Archangel's War

24

Raphael! Urizen’s place!

Raphael switched direction without hesitation, pulling such a tight turn that his wing muscles protested before they blazed into white fire and he was moving at speeds that turned the world into a barely visible blur.

That hadn’t been terror in Elena’s voice. It had been determination coupled with a sense of desperation. He wasn’t far from her but the journey there felt like an eternity. He arrived over Urizen’s building . . . just in time to see Elena catch a falling child in her arms and begin to spiral down to the ground.

Raphael flew toward her at lightning speed, but he knew he wasn’t going to make it. The child’s weight and momentum were causing her to drop at a catastrophic rate and she hadn’t begun very far from the ground. She was going to smash herself into pieces. But, tightly curled as she was around the child, she might save that small life. Raphael knew the choice she’d tell him to make if he had to choose between saving her and saving the child.

The child. Always the child.

He went to try and cut under her, catch her and the child both, though he knew the attempt was futile. Even wings of white fire couldn’t eliminate the space between two objects. His heart screamed. Elena!

A sudden explosion of light above him . . . and no bloody bodies on the street. Low as he’d flown, he had to land or smash into a wall. When he looked up, what he saw had him launching into the air once more. Elena stared at him in silence. Even the screaming child had gone silent, shocked by the sudden halt.

“Raphael.” It was a whisper. “Am I levitating? Just to clarify, I’m fine with levitating rather than being hunter-flavored mincemeat.” She looked down. “Phew. Even if I stop levitating now, this baby will be fine and worst I’ll get is a turned ankle.”

“Land.” His voice came out hoarse. “Land, Elena.”

“Land?” A furrowed brow, a taut voice. “Archangel, I haven’t exactly figured out the levitating thing yet.”

Breathing with icy calm even though his newly regenerated heart was a massive drum, he put his hand on Elena’s shoulder and pushed her down until her feet touched the asphalt. The screaming woman from the balcony had disappeared, was probably frantically running down the stairs to get to her son.

Who was now beaming at Raphael through a tear-streaked face, all dark eyes and hair, his skin a pale brown. He held out two chubby arms right then, and Raphael plucked him out of Elena’s hold. The child laughed and tried to reach for his wings.

In front of him, Elena folded her trembling arms. “There’s gratitude for you. I saved his life and he goes gaga over you. Typical.” Her voice shook, no bite in her tone and her pupils huge.

“Elena, look over your shoulder.”

“Did I magically grow wings?” she said with a wry smile before glancing back. She froze. Her throat moved in a hard swallow. She turned back to him very, very slowly. “I wasn’t levitating.”

“Seth!” A woman’s desperate cry. “Seth!”

“Mama!” The toddler leaned out toward his sobbing mother; he was grinning, having managed to grab hold of Raphael’s feathers before his mother arrived.

The distraught woman hugged her son close, her entire body shaking hard enough to fracture. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said through her tears. “We were dancing in the lounge with the music up, and I had to go into the kitchen to check on the stew. I was away for two minutes. I don’t know how he—”

“Climb chair mama!” her son informed her with delighted pride.

They all looked up to the outdoor seating on the balcony. The woman’s face went bone white. “I’m going to go throw that in the Dumpster right now.” Wiping off her tears with the back of one hand, she looked from Elena to Raphael, finally seemed to realize who it was that had caught her boy. “T-t-thank you.”

“I’m glad I could help.” Elena’s voice was stronger, but Raphael saw the rigid tension in her neck, the dark blot of her dilated pupils.

“Go, be with your son,” Raphael said, giving the child’s mother permission to run—he could see the need in her eyes. No ordinary adult mortal liked coming face-to-face with an archangel.

Children were another story.

Young Seth, unaware he’d used up one of his lives as well as his mother’s, waved at them over his mother’s shoulder.

Elena waited until the twosome had disappeared into the building before she stepped close to Raphael. “Are the you-know-whats on my back still there?” she whispered, scared that talking about the impossible would poof it out of existence.

Her archangel nodded.

Breath shallow and fast, she dared look over her shoulder . . . to see unearthly wings of white fire electric with a storm of golden lightning. That lightning moved, dazzling and alive, but the shape of her wings remained unbroken. They were big, the same size wings she’d had before the chrysalis. “Touch it,” she rasped, not ready to believe she wasn’t hallucinating.

Maybe she’d hit her head hard when she landed, was now in la-la land.

Raphael made contact. Elena shivered, sensation arcing through her nerve endings.

“I feel no solid surface.” Raphael touched her again; when he withdrew his hand, it came out coated with tiny lightning strikes that sank into his skin. “Do you want to attempt flight?”

