Archangel's Kiss

That, Elena knew, would never happen. Turning away from the mass of bodies, severed wings, and crushed flowers, she walked slowly up the path. "Wait. My book."

"I'll retrieve it for you after Raphael returns."

Elena hesitated, but knew she didn't have it in her to turn back and walk past the bodies again. "Thank you." She'd only taken a few more steps when the scent of rain, of the wind, infiltrated her every sense.

Illium melted away in silence, and it was Raphael who walked beside her. She expected a reprimand for deviating from his orders, but he said nothing until they were inside the walls of their private wing. Even then, he simply watched her strip off her clothes and enter the shower.

He was waiting with a huge towel when she stepped out, and as he wrapped it around her, the tenderness of the gesture threatened to break her. She looked up, met his eyes as he pushed damp strands of hair off her face. His words were quiet as he said, "The violence of our life shocks you."

Under her palm, his heart beat strong and sure. It was such a human sound, so honest, so real. "It's not the violence." She'd killed her own mentor when he went mad, butchering young boys like they were so much meat. "It's the inhumanity of it all."

Raphael stroked his hand over her hair, his wings unfolding to surround her. "Michaela came after you for a very human motive - she's jealous. You're now the center of attention, and she cannot stand it."

"But the cruelty in her eyes." Elena shivered at the memory. "She enjoyed hurting me, enjoyed it in a way that reminded me of Uram." The bloodborn angel had kicked at her broken ankle, sent her screaming. And then he'd smiled.

"They were mates for a reason." Another stroke, his heart so warm and vibrant under the cheek she'd pressed to his chest. But he was also the man who'd punished a vampire with such icy practicality that New Yorkers avoided that once bloodstained patch of Times Square even now.

"What did you do to Michaela?" she asked, her skin going cold with the realization that humiliation alone would have never been enough for Raphael. He didn't act capriciously, but when he did act, the world shivered.

A midnight breeze in her mind.I told you once, Elena. Never feel sorry for Michaela.

She'll use that to rip out your heart while it is still beating.

The heart he'd referred to gave a panicked beat of memory, the muscle bruised, painful.

"How was she able to do that, reach inside me that way?"

"It seems Michaela has been hiding a new power." His voice dropped. "It's no coincidence that she gained it so soon after coming close to death with Uram."

"He had her alone for long enough," Elena said, remembering the raw fear in Michaela's eyes when they'd rescued her. It had been the first time she'd seen an archangel afraid, and it had rocked her. "Do you think he changed her somehow?"

"His blood changed the woman, Holly Chang. She's neither vampire nor mortal now. It remains to be seen what becomes of Michaela."

Elena was ashamed to realize she'd forgotten about the only surviving victim of Uram's attacks. "Holly? How is she?" The last glimpse Elena had had of her, she'd been naked, her skin caked with blood, her mind half broken.

"Alive."

"Her mind?"

"Dmitri tells me she'll never again be who she was, but she isn't lost to madness."

It was far more than Elena had expected, but she caught the things he didn't say.

"Dmitri's still got people watching her, hasn't he?"

"Uram's poison altered her on a fundamental level - we must know what she's become."

And, Elena understood without asking, if Holly proved too much Uram's creature, Dmitri would slit her throat without hesitation. Instinct warred with harsh reality -

Uram's evil could not be allowed to spread. "You never answered my question," she said, hoping Holly Chang would spit in her attacker's face, that she'd save herself. "What did you do to Michaela?"

"I left her in a public place with your dagger in her eye. The eye had already healed around it."

"What does that mean?"

"Pain for Michaela when she pulls it back out, when she reheals." There was no mercy in him. "It's why Noel's attackers drove shards of glass into his flesh."

She knew he'd linked the vicious beating and his own actions on purpose. Another reminder of who he was, what he was capable of. Did he expect her to run? If he did, he had a lot to learn about his hunter. "You did something else."

You think you know me so well, Guild Hunter.

At that moment, he sounded like the archangel she'd first met, the one who'd made her close her hand over a knife blade, his eyes devoid of mercy. "I know you well enough to figure out you'd never let an insult pass unanswered." She'd seen that in his relentless search for Noel's attackers - his resolute determination likely the reason the angel behind it had gone to ground.

"In your travels around the Refuge, did you ever see a rock that reaches toward the sky on the other side of the gorge?"

"I think so. It's very thin, sharp . . ." Her mind made the connection with sickening ease.

"You dropped her on that rock, didn't you?"

She would've ripped out your heart. I simply returned the favor.

Goose bumps crawled over her skin at the ice in his tone. Crushing the fabric of his shirt under her hand, she took a deep breath. "What would you do to me if I ever did something to make you that angry?"

"The only thing you could do to make me that angry would be to lie with another man."

A quiet statement against her ear. "And you would not do that to me, Elena."

