Archangel's Kiss

She rubbed her own throat. "Most vulnerable spot?"

A nod. "But that's going to take time. For now, if you can pin or shoot an angel coming at you, you'll disorient him long enough to run."

A pause, and she realized he was waiting for a response. "I'm not too proud to run. My legs have kept me alive more times than you know."

Those ice green eyes seemed to gleam with subtle approval, but that was probably wishful thinking on her part. "If you're trapped in a situation where you have no choice but to fight, a good aim will give you a slight advantage."

"Emphasis on 'slight.' "

Galen pulled a knife out of the wall, his biceps flexing. "You're playing with archangels. Slight is an improvement on certain death."

Chapter 25

Jason stood across from Raphael on the balcony off Raphael's office, the buildings of the Refuge spread out below.

"What have you learned?" Raphael asked his spymaster.

The tattoo on Jason's face appeared complete, but Raphael knew that while the chunk of flesh that had been ripped out by one of Lijuan's reborn had healed, the markings were only temporary, so as to betray no weakness. Jason was having the ink redone step by painful step. "She's keeping a secret."

Raphael waited. All archangels kept secrets, but for Jason to comment on it had to mean something.

"It's a secret she appears not to have shared with anyone, but I think the Shade knows,"

he said, referring to Phillip, the vampire who'd been with Lijuan longer than Raphael had been alive. "He's like a pet to her - she hasn't forbidden him from entering the sealed room as she has everyone else."

"Do you think you or one of the others can get a glimpse inside the room?"

Jason shook his head. "She has a ring of reborn around it night and day." He touched his face. "I'm fairly certain they'd tear any intruder limb from limb."

Total dismemberment was one of the very few ways thatmight lead to the death of an angel Jason's age. However, if the head was left whole, there was a chance of regeneration. "Have you been able to confirm how many of Lijuan's reborn eat flesh?"

"It's no longer the old ones alone - I saw a pack of younger reborn feast on the bodies of the newly dead," the angel replied. "They did it out in the open."

"So, she crosses another boundary." It was one more indicator that her mind was no longer functioning as it should. "Tell me about this sealed room."

"It's in the center of her mountain hold, hidden deep within the core. The reborn roam all the corridors around it, and the ones that roam are the ones with eyes that shine - the ones who eat of flesh."

"Do you have any idea what she might be hiding?" It could be nothing good, that much was certain.

"Not yet. But I'll find out." Jason resettled his wings. "I did as you asked and had Maya work her way into Dahariel's domain. Something is going on, but whether it relates to the events at the Refuge, it's impossible to say. There are rumors that Dahariel killed several of his vampires recently, but that could've been a legitimate punishment."

"Have Maya remain where she is. I have people inside Nazarach's and Anoushka's homes."

"If it does prove to be Nazarach?"

"I'll execute him." Nazarach ruled Atlanta, but only under Raphael's grace. "Dahariel is the strongest of them all." And the most coldly intelligent. Leaving that decapitated head in Anoushka's bed was the kind of calculated threat Dahariel might make.

"If it is him," Jason said, "he's begun to strike close to home - one of Astaad's favorite concubines was found eviscerated yesterday. She was branded inside. All indications are that she was alive at the time."

"So . . ." It seemed nothing less than death - brutal, merciless - would satisfy this would-be archangel now. "Astaad hasn't informed the Cadre."

Jason didn't comment except to say, "Pride."

"Yes." The archangel who ruled the Pacific Isles had to be enraged that someone had managed to breach the walls of his harem. "One more archangel bested." In the most cowardly of ways, but drunk on vicious pleasure, the angel behind the assassination wouldn't see it that way. He, or she, would, Raphael was certain, view it as a true victory.

"Sire - there is more."

"Yes?"

"They found another Guild dagger in her chest cavity."

"Little hunter, little hunter, where aaaaaarre you?" Playful, singsong, horrifying.

Wrapping her arms around her raised knees, she ducked her head, making herself even smaller. The cupboard smelled of blood. Ari and Belle's blood. On her feet, in her hair, on her clothes.

Go away, she thought, please go away. Please, please, please, please . . . It was a litany in her head, her voice small and weak. Where was Daddy? Why didn't he come home?

And why wasn't Mama in the kitchen like she was every morning? Why was there a monster there?

"Where are you hiding, little hunter?" The creeping footsteps stopped for a second. An instant later came an even more chilling sound - lips smacking together. "Your sisters are most delicious. Do excuse me while I go take another bite."

She didn't believe him, terror and a frustrated, clawing rage keeping her locked in position. The giggle came three seconds later.

"Smart little hunter." A deep breath, as if he was drawing in the freshest of air.

Her own nostrils burned with the pungent aroma of a spice for which she had no name, mixed with ginger . . . and a golden, pure light. It nauseated her that this foul creature, this monster, smelled like summer days and a mother's warm embrace. He should smell like rot and pus. It was another affront, another pain to add to the ones he'd already carved across her heart.

