Archangel's Consort (Guild Hunter 3)

He came to a stop across from her, noting that she wore flesh today. “I’m honored.” After the destruction of Beijing and Lijuan’s “evolution,” no one had seen her except in the pools of water she seemed to enjoy utilizing for contact.

“Of course I would come to you,” she murmured in that voice that screamed the truth of her descent. “None of the others are of any interest.”

Elena, where are you?

On my way to Guild Academy to see Eve. Do you need me?

Stay away from the house until I say otherwise. I don’t want you in Lijuan’s line of sight.

A pause, but she didn’t argue—though he knew very well she didn’t like him anywhere near the Archangel of China. Be careful, Archangel.

Having handled the conversation at the same time that he exchanged meaningless pleasantries with Lijuan, he angled his body toward the serene waters of the Hudson, light refracting off its surface in a thousand broken shards. “Come, we will speak at my home.”

“So very civilized of you, Raphael.” She laughed, the sound incongruously sweet for a woman who had made the dead rise, whose power was tinged with a putrid darkness. “Is it any surprise I prefer you above the others?”

Raphael said nothing, and neither did she, not until Montgomery closed the library doors behind himself after serving the tea. Lijuan had chosen one of the armchairs in front of the fireplace, and Raphael sat opposite, acting the host—with Lijuan, the small courtesies must always be observed. If they were, she would follow her own peculiar code. There would be no bloodshed, not while she was a guest in his home.

Sipping her tea, Lijuan let out a sigh. “There is something to be said for the physical form.”

When they had last met in Beijing, she’d told him she no longer needed food for sustenance. “Have your needs changed?”

A soft smile that appeared innocent ... if you did not see the twisted shadows that lingered beneath. “Not my needs. My wants.” Another sip. “Some things power alone cannot duplicate.” Holding the teacup in an elegant hand, she met his gaze. “How do you stand it, Raphael?”

Raising an eyebrow, he waited.

“These mortals.” She flicked a hand in the direction of Manhattan. “All around you, everywhere you go. Like ants.”

Where Aodhan had asked a smiliar question with a deep, hungry curiosity in his tone, there was only contempt in the voice of the Archangel of China. “I have always lived in the world, Lijuan.”

A sigh. “I forget. You have not yet seen the millennia I have. I, too, once lived among mortals.”

He thought of the stories Jason had uncovered about Lijuan’s past, the horrors the other archangel had perpetuated. “You were a goddess always.”

A regal nod. “Will you kill her?”

The question didn’t throw him. He’d known the reason for Lijuan’s appearance the instant he saw her. “If my mother remains mad, she must be stopped.” Given the reports he’d received from Nazarach, Andreas, and Nimra this morning, telling of young vampires going murderously insane and killing in a way that bore Caliane’s stamp, that madness seemed a more and more a certain truth.

“Would it not be better to kill her where she Sleeps?” Lijuan put down her teacup with a sigh of pleasure. “She is not yet at her full strength. Once awake, she may well be unstoppable.”

The idea of Caliane raining pain and fire upon the world was a nightmare. But . . . “That is not our way.” Angelkind had very few laws. The only one that mattered most of the time was the absolute prohibition against harming angelic children. Neha’s daughter, Anoushka, had lost her life for breaking that law.

But there was a second, even more ancient law. To kill an angel in Sleep was considered an act of murder so heinous that the penalty was instantaneous and total death. Because even an archangel could die—but only at the hand of another archangel. “I will not be a coward and strike her while she is helpless.”

“Your mother is hardly helpless,” Lijuan argued. “You see the effects of her power all around—death drenches the landscape and even now, the molten core begins to boil with rage.”

Raphael thought of the bloodrage that had gripped him as Caliane’s power rippled around the world, of Astaad beating his concubine and—according to Jason’s most recent report—Titus executing the innocent. “Yes.” His mother had never been helpless.

“Then you agree. She must be killed before she wakes and terrorizes the world.”

“No, she must be woken.” Perhaps there remained within him a piece of the child he’d once been, but his decision was that of an archangel—this law could not be defiled, no matter the target. For once done, it could not be taken back. The slope would turn ever more slippery, as all those who Slept became fair game. “If we can rouse her before she is ready, she will rise weak. It’ll give us the advantage as we seek to learn whether or not she is sane.” Whether or not she would have to die.

Lijuan’s expression remained serene, but a ring of black appeared around her irises, a thick, oily color Raphael had never before glimpsed. Something in it whispered of the reborn, the corpses Lijuan had animated to mute, hungry life. “She escaped all those years ago,” the Archangel of China pointed out, the black ring shifting with an almost living awareness, “because the combined power of the Cadre wasn’t enough to keep her contained.”

“But they did not have you.” Raphael deliberately played to Lijuan’s vanity.

The other archangel’s gaze turned distant. “Yes. Caliane did not evolve as I have.” A small, satisfied smile. “You will walk me to the door, Raphael.”

“I am not your pet, Lijuan”—a soft reminder—“and never will be.”

Lijuan’s hair flew back in that eerie breeze that seemed to affect only her. “Pets are so easily disposable, Raphael. I have something far more permanent in mind for you.” A whisper of power licking around his face. “You could rule the world.”

All he’d have to do, he thought as he watched her take flight into the blue skies above his city, was give up his soul.

Rain drenched the city again that night, coming down so hard and fast that Elena wrapped her arms around herself as she stood by the flames of the fireplace in Raphael’s private study, staring out at the bleak landscape beyond. “Illium’s mother arrived safely?”