Archangel’s Consort (Guild Hunter #3)(17)
Author: Nalini Singh

Lijuan’s smile faded, her voice echoing with a thousand ghostly whispers. “They say Caliane Slept before, more than once. But when she woke the final time, she found Nadiel.”

“Then I was born.” He thought of his laughing, singing mother, thought, too, of her descent into a madness that had seemed to come out of nowhere. But if she’d been alive for so many millennia … “Do you lie to me, Lijuan?”

“I have no need to lie. I have evolved beyond even Caliane.”

On the surface, that certainly appeared true. Age had never been the arbiter of power among their kind. Raphael had become an archangel at an age unheard of among angelkind. And at just over five hundred years old, Illium was already far stronger than angels ten times his age. But that wasn’t why he’d contacted Lijuan. “Is it my mother who wakes?” he asked, holding that “blind” gaze.

“There is no way to know.” The whispers in her voice sounded almost like screams. “However, the magnitude of the disruption, the strength of the quakes and the storms, says that the one who wakes is the most ancient of Ancients.”

Raphael wondered what it was Lijuan saw with those eyes, if it was worth the sacrifice of a city . . . of what remained of her soul. “If this Ancient wakes without sanity, will you execute him or her?” Not before. Never before. To murder an angel in Sleep was to face automatic execution—no one was immune to that law. Even Lijuan, invulnerable though she might be to death, would find herself shunned by the entire angelic race if she crossed that line. Not something a goddess would enjoy.

Another girlish laugh, this one a giggle that was more disturbing than her appearance. “You disappoint me, Raphael. What need do I have to execute an old one? They can do nothing to me … and perhaps they can teach me secrets I do not yet know.”

It was then Raphael realized that if one monster came to waking life, it might well strengthen another.

The conversation with Jeffrey, coming as it did on top of the painful visit to the morgue, left Elena feeling as if she’d been beaten by stone fists. It was tempting, so tempting, to go home and hide, just pretend that everything would be okay when she came out again.

Except, of course, that was a child’s ploy. Elena hadn’t had the luxury of believing in hopeless dreams since she’d been a scared ten-year-old slipping and falling in a family kitchen turned abattoir. “Do you know where Jason is?” she asked Dmitri when they exited the morgue.

Dmitri pressed the car remote to unlock the flame red Ferrari parked in the employees-only lot. “Tired of your Bluebell already?” A tendril of champagne circled around her senses, cut with something far harder.

Never had she felt that harsh edge in Dmitri’s scent. She pitied the woman he took to his bed today. “Yeah, that’s it. I’m building a harem.”

Opening the door to the Ferrari, Dmitri braced one arm on top. For a moment, his expression turned probing, and she had the feeling he was about to say something important. But then he shook his head, his hair lifting slightly in the dull breeze, and pulled out his cell phone, checked something. “He’s at the Tower.”

Surprised by the straight answer, she fought off the wickedness of champagne to say, “Can you ask if he’d mind meeting me at the house?”

Dmitri made the call. “He’s leaving now,” he said, snapping the phone closed. “Nowhere for you to take off from here.”

Elena looked up. “Hospital building is high enough. I’ll head up to the roof.” Suiting action to words, she made her way back into the building and up. It was an interesting journey. There were only a few hospital staff in the lower corridors, and the ones who did see her seemed to lose the ability to speak.

Deeply bothered by that reaction from the people of a city she considered home, she found her way to the elevator and pushed the button. Because the staff used it to move beds from floor to floor, the cage was plenty big enough for wings. Then the doors opened on the first floor.

Two nurses, chattering to each other, looked up. Froze.

Elena stepped back. “Plenty of room.”

Neither woman said a word as the doors closed on their stunned faces. Variations of the scene were repeated on the next four floors. It was funny … except it felt wrong. This was New York. She needed to belong here—though she knew she would never again fit in the same way.

“Hmph.”

She glanced up at that sound to see that the doors had opened on the fifth floor to reveal an elderly man leaning on a cane. “Going up?”

He nodded and stepped in, making no effort to hide the fact that he was staring at her wings as he used his cane to push the button for his floor. “You’re a new one.”

“Very.” She stretched out her wings for him, the knots in her soul unraveling a little. “What do you think?”

He took his time replying. “Why are you taking the elevator?”

Smart man. “Felt like it.”

He laughed as the doors opened on his floor. “You sure sound like a New Yorker!”

Elena was smiling when the doors closed, something she would’ve never predicted minutes ago as she stood beside Dmitri. When the doors finally opened on the last level, she got out and made her way to the roof with firm steps, no longer feeling as if she’d been pummeled to screaming point.

The flight across the Hudson, assisted as she was by strong winds, went by fast. Jason was waiting for her in the front yard, his wings folded neatly back, his hair in its usual queue. It was the first time she’d seen his tattoo in full light, and the detail and intricacy of it made her suck in a breath.

Damaged by Lijuan’s reborn before Elena woke from her coma, the ink had been redone with such perfection after Jason healed that no one would ever know the difference. All curves and swirling lines, it spoke of the winds of the Pacific and the soaring beauty of the skies at the same time. “Where were you born?” she found herself asking, not expecting an answer.

8

“A small Pacific atoll that no longer exists.” There was nothing in that statement. No pain, no sorrow, no anger. Nothing.

The very lack of emotion was another answer.

Letting Jason’s secrets lie, she said, “I was hoping you could teach me some tricks about flying in daylight without making myself too big a target.”

Jason narrowed his eyes, his attention going to her wings. “There are a few techniques you can use straight away, but for the rest, you’ll need to practice until you can pull yourself high above the cloud layer in a burst of speed.”