Guild Hunter

Chapter 39

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Three months later, when Raphael walked in to take his place at a meeting of the Cadre, the gasps of surprise were genuine. Even immortals, it seemed, had written him off. He slid into his chair and placed his hands loosely on the arms. "I hear you"re debating how to divide my territory."

Neha was the first to recover. "No, of course not. We were speaking of Uram"s successor."

He smiled, let the lie pa.s.s. "Of course."

"You did well in halting him," Elijah said.

Charisemnon nodded. "Pity it came to such a public end. For a while, the mortals speculated that he was the cause of the disappearances in your region-how did you turn the tide?"

"I have good men around me." It had apparently been Venom"s idea to frame Robert "Bobby" Syles. He"d made the perfect fall guy-and given his sickening predilection toward children, no one had felt any guilt in blackening his name. A few judicial hints, some rumors of Bobby"s depraved leanings, and proof of his having entered the United States was all it had taken.

The world, humans, vampires, and angels alike, didn"t want to believe that an archangel had turned murderous. A battle between two archangels was something they could accept-most thought it had been a fight for control of the area, were happy with that understanding. To see Uram as a killer would"ve been too much, a fundamental shift in the fabric of the universe as they understood it.

Charisemnon humphed while t.i.tus nodded. It was Favashi who spoke next. "We are glad to see you, Raphael."

He thought she might truly mean it. So he gave a small nod. She smiled, her face beautiful in a way that had made kingdoms fall. But he felt nothing, his heart given to a mortal. "So, you are discussing successors?"

"More accurately," Astaad pointed out, "the lack of them. There is one, as we all know, who may soon become an archangel. But he isn"t yet."

"And Uram"s territory needs guidance now." Michaela"s gaze met Raphael"s across the circle, a malicious delight in it that he understood too well. But all she said was, "I can undertake some of the work, but I have enough to handle in my own lands."

"Very magnanimous of you, Michaela," Neha murmured with an elegant trace of sarcasm. "Does your landl.u.s.t know no end?"

Michaela"s eyes flashed. "And I suppose you have no interest in it?"

So it began, the rounds of propositions and reb.u.t.tals, alliances and oppositions. Only Raphael and Lijuan, sitting next to him, took no part. Instead, Lijuan touched his arm with pale, delicate fingers. "Did you and Uram speak much before he died?"

"No. He was beyond speech."

"A pity." She moved her hand back to the arm of her own chair. "I would"ve liked to learn more about the subtle effects of long-term exposure to the toxin."

Raphael raised an eyebrow. "Surely you"re not considering it?"

A soft laugh hidden in the sounds of the argument going on around them. "No, I value my sanity."

Raphael wondered if Lijuan could truly be called sane anymore. Jason had managed to gain more details of the other archangel"s court-half her "courtiers" were the reborn, creatures who followed her commands with unswerving obedience. "I"m happy to hear that. Ending the life of an angel as powerful as Uram was difficult enough. I dare not think about what it would be to have you turn bloodborn."

Lijuan"s eyes sparked with eerily girlish mischief. "Oh, such flattery will go to my head." She leaned back in her seat. "I was curious only because Uram seemed to have better control over his impulses than the young ones who turn. Is it not possible that he was right, that if we could traverse the problematic period, we might come out of it with enormous power on the other side?"

"The problematic period, as you put it," he said, watching the byplay between Neha and t.i.tus, sweet poison against granite will, "turns us into killers without compare. Our most recent investigations indicate that, counting his servants, Uram killed close to two hundred people in less than ten days."

"But he was thinking."

"Only of more death." Raphael kept his tone temperate through sheer force of will. That Lijuan was considering this even on a peripheral level was a very bad sign. "Had we given him a year, he would"ve torn apart thousands, glutting himself each time. That is what makes an angel bloodborn, the inability to stop, to fight the l.u.s.t for blood and power."

"I killed the last one, did you know? The one the humans call the father of all vampires." She laughed at the idea. "He was highly intelligent, evaded me for years, even ruled a sector."

"He bled the sector dry," Raphael reminded her. "He had no control over his instinct to kill-a puppet of his own desire. Is that what you would call power?"

Lijuan gave him an inscrutable look, a look filled with things such as he"d never seen and never wished to see. "You are a clever one, Raphael. Have no fear, I will not turn. It holds little interest for me now. As you well know."

He didn"t apologize. "Only stupidity excuses ignorance."

That made Lijuan giggle again. "Now you are being cruel to the others."

He wondered over that. If the others truly didn"t know about Lijuan"s evolution, then they were going to get an extremely unpleasant surprise one of these days. "I believe they"ve reached a consensus."

The others had split Uram"s territory to their satisfaction, rearranging the boundaries of their own lands to satisfy their landl.u.s.t. Raphael let them do so. His territory was already one of the largest, and even more important, one of the most productive and profitable. He had no desire to haggle over land Uram had beaten into submission. Weakness had never interested Raphael.

No, he was drawn to warriors.

