Angel’s Blood (Guild Hunter #1)(64)
Author: Nalini Singh

She smiled, realizing she was right-the archangel had lost control. "Hell, no." Twisting in his arms, she wiggled up to look into his face. Her smile faded. "You look . . . different." Nothing she could explain, nothing she could touch. But . . .

His expression grew shadowed. "You’ve made me a little more human."

Flashes of memory. Raphael bleeding out from a gunshot wound. "What does that mean?"

"I don’t know." His kiss was a fever and he was inside her before she knew it, their coupling fast, furious, and utterly magnificent.

Much, much later, as they faced the promise of a new day, she tried to wash off the angel dust, with only marginal success. Her skin continued to shine but it wasn’t as noticeable. And thankfully, the stuff didn’t, in fact, glow in the dark. "If someone tastes this," she said to Raphael as he watched her dress from his relaxed position by the fireplace, "will they want to jump my bones?"

"Yes." Those eyes gleamed. "So don’t let them taste."

She stilled at the menace in his command. "Don’t go around killing people on my account, Raphael."

"You made your choice."

To sleep with an archangel.

"I think the sexual high is starting to wear off," she muttered, pulling on a new pair of cargos in dark khaki, and a black T-shirt. She threw on a black sweater as well. It was early morning and still dark outside, the temperature having dropped along with the rain. "I mean it, Raphael, you go around killing innocent people, I’ll hunt you." She didn’t bother to hide her weapons-including the special gun-from him as she pulled them out of the overnight bag and concealed them on her body.

His face was expressionless as he watched her, his wings backlit by the flames, his magnificent body na**d but for a pair of black pants. "The honeymoon is over?"

She walked across the carpet to stare up into a face she knew she’d see in her dreams the rest of her life. "Nope." Fisting her hands on his na**d chest, she waited for him to lower his head, and then took a kiss. "Here’s a tip-you want to call me your toy, go ahead. Just don’t expect me to be one."

A hand on her nape, a warning grip. "Don’t attempt to manage me, little hunter. I’m not-"

The rest of his words disappeared in a crash of white noise.

Come here, little hunter. Taste.

"Elena." The sharp word pulled her back to the here and now.

"Fine." She cleared her throat. "Glad we sorted that out. The rain’s stopped-"

"What do you see?"

She met his eyes, shook her head. "I’m not ready to tell you." Might never be.

He didn’t threaten to take it from her by force. "It’s still drizzling lightly. That should help keep him in Stupor."

"Yeah." Drawing back, she folded her arms. "I didn’t think about that. They don’t like the cold, do they?" It was a rhetorical question. "Especially after a glut."

"But then again, Uram isn’t a vampire."

She blew out a frustrated breath. "Then what the hell is he? Tell me!"

"He is an Angel of Blood." He walked to the window, but she knew he saw things far more sinister than the predawn gloom. "A true abomination, a thing that should never have existed."

The anger that emanated from him was an almost physical force. "Is he the first?"

"He’s the first archangel to become bloodborn in my memory. But Lijuan says there have been others."

Elena’s mind filled with the images she’d found of the oldest of the archangels. Lijuan was the only one of the Cadre who showed even the first signs of age. It did nothing to detract from her exotic beauty-her face, her bones, her pale, pale eyes. And yet, there was something subtly wrong about Lijuan. As if she didn’t belong in this world anymore.

"The first archangel you know of," she murmured, thinking that through. "What about ordinary angels?"

"Very good, Elena." He didn’t turn from the window, as remote as he’d been on that rooftop what felt like weeks ago. "Those others were easily contained. Most were young males with little of the intellect Uram seems to have retained after his transition."

"How many?" She stared at the back of his head as if she could force him to speak. "One a year?"

He met her eyes in the window’s dusky reflection as she came to stand behind him. "No."

Biting back her frustration, she moved around to lean against the glass so they were face-to-face. "You’re obviously very good at covering the tracks of the bloodborn-humans don’t even have legends about this."

"In most cases, the victims alone learned the truth-and they did so minutes before their deaths."

"That makes me feel extra special." She found herself tracing the delicate gold edging of a feather near his biceps. "Tell me-these bloodborn, is it a madness they’re born with?"

A sweep of sinfully rich lashes against skin she’d kissed not so long ago. "We all carry the potential to become bloodborn."

Startled at the straight answer, she dropped her hand. "What, no warnings about too much knowledge?"

"You already know too much." A smile that hinted at age, at ruthlessness, at things better left unimagined. "It’s good you’ve come to my bed. No one will dare touch my lover."

"Too bad immortals have such fleeting interests." The cold of the glass at her back was beginning to seep into her bones, but she didn’t move. "Since I already know so much, tell me why an angel turns vampire."

His face closed over. "You’re still human."

She barely restrained the urge to kick him. "I’m also a hunter tracking an archangel. You pulled me into this. Give me the tools I need to fight."

"Your job is to find Uram. It’s your ability we need."

We. The Cadre of Ten.

"How am I supposed to do that job if you insist on hobbling me?" It took extreme effort to keep her temper. "The more I know about the target, the better I am at predicting his movements!"

He traced a finger over her cheek. "Do you know why Illium lost his feathers?"

"Because you were in a bad mood?" She blew out a frustrated breath. "Stop trying to change the subject."

"Because," Raphael said, ignoring her order, "he bespoke our darkest truth to a human." The way he said that, the language, made it impossible to ignore his age, his immortality.

Captured despite herself, she asked, "What happened to the mortal?"

"We took her memories." He cupped her cheek. "And Illium was forbidden from speaking to her ever again."