Archangel's Kiss (8 page)

“I’ll give you my hunger, my heart,” she said, fighting to retain her independence, and more—to build a foundation for their relationship that would last an eternity. “But my mind is my own. Accept that.”

“Or?” The cool question of a being used to getting exactly what he wanted.

“I guess you’ll have to wait and see.” Leaning back against the balcony, her body aching, unfulfilled, she simply looked at him, at the exquisite balance of beauty and cruelty, perfection and darkness. His own hunger had turned his face acetic, that flawless bone structure dramatic against his skin. But he made no move to kiss her again.

The words he’d spoken earlier came back to her, an invisible wall between them. Knowing he was right, she blew out a breath. “I have a question.”

He waited without impatience—as if he had forever and she was the only woman in the universe. It threatened to take her breath away. How had she, Elena Deveraux, a common hunter according to her father, ended up with the right to ask questions of an archangel?

“What do you know about Lijuan’s pets?”

A slow blink was all the indication he gave that she’d surprised him. “Dare I inquire how you knew to ask that question?”

She smiled.

His expression changed, holding an intensity that seared her through and through. “As I said”—eyes turning to chrome—“you’ll make eternity far more interesting.”

That was when she noticed the light coming off his wings. Bright, lethal, just enough to make him seem precisely what he was—an immortal who held enough power in his body to level a city. Instinct had her muscles tensing in preparation for flight, the adrenaline rush so strong, it was difficult to form words. “You’re glowing.”

“Am I?” Fingers undoing her hair, threading through the strands. “Lijuan’s pets are the reborn.”

Startled at getting a straight answer, she sucked in air through lungs that protested the effort—struggling past the pressure of Raphael’s presence, his power. She didn’t call him on it, intensely conscious that he wasn’t doing it to intimidate her. He was simply
being
. And if she planned to dance with an archangel, she had to learn to deal. “Something to do with vampires?”

“No. As archangels age,” he said, the glow beginning to fade, though his eyes stayed that metallic shade no human would ever possess, “we gain power.”

“Like your mental abilities,” she murmured, her heart still racing. “And the glamour.” Paranoia would run rampant if it got out that some archangels could walk among the populace unknown, unseen.

“Yes. Lijuan is the oldest among us, and as such, has the greatest store of abilities.”

“So these reborn are something only she can create?”

A nod that sent the coal black strands of his hair sliding over his forehead.

Reaching up to push them back, she lingered, playing with the heavy silk. “What are they?”

“Lijuan,” he said in a voice touched with midnight, “can make the dead walk.”

Her heart stopped for a second as she read the truth in his eyes, processed the awfulness of what he was saying. “You don’t mean that she can somehow bring people truly back to life, do you?”

“I would not call it life.” He bent his head, pressing his forehead against hers.

Sliding her hand around to the back of his neck, she held him close as he told her things no mortal knew.

“They walk, but they do not talk. Jason tells me that for the first few months of their existence, they seem to have some semblance of sentience, that it’s possible they know what they are—but with no power over their reborn bodies. They are Lijuan’s puppets.”

“Dear God.” To be trapped in your own body, knowing you were a nightmare . . . “How does she keep them alive?”

“She awakens them with her power, but they then feed on blood.” Raphael’s voice twined around her, filling her cells with horror. “The old ones, the ones who went to the earth long ago, feed on the flesh of the recently dead to keep their own bones clothed in flesh.”

Her soul grew cold, so cold. “Will you gain that ability?”

R
aphael threaded his hands through her hair once more.

“Our abilities are tied to who we are. I would hope I never become capable of creating the reborn.”

Shivering, she slid her arms around his torso. “Have you gained any new abilities in recent years?” Because she knew him, knew how thin the line he’d skated. Not that long ago, he’d broken every bone in a vampire’s body while the pitiful creature remained conscious. It had been a punishment Manhattan would never forget. “Raphael?”

“Come.” He rose into the air.

Yelping, she shifted her hold to around his neck. “You could’ve warned me.”

