian crumpled toward him, and sank his fangs into Gian’s throat. The blond’s throat moved in deep gulps as he drank, while Gian struggled ineffectually.

The sudden blood loss shouldn’t have weakened him that much, so the blade star must’ve done damage to his trachea, too. Angels didn’t need to breathe to live, but not breathing had an impact on their strength.

Especially if a vampire was feeding right from the artery at the same time.

Elena wasn’t about to stop that feeding. The vampire looked like he was starving and had been starving—starved—for a long time. She left Raphael to monitor the situation and to make sure Gian wouldn’t escape; she hadn’t forgotten what Raphael had told her about exactly how dangerous the leader of the Luminata had once been—but on the flip side, Gian had been ruling this little fiefdom for centuries.

Elena had a feeling his flunkies didn’t ever dare challenge him. A ruler as egotistical as Gian wouldn’t stand for it. And Gian had cleared the area of all other possible threats. Unlike the angel she’d seen in the hallway, he hadn’t let his body go to seed, but he had allowed the razored edge of his self to dull, his instincts no longer as sharp.

“Don’t.”

The single chilly word had her swiveling back in readiness to fight—to see Gian’s hand glowing with a green-gold power. Of course he’d have the ability to utilize energy like Aodhan and Illium, she realized. He’d been an archangel’s second once. But he wasn’t the biggest predator in the room. And when Gian ignored Raphael’s order, began to raise his hand up to the vampire’s throat, Raphael seared off half of Gian’s left wing using his own violent energy, the wound cauterized as it was made.

The angel convulsed, his hand falling to his side as the green-gold energy fizzled.

Gian, however, wasn’t the only threat. If the vampire was insane after his trauma, there wasn’t much anyone could do. He’d have to be executed, no matter how unfair that was.

Maddened vampires rarely came back from their murderous urges.

Those thoughts tumbled rapid fire through her brain as she turned to the other captive in the room, her mind trying to catch up with what her eyes were seeing: a woman with hair of moonlight who stared at Elena as if she’d seen a ghost.

Majda had Ari’s eyes, Beth’s eyes, she found herself thinking. Stunning turquoise, so clear and so painfully familiar.

“Marguerite.” The raw whisper was shaped by full lips set in a face that was wrinkled and haggard, those stunning eyes smudged with tears, but it was undoubtedly of the woman in the miniature.

Elena’s breath caught.

“Elena,” she corrected gently as she broke through her shock to examine the chains that held Majda’s wrists and ankles pinned to the wall. “Marguerite was my mother. My maman.” She didn’t know if Majda spoke English, but the word “maman” should be understandable to a woman who’d lived in France.

The chains were heavy iron.

“I’ll take care of it, Guild Hunter.”

Stepping back, Elena let Raphael pulverize the irons and caught Majda in her arms.

Her grandmother’s legs were shaky, her arms, too, but those arms came around her with unexpected fierceness. “Marguerite’s baby?” Tears in every word. “My granddaughter.”

Going down to the floor with Majda in her arms, Elena fought her own tears. “You need blood,” she said, recognizing the cinnamon spice and wild raspberry scent of this woman as that of a vampire.

Her grandmother pushed away Elena’s wrist when she offered it.

Elena tried again. “You need to drink.” Majda wasn’t emaciated or starving like the other vampire, but she was weak, as if she hadn’t fed for at least a week or longer.

Majda shook her head. “Not from my bébé, from my Marguerite.”

Realizing her grandmother was still disoriented, Elena went to make a small slit in her forearm, but Raphael was there before her. “Let me, hbeebti. I am far stronger and she’ll heal faster.”

Her grandmother’s eyes flicked from Elena to Raphael at the word hbeebti, her pupils dilating. When Raphael’s wing pressed over Elena’s as he crouched down to offer Majda his forearm, she scuttled back . . . and then her gaze seemed to focus on Elena’s own wings. Her breath began to come faster.

“I’ll explain,” Elena said, desperate to help her. “But please drink, Grandmother.”

Elena didn’t know if it was the “please” or the “Grandmother” that did it, but Majda made her way cautiously closer and, lowering her head, sank her fangs into Raphael’s wrist. She jerked back after a single long pull at most, and when her lashes lifted, there was a glow to her eyes that reminded Elena of Raphael’s wings.

“Not an angel,” Majda said even as her skin smoothed out to flawless beauty, her hair turning glossy and shiny.

In a matter of heartbeats, she looked no older than Elena.

“No.” Elena just stared. “He’s an archangel.”

And her grandmother was astonishingly beautiful.

Her eyes were also no longer locked on Elena. “Jean-Baptiste!” Scrambling to her feet, she ran to the other vampire, the one Gian had been torturing.

He was still feeding—and Gian was the one who was shrinking and shriveling, the vampire growing healthier in a slow motion contrast. His eye had healed first, the crusted blood and ocular fluid around it falling away in flecks when he blinked. His hair was no longer straw but becoming softer blond, his body filling out in a way that told her he was a tall, solidly built man when not starved.

Still, the transformation was nothing close to that with Majda.

Then Raphael got up, pulled Gian away to drop his wasted but still alive form to the floor, and pressed his wrist to the vampire’s bloody mouth. The vampire fed, jerking the same way as Majda had done at the punch of power, but he didn’t wrench away, his starvation too great. He drank for at least a minute before he lifted his head.

By then, he had starkly handsome features that looked oddly familiar to Elena.

“You have her hair, her skin,” Raphael murmured. “But much of the rest, it comes from him.”

And it really hit her; she was staring at her grandfather. And Raphael was right—much as she superficially resembled her grandmother, it was her grandfather whose genes had held sway over both Marguerite and Elena, though if anyone had asked her to explain exactly how, she’d have been stumped.

