Archangel's Legion (27 page)

Coming to sit with her below the roses, he braced his forearms on his thighs and said, “It began with a bloodborn angel and ended in ambrosia.”

•   •   •

T
oo wired to sleep in spite of the late hour, Elena talked
Isabel into a sparring session in the private courtyard of the house occupied by only Raphael, Elena, Keir, Naasir, and Isabel. The other angel was good, but Elena more than held her own.

“I think I’ve become soft in this position.” Isabel wiped the sweat off her brow. “Galen will have my head when I rotate back to the Refuge.”

“He’s a tough bastard,” Elena agreed. “But since I’d be dead without the lessons he beat into me on a daily basis, I can’t curse him too loudly.”

Isabel stifled a laugh, and the two of them separated to shower, with Naasir taking over the watch. Conscious Caliane would want to spend as much time with Raphael as possible, Elena didn’t wait for him before going to bed, her body happily tired. She expected a total knockout . . . but it was as if the nightmare visions knew she was alone, vulnerable.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Elena’s wings kept dragging through the congealed blood no matter how hard she tried to keep them raised off the slippery tile, the white-gold tips turning a muddy rust. “Belle? Belle, where are you?”

Her oldest sister crawled to her from behind the counter, her blood-soaked fingers leaving darker streaks on Elena’s wings as she tried to grab on. “Ellie, my legs hurt.”

“Wait, I’ll help you get up.” She slipped in the liquid that smelled so wet and metallic even as she spoke, landing hard on her back, her wings crushed between her body and the tile in a tangle that wrenched at her tendons.

Gritting her teeth, she managed to get onto her hands and knees, but her body kept sliding backward, the kitchen floor suddenly a slope. “I can’t reach you.” Her voice was that of the child she’d been, the girl used to having two older sisters who told her what to do when she wasn’t sure. “Belle! What should I do?”

But Belle couldn’t speak anymore, her head separated from her body, her beautiful long legs in pieces. Sobbing, Elena tried to find Ariel. Ari would know what to do; Ari always knew.

Heart pulsing in her mouth, she glimpsed her sister’s slender fingertips behind the chair, began to claw her way forward. She knew it was Ari, because Ari had just painted her fingernails a shade she called “nude”—the color wasn’t her favorite, but it was one that didn’t get her in trouble at school. “Ari?” She reached out to touch Ari’s hand. “Belle’s hurt. She’s really hurt. We have to help her. Ari?”

She was holding her sister’s hand. It had been torn off at the wrist.

•   •   •

R
aphael walked into the suite at dawn to find his consort
in bed, her body rigid and her hands fisted. Immediately putting his hands on her shoulders, he shook, knowing she needed to be wrenched out of the vicious grasp of nightmare. “Elena, wake!”
Elena!

A jerk of her head, but she didn’t wake. Tugging her toward him with a grip in her hair, he kissed her, kept kissing her until he felt her nails dig into his arms, her body losing that ugly nightmare tension. The sob that tore from her when he broke the kiss had him crushing her close.

“I hate this,” she said, after the storm had passed and they sat on the edge of the bed staring out at the approaching dawn. Her voice was flat, near defeated, unlike the woman he knew.

Not closing the distance she’d put between them because he sensed she wasn’t ready, her hands white-knuckled on the edge of the bed, he kept his eyes on the clean line of her profile. “You’re having far fewer nightmares than you did when we first met.”

Jaw clenched, she stared down at the carpet. “And I still wake up like that, terrified out of my skin.” A throb of anger beneath the defeat, his Elena rising through the battered and bruised places in her soul. “When does it stop? When do I get
over
it?”

Judging she wasn’t willing to listen to reason—she might not even hear him in her current self-punishing mood—he rose. “We’re not scheduled to leave for two hours.” He could not be seen to be racing back to New York. “We have time for a sparring session.”

She didn’t get up. “I had one with Isabel last night.”

This, Raphael realized, was even more serious than he’d believed. Elena never turned down a chance to spar with him—he was one of the few people who pushed her to her absolute limit, uncaring of the risk attendant in causing even unintentional harm to the consort of an archangel. To him, the inevitable bruises were acceptable if the lesson would help her stay alive.