Ari. Belle. Gone.

She blocked her sobs with a fist, knowing her sisters would never dance with her across the kitchen floor again. Belle's legs, those beautiful, long legs had been broken until they twisted in a way that was simply impossible. And Ari . . . the monster had nuzzled into the nightmare that was her neck before Elena found the courage to follow her sister's dying command to run. But the blood, the blood would give her away.

She waited, listened. He was moving around. She thought he might've gone upstairs, but her pulse was pounding too hard in her ears. She couldn't trust the sounds, couldn't run.

Not when he could be standing in the corridor waiting for her. Then it was too late. His footsteps came back into the room.

"I've got a suuuuurprise for you." A sly, scraping sound, the knob of the cupboard where she was hiding being twisted away. She pushed back into the wood but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run.

"Boo!"A single perfect brown eye stared mischievously through the hole made by removing the knob. "There you are."

She stabbed out with the knitting needle she'd picked up from her mother's basket in the living room, spearing that eye dead center. Liquid spurted onto her hand, but she didn't care. It was his scream - high, piercing, agonized - that mattered. Giving a savage little smile, she pushed out of the cupboard as he stumbled back, darting past him and up the stairs.

She should have gone outside, found help. But she wanted her mom, needed to see that she was alive, was breathing. Shoving through her parents' bedroom door, she slammed it shut behind her, turned the lock. "Mama!"

There was no answer.

But when she looked around, relief poured through her. Because Mama was just sleeping. Running over on feet that continued to leave fading red imprints on the carpet, she shook her mother's shoulder.

And saw the gag around her mouth, the knives that pinned her wrists and ankles to the sheets. "Mama."Her lower lip quivered, but she was already reaching to undo the gag.

"I'll help you. I'll help you."

It was the terrified warning in her mother's eyes that made her turn.

"Bad little hunter." Shaking the bedroom key at her, the monster pulled the needle out, and looked at it with a single curious eye, the other a bloody ruin down his cheek. "Do you think Mommy would like a present?"

"Wake up, Elena! "

She jerked into a kneeling position in one go, reaching for the knife she'd slipped under the pillow out of habit. Raphael looked up at her as she stared down at him, knife held high, ready to go for his throat.

Red hazed her vision, her tendons quivering with the need to strike out.

Elena.The scent of the sea, of the wind.You're safe.

"I'll never be safe." It came out a withheld scream, so taut, so painful it was barely sound. "He hunts me in my dreams."

"Who?"

"You know." She tried to lower the knife. Her muscles refused.

"Say it. Make him real, not a phantom."

Her mouth filled with the taste of bitter rage. "Slater Patalis." The most infamous killer vampire in recent history. "We were his last snack stop."

"The records say the hunters were able to capture him because you disabled him."

"I remember stabbing him through the eye, but that wouldn't have stopped him." Her fingers finally unclenched, dropping the knife. It would've sliced into her thigh had Raphael not caught it midfall.

Placing it on the small bedside table, he said, "Your memories are incomplete?"

"They're coming back more and more." She stared out at the wall, seeing nothing but blood. "I've always seen parts, but now I think they were jumbled up pieces of the whole.

What I saw tonight . . ." Her eyes burned, her hands fisting on her thighs. "The monster broke my mother's legs, her arms, pinned her to the bed, made her listen as he killed Belle and Ari."

Raphael opened his arms. "Come here, hunter."

She shook her head, unwilling to surrender to weakness.

"Even an immortal," Raphael said quietly, "has nightmares."

She knew he wasn't talking about her. Somehow, that made it easier. She fell into his embrace, burying her face in the warm curve of his neck, the clean, bright scent of him filling her lungs. "Later, I saw the streaks on the carpet, realized she'd tried to come to us even after he hurt her so badly. But he came back upstairs, put her in that bed again."

"Your mother fought for you."

"She lost consciousness soon after I found her. I was so scared then, so afraid to be all alone with him, but now, I think her lack of consciousness was a mercy." Her stomach twisted because in the most secret depths of her mind, she knew Slater had hurt her mother in other ways, made Elena watch. "I stayed awake because I knew Beth was coming home from her sleepover soon. I knew I couldn't let the monster get her. But he was gone before that."

"So your youngest sister was saved from the horror."

"I don't know," Elena said, remembering the lack of comprehension on Beth's small face at the funeral ceremony for Ari and Belle. "It was her first ever sleepover, and I don't think she's spent a night away from home ever again. Somewhere deep inside, she's afraid of what she'll come home to."

"You, too, hold a hidden fear," Raphael murmured. "What is it that you're so scared to speak of?"

"I think," she said through the haze of tears she refused to let fall, "he did something to me." Then he'd left both her and Marguerite alive, while Ari and Belle lay dead on the kitchen tiles.