“They’re my grandparents,” she whispered, trying to make sense of it all.

“Not a single doubt. And both appear to be sane.” Having already removed Jean-Baptiste’s chains, Raphael turned to Gian while Majda sobbed and kissed her husband at the same time, uncaring of the blood that smeared his lips.

Looking away to give them privacy as they embraced, Elena watched Raphael go to Gian, haul him up with a single hand fisted in his shirt. “Explain yourself.”

Gian opened his mouth but nothing came out. Too much damage from the feeding, Elena thought, then, when the Luminata clawed at his throat, she realized the blade star was still lodged in there somewhere. “He needs help to get that blade star out,” she said, her tone flat. “I have a hunting knife.”

“No, Elena, this we will do in front of the Cadre.” A glance at her grandparents. “You will follow us.”

It was the male who answered. “Yes, sir.” In the light silvery blue of his eyes was understanding of Raphael’s identity. And around him hung the same sense of raw power Elena sensed in Ashwini’s Janvier. Like Janvier, her grandfather might’ve been young in immortal terms, but he was strong—else his blood wouldn’t have held power enough to linger through his child.

When those eyes turned to Elena, they held incandescent joy. “Marguerite’s daughter?” he asked Majda in a chaos of intermingled disbelief and joy. “Our baby’s baby?”

Throat thick, Elena touched her hands to theirs. “We’ll have centuries to talk, an eternity.” She couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that she was looking at her maternal grandparents, but one thing she knew: this woman of her family hadn’t been murdered. She’d survived. She lived. “But first, we need to take care of this asshole before the storm ends and the Cadre flies away.”

They had no context for her statement, but Majda and Jean-Baptiste were willing to follow her lead, their hands interlocked. Both had used the backs of their forearms to wipe the blood off their mouths.

While her grandmother wore a flowing gown of misty blue that looked strangely new, her grandfather was all but naked, the rags that clothed his body having fallen off as he healed. Elena tried not to look that way. It was clear he didn’t like being near-naked in front of his granddaughter—and wow, yeah, that was definitely a trip, that these two beautiful, ageless people were her family.

Following Raphael as he hauled Gian up the passageway by the neck, the Luminata’s feet and wings dragging on the floor, she asked him to wait when they reached the suite where the women had been kept. She entered with care lest another Luminata had somehow managed to come in, quickly cleared the area, then began to search the wardrobes, hoping some of the Luminata had forgotten clothing.

There was an edge to her grandfather’s stance that told her he was a man of quiet pride. She would not take that from him, would not let the Luminata gawk at him when they entered the main part of Lumia.

She found nothing suitable in what had been Josette’s room, but when she checked the room that wasn’t in use, it was to discover a stack of civilian male clothing. She tried not to think about the fact that some of these clothes could well have belonged to young males who’d been taken and who’d never gone home again. “I’ll get vengeance for you,” she whispered.

Stepping out, she found Raphael had sent her grandparents into the plush waiting area. Elena kept her eyes resolutely on her grandmother as she said, “I found male clothing in there.”

Majda and Jean-Baptiste slipped into the room without further discussion, their linked hands never breaking.

Dropping Gian in one corner after coming into the suite, Raphael brushed away strands of hair stuck to her cheek from perspiration she hadn’t even felt in the heat of the moment. “So, hbeebti.”

“Yeah.” Rubbing her cheek against his palm when he spread it open on her skin, she blew out a breath. “I’m the grandchild of a vampire.”

“Two vampires.”

She bit down on her lower lip, shook her head. “Majda wasn’t a vampire when she had my mother.” Riad’s great-grandparents had made it clear Jean-Baptiste couldn’t find an angel who’d fast-track her application. “I have a feeling she was Made after she left France.” As for the how of the latter, and where the bus crash fit in, she’d get the details from her grandmother later.

Raphael considered it, sliding his hand down her arm. When she caught his hand, he smiled, linked his fingers with hers. “You may be right.” A dangerously calm glance over at where Gian whimpered and gasped, his eyes bugging out of his head as he continued to dig at his throat. “Quiet.”

Gian flung his fist at Raphael, but no green-gold energy came from it.

“You have lost half your volume of blood and your body is focusing on healing your throat,” Raphael told the other angel in a voice so cold it raised every tiny hair on Elena’s body. “You have no resources to muster an attack. Do not attempt it again or I’ll forget about a trial in front of the Cadre and turn you to dust where you crawl.”

His eyes were deep Prussian blue when he returned his attention to Elena, the otherness of him a heavy presence in the room. You look a little terrified, Elena-mine.

In a good way. She wove her fingers even tighter with his, banishing the chill of violent power and long immortality with the love that lived in her, in him, between them. No matter how scary you get, Archangel, I always want to dance with you.

Majda and Jean-Baptiste returned from the room right then. To Elena’s surprise, both had changed. Her grandfather wore black pants and a simple white shirt that suited his blunt handsomeness. He didn’t have the prettiness developed by some vampires. No, he was like Dmitri—he’d retained a harsh edge to his features that said he was a dangerous man, but vampirism had given him unblemished white skin that needed the kiss of the sun, and hair that gleamed with silken health.

As for Majda . . .

Gone was her grandmother’s gown, in its place a pair of brown pants that she’d rolled up at the bottom and tied tightly around her waist using a belt Elena remembered seeing in the wardrobe. On top, she wore a woman’s shirt, so that must’ve also been in the wardrobe.

And Elena knew without asking that the gown had been forced on Majda by Gian.

Majda’s lips suddenly curved, her eyes bright.

Following the line of her gaze, Elena realized her grandmother had seen Raphael and Elena’s linked hands. “Let’s go get rid of the garbage,” Elena said softly.