Yes, he was beautiful, but it was the beauty of a warrior or a conqueror. This man had power stamped on every inch of his skin, every piece of his flesh. And that was before she took in the exquisite perfection of his wings. The feathers were a soft white and appeared dusted with gold. But when she concentrated, she saw the truth—each individual filament of each individual feather bore a golden tip.
“Yes, it’s beautiful up here,” he said, breaking into her fascination.
She blinked, then felt her face color, having no idea of how much time had passed. “Yes.”
His smile bore a hint of mockery, of male satisfaction . . . and of pure, lethal focus. “Let us have breakfast and talk.”
Furious at having allowed herself to be blindsided by his physical beauty, she bit the inside of her cheek in reprimand. She wasn’t going to fall into the same trap again. Raphael clearly knew how striking he was,
and
he knew the effect it had on unsuspecting mortals. Which made him an arrogant SOB she should have no trouble resisting.
Pulling out a chair, he waited. She halted a foot away, very conscious of his height and strength. She wasn’t used to feeling small. Or weak. That he could cause her to experience either sensation—and without any apparent effort—made her angry enough to chance reprisal. “I’m not comfortable with anyone standing behind me.”
A spark of surprise in those blue, blue eyes. “Shouldn’t it be me who fears a knife in the back? You’re the one carrying concealed weapons.”
The fact that he’d guessed at her weapons meant nothing. A hunter was always armed. “The difference is, I’ll die. You won’t.”
With a small, amused wave of his hand, he walked to the other side of the table, his wings brushing over the squeaky clean tiles to leave behind a shimmering trail of white gold. She was certain he’d done it on purpose. Angels didn’t always shed angel dust. When they did, it was immediately collected up by mortals and vampires alike. The price for a speck of the bright stuff was more than that for a flawlessly cut diamond.
But if Raphael thought she was going to get down on her knees and scrabble, he had another think coming.
“You don’t fear me,” he said now.
She wasn’t stupid enough to lie. “I’m petrified. But I figure you didn’t make me come all this way just so you could push me off the roof.”
His mouth curved, as if she’d said something funny. “Take a seat, Elena.” Her name sounded different on his lips. A binding. As if by speaking it, he’d gained power over her. “Like you said, I have no plans to kill you. Not today.”
She sat with the elevator cubicle at her back, aware of him waiting with old-world chivalry until she’d done so. His wings draped gracefully over the specially designed chair back as he followed suit. “How old are you?” she found herself asking before she could nip her curiosity in the bud.
He raised a perfectly arched eyebrow. “Do you have no sense of self-preservation?” It was a casual comment but she heard the steel beneath the surface.
Chill fingers trailed over her spine. “Some would say not—I
am
a vampire hunter.”
Something dark and exquisitely dangerous moved in the crystalline depths of those eyes no human would ever have. “A born hunter, not a trained one.”
“Yes.”
“How many vampires have you captured or killed?”
“You know the number. It’s why I’m sitting here.”
Another gust of wind whipped across the roof, this one strong enough to rattle the cups and pull strands of hair from her twist. She didn’t try to pin them back, keeping her full attention on the archangel instead. He was watching her in turn, much as a large beast of prey might watch the rabbit it was eyeing for dinner.
“Tell me about your abilities.” It was nothing less than an order, his tone a blade that whispered warning. The archangel no longer found her entertaining.
Elena refused to look away, even as she dug her fingernails into her thighs to anchor herself. “I can scent vampires, differentiate one from the pack. That’s it.” A useless skill—unless one was a vampire hunter. It sort of made the term “career choice” an oxymoron.
“How old does the vampire have to be for you to sense his or her presence?”
It was an odd question and one she had to pause to consider. “Well, the youngest I’ve tracked was two months old. And he was the outer limits. Most vamps wait at least a year before trying anything funny.”
“So you’ve never had any contact with a younger vampire?”