Picking up her favorite blades, he threw them at her. Hands snapping up, she caught both. “I
said
”—spoken through gritted teeth—“I don’t want to.”

“And I say you’ve sulked long enough.” He stripped off his formal wear and pulled on a pair of pants suitable for sparring.

Eyes of silver-gray slitted in frigid outrage. “I just dreamed I had my sister’s severed hand in my own. Sorry if that inconveniences you.”

Raphael shrugged and very deliberately used the one thing he knew would infuriate her enough to cut through the apathy. “I’ll see if Tasha is up for a session, then,” he said and reached for the doorknob. “Be ready to leave in two hours.”

The knife quivered to a stop on the doorjamb an inch from his face.

25

N
ot saying a word, and aware of Elena swearing behind
him as she rushed to pull on clothes, he walked out and down the steps into the courtyard. When she emerged a couple of minutes later, it was in khaki cargo pants and a specially designed black tank that took her wings into account. Like his, her feet were bare, but she had knives while he was unarmed.

A fair balance, given his extreme strength and speed.

When he made a “come on” gesture with both hands, Elena narrowed her eyes and threw one of those blades at his face. He was distracted just enough by the unexpected act that she almost swiped him with the second blade as she came in low. Grinning, he avoided the strike with a twist that slapped her with his wing.

It wasn’t meant to hurt, only to distract in turn, but Elena had learned from their past sessions, and turned with him, going for his wing with the blade in her grip. His consort had a tendency to make mistakes when angry, but not today—he’d succeeded in angering her to the point where she fought with icy fury.

Barely avoiding the sharp bite of metal, he used his wings to lift himself a foot off the ground in order to avoid a kick. “A little slow,
hbeebti
.”

She smiled at the taunt . . . and threw the second blade directly at his wing. Positioned as he was, he couldn’t avoid it in time and it pinned his wing to the wall of the house. But he was an archangel, had it out a split second after it went in, his body ready to handle her secondary attack.

“You now have no knives,” he said, exhilaration in his blood as he parried her fists and kicks. Elena couldn’t truly hurt him, not yet, but her fighting style was unique, one she’d created as she reworked her hunter training and adapted Galen’s teachings to take her personal strengths and vulnerabilities into account. And because she hadn’t been an angel all her life, she didn’t know she wasn’t supposed
to be able to do certain things, so she just went ahead and did them.

That element of surprise made each session as fun for him as it usually was for her.

Now she came in close . . . and suddenly had two more knives headed straight for his neck. Blocking them using a maneuver he’d learned from Alexander before the other archangel started to view him as a threat, he bared his teeth. “That’s cheating.”

“Oh?” A saccharine-sweet smile. “Didn’t realize we were playing fair.” Another fury of blades, their bodies moving with a speed and a ferocity that had drawn an intrigued audience of three—Keir, Isabel, and Naasir. All watched from the balconies that ringed the courtyard and someone clapped when Elena managed to swipe his forearm, drawing blood.

Ignoring the cut, he touched the tip of the knife he’d pulled out of his wing to her cheek to register a hit. He made sure it didn’t break skin, for his passionate, beautiful lover didn’t heal as fast as he did, but she made no effort to hide her fury that he’d gotten so close. Twisting out of reach before she could take advantage of his proximity, he moved to come at her from behind.

She threw the knives over her shoulders without turning.

Startled by the unexpected tactic, he almost took one in the chest, only his agility saving him from a wound that would’ve taken at least ten minutes to repair. Turning the instant the blades left her hands, Elena swept out with a kick to capitalize on his shaky balance, but she’d forgotten her wings.

Grabbing one, he hauled her close, his blade at her throat. “I win,” he said, both their chests heaving.

A sharp prick against his heart. “Wanna bet?”

Grinning, he bent his head and kissed her, half expecting her to slide the blade in, she was so pissed. But she returned his kiss, hot, wild, and wet, her tongue rubbing against his own. “You ever taunt me with Tasha again,” she said in a harsh whisper when they broke the kiss to gasp in air, “and I will geld you.”

