Angel's Blood

Elena walked out the Tower door and kept going, ignoring the taxi standing by. An incandescent anger, richer, deeper, more deadly than anything she'd ever before felt, fired through her nerve endings, causing pain but also keeping her alive, keeping her going.



The bastard, the goddamn bastard!



Tears pricked. She refused to let them rise. To do that would be to admit that she'd expected something more from Raphael, something human.



Catching a familiar scent, she spun on her heel, knife in hand. "Go home, vamp." Her voice was molten fury.



Dmitri gave a courtly bow. "Be that I could do as my lady asks. Unfortunately"-he straightened, his shades reflecting her own angry image back at her-"I have other orders."



"Do you always do as your master commands?"



His lips thinned. "I stay with Raphael out of loyalty."



"Yeah, right. Like a little puppy dog." She dug in her claws, in the mood to draw blood. "Do you sit up and beg when he asks, too?"



Dmitri was suddenly in front of her, having moved so fast he was gripping her knife hand before she could draw breath. "Don't push me, hunter. I'm the head of Raphael's security force. If it were up to me, you'd be strung up in chains, screaming as your flesh was flayed off your bones."



The erotic scent of him made the image even more barbaric. "Didn't Raphael tell you to stop the scent games?" She dropped a knife down from her arm sheath and into the palm of her weaker hand. Weaker, not weak. All hunters could fight with both hands.



"That was last night." He bent closer, the planes of his face exquisitely drawn, the curve of his lips touched with a hint of cruelty. "Today, he's probably extremely pissed with you. He won't mind if I take a discreet bite." A hint of fang as he flashed her on purpose.



"Right here on the street?" she asked, looking up at the line of his throat, vividly conscious of the push of his erection.



He didn't bother to glance around. "We're near Archangel Tower. The streets belong to us."



"But"-she smiled-"I. Fucking. Don't!" Slashing out with her knife, she carved a line across his throat.



Blood sprayed in an arterial rush but she'd already dodged out of the way. Dmitri grabbed at his neck and fell to his knees, his shades falling away to display eyes blazing fire. She read her death in those eyes.



"Don't be a baby," she murmured, wiping the knife on the grass and sliding it back into the sheath. "We both know a vamp your age will recover within the next ten minutes." A violent wave of vampire scent crashed into her senses. "And here come your flunkies to help you out. Nice talking to you, Dmitri darling."



"Bitch." It was a wet gurgle.



"Thanks."



He actually smiled, hard, lethal, scary as hell. "I like bitches." The words were already clearer, his healing progressing at a faster pace than she would've believed.



But it was the dark hunger in his tone that got to her. Damn kinky vampire had actually liked the knife. Shit. Turning her back to him, she ran. The second he healed, he'd come after her. And right now, she was worried less about being killed than about being seduced out of her fucking mind.



Dmitri might make her ache with need, but she didn't want him when he wasn't around to dose her with that scent of his. It was a compulsion, that scent, far stronger than any other she'd ever heard of. But that was hardly surprising given who he called sire.



Raphael had taken her between one breath and the next. She'd thought she'd learned to detect him, to pick up the odd sense of disconnection between mind and self that had accompanied his earlier attempts. But this time, there had been nothing. One second she was worrying about vampire serial killers, the next she was crawling all over him, trying to suck his tongue down her throat. If she hadn't snapped out of it, she was pretty sure she'd have been sucking other things, too.



Her face flushed.



Not in anger, though that was there. In desire. In heat. She might not want Dmitri when he was out of range, but she wanted the archangel. That made her a candidate for the asylum, but under no circumstances did it excuse what he'd done.



An instant later, she passed out of the restricted Tower zone to hit busy city streets, but instead of slowing down, she pushed herself even harder. Reaching into her pocket as she ran, she pulled out a cell phone and pressed in an emergency code. "I need a retrieval," she gasped as soon as someone answered. "Sending location." She pressed a button, activating the special GPS widget-it would transmit her location to the Guild computers until she switched it off. Because she couldn't stay in one place. The second she did, the game was over.



She kept an eye out for a taxi, but, of course, there were none in sight.



Two minutes later, tendrils of hunger snaked around her, searching, caressing. A sumptuous warmth bloomed in the pit of her stomach. Shoving a fist against that body part, she took in another gasp of air and made a hard left. High-class department stores zipped by, followed by the Zombie Den-the hangout of choice for the vamps and their whores.



Images of the erotic scenes she'd witnessed last night filled her head.



Opulent.



Sensual.



Seductive.



Not whores, addicts. And the worst thing was, she couldn't blame them. If Raphael ever got her in bed-not a chance since she was going to cut off his balls the first opportunity she got-she'd probably crave him to the end of her days. Infuriated, she pumped up her arms and swerved around a kid on a skateboard.



