Angel's Blood Angel's Blood Chapter 39 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 pass. "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 Titus 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 landlust know no end?" Michaela's eyes flashed. "And I suppose you have no interest in it?" So it began, the rounds of propositions and rebuttals, 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 Titus, 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 lust 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 landlust. 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 glass, 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 associated 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 title 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."...
Angel's Blood Angel's Blood Chapter 40 Wake up, Elena. Elena frowned, batting away the sound. Every time she tried to sleep, he told her to wake. Dratted man. Didn't he know she needed to rest? Elena, Sara has set her hunters on me. As if he had anything to worry about from even the toughest vampire hunter. She's threatening to tell the media I'm doing unnatural things with your body. A smile in her mind, in her soul. The archangel had a sense of humor. Who knew? Ellie? He never called her Ellie, she thought, yawning. The first thing she saw when she blinked open her eyes was blue. Endless, fathomless, brilliant blue. Raphael's eyes. And that quickly, she remembered. The blood, the pain, the shattered bones. "Damn it, Raphael. If I have to drink blood, I'm going to suck your gorgeous body dry." Her voice was husky, her anger absolute. The archangel smiled and it held such fierce joy that she wanted to grab on to him and never let go. "You're very welcome to suck any part of my body you wish." She wouldn't laugh, wouldn't surrender to the hunger she saw in those immortal eyes. "I told you I didn't want to be a vampire." He fed her chips of ice, cooling her parched throat. "Are you not at least a little glad to be alive?" She was a lot glad. Being with Raphael . . . oh, well, how bad could blood taste? But-"I'm not doing any vampire lackey stuff." "Fine." "I'm only drinking your blood." That made his smile widen. "Fine." "That means you're stuck with me." She jutted out her chin. "Try to throw me off for some bimbo and we'll see who's immortal." "Fine." "I expect-" That was when she felt the weird lumps under her back. "Whoever made this bed did a shit job. It's all lumpy." Blue, blue eyes laughed at her. "Really?" "Hey, it's not fun-" Her words ended on a choked breath as she turned her head and saw what she was lying on. Wings. Such beautiful wings. A rich, evocative black that swept gracefully outward in subtle increments of indigo, deepest blue, and dawn until the primaries were a vivid, shimmering white gold. Midnight wings. Incredible wings. And she was squashing them. "Oh, my God! I'm crushing an angel. Let me up!" Raphael helped her rise when she held out her hand. The tube stuck into her arm hindered her movement. "What?" "To keep you alive." "How long?" she asked, shifting to look over her shoulder. His answer was lost in the rush of white noise that crashed across her brain. Because she hadn't been squashing anyone . . . but herself. "I have wings." "A warrior's wings." He brushed his finger over one edge and the sensation rocketed through her entire body. "Wings like blades." "Oh," she said when she could speak again, "I guess I really am dead then." That made sense. She'd always wanted wings and now she had them. Ergo, she was dead and in heaven. She turned. "You look just like Raphael." He smelled of the sea, a clean, fresh bite that made her body sing. He kissed her. And he tasted far too real, far too earthy, to be a figment of her imagination. When he drew back, she was stunned to see the emotion in his eyes. It was shocking enough to make her forget the magic of the wings at her back. "Raphael?" That blue glittered fever bright, the skin pulled taut over his cheekbones. "I'm very angry at you, Elena." "So what else is new?" she quipped, but found herself stroking the arch of his wing. "I am immortal and you tried to save my life by endangering your own?" "Stupid, huh?" Leaning close, she rubbed her nose over his. Stress-touches, she thought stupidly, they were called stress-touches, the little things that lovers did to anchor each other, the things that were their secret language. Her and Raphael's language had barely begun, but it held a promise so raw, so rich, her heart twisted inside her chest, almost afraid of the fury of it. "I couldn't let you be hurt. You belong to me." Such an arrogant thing to say to an archangel. He closed his eyes, dropping his forehead against hers. "You'll be the death of me, Elena." She smiled. "You need a little excitement in that boring old life of yours." Those eyes opened, blinding in