Archangel’s Enigma (Guild Hunter #8)(46)
Author: Nalini Singh

Behind him, he could hear Andromeda breathing hard. She leaned against him. “Are they all dead?”

He took care of the one he’d disemboweled and thought hard about the words he’d been taught as a child after Raphael carried him to the Refuge. “Yes.” It came out a growl so deep, he knew he didn’t sound human.

Shifting to face Andromeda, he gripped her jaw with a clawed and bloody hand. He turned her head—gently—to one side then the other before checking her neck and body. Her wings were bloodied, but it was from spray. “You’re not hurt,” he got out just as part of him realized he’d probably scared her.

Women didn’t like his claws, didn’t like the way his eyes glowed after a hunt.

Andromeda pushed off his hand and grabbed his jaw. He was so surprised he let her pull him forward and turn his face this way and that. Releasing him, she walked around to his back and pushed up his T-shirt, then came around to do the same to the blood-soaked front.

“You’re not hurt either.” She looked down at his feet. “Did you get cut or bitten there?”

He snorted at the ridiculousness of her question. Dropping her hand from his T-shirt, she scowled at him. “Are those things all dead or do you think we’ll run into more?”

Thinking about it, about words and how they worked, he said, “They would’ve come toward the scent of blood.”

“Good.” She knelt down to look at Suyin. “Can you carry her the whole way?”

“Yes.” It would slow them down, but he didn’t leave helpless people behind to be eaten by monsters or imprisoned by Lijuan.

*   *   *

Andromeda rose to her feet as Naasir bent to pick Suyin up with an effortlessness that betrayed his strength. He was splattered with blood, his silver hair streaked with it. She wanted to scrub it all away; Naasir was as real and honest as the reborn were unnatural abominations.

At least the rain washed off the worst of it as they walked.

“Why did you decide to study the Sleeping archangels?” Naasir asked some time later.

She noted that his voice was less growly now—she liked it either way. The only voice she didn’t like was the cold, cultured tone he’d used when she’d first made him angry. “I’m just fascinated by the idea of all these powerful beings resting in hidden places on and in the earth.”

“How many?”

“No one knows. The Ancestors are stories we tell children, but there are more credible legends of Ancients who’ve Slept so long that they, too, have become myth.” She bit her lip and admitted her secret wish. “Jessamy says Alexander could sometimes be coaxed to speak of times of myth. They are his memories. With him and Caliane both in the world, we could find out so much.”

“Caliane speaks to you?”

“No—to Jessamy. Even then it’s not often, but Jessamy visited her soon after you left Amanat; she said Caliane was most gracious and generous.” Andromeda knew the Historian, her wing twisted and unable to take her aloft, remained highly conscious of not being glimpsed by ordinary mortals, for angelkind could not be seen to be weak in such a way, but that wasn’t an issue in Amanat.

When Jessamy wanted to view things in more populated environs, she skimmed the landscape in a light plane or in a helicopter modified to fit angelic wings while hiding the occupants from view. Usually the occupant was a single slender angel. Jessamy had quietly learned to operate both those vehicles.

Andromeda saw in Jessamy’s determination a woman who was her hero. The other angel had survived thousands of years before inventors gave her a way to take to the skies on her own. Andromeda could survive five hundred years in a court devoid of hope.

“According to Caliane,” she said, setting aside the inevitable for this night, “counting Alexander, there are seven archangels who Sleep.”

“What if they all wake up at once?”

“It would be catastrophic.” Archangels couldn’t be in close proximity for long periods without a dangerous rise in their aggression. Ten was the perfect number spread out across the world. One or two more could be accommodated, but after that . . . “We’d end up with back-to-back wars until the balance was restored.”

“Natural law,” Naasir said bluntly. “Nature will always seek to maintain balance.”

“Yes.” She checked on Suyin again, shook her head when Naasir looked at her. “No improvement.”

Face set in harsh lines, Naasir kept on walking.

“I don’t only study Sleeping archangels,” Andromeda said in an effort to keep their minds off the bleak situation. “If you promise not to laugh, I’ll tell you about my other studies.”