"Where's the vamp?" the kid called out, jumping off his board in excitement. "Dude . . ."



Oh, fuck! She glanced over her shoulder and saw Dmitri gaining on her. The blood on his shirt was a scarlet flower but his neck was fine, his pretty face wiped clean. Snapping back her head, she darted into traffic, crossing the road to the blaring of horns, curses, and several excited screams. A tourist started snapping photos. Great. He'd probably get a shot of her being vampire-bit right before Dmitri turned her into a begging, crawling thing concerned with sex alone.



Her gun was suddenly in her hand. Knives were her weapon of choice, but if she was going to stop the son of a bitch before he got to her, she'd have to shoot him in the heart. There was a very slight chance she might actually kill him that way, and if she did, she'd be brought up on charges. Unless, of course, she could prove harmful intent. She could see it now.



"See, Your Honor, he was going to fuck me silly, make me like it."



Yeah, that would fly. With her luck, she'd end up with some old fogey of a judge who thought like her father-that women were pawns, spreading their legs their only talent. Fury boiled through her in a second violent wave. She was about to turn, her finger already on the trigger, when a motorcycle screeched to a stop in front of her. It was pure black, as were the rider's clothes and helmet. But there was a discreet gold G on the gas tank.



Switching direction, she jumped onto the back and held on for dear life.



Dmitri's hand brushed her shoulder as the motorcycle peeled away. She turned to find him standing at the curb, watching her go. He blew her a kiss.



Raphael closed the door to the black-on-black room. For a second, he stood in the utter lack of light and considered what he was about to do.



Lijuan was totally removed from humanity.



What had happened between him and Elena had been very human, very real.



He set his jaw, knowing he had no other choice. Not with Caliane for a mother. If this was the beginning of some kind of a degeneration . . .



Walking instinctively to the center of the room, he focused his angelic abilities to a shining beam deep within. Like the glamour, this was something only an archangel could do. But unlike the glamour, it demanded a far heavier price. For the twelve hours after he did this, he would be Quiet, ruled by a part of his brain that had never known mercy and never would.



It was why he rarely used this form of communication. In the aftermath, he became something far closer to the monster that lurked in his heart, in the hearts of all archangels. Power was a drug and it didn't only corrupt, it destroyed. It was during one of these Quiet periods that he'd punished the vampire who had ended up in Times Square.



The punishment had been nonnegotiable. But the Quietness in him had changed the timbre of it to something close to evil. Now, Raphael made sure not to schedule anything that could turn destructive during these periods. The problem was, once he went cold, he saw things in a different light and could very well change his mind.



But this had to be done.



Centered, ready, he spread out his wings to their fullest extent. The tips just barely touched the edges of the room and he could taste the blackness of the walls in his throat. Most humans and vampires believed that angel wings weren't sensitive except at the arched line above the shoulders. They were wrong. Some quirk of angelic biology meant that an angel was fully conscious of any impact on his wings, whether it be in the center or at the very edge of his primaries.



Now he soaked in the blackness as if it were power. It wasn't. The power came from within him, but the lack of stimulation-a kind of sensory deprivation-amped up his awareness of that power to excruciating levels. First it was a hum in his blood, then a symphony, then a thundering crescendo that filled every one of his veins, stretching his tendons to breaking point and lighting him up from within. It was at that instant-before an internal implosion that could leave him stunned for hours-that he raised his hands and threw power at the wall in front of him.



It buckled, then liquefied into a churning pool that reflected nothing in its ebony depths. Quickly, before the power could grow restless and seek to shove itself back into his body, he directed it into a searching pattern set to Lijuan. The ability to communicate over vast distances came from the same root as their mental gifts, but unlike those mental gifts, it was so potent it required a vessel to contain it. The walls within this room provided the most efficient of those vessels, but he could use other objects and surfaces if pushed.



If he'd tried this sending-to the other side of the world-using only his mind, he'd probably have shattered parts of his brain and destroyed this building in the process. In front of him, the swirling slowed, then stopped completely. The liquid smoothed over to black glass. Within was a familiar face and only the face. The searching was very specific-it would show him nothing but Lijuan.



"Raphael," she said, her surprise open. "You chance the use of this much power while Uram is in your state?"



"It was necessary. I'll be back to full strength by the time he devolves to the next stage."



A slow nod. "Yes, he hasn't crossed the final line, has he?"



"We'll know when he does." The whole world would know. Everyone would hear the screams. "I need to ask you a question."



Her eyes were fathomless when she looked at him, so pale the iris was almost indistinguishable from the white of the eye. "There is a monster inside us all, Raphael. Some will survive, others will break. You have not yet broken."



