Guild Hunter 03 - Archangel's Consort

arrived. Landing a short distance away, he moved through the shade of the leafy trees that lined the bank, and to the edge of the quiet current. The fingers of a weeping willow touched the clarity of it on the other side, and he could hear the calls of the birds hidden in the foliage.
    It was a beautiful place, and it spoke to none of the violence that Nazarach had done. Each angel had his own way of ruling. Nazarach used fear. But it wasn’t the amber-winged angel Raphael had come to see. “Why are you in my territory, Elijah?”
    The archangel who ruled South America looked up, his golden brown eyes haunted, his hair disordered as if he’d been thrusting his hands through it. “I come to ask you for sanctuary, Raphael.”
    “Not for you.” Elijah was older than Raphael, powerful in his own right.
    The other male looked unseeing into the water, his wings trailing on the mossy earth. “For Hannah.”
    “You think you will harm her?” Raphael had faced the same fear after he’d executed Ignatius, taken Elena so roughly.
    “I would never hurt her,” Elijah said in a hollow voice, “but I am not always myself.”
    “A rage, red across your vision?”
    Elijah jerked up his head. “You’ve felt it?”
    Raphael considered his answer as the heavy-limbed trees above them, around them, sighed into the silence. This could well be an act, Elijah probing for a weakness. But the South American archangel was also the one who had always stood behind Raphael in the Cadre, the one who had told him he had the potential to lead. “Yes, but not in the past week.” He examined Elijah’s tortured face. “Has it touched you in that time?”
    A quick negative shake of that golden head that had inspired sculptors and played muse to poets. “But once was enough. I do not trust myself—I acted with a cruelty that will haunt me for centuries to come. The vampires in question survived only because of Hannah’s intervention.” Elijah fisted his hands. “I could’ve hurt her with the same violence.”
    Raphael had learned to spot and exploit the chinks in an opponent’s armor long ago. He’d had to, to survive the Cadre. But he’d also known Dmitri for almost a thousand years, understood something of friendship. “Yet you did not, Elijah. That is the line. You did not cross it.”
    Elijah was silent for a long time, the water passing with serene patience over pebble and rock as they stood unmoving on the riverbank. Across from them, the fronds of the weeping willow swayed in a gentle motion, pulled by the tug of the water. But the birds had gone silent, and suddenly the world was a much darker place.
    “If she can do this to us in her Sleep, Raphael,” Elijah said at last, “what will she do when she wakes?”
     
     
    Having showered and changed after training with Illium— every one of the drills geared to give her the strength to achieve a vertical takeoff—Elena walked into the library where Montgomery had laid out an informal dinner, and came to a complete halt. “Aodhan.” He stood next to the window, looking out over the storm lashing Manhattan once more. The dark beyond threw the piercing brilliance of him into cutting focus.
    The fact was, Aodhan would never, ever blend in, not among angelkind and certainly not in the mortal world. His eyes were shattered from the pupil outward in shards of vivid green and translucent blue, his wings fractured light, his hair glittering strands encrusted with diamonds. The whole of it should’ve made him appear a cold being of marble and ice, but his skin held an undertone of gold, warm and inviting.
    “Elena.” He inclined his head in a slight bow, his voice still unfamiliar, she’d heard it so infrequently.
    “Raphael should be here soon.” Walking to the table, she poured herself a steaming cup of coffee—wine would put her to sleep after the workout she’d had. “He returned from Atlanta ten minutes ago.” From the territory of an angel who would’ve given Elena the creeps even if Ashwini hadn’t warned her before she ever met him. Screams , Ash had said of Nazarach’s home, the walls are full of screams .
    Aodhan said nothing, simply turned to look at the rain-drenched dark once more, a remoteness to him that she knew was deliberate. The angel fascinated her. He was akin to some great work of art, something you admired without understanding in truth. Except . . . there was far more to him. Pain, suffering, and a hurt that had made him withdraw into