Archangel's Kiss

"I feel as if I know you," Elena murmured, staring at that face that defied categorization.



He could've been born in Egypt, in Indonesia, in a hundred different places.



Raphael's hand released hers to curve around her neck. "Keir watched over you as you slept."



"And sometimes" - a smile on that perfect mouth - "I sang to you, though Illium begged me to stop."



Light words, but that smile . . . old, soold . Elena's bones sighed with the knowledge that notwithstanding the fact that he looked like a teenage boy on the cusp of adulthood, Keir had seen more dawns than she could imagine.



"Are you keeping Sam asleep?" Elena asked.



"Yes. He's too young to remember not to move his wings, so we won't bring him back to full consciousness until the bones have knit back together."



Raphael's fingers tightened on her skin. "Are any of his injuries likely to cause long-term harm?"



Elena stared through the glass in dismay. "Angels can be hurt that way?"



"When we are very young," Keir said, "yes. Some injuries take centuries to heal fully."



Brown eyes lingered on Raphael's face. "It takes a ruthless kind of will to survive that much pain, but Sam won't need it. He has no hurts that won't heal within the next month."



Elena pressed her palm to the glass. "I can't understand the malice that could lead someone to do this."



Fingers brushing the pulse in her neck, her archangel's rage so fiercely contained, she wondered what it cost him. "You've seen innocents drown in blood, and yet you ask?"



"Bill," she said, naming the hunter who'd butchered a string of young boys before Elena had ended his life, "did what he did because of a mental illness that eroded the soul of the man he was. But this was a calculated act." The brand on Sam's cheek, the ugliest of abuses, had been covered by a bandage. "Will that fade before he wakes?"



"I'll make certain of it." Keir's tone turned so cold it was as if he was another man, a man who'd never known a healer's mercy and never would. "This is a deed that threatens to taint the Refuge forever."



Raphael stared through the glass. "His mind?"



"He's young." A long glance up at Raphael. "The young are resilient."



"But scars remain."



"Sometimes, the scars are what make us who we are."



Elena wondered at the scars that marked the son of two archangels, whether he'd one day share them with her. She wouldn't push, knew exactly how bad old wounds could hurt. A year. A century. It had little bearing when it came to the heart. The scars formed in that suburban kitchen when she'd been barely ten had indelibly marked her. They'd marked her father, too, but in a different way. Jeffrey Deveraux had chosen to deal with it by wiping his first wife and two eldest daughters from his memory.



Her nails dug into the palm of her hand. "I'm going to go see if I can find any trace of the vampire." The city was huge, but she might get lucky - and it was better than doing nothing.



"I'll return with you," Raphael said. "Keep well, Keir."



The other angel lifted his hand in a small wave as they left.



"Do your healers have special abilities?" Elena asked.



"Some do. Some are more akin to human physicians."



"They'd have seen things go from leeches to transfusions to organ transplants." Arriving at the waiting area, she wrapped her arms around Raphael and let him take her up to the ledge.



Illium's wings were shadowed blue against the snow when they walked out, his face turned up to the flakes falling soundlessly from the night sky "The water, Ellie," he said,



"it'll wipe away the scents."



"Damn." Water was the one thing that ended any hope of a scent trail. Melting a few flakes in the palm of her hand, she tried to think positive. "Sometimes, snow isn't so bad - I once successfully tracked a vamp because the snow trapped his scent instead of washing it away."



"Then you need to hurry." Raphael spanned her waist with his hands. "Illium, Naasir thinks he may have found something in the north quadrant."



Illium's eyes almost glowed against the clean lines of his face. "I'll go and help him check it out."



Pressing her lips to Raphael's ear as they rose into the air, Elena asked a question that had been simmering at the back of her mind. "Is Illium getting stronger?"



He was badly injured by Uram, went into a deep healing sleep known asanshara. It was the first time he'd done so - sometimes, there's a change in a man afteranshara.



"How strong will he get?"



Unpredictable.He swept down, the wind frigid across her cheeks.We're in the area around Sam's home.



"Nothing in the air. Put me down - I'll see if I can track him through the snow."



But that, too, proved futile. "It's not a total loss." She blinked away a flake caught on her lashes. "It's so cold, the snow won't melt anytime soon. That gives me time to search across the Refuge."



"How far through snow can you pick up a scent?"



"A couple of feet at most."



Raphael looked up. "The skies will open tonight."



"Then I guess we'll be staying up." Elena met the midnight storm of his eyes, felt compelled to reach up, cup his cheek. "We'll find the bastards."



He didn't soften under her touch, didn't become any less distant. "The fact that they dared take a child, it speaks of a deep rot, a rot that must be excised before it infects our entire race."



"Nazarach and the others?"



"They were all in open sight."