their intensity. "Yes. So you will not die. I've made certain of it." She was half convinced she'd imagined the wings, but the beautiful sweep of midnight hadn't disappeared when she checked out of the corner of her eye. "How the hell did you attach prosthetic wings to my back in the course of a . . ." She paused. "Okay, no soreness from the wounds so, what, it's been a week? No, longer." She frowned, trying to reorder splintered pieces of memory. "I had broken bones . . . my back?" The archangel smiled again, his forehead still touching hers, his wings arching over to shadow them in their own private world. "The wings aren't prosthetic and you've been asleep for a year." Elena swallowed. Blinked. Tried to breathe. "Angels Make vampires, not other angels." "There is one-how would you put it-loophole." "Loophole? More like a giant cavern if I have wings." She held on to him, the only solid thing in a shifting universe. "No, it is the tiniest of holes, barely a pinprick. You're the first angel to have been Made in all the years of my existence." "Lucky me," she whispered, brushing her fingers along his nape and drinking in his sigh of pleasure. This moment, it felt frozen out of time. Here, she was simply a woman, and he was simply a man. But like all moments, it had to pass. "What are the requirements?" "Nothing we've ever been able to manipulate, though angels have tried for millennia." Those incredible, unearthly eyes held her prisoner. "The one and only time an archangel can Make another angel is when our bodies produce a substance known as ambrosia." A snapshot of memory-the golden, melting heat of his kiss, the delicate sweetness, the lush sensuality, the taste that was an erotic sensation and whispered caress in one. "The mythical food of the gods?" "Every myth holds a grain of truth." She couldn't help it, she kissed him again. And the taste of him rushed over her in a tumultuous wave. He was the one who broke the kiss. You were very badly injured, Elena. The aches inside her were a testament to that truth. That didn't mean she had to like it. "Tell me about ambrosia then." A bad-tempered command. "Ambrosia," he said against her mouth, "is produced instinctively at a single point in an archangel's life." Images of his shredded wings, the living burn of angelfire. "Near death?" She touched him, checking, exploring, convincing herself he was alive. "We've all been near death more than once." He shook his head. "No one has ever been able to pinpoint the trigger." "But?" "But it is legend that ambrosia only rises when-" She held her breath. "-an archangel loves true." The world stopped. The air particles seemed to still above her, the molecules suspended as she stared at the magnificence of the man who held her in his arms. "Maybe I was just biologically compatible." It came out a ragged whisper. "Perhaps." The possession of lips against her neck. "We have eternity to discover the truth. And in that eternity, you will be mine." She thrust her hands into his hair, feeling heat spread through her body in a rolling wave. But she couldn't surrender. Not until they got one thing straight. "Fine-so long as you don't think that gives you the right to rule my life." He came over her as she lay back down. "Why not?" She blinked at the cool arrogance of that question, and realized that her existence had just become a whole lot more interesting. Forget about hunting an archangel, she was about to learn how to dance with one without losing herself in the process. Exhilaration spiked through her bloodstream. "This is going to be some ride, Archangel."
Angel's Blood Angel's Blood Epilogue Elena had had visions of flying in through Sara's window and startling the heck out of her best friend, but that was before she realized that while she might be awake, actual movement was a whole other story. Which was why she was still in bed when a blindfolded Sara was shown into her room at the Refuge. Raphael had moved her to the angelic stronghold soon after his own recovery, but had managed to keep her hidden. Only the Seven and trusted healing and medical personnel knew about her. However, he hadn't even tried to argue when she asked to see Sara. Her friend folded her arms and gritted her teeth as she was led across the carpet by Dmitri, who seemed to take perverse pleasure in wrapping his scent around Elena while she was too weak to defend herself. To everyone's surprise, she'd come through the transformation with both her hunter abilities and weaknesses intact. She and Raphael were continuing to "discuss" her status as Guild Hunter. The lush caress of liquid satin across her skin, tempting and inviting. Rubbing her arms, Elena scowled at Dmitri and was about to speak when Sara blew out a breath. "I don't know what your boss thinks he's going to achieve by abducting me. We're not going to end the strike." Strike? That explained