“I have faith in your reflexes, Elena.”
After all, if you hadn’t shot Uram, New York might yet be drowning in blood.

She snorted. “That wasn’t all me. I seem to remember you throwing fireballs at him.”

“Angelfire,” he murmured. “One touch and it would’ve killed you.”

Rubbing her face against his chest as he flew them over the lethal beauty of the massive mountain range that surrounded the lights of the Refuge, she said, “I’m hard to kill.”

“Take care, hunter.” Dipping, he swept down toward the edge of a crashing waterfall. “You can still be hurt.”

They were so close she could skim her fingers along the glittering beauty of the water, the droplets diamonds trapped under moonlight. Wonder burst to life inside of her. “Raphael!”

Rising, he flew them back up into the icily clear night sky, each star cut in crystal.

“You said a strong vampire could kill me,” she said, feeling the cold color her cheeks as the wind ripped through her hair. “Angelfire, I can guess. What else am I vulnerable to?”

“Angelfire is the easiest method, but those archangels who can’t create the fire have other means.”

“I wasn’t planning on hanging out with the Cadre, so that’s good.”

Lips against her ear, a touch that seared her to the toes, but his words . . . “Disease is no longer your enemy, but fellow angels can also kill you. You’re so young that if you were partially dismembered, you’d die.”

She swallowed her gorge at that violent image. “That happen often?”

“No. Usually, the head is cut off and burned. Very few survive that.”

“How could
anyone
survive?”

“Angels are resilient,” he murmured, twisting to glide them back down.

“This place is huge,” she said, glimpsing lights far in the distance. “How can no one know it exists?”

Raphael didn’t answer until he’d landed on the balcony outside their bedroom. “Immortals may disagree on many things, but on this we are united—our Refuge must never be known to mortals.”

“Sara?” She clenched her fingers on his upper arms. “Did you do something to her mind?”

“No.” Eyes of endless, merciless blue stared down at her, eclipsing everything else. “But if she speaks of it, I must silence her and all those she tells.”

A cold knot formed in her stomach. “Even if that would break my heart?”

“Make sure she doesn’t speak.” He cupped her cheek, his fingers cool from the night air. “And that will not come to pass.”

She pushed away from him. This time, he let her go, let her walk to the end of the balcony and stare down into that ragged tear in the flesh of the earth. There were fewer lights now, as if the angels were bedding down for the night. “I’m not part of your world, Raphael. I’m still human inside—I won’t sit back and let my friends be slaughtered.”

“I would expect no less.” He opened the doors. “Come, sleep.”

“How can you expect me to sleep after saying something like that?” Swiveling on her heel, she stared at him.

He glanced back, a being of such power that she still couldn’t accept he loved her. But was an archangel’s love like a human’s? Or did it cut deeper? Draw heart’s-blood?

“I forget,” he said, “that you are so very young.” Moving to her, he stroked his fingers down her temple, over her jaw. “Mortals fade, Elena. It is a simple truth.”

“So I should forget my friends, my family?”

“Remember them,” Raphael said, “but also remember that one day, they won’t be there.”

Grief was a wild-eyed beast inside of her. She couldn’t imagine a world without Sara, without Beth. The ties she had with her younger sister might’ve been eroded by the choices they’d both made, but that didn’t mean Elena loved her any less. “I don’t know if I have the courage to survive that kind of loss.”

“You’ll find it when the time comes.”

The pain in his voice slid a dagger hilt deep into her own heart. “Who?”

She didn’t really expect an answer. Raphael might be her lover, but he was also an archangel. And archangels had made an art form out of keeping secrets. So when he ran his knuckles down her face and said, “Dmitri,” it took her several seconds to respond.

“He was Made against his will,” she guessed, remembering the conversation she’d once had with Dmitri about children. Had the vampire watched his children grow old? Had he lost a wife he loved?

Raphael didn’t respond this time, nudging her into the bedroom. “You must rest or you won’t be fit for flight by the time of the ball.”

She followed, shaken by the truth he’d forced her to face.

