Archangel’s Shadows (Guild Hunter #7)(28)
Author: Nalini Singh

Ashwini sat there for another minute and she didn’t even know why until she saw the silhouette change, mother and child joined by a masculine form, stocky and with arms that went around them both. Wrenching her eyes away from a scene that would never be a part of her own life, she drove off.

It was stupid to do this, she knew that. Once she was outside Manhattan, the drive would take eighty minutes or more there, the same back, and she planned to wake early to attend the autopsy. But a night without sleep wouldn’t kill her, and her gut pulsed with the remorseless tug she felt only during the worst episodes, when neither medication nor therapy would fight the monsters. Oddly, Ashwini’s voice, reading from a piece of classic literature, had proven the best panacea when things began to go downhill . . . as was happening more and more frequently.

She reached her destination just under an hour and a half later, was welcomed by a familiar nurse, his red hair combed in a simple style. All the senior staff knew Ashwini had permission to visit at any time.

Carl’s face made it clear her instincts hadn’t let her down. “How bad?” she asked.

“Most severe end of the scale.”

“Did anyone unauthorized go into the room?”

Shaking his head, Carl said, “I double-checked. The episodes are simply getting worse, Ash.”

It was a fact she’d admitted to herself three months back. “Have you told Arvi?” Unlike her, he refused to face the truth even a blind man could see.

“Yes. He’s here, but you know your voice is the only one that seems to help.” Blue eyes sad against the freckled paleness of his skin, he spread his hands, palms out. “I would’ve called you, but it was so late and with your injury . . .”

“It’s all right, Carl.” Leaving the nurse at his station, she strode down the thick gray carpet of the hallway toward the corner suite, the walls around her hung with elegant pieces of art, and the arched window at the end reaching the floor. It allowed sunlight to pour in during the day while showcasing the hedge maze that was part of the extensive gardens.

Tonight it revealed only stygian darkness.

The book was waiting for her on the little hallway table beside the closed door, the soundproofing so good that she couldn’t hear anything beyond it.

Arvi sat on a chair beside the table. His head was in his hands, his shoulders slumped and the white of his business shirt stretched across the breadth of them. He’d always seemed so big to her, larger than life. Yet he was only a man, a man who was in pain. She went to reach out, closed her hand into a fist before she could make contact.

Turning, she picked up the book . . . and Arvi’s hand closed over her wrist, the leather of her jacket insulating her from the skin-to-skin contact that might have plunged her into her brother’s life and his secrets against her will. Chest thick with a thousand unsaid things, she shifted to look at him.

When his shoulders shook, a harsh sound escaping his throat, she turned completely and held his head against her stomach as he cried. Her own tears were locked up inside her, knotted up with fear and anger and loss. But she held Arvi as he cried, her strong, determined older brother who couldn’t fix this one thing that had changed everything.

The past. The present. The future.

Janvier.

He could’ve been her future in another world, another time, when Arvi’s rough tears didn’t hold pure heartbreak and the knots inside her weren’t formed of a terrible, inevitable truth. Because Ashwini would never permit herself to be the one on the other side of the locked door.

No matter what.

•   •   •

Raphael walked downstairs long past midnight, his city swathed in a moonless and velvet dark while his consort lay peacefully in their bed. She’d been sleeping with her hand over his heart until he left. Though Elena had gone to bed tired but happy and he didn’t expect the nightmares to find her, he didn’t like to leave her in the twilight hours. However, Dmitri had made direct contact, and his second didn’t interrupt Raphael at such times for trivialities.

A woman is dead, Dmitri had told him, and her body bears hints of Lijuan’s hand. Janvier is on his way to the Enclave to give you a report.

Icy fury filled Raphael at the thought of the archangel who’d sought to harm his people in her lust for power. He wanted no taint of her in his territory. That thought uppermost in his mind, he turned at the bottom of the steps and made his way to the library.

The man who stood facing the sliding glass doors that looked out to the Hudson, and beyond it, the million pinpricks of light that was Manhattan, held himself like a fighter, his stance light. He wore a white T-shirt and over it, a holster that crisscrossed his back. That holster wasn’t the weathered brown one Raphael had previously noted; the supple leather of this was golden in color, the blades it held distinctive.

Those blades had been lethal in combat.

Raphael was well aware that Janvier, along with Naasir and Ashwini, had done far more behind enemy lines than was known even among their own troops. The three had a way of making it all seem a game, not to be taken seriously. A number of their actions during the battle might have appeared foolish to others, but he’d seen the strategic calculation behind it—distracting, annoying, or frustrating the enemy at a critical juncture could be as deadly a strike as a cleaving blow with a sword.

Turning the instant Raphael stepped into the room, Janvier put his hands behind his back, his stance altering to that of a soldier with his liege. “Sire.”

“Janvier.”

The other man didn’t dally, giving him a crisp, clean report of the night’s discovery. “While the final state of the victim’s body hints at Lijuan,” he added, “the scars and bruises point to long-term abuse.

“As it is, we all know Lijuan can’t have regenerated already. Even if she had, she’d hardly be interested in prowling the streets, attacking pets and women—but I also can’t see Lijuan sharing this particular power.”

Raphael had witnessed Lijuan fly apart into a thousand shards and, regardless of her attempts to convince the world that she was a goddess, he was certain she needed her physical body. He’d injured that body multiple times during the battle and the only reason she’d been able to so quickly erase the wounds was because she’d fed on the life force of her soldiers.

And for that, she’d needed her mouth.

Even an archangel couldn’t regenerate the mouth without first regenerating the brain and all the systems of the body that kept that brain alive. Lijuan wasn’t dead, of that he was in no doubt, but neither was she a goddess. It would take her considerable time to repair her physical form, especially taking into account that he’d obliterated her using a combination of wildfire and angelfire.