Elena had no idea where he was going with this line of questioning. “Contact, sure. But not as a hunter. You’re an angel—you have to know they don’t exactly function well the first month or so after being Made.” It was that stage in their development that continued to fuel the myth about vampires being lifeless zombies given will.
They truly were creepy in the first few weeks. Eyes wide open but with nobody home, flesh pallid and wasted, movements uncoordinated. It was why the hate groups preferred to target new vamps. Most people found it far easier to mutilate and torture someone who looked like a walking corpse than someone who could be their best friend. Or brother-in-law, in Elena’s case. “That young, they can’t feed themselves, much less run away.”
“Nevertheless, we will do a test.” The archangel picked up the glass of juice beside his plate and took a drink. “Eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
He put down the glass. “It’s a blood insult to refuse an archangel’s table.”
Elena had never before heard the term, but if it involved blood, it couldn’t be anything good. “I ate before coming here.” A flat-out lie. She hadn’t been able to keep down much more than water, and that with effort.
“Then drink.” It was an instruction so absolute, she knew he expected instant obedience.
Something snapped inside her. “Or else?”
The wind stopped. Even the clouds seemed to freeze.
Death whispered in her ear.
3
Elena’s instincts were screaming at her to grab the knife
in her boot, do some damage, and get the hell out, but she forced herself to stay in place. The truth was, she wouldn’t make it more than two feet before Raphael broke every single bone in her body.
It was exactly what he’d done to a vampire who’d thought to betray him.
That vampire had been found in the center of Times Square. He’d still been alive. And he’d still been trying to scream—“No! Raphael, no!” But his voice had been a rasp by then, his jaw hanging on by stringlike tendons, his flesh missing in places.
Elena—out of the country on a hunt—had seen the news footage after the event. She knew the vamp had lain there in agony for three hours before being picked up by a pair of angels. Everyone in New York, hell, everyone in the country, had known he was there, but no one had dared help him, not with Raphael’s mark blazing on his forehead. The archangel had wanted the punishment witnessed, wanted to remind people of who and what he was. It had worked. Now the mere mention of his name evoked visceral fear.
But Elena wouldn’t crawl, not for anyone. It was a choice she’d made the night her father had told her to get on her knees and beg, and maybe, maybe, he’d accept her back into the family.
Elena hadn’t spoken to her father in a decade.
“You should have a care,” Raphael said into the unnatural silence.
She didn’t collapse in relief—the air continued to hang heavy with the promise of menace. “I don’t like to play games.”
“Learn.” He settled back in his chair. “You will live a very short life if you expect only honesty.”
Sensing the danger had passed—for now—she unclenched her fingers with an effort of will. The force of the blood rushing back into them was painful in its extremity. “I didn’t say I expected honesty. People lie. Vampires lie. Even—” She caught herself.
“Surely you’re not going to practice discretion now?” The amusement was back but it was tempered with an edge that stroked like a razor across her skin.
She looked into that perfect face and knew she’d never met a more deadly being in her life. If she displeased him, Raphael would kill her as easily as she might swat a fly. She’d be smart to remember that, no matter how the knowledge infuriated her. “You said I had to do a test?”
His wings moved slightly at that instant, drawing her attention. They truly were beautiful and she couldn’t help but covet them. To be able to fly . . . what an amazing gift.
Raphael’s eyes shifted to look at something over her left shoulder. “Less a test than an experiment.”
She didn’t twist around, had no need to. “There’s a vampire behind me.”
“Are you sure?” His expression remained unchanged.
She fought the urge to turn. “Yes.”
He nodded. “Look.”
Wondering which was worse—having her back to an enigmatic and highly unpredictable archangel, or to an unknown vampire—she hesitated. In the end, her curiosity won out. There was a distinctly satisfied expression on Raphael’s face and she wanted to know what had put it there.
Shifting, she turned sideways with her whole body, the position allowing her to keep Raphael in her peripheral vision. Then she looked at the
two
. . . creatures who stood behind her. “Jesus.”
“You may go.” Raphael’s voice was a command that awakened abject terror in the eyes of the one who looked vaguely human. The other scuttled away like the animal it was.