Michaela smiled at him again as the meeting ended, lingering behind with Elijah. "It"s a pity, is it not, Raphael," she said after the room cleared of all but the three of them, "that your hunter died?"

He didn"t say a word, just watched her.

Her smile widened. "She"d outlived her usefulness in any case." She flicked her hand, brushing aside Elena"s life as one would a fly. "I was rather disappointed I didn"t get to hunt her, but it"s as well-I"ll be very busy now that I have part of Uram"s land to govern along with my own."

Elijah looked at Raphael. "You liked the hunter?"

It was Michaela who answered. "Oh, he was quite possessive over the mortal. He warned me off from hurting her." A deeply vicious smile. "But now she is dead and you must court me. Perhaps I will accept you."

Raphael raised an eyebrow. "You"re not the only female angel."

"But I am the most beautiful." Giving him another smile edged with broken gla.s.s, she swept out.

Elijah stared after her. "I"m very glad I never dipped in that particular pond."

"You surprise me," Raphael said. "I thought I was the only one."

"I had been with Hannah for over a century by the time Michaela found me." He shrugged. "I"m not her type in any case, as the mortals say."

"Everyone is her type. And no one." The only person Michaela cared about was herself. "Do you think she ever attempted to seduce Lijuan?"

Elijah choked on his laugh. "Careful, old friend. You will give me a heart attack."

Raphael didn"t return the laugh. "What is it you want to say, Eli?"

The other archangel"s laughter faded. "Lijuan. She raises the dead."

"We can"t yet say if the power is good or evil." Though Raphael knew what he believed. "She"s the oldest of us all-we have no template to judge her evolution."

"True. But, Raphael"-Elijah paused, sighed-"you"re old enough to know that the powers we achieve with age are tied intrinsically to who we are. That Lijuan should manifest an ability a.s.sociated with death, it tells us a great deal about her."

"What about you?" Raphael asked, keeping secret his own newfound gift. "What has age brought you?"

Elijah"s smile was inscrutable. "But those are the secrets we keep." He rose as Raphael did. "The hunter, you truly cared for her?"

"Yes."

The other archangel put his hand on Raphael"s shoulder. "Then, I"m sorry." His sympathy seemed honest. "Mortals . . . they burn so bright, but their light goes out too quickly."

"Yes."

Illium was waiting for him at the Tower. "Sire." As with Dmitri and Venom, it was a t.i.tle of respect, not truth.

Elena would"ve questioned him about that had she been here. And she would"ve worried about her "Bluebell." "How is your healing progressing?"

Flaring out the wing that had borne the worst damage, Illium winced. "It"s almost complete." He looked at Raphael"s healed body, a body that had been eaten through with an incredible amount of angelfire. "The difference between angel and archangel."

"Is age and experience." Raphael went closer, looked at the wing . . . and laughed for the first time since the night he"d fallen with Elena. "Now I understand your expression."

Illium snorted. "I look like a d.a.m.ned duck." His words weren"t far off the mark. The feathers that had grown over the injured section were soft, white, and delicately . . . fluffy. "I hope to h.e.l.l these baby feathers fall off and get replaced by real ones. They will, won"t they?" He sounded worried.

"Do they impede flight?" Having spoken to the healers and medics himself, he knew Illium had been permitted short bursts of flight.

"No. But they"re not as efficient." He stared down, swallowed. "Please tell me this is only a stage of healing. I"ve never had this happen before."

Raphael wondered what Elena would"ve done in this situation. Probably taken every opportunity to tease. His heart clenched. "They"ll shed within the month," he said. "You lost so much of your wing when you hit the pier, including several layers of skin and muscle, that you"re effectively regrowing it from the inside out, instead of just replacing your feathers."

Relief whispered through Illium"s eyes as he dropped his wing. "Without anshara I"d still be lying in bed, unable even to move."

Raphael"s mind drifted back to those months when his own body had lain broken. The field had been isolated, his mental abilities young. Only the birds and Caliane had known he was there. "Yes."

"Sire . . . you"ve yet to punish me for losing Elena that day." Illium"s features were drawn, his normally ebullient personality buried beneath the formal words. "I deserve to be censured. I am one of the Seven, one of your most experienced men, and I let her be taken."

Raphael shook his head. "It was no fault of yours." He was the one who"d made the fatal mistake. "I should"ve known Uram could hasten his recovery through blood."

"Elena," Illium began, then stopped. "No, questions are useless here. Just know that your Seven stand behind you."

Raphael watched the other angel leave via the balcony, then, after a moment"s pause, did the same himself. The wind lifted him up, his repaired body still aching but otherwise fine. He"d be back to total strength within a few weeks. Until then, his Seven would ensure his territory remained safe from covetous eyes.

Lijuan and Michaela, likely Charisemnon and Astaad, too, would never understand that kind of loyalty. Perhaps only Elijah and, in this matter, t.i.tus, had any hope of comprehending what the Seven had given him. Dmitri was the oldest, Venom the youngest, but together, the three vampires and four angels had been with him for a remarkable number of centuries, their allegiance unwavering-but that didn"t mean they were ciphers. No, his Seven had all fought with him at one time or another, arguing against his decisions even to the point of putting their lives on the line.