Her heart clenched. Not at the darkness in his words. At the vulnerability. Again, she was shaken by the power she had over this magnificent being, this archangel. "No," she agreed. "I would never betray you."

A kiss pressed to her cheek. "Your hair is damp. Let me dry it."

She stood motionless as he stepped back and picked up another towel, drying her hair with the careful gentleness of a man who knew his own strength far too well. "You closed your mind to me."

"I might not be human any longer, but I'm still the woman who stood against you on the Tower roof that first day." Now that terrifying male she'd met was her lover, and she knew if she gave in to his demands, the relationship between them would be irrevocably, unalterably damaged. "I can't accept your right to invade my mind as you please."

"It is said Hannah and Elijah share a mental bond," he told her, putting the towel down and tugging her hand to lead her into the bedroom. "They are always with each other."

"But I'm betting their link goes both ways." She stroked the arched line of his right wing - rising gracefully from his back. His shirt draped easily over his muscular frame, the back designed to accommodate wings. "Doesn't it?"

"In time," Raphael said, his voice changing, becoming deeper, "we will have that."

She stroked the ridge again, dropped a kiss to the center of his back. "Why do you sound so certain when so many things about angelic power seem to depend on the angel?"

You speak to me with the ease of a two-hundred-year-old already. You'll gain the power.

"That's good to know." She walked around to face him. "But until I do, I won't allow one-way traffic."

His eyes were arctic, so very, very blue she knew the color would follow her into her dreams. "If your mind had been open," he said, "I would've known of Michaela's arrival the moment you did."

Okay, he had her there. But - "If you let me have my privacy, then I won't mind calling out to you when I need you."

His hand on her cheek, a protective, possessive touch. "You didn't call today."

"I was taken by surprise." She shook her head, took a deep breath. "No, I'll be honest. I haven't yet learned to rely on you. I'm used to dealing with things alone."

"That's a lie, Elena." He brushed her cheekbone with his thumb. "You'd call Sara for help in a heartbeat."

"Sara's been my friend since I was eighteen. She's more my sister than my friend."

Reaching up, she put her hand over his. "I don't know you like I know Sara."

"Then ask, Guild Hunter." An order from the Archangel of New York. "Ask what you would know."

Chapter 13

Raphael was angry. But, Elena thought, this clean, bright anger, she could deal with.

When he became as he had earlier with Michaela, then she was fearful for his very soul.

"Tell me about your childhood," she said. "Tell me what it's like to grow up a child in an angelic world."

"I will, but first, you'll get into bed, and I'll bring you something to eat."

Realizing that was one battle she didn't particularly want to fight, she shucked off the towel as he went to the other room to get the food, and shimmied into one of Raphael's shirts. The slots in the back flowed around her wings, but she could find nothing with which to secure them at the bottom. Deciding she couldn't really be bothered searching for the illusive closures, she was sitting quietly in bed when he returned.

He halted for a second. "I'm surprised to find that you obeyed an order."

"I'm not unreasonable . . . so long as the order is reasonable."

A gleam of amusement lit the arctic blue as he placed the plate of bite-sized treats on the mattress between them, the glasses of water on the bedside table, and came to sit on the bed diagonally opposite her. They'd taken this position before, but that time, he'd been on her side of the bed.

Very conscious of the subtle distance, she picked up a tiny sandwich filled with what looked like thin slices of cucumber. "So?"

A long, long moment passed before he spoke. "Being a child among angels is a joy.

Children are petted and generally spoiled. Even Michaela wouldn't harm a child's heart."

Elena found that hard to believe. But then again, Michaela had once gotten out of bed to let what she'd believed was a trapped bird out of her room. The archangel wasn't pure Wicked Witch of the West, for all that Elena would've liked to typecast her in that role.

"My childhood was ordinary, except that my father was Nadiel, my mother, Caliane."

The breath rushed out of her. "You're the son of two archangels?"

"Yes." He turned, looking toward the mountains, but she knew it wasn't the snow-capped peaks, the starlit sky, that he saw. "It's not the gift it seems."

Elena stayed silent, waiting.

"Nadiel was a contemporary of Lijuan's. Older by only a thousand years."

A thousand years. And Raphael spoke of it so very easily. How old did that make Lijuan? "He was one of your ancients."

"Yes." Raphael turned back to her. "I remember listening to him talk of sieges and battles long past, but mostly, I remember watching him die."

"Raphael."

"And now you feel sorrow for me." Raphael shook his head. "It was at the dawn of my existence."

"But he was your father."

"Yes."

Tracing her eyes over that harshly masculine, impossibly beautiful face, she moved the tray of food to the floor. He watched, silent, as she pushed aside the blankets and came to sit in front of him, her hand braced on his thigh. "Fathers and mothers," she found herself saying, "leave their mark, no matter if we've known them a lifetime or only a day."