"I lost control of my mind," he told her, not questioning how she knew what she did. Lijuan was more ghost than human, a shadow who moved seamlessly between worlds the rest of them never glimpsed.



"It is evolution," she whispered, a smile that was not a smile creasing her face. "Without change, we would turn to dust."



He didn't know if she was talking about him or herself. "If I keep losing control, then I'm useless as archangel," he said. "The toxin-"



"This has nothing to do with the Scourge." She waved a hand and he saw wrinkles. She was the only angel who showed even such small marks of age and she seemed to revel in them. "What you are experiencing is something else entirely."



"What?" He wondered if she was lying, drawing out the conversation in order to weaken him. It wouldn't be the first time two archangels had worked in concert to topple a third. "Or do you know nothing and play at being a goddess?"



Frost in those blind eyes, flickers of emotion so other as to be nothing known. "I am a goddess. I hold life and death in my hand." Her hair flew back in that ghostly wind she alone could generate. "I can destroy thousands with a thought."



"Death does not a goddess make or Neha would be beside you at this moment." The Queen of Snakes, of Poisons, left a trail of bodies in her wake. No one disagreed with Neha. To do so was to die.



Lijuan shrugged, an oddly human gesture. "She is a foolish child. Death is only half the equation. A goddess must not merely take life . . . she must give it."



He looked at her, felt the insidious beauty of her words, and knew what he'd only before suspected-she'd gained a new power, a power whispered of but never believed. "You can make the dead walk?" Not alive, they would not be alive. But they would walk, they would talk, and they would not rot.



Her only response was a smile. "We are talking about you, Raphael. Are you not afraid I'll use your problem to destroy you?"



"I think you have little interest in New York."



She laughed, a cool sound that whispered of the grave and sunshine in one. "You are a clever one. Far cleverer than the others. Here's what you need to know-you did not lose control."



"I forced a woman to want me." His tone was vicious. "It may be nothing to Charisemnon, but it is to me." The other archangel held power over most of North Africa. If he saw a woman he wanted, he simply took her. "What is that if not a total loss of control?"



"There were two people in that room."



For an instant, he didn't understand. Then he did and it made his blood turn to ice. "She has the ability to influence me?" He hadn't been under any creature's control since escaping Isis's tender mercies ten centuries ago.



"Would you kill her if she does?"



He'd killed Isis-it had been the only way to break free of the powerful angel bent on keeping him prisoner. He'd killed others, too. "Yes," he answered, but part of him was no longer so sure.



Is rape what turns you on?



The impact of those words still reverberated in the endless night he called a soul. His eyes flicked over Lijuan's face. "If she was controlling me, it wasn't conscious." Otherwise, she wouldn't have accused him of rape.



"Are you sure?"



He stared at her, in no mood to play games.



It made her smile widen. "Yes, you are a smart one. No, your little hunter does not have the power to bend an archangel to her whims. Are you surprised I know who it was?"



"You have spies in my Tower, like you have spies everywhere."



"And do you have spies in my home?" she asked, her tone a razor.



He threw up a shield, reflecting back her cutting power. "What do you think?"



"I think you're far stronger than the others realize." Calculation filled her gaze, even as she dropped into less formal speech.



Raphael would've cursed himself for having made a mistake except that he knew this was part of Lijuan's modus operandi. To speak with her, you had to be, if not an equal, at least strong enough to make things interesting. "If you weren't a woman, I'd say you have a need to prove whose cock is bigger."



She actually giggled but the sound was somehow . . . off. "Oh, that I'd found you when I was still interested in such things." She waved a hand. "You would've made a fine lover." Her lips turned sensuous, some faded remembrance lighting sparks in the winter chill of her eyes. "Have you ever danced with an angel in flight?"



Memory hit Raphael like a body blow. Yes, he had danced. But it had not been in pleasure. However, he said nothing, simply watched, listened, knowing he was her audience.



"I had a lover once who actually made me feel human." She blinked. "Extraordinary, isn't it?"



He considered what kind of a young angel Zhou Lijuan might've been and found he didn't like the answer. "Is he with you still?" he asked for form's sake.



"I had him killed-an archangel can never be human." Her face shifted, becoming less and less of this world, a caricature of angelic features, paper-thin skin over bone glowing from within. "There are some humans-one among half a billion perhaps-who make us something other than what we are. The barriers fall, the fires ignite, and the minds merge."



He stayed absolutely silent.



"You must kill her." Her pupils had expanded to devour the irises, her eyes black flame, her face a burning skeletal mask. "Unless and until you do, you can never be certain when the barriers will fall again."



"What happens if I don't kill her?"



"Then she will kill you. She will make you mortal."