Guild Hunter 03 - Archangel's Consort

not only overwhelmed the sand garden, they appeared to have gone under then cracked upward through the floors of the shrine itself.
    Walking to one huge root, she put her hands on the wood and vaulted over, her wings trailing across the knotted surface as she did so. “Find anything?” she called out to Raphael, unable to see Illium.
    He glanced over at her from where he stood by the entrance. She took a startled step back. His eyes . . . “Raphael, talk to me.”
    That unearthly glow continued to shine unabated as he held out his hand. “Come here, Elena.”
    Walking carefully over the twisted and broken remains of two low steps, she reached out to take his hand, let him pull her up beside him. “What do you see?”
    That inhuman gaze focused on something in the forest. “I see nothing, but I hear her.”
    Raphael.
    Elena shivered. “I heard that, too.” Looking down at their clasped hands, she realized the glow from his skin was traveling over hers in a glittering wave. “What’s happening?”
    Raphael shook his head, silken strands of midnight black hair sliding across his forehead. “I do not know. But I know that my mind is clearer when you stand beside me.” His eyes continued to smolder with that preternatural fire, as if he was burning huge amounts of power ... to keep Caliane at bay, she realized.
    She dropped one of the knives from her arm sheath down into the palm of her free hand. “Do you still want to look inside the shrine? The debris in front of the door isn’t too bad.” What little she knew about Japanese shrines said this was unlikely to have been the main entrance—but from what she’d seen in the air, the front was inaccessible.
    “Yes.” He returned his attention to the ruins. “My mother was Cadre. She is adept at games, may well be trying to lure me away from here because it is her resting place.”
    Glancing around, Elena frowned. “Where’s Illium? Inside already?”
    “I cannot hear him.” Raphael’s tone was sharp.
    “That doesn’t mean anything,” Elena said, hand tightening on the hilt of her dagger. “Not here, with the static.” But her heart thudded double-time. Not Illium, she thought, not the angel who’d become one of her closest friends.
    “Wait.” Raphael held her back when she would’ve headed down to where she’d last seen the blue-winged angel. “I will go first—there are things here you have no hope of defeating.”
    “Go.” She wasn’t stupid, no matter that worry for Illium had her frantic. The angel had become one of her people, someone she’d fight to the death to save. “Be careful Archangel.” Because if she loved Illium, what she felt for Raphael was beyond words, beyond her ability to describe. A huge, powerful, near-painful emotion, it simply was.
    “Death holds no allure for me, Elena.” The power of him cut against his skin, a cold white fire. “Not when I have yet to sate my hunger for you.” Turning, he walked not to where she’d last glimpsed Illium, but into the bowels of the shrine. “He came in here.”
    Following, her entire body on alert, she paused by a long, pitted column that bore flecks of what appeared to be rust-colored pigment and checked in the shadows around its side. Seeing nothing, she continued on, the rustle of her and Raphael’s wings the only—“Wait.” Gripping Raphael’s arm, she stopped him when he would’ve gone farther into the depths of the building.
    When he glanced back at her, she leaned forward to brush the dirt off a cracked but still-standing column using her fingers. “Do you see?” It was a whisper.
    Raphael reached out to trace the shape of the dragon carved into the eroded surface. “This should not be part of this shrine. Everything about it is wrong.”
    “Do you think ... ?”
    “Perhaps. Or perhaps she is simply remembered as legend in these parts.” Turning again, he walked a few steps into what had been the main room—the roof of which was now almost entirely gone, the sky covered with a filigree of green—and stopped three feet in. “Illium.” Bending, he picked up one startling blue feather edged in silver.
    There was a drop of crimson on the very tip.

     
    Half an hour later, they’d combed every single inch of the shrine and the surrounding area and found no further sign of Illium. “You said your mother liked beautiful things,” she said to Raphael as they stood beside the gnarled old root she’d vaulted over not long ago.
    Raphael gave a slow