Archangel’s Enigma (Guild Hunter #8)(124)
Author: Nalini Singh

“No!” he yelled back. It was as if he had a homing beacon inside him, leading him to the place where he’d been created. “Another hour!”

Jason rose up above the clouds again, no doubt escaping the light snow that was irritating Naasir. Andromeda had better pet him a great deal for this—he’d gone into snow for her.

Running on, his mind full of memories of the ways she played with him, he came to a stop almost exactly an hour later. Jason landed beside him. “There’s nothing here. It looks just like any other part of the landscape.”

“There was a house here once,” Naasir told the other man. “A stronghold. The angel who lived in it liked the cold because it stopped his experiments going far if they escaped. Inside his stronghold, though, it was warm—because children and small animals die when it’s too cold.”

Jason’s dark eyes held his, and in them, Naasir saw dawning realization. “Raphael buried it, didn’t he?”

“No. Alexander did.” While on the cusp, Raphael hadn’t yet become an archangel; he’d been able to incapacitate Osiris, but he couldn’t bury this place of horror. “Raphael told me Alexander sank it into the snow, but he left it whole.” Naasir began to walk around. “Here.” He scuffed his foot over a spot. “There is a door here. If I can get inside, I can get what I need.”

“Step back.”

Naasir scowled but did as asked. “I was going to dig down.” His claws were very strong but he’d also brought sharp digging tools. “You can help me. It’s far down.” So far that no one would ever accidentally discover the buried stronghold in this landscape inhospitable to life.

“Or,” Jason said, “I could do this.” Black lightning came from the fingers of one hand.

Naasir had seen Jason’s lightning before—it created shadows that could encompass anything within their depths, suffocating and killing if Jason wished. Today, he saw that Jason’s lightning could also act like what it seemed.

The heat of it sizzled through the snow and ice as if it was nothing. It took Jason time only because he was being careful not to accidentally damage what lay beneath, but he drilled a tunnel to an incredible depth within the next ten minutes.

“Wait,” Naasir said and took off his pack. “I’m going to go down, see if it’s far enough.” As he spoke, he took a small package from the pack and put it in a pocket of his snow jacket.

“If it is,” Jason said, his eyes on the hole, “come back up enough to signal me so I know you haven’t been buried in snow down there.”

Making the promise, Naasir didn’t jump down into the hole but climbed down, using his claws to get a good grip. If Jason had drilled too far, he would feel the door as he went down. As it was, it was still a few feet below, but he decided to dig that out with his hands, pressing the extra snow to the sides of Jason’s tunnel.

Then he climbed back up so he could yell to Jason. “Throw down the ax in my pack! I need to hack through the ice in front of the door.”

Finding the ax, Jason told him to hug the wall before the black-winged angel dropped the tool into the snow tunnel.

Naasir picked it up and began to hack away the snow and ice that blocked him from the door on the other side. It took time, sweat rolling down his back under the layers of warm clothing. Even then, the door wouldn’t open, it was frozen so hard. He used the ax again to chip at the ice, but he was careful not to destroy the seal.

When he left, he’d close it up again.

Because the reason Alexander had submerged rather than destroy this place was because it was a burial ground. Naasir’s brethren, who he’d never met in life, wouldn’t mind him coming in to take something. He was one of them. But no one else was welcome here, and he would permit no one to defile it.

A black feather drifted down.

Realizing Jason had to be growing concerned, he climbed back up so he could wave at the spymaster. Then he dropped down once more and, after a little more careful chipping, twisted the handle of the door and pushed as hard as he could. A creaking groan sounded. He slammed his shoulder against the door. Once, twice . . . and he was falling into the frigid place where he’d been born and where so many had died.

“It’s only Naasir,” he said to the ones who slept here in the stone coffins Osiris had created one by one around a small home, until they became the walls and the floor of a large stronghold. Each square block held a twisted child who was two, or broken bodies who were still one.

“I’ve come for a book,” he said, able to sense them all around, curious and excited that he’d come. “It’s red with a golden design on the front, and it has a lock stamped with the shape of a griffin. That’s a kind of half bird, half lion.” His breath frosted the air as he spoke, his claws having sliced out of his boots to grip at the ice that covered all surfaces.