Guild Hunter 02 - Angels' Flight

staring out into the inky dark of the night and the slumbering silhouettes of the gardens and trees that sprawled out in every direction.
     
    It was perhaps twenty minutes later, right when he was about to turne assault., that he glimpsed wings. They weren’t Nimra’s. Frowning, he angled himself so as to be invisible from the ground and watched. The angel appeared out of the shadows a minute later and stopped, his face lifted up toward Nimra’s window— a long, motionless moment— before he carried on.
     
    Interesting.
     
    Pushing away from the window when there was no further movement, Noel walked into the shower, realizing he’d glimpsed the tall male in the audience chamber earlier. The angel had stood on Nimra’s right as she dealt with a number of important petitions, so there was no doubting the fact that he was one of her inner circle. Noel intended to find out everything else about him later today.
     
    It was still dark when he walked out of the shower, but he knew there was no point in attempting to sleep now— and as a vampire, he could go without sleep for long periods. Part of him didn’t know why he even tried to find such rest. Even on the nights when he didn’t hear the screams, he heard the laughter.
     
    N imra walked out into the gardens the next morning to find that Noel had beaten her to the dawn. He sat on a wrought- iron bench beneath the branches of an old cypress, his eyes on the clear waters of the stream that snaked through her lands before joining a wider tributary that led into the bayou. He was so motionless, he appeared carved from the same stone as the silken moss- covered rocks that guarded the waterway.
    She stepped quietly, intending to take the path that would skirt away from him, for she understood the value of silence, but he lifted his head at that instant. Even with the distance between them, she was caught by the wintry blue of those eyes—eyes she knew had been destroyed in the attack at the Refuge, his face beaten in with such viciousness he’d been recognized only because of a ring worn on a shattered finger.
     
    Anger, cold and dangerous, slid through her veins, but she kept her tone easy. “
Bonjour
, Noel.” Her wings brushed the curling white and pink flowers of the wild azalea bushes on either side of her, and the dew showered a welcome caress on her feathers.
     
    He rose to his feet, a big man who moved with predatory grace. “You wake early, Lady Nimra.”
     
    And you,
Nimra thought,
do not sleep.
“Walk with me.”
     
    “A command?”
     
    Definitely a wolf. “A request.”
     
    He fell into step beside her, and they walked in silence through the rows of flowers nodding sleepily in the hazy early-morning light, their petals seeking the red- orange rays of the rising sun. It was her habit to spread her wings when she was outdoors thus, but she kept them folded today, maintaining a small distance between her and this vampire who was so very contained, she couldn’t help but wonder what lay beneath the surface.
     
    A plaintive meow had her bending to look under the hedgerow. “There you are, Mimosa.” She plucked the elderly cat out from under the dark green shade of a plant dotted with bursts of tiny yellow flowers. “What are you doing awake and about so very early?” The gray cat, her fur sprinkled with white, nuzzled at her chin before settling down in her arms for another nap.
     
    She was aware of Noel glancing at her as she stroked her hand over Mimosa’s fur, but said nothing. Like a wounded animal, he would not react well to pressure. He would have to come to her— if he ever did— in his own time, at his own pace.
     
    “Those tufted ears,” he said at last, looking at the comical puffs that tipped Mimosa’s otherwise neat head. “That’s why you call her Mimosa.”
     
    It made her smile that he’d guessed. “Yes— and because the first time I saw her, she was standing near a mimosa plant, snapping her paw out at the leaves, then jumping back as they closed.” In the process, she’d managed to get several of the fluffy dandelion- like flowers on her head, a tiny crown.
     
    “How many pets do you have?”
     
    She rubbed Mimosa’s back, felt the old cat purr against her ribs. “Just Mimosa now. She misses Queen, though Queen used to tire her out with her antics, she was so young.”
     
    N oel wasn’t used to seeing angels acting in any way human. Yet Nimra, her arms full of that ancient feline, appeared very