“Yes, I have to know.” A light flashed not far in the distance at the same instant. “I think we’re being paparazzied.” Regardless, she drew in, then spread out her lightning storm wings. “Wish me luck. Vertical takeoffs were never my forte.”

She was four feet off the ground before she realized what had happened. The pulse in her neck skittered, her skin hot. Home, Archangel.

I’ll fly under you.

Neither one of them had to articulate the reason why—Elena had no idea where these wings had come from or how long they’d last. But as she took to the sky, she felt no fear, only a bone-deep joy. The events of the past few minutes—such a short time—ran through her mind in a repeating loop.

“I can’t believe I asked you if I was levitating!” she called out to Raphael once they were high enough up that no one else was going to hear them.

I will be magnanimous and blame it on shock. It will be a hushed secret between an archangel and his consort.

Laughing, she swept to the left, then back around to the right to test her maneuverability. They function just like flesh and blood wings. Eyes hot, she had to blink to clear her vision. You gave me your heart, a heart that can process violent Cascade energies—you gave me back my wings, Raphael.

The salt-laced sea in her mind, huge and cold and of Raphael. I may have provided the raw material, Guild Hunter, but you made the choice. Wings of fire and lightning can fit in a chrysalis that is too small.

Despite her desperate desire to fly and fly, she went straight to their Tower balcony. After landing beside her, Raphael cupped her face and pressed his forehead to hers. There they stood, no words needing to be spoken.

When they did walk inside and down to the infirmary level, it was to run into Dmitri. He took one look at her and shook his head. “Don’t scorch the walls.”

Striding over, Elena hauled down his head and kissed him hard on the lips. “Today, even you can’t annoy me,” she said into his stunned face before releasing him.

A laugh sounded from not far down the corridor, where Dmitri’s wife had just emerged from Lucius’s office. Honor’s eyes were dancing. Dmitri, meanwhile, was looking at Elena in utter horror. “We will never speak of this again,” he said. “Ever.”

“I think he could use a hug,” Elena said to Honor.

“You two are awful together and I love you both. And your wings are a showstopper.” With that, Honor walked over to console her scowling husband.

Raphael meanwhile, was wearing a suspiciously bland expression.

Elena jerked up her head as they continued on down the corridor. “What?”

“I have never seen that look on Dmitri’s face in all my life. I also cannot wait to see the look on your face when it sinks in that you kissed Dmitri.”

“All worth it.” Full of sunshine and sparkles and freaking puppy dogs, Elena all but skipped into Nisia’s office.

The Tower healer and Keir were seated on a small dark blue settee, their heads bent over a pile of charts and notes. A single glimpse of Elena and they were over her like a rash, muttering and examining and talking in a fluid language Raphael told her was a variant of Aramaic. It was as Keir was about to take a reading that her wings disappeared in a silent whoosh.

Elena tried not to panic. “Raphael, what’s my back look like?”

“Your leather jacket boasts two wing slits with the edges sealed shut as if by heat.” He helped her get the jacket off. After which, she pulled off the long-sleeved T-shirt she’d been wearing underneath. Turning her body toward the mirror Nisia held up, she sucked in a breath.

A familiar tattoo covered her back: a fiery outline of wings that blazed before settling into a glittering light under her skin.

“Your wings have always been present,” Raphael murmured, running his finger along the edges and making her toes curl. “At least since the day we first saw the fire tattoo.”

“I don’t know how to bring them back.” It was hard to breathe.

Eyes as blue as a mountain sky met hers. “Remember how you learned to fly?”

“You pushed me off a cliff.”

Nisia held out a palm. “Wait, just wait.”

“I am not sure that’s the greatest idea,” Keir began, but Elena was already putting her clothes back on.

Dire alarm marking their faces, the healers hurried after Elena and Raphael as she and her archangel strode out onto the balcony. When she saw the Legion’s gray wings filling the air, she knew Raphael had called them. Her personal catching team. She walked to the very edge. “I’m ready.”

No hesitation, no questions; the love of her life pushed her into a deadly fall before sweeping down and below her with his arms open, ready to break her fall. Elena didn’t panic, just thought of her wings. Her body kept accelerating. And accelerating. Shit. She was about to slam straight into her archangel. I need wings now!

A wrench at her back. A jerking halt.

“Yee-fucking-hah!” She dived straight at Raphael, laughing, and they played like wild winged children. The Legion swept and flew around them, their voices in Elena’s head.

We have not seen this.

We did not know.

The chrysalis was not too small for this.

You are new, Elena.

We are new.

We are . . . happy.