Charisemnon had cautioned him about Dmitri more than once. "That vampire has ideas above his station," the archangel had said. "If you"re not careful, he"ll take your Tower for his own."

And yet Dmitri had held off all challengers for the three months that Raphael lay in a healing coma. The first month, he"d gone so deep that he"d descended below anshara. Had Dmitri-or any of the six others-wanted to end his immortal life, they could"ve struck a deal with another archangel and betrayed his place of rest. Instead, they had protected him; more than that, they had protected his heart.

The young children playing in the New Jersey park looked up with open mouths as he flew over them. Their awe turned into screams of delight as he landed on the gra.s.sy verge that surrounded the playground equipment. He watched as mothers, and a few fathers, tried to contain their children"s excitement, afraid of giving offense to an archangel. Fear whispered in their eyes and he knew it would always be so. To rule, he could not appear weak.

Small hands touched his wing. He glanced down to see a tiny child with tightly curled black hair and skin that spoke of distant lands of sunshine and warmth. As he bent to lift the child in his arms, he heard a woman"s cry of panic. But the child looked at him with innocent eyes. "Angel," he said.

"Yes." Raphael felt the warm beat of the boy"s humanity and it gave him solace. "Where is your mother?"

The boy pointed to a terrified-looking young female. Walking across, Raphael handed over her child. "Your son has courage. He"ll grow up into a strong man."

The woman"s panic disappeared under a wave of burgeoning pride.

As Raphael walked through the children, several others dared pat his wings. And when their tiny, soft hands came away shimmering with angel dust, they laughed in innocent joy. Sara raised an eyebrow when he reached her. "Showing off, Archangel?" Her hands squeezed the handles of the baby carriage in which a small girl-child slept, peaceful, unaware of monsters and blood.

"Uram never walked among humans," he said instead of answering.

She began to push the carriage along a narrow path powdered with the barest layer of snow, the first caress of winter. No one interrupted them, though four intrepid children dared follow a few feet behind-until their parents called them back. In Sara"s carriage, her child raised fisted hands, fighting dream battles. It was fitting, he thought. After all, Zoe Elena bore the name of a warrior.

"Did Dmitri lie?" she asked after several minutes of silence. "Is Ellie dead?"

"No," he said, "Elena lives."

Sara"s hands tightened until her bones pushed white against skin the color of smooth, dark honey. "It doesn"t take this long for the transition from human to vampire. Once you do whatever it is you do, most vamps are up and functioning-well, walking around at least-within a couple of months at most."

Raphael chose his words carefully. "Most vampires don"t start off with broken backs."

Sara nodded jerkily. "Yeah, you"re right. I"m just-I miss her, d.a.m.n it!"

Zoe woke at the sound of her mother"s distress, her forehead beginning to crinkle with angry lines.

"Sleep, little one," Raphael said, "sleep."

The child smiled, her lashes closing to create half-moon crescents against plump cheeks.

"What did you do?" Sara asked, shooting him a suspicious look.

Raphael shook his head. "Nothing. Children have always liked my voice." Once, at the dawn of his existence, he"d guarded the nursery, guarded their most precious treasures. Angelic births were rare, so rare. It was logical, their healers and learned ones said. A race of immortals didn"t need a very high replacement rate. But being immortal didn"t shield one from the need to create a child.

Sara"s face softened. "I can see that. When you spoke to her . . . it was different from how you usually sound."

He shrugged, sensing the world begin to sigh with the coming of night. "Sara, Elena wouldn"t want you worrying."

"Then why the h.e.l.l won"t she even give me a call?" Sara demanded. "We all know something"s wrong! Look, if she"s paralyzed"-she swallowed-"it doesn"t matter to us! Tell her to stop being a prideful b.i.t.c.h and give me a call." A sob caught in her throat but she refused to shed it. Another warrior. Kin to his own.

"She cannot speak to you," he told her. "She sleeps."

Sara"s eyes were wild with grief when she looked at him. "She"s still in a coma?"

"In a sense." He stopped, held her gaze. "Trust me to care for her."

"You"re an archangel," she said, as if that explained everything. "Don"t you dare keep Ellie alive on machines. She"d hate that."

"Do you think I don"t know that?" Stepping back, he flared out his wings. "Trust me."

The Guild Director shook her head. "Not until I see Elena with my own eyes."

"I"m sorry, Sara, but no."

"I"m her best friend, her sister in every sense of the word bar one." She reached down to tuck Zoe"s blanket more firmly before turning her head. "What right do you have to keep her from me?"

"She"s mine, too." He tensed his muscles in readiness for flight. "Take care of yourself and those you call your own, Director. Elena will not be happy if she wakes to find you a worn shadow of yourself."

Then he flew, and the silence was so huge, it crushed him. Wake up, Elena.

Still, she slept.

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