She watched them leave through the glass door and swallowed. “How old was . . .” She couldn’t call that thing a vampire. Neither had it been human.
“Erik was Made yesterday.”
“I didn’t know they could walk at that age.” It was an attempt to sound professional though she was creeped out to her toes.
“He had a little help.” Raphael’s tone made it clear that that was all the answer she was going to get. “Bernal is . . . a fraction older.”
She reached for the juice she’d rejected earlier and took a drink, trying to wash away the stink that had seeped into her pores. The older vamps didn’t have that ick factor. They—except for the unusual ones like the doorvamp—simply smelled of vampire, like she smelled human. But the very young ones, they had a certain rotten-cabbage/putrid-flesh smell that she always had to scrub three times over to get rid of. It was why she’d begun collecting the body washes and perfumes. After her initial contact with one of the newly Made, she’d thought she’d never get the smell out of her head.
“I didn’t think a hunter would be so disturbed at the sight of the just-Made.” Raphael’s face appeared oddly shadowed, until she realized he’d raised his wings slightly.
Wondering if that implied focus or anger, she put down the glass. “I’m not, not really.” True enough now that that first, instinctive flash of disgust had passed. “It’s the smell—like a coating of fur on your tongue. No matter how hard you scrape, you can’t get it off.”
Open interest showed on his face. “The feeling is that intense?”
She shivered and looked around the table for something else to take the edge off. When he pushed a cut grapefruit in her direction, she dug into it with relish. “Uh-huh.” The citrus fruit’s acidic juices dampened the reek a little. At least enough that she could think.
“If I asked you to track Erik, could you?”
She shivered at the memory of those almost-dead/ not-quite-alive eyes. No wonder people believed those stories about vampires being the walking dead. “No. I think he’s too young.”
“What about Bernal?”
“He’s on the bottom floor of the building right now.” The barely Made vampire’s odor was so noxious, it permeated the building. “In the lobby.”
Golden-tipped wings spread to shadow the table as Raphael put his hands together in a slow clap. “Well done, Elena. Well done.”
She looked up from the grapefruit, belatedly aware she’d just proven how good she was when she should’ve flubbed it and gotten out of this, whatever “this” was. Shit. But at least he’d given her some idea of the job. “Do you want me to track a rogue?”
He rose from his chair in a sudden, liquid movement. “Wait a moment.”
She watched, transfixed, as he walked to the edge of the roof. He was a being of such incredible splendor that simply seeing him move made her heart squeeze. It didn’t matter that she knew it was a mirage, that he was as deadly as the filleting knife she carried strapped to her thigh. No one, not even she, could deny that Raphael the Archangel was a man made to be admired. To be worshipped.
That utterly
wrong
thought snapped her out of her dazed state. Pushing back her chair, she stared hard at his back. Had he been messing with her head? Right then, he turned and she met the agonizing blue of his eyes. For a second, she thought he was answering her question. Then he looked away . . . and walked off the roof.
She jumped up. Only to sit back down, blush reddening her cheeks, when he winged upward to meet an angel she hadn’t seen until that moment.
Michaela.
The female equivalent of Raphael, her beauty so intense that Elena could feel the force of it even from this distance. She had the startling realization that she was looking on at a midair meeting between two archangels.
“Sara’s never going to believe this.” She forgot the stench of young vampire for the moment, her attention hijacked. She’d seen photos of Michaela, but they came nowhere close to the reality of her.
The other archangel had skin the color of the most exquisite, fine milk chocolate and a shining fall of hair that cascaded to her waist in a wild mass. Her body was quintessentially female, slender and curvy at the same time, her wings a delicate bronze that shimmered against the richness of her skin. Her face . . . “Wow.” Even from this distance, Michaela’s face was perfection given form. Elena fancied she could see her eyes—a bright, impossible green—but knew she had to be imagining it. They were too far away.
It made little difference. The female archangel had a face that would not only stop traffic, it would cause a few pileups in the process.