Archangel’s Consort (Guild Hunter #3)(25)
Author: Nalini Singh

I’ll watch over you, she promised Zoe silently, though the thought of surviving her best friend was an aching sorrow in her heart. Over you and all who come after you. Sara’s blood.

Having received the message of Aodhan’s arrival, Raphael swept down across the sparkling nightscape of Manhattan to land on the wide Tower balcony outside his office—where the angel stood waiting. Unlike Illium, who even with his remarkable wings and eyes of gold, managed to walk among mortals, Aodhan would never fit easily into this world. He was cut in sparkling ice, his wings so bright as to almost hurt human eyes, his face and his skin seeming to be created from marble overlaid with white-gold.

Michaela, that devourer of men, had once said of Aodhan, “Beautiful—but so very cold, that one. Still, I would like to keep him as I would a precious gem. There is no other like Aodhan in the world.”

But Michaela saw only the surface.

Raphael walked to the edge of the space that had no railing, running his eyes over his city. “What did you discover?”

Aodhan tightened his wings to avoid any contact as he came to stand on Raphael’s left. “I cannot understand,” he said instead of answering, “how you can live surrounded by so many lives.” A stark curiosity underlay his every word.

“Many cannot understand your preference for solitude.” He watched as a number of angels came in for landings on lower balconies, their wings silhouetted against the night sky. “You surprise me with this visit, Aodhan.” The angel was one of Raphael’s Seven for a reason, but he was also damaged.

“It is . . . difficult.” Aodhan’s expression was haunted in a way that not many would’ve understood. “But your hunter … She is so weak, and yet she fought the reborn with unflinching courage.”

“Elena will find it amusing that she is an inspiration.” Yet she would also understand what it meant for Aodhan to take this step, his hunter with her mortal heart.

Aodhan was silent for another long moment. “East,” he said at last. “Naasir and I both believe the Ancient Sleeps in the Far East.”

With Galen in charge at the Refuge, Raphael had set Aodhan and Naasir the task of searching for clues as to the location of the Sleeper who might well be his mother. However, he hadn’t expected any kind of an answer so soon. “Why?”

“Jessamy tells me that when an Ancient awakens, it is not a process of a few days or even weeks. It can take up to a year.” His crystalline eyes, fractured outward from the pupil, reflected a thousand shards of light as he spoke. “Yet not one of the Cadre sensed this.”

Raphael understood at once. “Because the region falls in Lijuan’s shadow.” Any fluctuations in power in that area had been attributed to Lijuan’s evolution. “Keep searching.” The temptation to join the hunt was strong, but after having been absent from his Tower for so long, he couldn’t leave it for what might turn out to be weeks—too many covetous eyes were trained on his domain.

Aodhan bent his head. “Sire.”

As the angel began to expand his wings in preparation for flight, Raphael stopped him with a single touch on the shoulder. Aodhan froze.

“Talk to Sam.” Knowing the demons that tormented the angel, Raphael broke the contact. “Elena gave him a dagger. Legend says the ruby in the dagger was a gift from a sleeping dragon. It may be nothing—”

“But it may denote knowledge of an Ancient.” Aodhan’s wings glittered in a stray shaft of moonlight as he hesitated. “Sire, I would come to this city again.”

“Are you certain?”

“I have acted the coward for centuries. No more.”

Raphael had been there when Aodhan was found, had carried the other angel in his arms the hours it took to reach the Medica and Keir. “You are no coward, Aodhan. You are one of my Seven.”

Aodhan glanced back toward the office, in the direction of the wide shelves of deep ebony that lined one wall. “Why do you not display one of my feathers? My wings are as unusual as Bluebell’s.”

Raphael raised an eyebrow. “Illium is a performer.” While Aodhan, like Jason, preferred the shadows.

As he watched, Aodhan pulled out a perfect, glittering feather and walked inside to place it beside the heavenly blue that was Illium’s. Raphael inclined his head when the angel returned. “After this task is done, you will move here.” Manhattan was still reeling from Elena’s return—Aodhan’s presence might just bring the city to a standstill. But that was a problem for another day. “If you and Naasir are able to narrow the search area to a specific locality, call and wait for me. Do not approach.”

“If it is her . . . you believe she will kill.”

“My mother is the specter in the dark, Aodhan, the nightmare that whispers in the hindbrain.” And he was her son … the son of two archangels gone insane.

11

It was after Zoe had been put to bed, and the adults had finished dinner that Elena opened the box Deacon had brought down and saw the weapon he’d created for a hunter with wings.

“Ooooh.” Delirious with pleasure, she picked up what seemed to be a modified crossbow, so small and light that—“It’s meant to be strapped to my leg?”

“Yeah.” Deacon grabbed the harness and got her to stand so he could buckle it around her thigh. “I decided it would be problematic on the shoulder—your wings would be too close, too easy to damage.”

Nodding in agreement, Elena checked the weapon. “Balance shouldn’t be an issue in flight, given its weight. But what the heck is this?” She pulled out a small, circular blade, its serrated edges razor-sharp and felt her eyes widen. “It shoots these things? Like the weapon you’ve got?” The weapon she’d lusted after since the day she’d first seen it, in the middle of a junkyard crawling with vampires.

“Yep. It’s also designed so you can use it one-handed if required.” He tightened the harness. “Slot it in.”

Flipping the safety, Elena did so, then took a few steps. “Light, portable.”

“He tested it on me,” Sara said from where she was curled up on the couch, bowl of strawberry ice cream in hand. “Since I’m shorter and not as strong, I thought you’d have no problem.”

Elena stroked the weapon, felt her hunter instincts sigh. “It’s perfect. Deacon, come here.”

When he stepped close, she reached up and smacked a kiss on his beautiful lips. “You’re wonderful.”