Guild Hunter Book 1 - Chapter 20

Elena went utterly quiet, much as she imagined a small mouse might in front of a very big, very bad cat with large teeth. "Raphael?" she whispered, though she knew that fresh, clean, rainy scent as well as her own. And that was something that made no sense at all-how could he have a scent inside her head?

Go to sleep, Elena. Your thinking is keeping me awake.

She took a deep breath. "How are you-the injury?"

Are you bound?

"Yes." She waited for an answer to her own question.

Good. I wouldn't want you disappearing before we had a chance to talk about your penchant for weaponry.

Then the sense of him was gone from her head. She whispered his name again, but knew he was no longer listening. Her guilt soon morphed into anger. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d-he could've had her released, but he'd left her tied up. Her wrists were sore, her back hurt from the d.a.m.n chair, and-"And he's got a right to be p.i.s.sed." Raphael had terrified her on that ledge tonight, but he hadn't actually harmed her. Meanwhile, she'd shot him. If the man was furious, he had reason. That didn't mean she had to like it.

And there was still the matter of his compelling her to have s.e.x.

Humiliating as it was, she'd told him the truth tonight-if he'd only waited, it was highly likely she'd have crawled all over him voluntarily at the first opportunity.

Her cheeks burned. She was going to have Idiot tattooed on her forehead as soon as she got out of here. From the start she'd told herself to be wary, to never forget that she was nothing but a throwaway source of entertainment for Raphael. Apparently that didn't matter to her hormones.

The archangel made her burn.

The worst thing was, she couldn't blame the fascination on l.u.s.t alone. Raphael was far too intriguing a male for anything that simple. But tonight, tonight he hadn't been right. Or maybe, another part of her whispered, he had been-what if the stranger she'd shot had been the real Raphael . . . the Archangel of New York, a creature capable of torturing another being until that person was nothing but a screaming, destroyed piece of monstrous art.

Raphael's eyes were closed, but he wasn't truly asleep. He was in a semiconscious coma, a condition for which humans or vampires had no equivalent. The angels knew it as anshara , a state of being that could be achieved only by those who had lived longer than half a millennium, and that allowed both reason and deep rest at the same time. Now, the conscious part of him was absorbed in knitting the wound Elena had made with her little gun, while the rest of him slept. A useful state. But not one that could be brought on by choice.

Anshara only came to pa.s.s when an angel had been badly injured. That had happened rarely in the last eight hundred years of Raphael's existence. When he'd been young and inexperienced, he'd damaged himself-or been damaged-a few times.

Images of dancing in the sky before his wings tangled, and he plummeted to earth with the certain understanding that his blood would paint a red carpet across the meadow floor.

Ancient memories. Of the boy he'd been.

Broken arms, broken legs, blood spilling out of a shattered mouth.

And her. Standing over him, crooning. "Shh, my darling. Shh."

Sheer terror racing through his bloodstream, his heart heavy with the knowledge that he was helpless to stop her . . . his mother, his greatest nightmare.

Black haired and blue eyed, she'd been the feminine image from which he'd been cast. But she'd been old by then, so very old, not in appearance but in the mind, in the soul. And unlike Lijuan, she hadn't evolved. She'd . . . devolved.

In the present, he could see his wing knitting together filament by filament but it wasn't enough to keep the memories at bay. During anshara, the mind disgorged things long locked away, covering the soul in a layer of opaqueness no mortal could hope to understand. These were the memories of a hundred different mortal lifetimes. He was old, so old . . . but no, he wasn't ancient. These memories weren't all his. Some were those of his race, the secret repository of all their knowledge, hidden inside the minds of their children.

Caliane's memories rose to the surface.

And he was looking down at his bleeding and broken body from a crouching position, watching his/her hand stroke his hair off his face. "It hurts now but it had to be done."

The boy on the ground couldn't speak, drowning in his own blood.

"You will not die, Raphael. You cannot die. You are immortal." Leaning down to press a cool kiss against the b.l.o.o.d.y ruin of the boy's cheek. "You are the son of two archangels."

The boy's miraculously undamaged eyes filled with betrayal. His father was dead. Immortals could die.

Sadness s.h.i.+fted through Caliane. "He had to die, my love. If he had not, h.e.l.l would have reigned on earth."

The boy's eyes grew darker, more accusing. Caliane sighed, then smiled. "And so must I-that is why you came to kill me, is it not?" Soft, delighted laughter. "You can't kill me, my sweet Raphael. Only another of the Cadre of Ten can destroy an archangel. And they will never find me."

A shocking transition into his own mind, his own memories. Because he had none of Caliane's after that-she'd made the memory transfer as he lay so badly injured he hadn't even been able to crawl for months. Nor had he been able to lift his eyes to watch her take flight. Instead, his last memory of his mother was of the sight of her bare feet stepping lightly across the verdant green of the meadow, a trail of angel dust sparkling in her wake.

"Mother," he tried to say.

"Shh, my darling. Shh." Then a gust of wind blew dirt into his eyes.

When he blinked awake, Caliane was gone.

And he was looking into the face of a vampire.

Blood born

He fed.

His parched bones swelled, filled with life.

But he needed more.

So much more.

This was the ecstasy the others had been trying to keep from him while bloating themselves with power. Now they would pay the price. Blood dripped from his canines as he screamed a challenge that shattered window gla.s.s on every building within a mile radius.

It was time.