Archangel's Kiss

He placed it on the rock, face up. "His name was Aloysius. Four hundred and ten years old."

It was somehow harder, when you had a name. Taking a deep breath, she began to separate the scents. There were so many. "A lot of angels have been down here." And it looked as if her developing angel-sense was functioning just fine today.

"There was hope he might be able to be revived until his brain was discovered to be missing."

She stared at Raphael across the body that was nothing but the emptiest of shells. He had told her, but - "The victim honestly could've survived the rest of it?"

"Immortality isn't always pretty." An answer that left no room for ambiguity. "He was most likely conscious while his organs were being removed."

Swallowing, she shook her head. "I'm too young for that, right? If someone decides to fillet me, I'll lose consciousness?"

"Yes."

"Good." She wasn't the giving up kind, but neither did she want to know what it did to a person to survive this kind of torture. "Given the blood splatter, he was dropped from a fairly impressive height." She was trying not to think too hard about what might be sticking to the soles of her shoes - the M.E. would have had her behind bars for compromising a scene like this, but she salved her conscience with the fact that the scene was already so compromised it was worthless to anyone but a hunter-born.

"However," she continued, "it wasn't so high that it tore his body completely apart - do you have any way of knowing if he had his organs at that stage?" It was impossible to tell in all the gore.

"Yes." Raphael pointed to the open chest cavity. "Some of them left pieces behind." He reached in and picked up what appeared to be a hard pink stone, ragged at the edges. The stone gleamed a deep rose quartz in the sunlight. "A segment of his liver."

Goose bumps broke out over her skin. "Are you sure he can't feel that?"

"He's dead. What his body is doing, it's akin to a chicken running around after its head has been cut off."

"A nerve response." It made sense that it took longer for an older immortal to fade.

Returning the stone to the chest cavity, Raphael pointed at the head. "Parts of the brain were also found scattered on the rocks."

She was going to throw away these shoes the instant she got home. "That hard an impact would've turned his organs pretty much into soup," she said. "Wouldn't that make it more difficult to remove them?"

"Not if the 'surgeon' waited for him to heal enough for the organs to become viable again."

She'd been handling the gore fine, but ice filled her veins at the cold-blooded nature of the kill. "Jesus."

"Use your senses, hunter." It was a gentle reminder. "The wind is holding but it can change without warning."

Shaking off her horror, she began to filter out the scents she already knew - separating the good guys from the bad could come later. She was midway through the process when her angel-sense cut out without warning, leaving a single clean thread behind. "A vampire was here."

"Not with the rescue team," Raphael said, his expression intent.

"Means he was here before." Trying not to gag on the sickly sweet smell of the body in front of her - a body that didn't smell like death should - she arrowed her senses to that vampiric thread.

Cedar painted with ice, an unusual scent, full of elegance.

Her eyes snapped open. "Riker. Riker was here."

Raphael found Michaela hours later, high in the night sky above her home, her body clad in a catsuit that turned her into a sleek, dangerous predator. There was no hint of the insanity Elena and Galen had both seen in her, her body as clean and as lushly graceful as always.

"Raphael," she said, coming to a vertical hover beside him. "Are you here to warn me off your hunter again?"

Elena, Raphael thought, might see in Michaela's past a hurt that had turned her bitter, but Raphael had known the young angel she'd been, her ambition a pyre on which she'd sacrifice anything. "You walked into the Medica with the intent to do harm."

A smile coated with the purest malice. "There was no intent until your pet hunter and her friends got in my way."

"You injured several healers on your way in. And you waited until after you knew Elena was inside."

"Does it not disgust you?" she whispered, her voice sliding from poison to purring sensuality in the blink of an eye. "That she's so weak?"

"Power without conscience rots the soul," he told her, watching her eyes harden even as her lips remained uptilted in a smile that promised the darkest of sins, the most excruciating of pleasures. He thought of Uram, falling into the trap of that smile, the selfish beauty of that mind - but then, the dead archangel had chosen his path long before Michaela was even born. "Why did you kill Aloysius?"

"Clever, Raphael." A small bow of her head, genuine delight in her eyes. "He was one of mine, became mine when I took over part of Uram's territory."

"What did he do to merit such an execution?" As the archangel who ruled his territory, Michaela had had the right to put Aloysius to death, but to have that death come at the hands of one of the Made - a vampire who'd likely been allowed to feed from the dying angel - was a ritual humiliation.

Michaela's green eyes turned into narrow slits of light. "He helped abduct Sam."

Any sympathy Raphael might've felt for Aloysius died a quick and permanent death.

"Did you take his memories?"

"Useless." She slashed out a hand. "He was a bit player, a gullible sheep in this faceless would-be archangel's army."