Raphael placed his hands on her shoulders. “Undo the straps.” The heat of his body was a lush stroke against her, invisible, inescapable.

And that quickly, her wings were afire with sensation, with a need that obliterated all else. It took effort to breathe, to speak. “Raphael, are you inside my mind?” She was pulling out and undoing the straps that held the piece of fabric crisscrossed over her breasts even as she spoke.

“No.” Long, strong fingers playing over her collarbones, the dip of her breastbone. “Such soft skin, Guild Hunter.”

Every inch of her seemed to burn with a thirst that couldn’t be quenched. “Then what’s happening to me?”

“You are still becoming.”

He slipped off her top, and she felt the rasp of every fine thread, shuddered against the fleeting brush of his fingertips.

“Do you know what I taste at the curve of your neck?” He pressed his lips over that very spot. “Fire and earth, spring windstorms cut by a hint of steel.”

She shivered, reaching back to tangle her hand in the heavy silk of his hair. “Is that how you see me?”

“It’s who you are.” He moved his hand up the slope of her hip, a slow seduction that made her suck in her stomach in anticipation.

But nothing could’ve prepared her for the shock of lightning that was his hand on her breast, his intent explicit. She couldn’t help but watch, her entire being attuned to the merest shift of his.

Then he kissed her neck again and her senses splintered. Clenching the hand she’d thrust into his hair, she spun around, cupping his face between her hands, taking that beautiful, cruel mouth with her own. The kiss was wild, full of the fury of her need, the savage possession of his. One male hand fell to her hip as the other gripped her neck, refusing to let her draw back.

Her breasts were crushed against the linen of his shirt, the texture deliciously—almost painfully—abrasive against her sensitized nipples. She bit his lip in revenge for what he’d done to her. He bit her back, but he held the bite, releasing her flesh with a slow concentration that had her thighs pressing together in a burst of damp heat.

She went to slip her hand underneath his shirt. He caught her wrist. “No, Elena.”

“I’m not that fragile,” she said, frustrated. “Don’t worry.”

His hand tightened on her wrist for a second before he dropped it and took a step back, breaking their connection. Ready to fight him for what she needed, she looked up . . . and froze. “Raphael.” Azure flames surged in those eyes, deadly as the angelfire he’d thrown at Uram in that final, cataclysmic fight.

“Go to bed,” he said in a tone of voice so calm it was a sheet of ice.

But the fire continued to burn. Feeling her heart spasm at the lethal edge of it, she wrapped her arms around her body, covering her breasts. She didn’t know if she was protecting herself or him. “Will you come back?”

“Are you sure you want me to?” He’d turned and was through the balcony doors before she could answer.

She watched him take off into the infinite darkness of a mountain night, before closing the doors with fingers that had dug dark red crescents into her own skin and crawling into bed. But though she pulled every single one of the blankets over her, it took her a long time to stop shivering.

She’d thought she’d known, had thought she’d understood. But she hadn’t. Ever since she’d woken, she’d been treating Raphael as if he was “safe.” Tonight, she’d had a rude awakening. Raphael would never be safe. All it would take was one slip and he could kill her.

Was she strong enough to take that risk, that chance?

He’d said that to her the night she’d shot him, the night he’d bled so much that she’d cried, her hands trembling as she attempted to stop the crimson flow of blood. Had he been afraid then? Did Raphael even understand fear? She didn’t know, wasn’t sure he’d answer her if she asked.

Elena knew fear far too intimately. But, she thought, her muscles relaxing, she hadn’t been afraid at the end. When her body lay shattered in Raphael’s arms, she hadn’t been afraid. And that was her answer.

Yes
, she said speaking to Raphael, not knowing the strength of their mental connection, not sure how far it’d reach.
Yes, I want you to come back.

He didn’t answer, and she didn’t know if he’d even heard her. But deep in the night, she felt the caress of lips against the curve of her neck, sensed the dark heat of a big male body curving around hers, her wings trapped in between . . . an indescribable intimacy between two angels.