"Of course they were."



"It doesn't matter if the angel driving this didn't participate in the physical act - their corruption is the root. What was done to Noel merited death. What was done to Sam . . .



death would be a mercy."



Light edged her fingertips where they touched Raphael's skin. She feared his power, would've been a fool not to. But she couldn't let him cross that line, couldn't let the hunt drag him into the abyss. "Raphael."



"There is," Raphael murmured, his eyelids lowering to hood the ice of his gaze, "a dark music in the screams of your enemies."



"Don't," she whispered, trying to reach him. Cruelty, as he'd once told her, seemed to be a symptom of age and power. But she refused to surrender to that, to let him be consumed by the violence of his own strength. "Don't."



But he wasn't listening. "Would you not like to stroke a stiletto across his throat, Elena?"



His own hand closed around her neck, sensual, gentle, lethal. "Would you not like to watch him beg for his life?"



Chapter 16



"Part of me," Elena whispered, admitting to the angry need within, "wants to do exactly that, wants to torture the bastard until he whimpers, until he crawls."



"But you will pity him when the time comes."



"My heart is human." And that heart was his. Ignoring the hand he still had around her throat, she pulled his head down to hers. As their lips met, she felt the slow burn of his power grow until it pulsed against every inch of her flesh. It was a reminder that no matter if she now had wings, she was very much mortal in comparison to this archangel.



His energy surrounded her, soaked into her very pores, his lips taking hers with a terrible, beautiful cruelty. There was no attempt to harm, no pain. No, Raphael kissed her like the immortal he was - with the heartless skill of a man who'd kissed so many women across the ages, their faces had to be a blur by now. It was a direct, unmistakable display of the ruthless heart that beat within his chest.



You can't scare me, she thought to him.



A lie, Guild Hunter. I can feel your heart thudding like a trapped rabbit's.



I'd be stupid not to be afraid. But I'm not going to back away from us just because you're feeling a little extra snarly.



A split second when his lips stopped, then she felt them curve, his hand rising from her throat to cup her cheek. The white-hot burn of his power faded, was replaced by the erotic touch of his skin.Only you would ever dare say that to me.



Needing to breathe, she broke the kiss, her entire body a humming flame. Man, but the archangel knew how to kiss. "We have to go."



A small nod, his hair sliding across his forehead before the wind pushed it back. "Where do you want to start?"



"How about the school - he might've been watching Sam or the other kids to decide which one to take."



Raphael's face went quiet, but though his eyes turned a deep indigo lit from within, he didn't flame with power again. "I'll fly you to the school grounds."



However, though Elena searched until the early hours of morning, when the snow began to come down in white sheets, she didn't find even the faintest trace of the vampire who'd laid brutal hands on a child in a place meant to be the safest of havens. More angry than anything else, she walked into their bedroom and began to strip off snow-wet clothes, her bruises stiff with cold.



"Let me." Raphael placed his hands on her shoulders. "Your wings are dragging on the floor."



"I'm tired," she admitted, allowing him to peel off her sleeves, undo the straps of her top, and pull it from her body. "I'm used to being stronger than the people around me.



Here, I'm pathetically weak."



A kiss on the bare skin of her shoulder, warm hands on her stomach. "Strength comes in many forms, hunter. Yours is deeper than you know."



Leaning back into him, she let her body relax, trusting him to keep her upright. "This is nice. Having someone to hold me when I'm tired." It was an intimacy, a gift she'd never expected.



A long pause. Another kiss on her shoulder, those hands quietly possessive. "Yes."



It had been a leap in the dark to admit that much, that she was coming to rely on him -



she, a woman who hadn't relied on a man since the day her father threw her out on the street - but she'd never expected that he'd honor her trust with his own. Closing her hands over his, she dropped her head to one side, exposing her neck.



He took the hint, kissing a line up the curve of it. "Shower?"



"Bath." She didn't think she could stand unaided.



"You'll fall asleep." His lips pressed to the quickening beat of her pulse, the possessive strength of his body reaching through her exhaustion to awaken the most primal of needs.But I'll hold you up.



It was another kiss, that offer. "Promise?"



"Promise."



Upper body naked, she stayed in place as he remained behind her.



"So many bruises." His hands were gentle over them, his voice holding a thrum of anger.



"Get used to it," she said with a laugh. "I seem to have a knack for getting myself in trouble."



A slow smile against her cheek, his hands on the button of her pants. "As you did the first time we met."



When she was bared to the very skin, her pants kicked away, she reached back to wrap her arms around his neck, arching her body in a sinuous stretch.



"Elena." A husky warning even as his hands stroked up her rib cage to close over her breasts.



Breath shaky with want, she pushed into him, her nipples aching for a rougher touch.



"More." A brazen demand.