Raphael's cheery mood this morning. If the hunters were refusing to do their job, vampires had to be reneging on their Contracts left, right, and center. "Now my head's really swollen." Sara froze, then scrabbled to pull off her blindfold as Dmitri slipped out of the room, closing the door behind himself-but not before encasing Elena in another decadent wave of scent. She was still getting her breath back when Sara's blindfold dropped to the floor. Her friend's eyes went wide. Then she turned sheet white under the exotic beauty of her skin. "Christ, Sara, don't faint!" Elena yelled, reaching out as if to catch her. Sara braced her weight against a chair. "I'm hallucinating. Or that fish they fed me on the plane was laced with LSD." "Sara, if you don't come and hug me, I'll shoot you." That gun Sara had put under her pillow had saved not only her own life, but Raphael's as well. "It's me, you idiot!" Sara swallowed, then rushed to the bed. Their arms wrapped around each other so tight that breathing became optional. Elena didn't care. Blubbering, they started to talk at the same time, laughing and crying. "Thought you were-" "-Raphael said-" "I said, no way in hell-" "Damn straight-" "-and Ransom was ready to come up-" "-woke up and I had wings!" They both stopped, stared at each other, giggled, then drew back. "Holy crap, you have wings." Sara took the cup of coffee on Elena's bedside table and chugged it. "Is that what I think it is?" Destiny's Rose glittered from its position on her bedside table. "Raphael's being stubborn." Choking, Sara put down the empty coffee cup and thumped her fist on her chest a few times before saying, "Now, explain to me why you have wings." "I don't know if I can. I'm learning as I go here-but what the heck is this about a strike?" Sara grinned. "Got me here, didn't it?" Her smirk was very satisfied. "They've been keeping you from us, Ellie, telling us you were alive but nothing more. We thought you'd been paralyzed-" Her breath hitched and suddenly her hurt was a living, breathing entity between them. "Couldn't you have called me, Ellie? A year. Didn't you trust me?" Elena squeezed her friend's hands. "I woke up exactly twenty-four hours ago. The first person I asked to see was you. But don't tell Ransom, or he'll get jealous." "You were in a coma for a year?" Sara's mouth dropped open. "How come you're mobile? Are you? Your muscles-" "Yes," she said before Sara's fears could take root all over again. "I don't know. They said something about healers and exercise but I'm sorta stuck on the wings." Sara shook her head, reached out to touch, then snapped back her hand. "Angels don't like it when-" Elena grabbed her friend's hand, put it on the sleek feathers that were her own. "I'm still me." Sara's hand whispered over her wing, and though the sensation was nothing like when Raphael touched her, it was a kind of intimacy-the kind between friends. "Ransom still with Nyree?" Sara nodded, laughter in her eyes as she dropped her hand back down to the sheets. "I don't think he can believe it himself. So, you have wings." "Yes." "Angels don't Make other angels." "Then what am I? Chopped liver?" A disturbing tendril of thought wormed its way into her brain. She'd said she was still the same, but was she really? Could she share everything with Sara now when to do so might be to expose the secrets of an entire race? Later, she told herself, she'd think about that later. "So, do you like my wings? Aren't they the most exquisite things you've ever seen?" Sara started laughing. "Vanity, thy name is Elena." "Thank you very much," she said on a wave of determination. Losing Sara's friendship wasn't an option. And if she had to fight an archangel to keep it, so be it. "Now, tell me all the goss." Outside, on the jagged rocks that guarded the Refuge, Raphael stood shoulder to shoulder with Dmitri. "A human sits in the Refuge," he said, his hair whipped back by the wind. "It breaks one of our deepest taboos." "She has no idea of the location-you can wipe her mind to ensure she can't betray what little she does know." Practical words from the leader of his Seven. "Yes." But he wouldn't and that was the change that was his. "Or I could trust Elena's word on Sara's sense of honor." Dmitri nodded, and when he next spoke, his tone was quiet. "Elena will change us." "She already has." As wild and relentless as these fierce mountain winds, his hunter would never simply accept the way of things. And for a race of immortals, that might be the rudest of awakenings. Anticipation hummed in his blood. "Jason's returned," Dmitri said, pulling him back to the present. "When?" "Two days ago. Some of Lijuan's reborn managed to injure him, but he'll recover within the week." Raphael nodded, knowing that more changes were afoot than the Making of an angel. "So it begins."
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