Guild Hunter 01 - Angels' Blood

Ransom would choose anger rather than the pain of loss. Her eyes blurred, and for a second, she thought she was imagining the wings filling her vision. They surrounded Raphael, soft, dark shadows in the pitch blackness of the night that had fallen over Manhattan.
    “They’re rising!” She jerked at Ransom’s coat, stared. “They’re rising!” Raphael and Elena were lost in the mass of wings but Sara didn’t care. All that mattered was that they hadn’t fallen to earth, hadn’t fractured into a thousand pieces as she watched, helpless. “Ellie’s alive.”
    Ransom didn’t dispute her claim, though they both knew Ellie’s broken body spoke of injuries that could never be repaired. He just held her and let her pretend everything was okay. At least for a moment longer.
     
     
    One week later, Sara slammed down the phone in her of fice and stared across at Ransom while Deacon stood by her side, a solid, immovable presence. Her husband. Her rock. “They’re refusing to release any information on either Raphael or Ellie.”
    Ransom’s mouth tensed. “Why?”
    “Angels don’t have to give reasons.” Sara’s mouth twisted, sorrow so deep and true inside of her that she didn’t know how she moved. “That night, we all got a vivid lesson in the fact that archangels can die. Might be Raphael’s gone and we’re dealing with new management.”
    “They have no right to keep her from us!” Losing the cool he’d retained till then, Ransom brought a fisted hand down on the chair arm. “We’re her family.” He froze. “Did they give Ellie up to that bastard?”
    Sara shook her head. “Jeffrey’s been completely stone-walled. At least my calls get answered.”
    “Who does the answering?”
    “Dmitri.”
    Ransom got up and began to pace, as if unable to sit still. “He’s a vampire.”
    “I don’t know what the hell is going on.” It certainly seemed as if the vampire, not another angel, was in charge. Deacon had used his sources—and he knew some very unusual people—to come up with the same answer. Dmitri was running the show, in effect, running Manhattan.
    “This is probably useless information,” she continued, “but the latest word is that another one of the archangels, Michaela, left the city soon after Uram was killed.” Everyone knew which archangel had died—it was the biggest news story of the millennium, even with the angels refusing to offer even a crumb of information.
    “Three archangels in one city?” Ransom shook his head. “That’s not coincidence. Deacon?”
    “You’re right. But that just raises more questions, answers none.”
    Trust Deacon to cut to the heart of it. So apparently calm. But she sensed his fury in the rigidity of his muscles. Her husband chose his friends with care—Ellie was definitely one of them. Touching him lightly on the thigh even as he put one big hand on her shoulder, she said, “There are rumors Archangel Tower’s closed itself off even from other angels.”
    Ransom thrust a hand through his unbound hair, hair that Elena had taken such delight in teasing him over. Now it lay uncared for around his shoulders. “I think you’re right—it sounds like Raphael’s dead and they’re scrambling to find a replacement.”
    Still at her desk, Sara stared out into the lights of a city that remained half black. So many of the power relays and wires had been destroyed in the archangel-to-archangel fight that the repair job was going to take months. “But why won’t they give us Ellie?” That, Sara couldn’t understand. “She’s mortal. She’s not theirs.” Sara would take care of her best friend, with all the honor and love in her heart.
    Ransom turned to shoot her a probing look. “You in shape?”
    She understood in a split second. “Good enough to sneak into the damn Tower.”
    “You’ll go in wired,” Deacon said, proving once again that she’d seriously lucked out in the marriage stakes. “Both of you. Anything goes wrong, I’ll be waiting with an extraction team. Who’s here right now?”
    Sara thought rapidly. “Kenji’s in the Cellars. So is Rose. Just downtime, so they can come out.”
    “Call them up. I’ll get the wire kit.”
    An hour later, she found herself crouching beside Ransom in the gardens around the heavily guarded Tower. Incoming and outgoing traffic in the area surrounding it was now so restricted that no one had managed to get this close since the night the city went dark. Sara saw a possible entry