"Were you able to discover anything that may lead to the identity of the one we seek?"

"No. Aloysius was but a pawn."

Raphael saw the truth in the small smile that flirted with her lips. It was cold, merciless, satisfied. "You lost your temper, killed him before taking all his memories."

"He laughed while he put Sam in that box." A thin line of red circled her irises. "I saw it when I looked into his mind."

"Is that when you dropped him?"

"Yes." A shrug. "I'd already broken his wings. Riker took care of the rest."

Raphael reined in his frustration. "How did you discover his involvement?"

"He was afraid his master had come to see him as expendable, couldn't keep from spilling his fears to his lover." A slow smile, that of a snake in the grass. "And loyalty is such a rare commodity when riches are involved."

Elena felt almost surreally calm as she stepped onto the plane the next day. They were flying to Beijing two days ahead of the ball itself, would arrive one day before the other archangels. "Venom?" she asked.

"He's safe." Raphael told her as they took flight. "I've moved all three - Sam, Noel, and Venom - to another location. Galen has gone with them."

"Good." She gripped the armrests. "I feel for Michaela, I do." Losing a child . . . she couldn't imagine the pain.

Her father had lost two daughters.

Because of Elena.

Swallowing the pain-lashed guilt that sat like a stone on her chest, she turned to look at the archangel she called her own. "But she was out of it at the hospital. All it would've taken was one conversation with you and there would've been no violence."

"You're expecting her to act human, Elena." An answer laced with cold. "Archangels aren't used to asking permission for anything."

She was no longer the same woman who'd woken from the coma, their relationship a complete mystery. She knew pieces of him now. Enough to ask, "What's wrong?"

Raphael glanced at her with eyes that had gone that metallic shade that never augured anything good. "What Michaela did to Aloysius? I wouldn't have been that merciful."

Her palms grew damp. "You call that mercy?"

"He died quickly." Frost in that gaze, a chill immortal winter. "I would've kept him alive for days while I tore his mind apart."

She blew out an unsteady breath. "Why are you telling me?"

You need to know who I am.

Elena thought of that, gave him her answer. "If Slater Patalis was standing in front of me, I'd do the same."

Raphael ran the back of his hand over her cheek. "No, Elena. I think your anger is a far hotter flame."

Reaching up, she tangled their fingers together. "I'll try to stop you if it ever comes to that."

"Why? Do you pity those who'd harm the innocent?"

"No." She brought their clasped hands to her lips. "I care about you."

Raphael felt the cold in him shift, begin to heat from within. "So you'll try to save me."

"I think it'll be mutual." A voice husky with shadowed memories. She'd woken on a scream again today, her mind locked inside a horror almost two decades in the past.

Mirroring her kiss, he raised her hand to his mouth. "We'll save each other."

There were no more words until his hunter shook her head. "What if this angel, the one who wants to become an archangel, tries something while we're gone?"

"Nazarach, Dahariel, and Anoushka have all been invited to the ball, as have others of comparable power."

Elena grew still. "That's when they'll make their move, isn't it? It'll be the perfect stage, especially with the Cadre meeting ahead of the ball."

"Yes." He looked at her, the pulse in her neck a fluttering, fragile thing. "Do not let them near. You remain the target who'll get this aspirant the most attention."

"Don't worry. They're not exactly people I want to spend time with." A shiver that he knew had nothing to do with the threat on her life even before she spoke. "Lijuan . . .

have you heard anything?"

"She has brought her reborn to the Forbidden City. We will see the dead walk."

Chapter 32

The Forbidden City took Elena's breath away. An intricate maze of delicate buildings and hidden pathways, the place really was a city within a city. And it was a city full of wonder - white marble bridges with dragons sleeping on the end-posts; paved courtyards replete with trees, each strung with twinkling silk lanterns in lieu of fruit; courtiers clothed in a myriad of jewel tones. It was like something out of a dream.

"Butterflies," she whispered, standing on the private balcony of the upper-level residence that was their own. "They remind me of butterflies."

Raphael's presence was a solid warmth behind her, his hands braced on the railing on either side of her. She savored the heat of him, feeling his chest vibrate against her wings as he spoke. "Neha and some of the others keep a court to a certain extent, but Lijuan's is the most extensive."

"She's truly a queen." Fans unfurled as she watched, coquettish smiles exchanged over their illusionary borders. All the women wore ankle-length dresses, most in styles that whispered of elegance rather than sex. "Do you think they know of the reborn?"

"Yes." His hands closed over her own, his voice an intimate darkness in her ear. "Jason's men tell him Lijuan has begun to bring some of her reborn to the inner court as entertainment."