Raphael winced. “That would take at least a day to repair. Are you sure you want to lose my . . . attributes for that long?”

A twitch of her lips, eyes bright. He could see her struggling to hold in the laughter, but it was a losing battle and she was soon doubled over with her hands on her knees, her laugher wild color in the air.

For the first time, I envy you, Raphael
.

Glancing up, he caught Keir’s gaze.
It’s not every man who has his lover out for his blood.

Keir’s laugh was quiet, as, waving good-bye, he disappeared into his suite. It was Naasir who jumped down onto the courtyard with feral grace. Picking up the discarded knives, he held them out to an Elena who was now upright and wiping tears of laughter from her face.

“Thanks,” she managed to say, before secreting away the knives with such speed, Raphael couldn’t follow her movements or tell where exactly she’d hidden the sleek weapons.

“Why did you cheat?” the vampire asked, head cocked. “With the knives?”

“Er, I was fighting an archangel who can crush me like a bug. Of course I was going to cheat—especially since we had a score to settle.”

Naasir stared at her, then grinned. “We’ll spar when I’m in New York.”

Twenty-five minutes later, they’d showered and dressed in preparation for the trip home, and Elena still wasn’t sure quite what had happened. “Does he like me now?” she asked, as they ate a light breakfast in readiness for heading out on the wing.

“Naasir likes very few people, but I think he finds you interesting.”

“Hmm.” She bit into her honey toast. “I’m not sure I want to be found ‘interesting’ by a tiger creature. He probably finds other fresh meat interesting, too.”

“Tiger creature?”

“Stop laughing.” Scowling, she poured him a glass of orange juice and pushed it across. “Sorry about the funk when I woke up.”

He took the juice, the humor fading from eyes the breathtaking hue of a high mountain lake. “Why today?” he asked gently. “You’ve never been so defeated by the nightmare memories.”

“I don’t know. I really don’t.” It had simply felt as if she’d been beaten to a bloody pulp, every one of her achievements erased by the crushing ugliness of horror. “I just”—she blew out a breath—“I wish I could be fixed, so I could remember my sisters, my mother, without the pain.”

Raphael didn’t offer her platitudes, just grim pragmatism. “You’re young. The memories will never disappear, but they’ll lose their power to cause such harm over time.”

“No offense, but I don’t want to be screaming myself awake for the next hundred years.” The immortal concept of “time,” she’d learned, was far different from a mortal’s.

“You’re far too stubborn for such a possibility to come into being.” Reaching across, he rubbed his thumb over her cheek. “There’s a reason the nightmares are getting worse, and you know why.”

Startled, she frowned. “What reason? It’s not close to the anniversary.”

“Sometimes,
hbeebti
, you surprise me.” Dropping his hand, he said a single word—“Eve”—and all the pieces fell into place.

Her half sister, only a little older than Elena had been when Slater Patalis destroyed her world, was just coming into her power as a hunter. As Elena had been that fateful year. “Wow,” she whispered, her fingers motionless on the white tablecloth. “How did I not see that?”

“It is too close a hurt.”

“Maybe.” Picking up her juice, she finished the glass before speaking again. “I guess some part of my subconscious is terrified it’ll happen again.”

“Yes—especially as you’ve now formed a true bond with Eve.”

Where before, they’d been strangers with half the same blood. “Do you think Jeffrey’s scared, too?” she asked, thinking of the vicious wounds it must score on a man’s soul to bury first his children, then his wife.

“His emotional state is irrelevant.” Raphael’s face was brutal in its repudiation. “It’s because of him that you didn’t have what you needed to heal as a child.”

She knew he was right, but it was strange, how now that she’d finally begun to look at Jeffrey through the eyes of an adult and not a child, it was so much harder to despise him. “I don’t know if I can ever forgive him for what he did to me, but I might not hate him if he gets it right with Eve.” Except she was terribly afraid that was a futile hope.

•   •   •

A
half hour later and they were on their way out of the city
when who should flag them down onto a rooftop but Tasha. “I’m so glad I caught you,” she said, her hair tied back to showcase the blade she wore diagonally across her back. “I did so wish to say good-bye.”