Guild Hunter 05 - Archangel's Storm

clumsiness rather than taken as a sign of weakness by the others landing around them.
    Pride, as Mahiya had said, was an integral component of Neha’s nature.
    Righting herself by pushing off his body, she ignored him as she entered her private apartments, but he knew that to leave now would be to undo any good he’d done. So he walked out to the courtyard to help deal with the injured—just because angels and vampires were hard to kill didn’t mean they didn’t hurt. A man who knew how to inject morphine and other pain relief medication was always useful in battle conditions.
    When Neha’s private guard summoned him two hours later, the courtyard was close to cleared, the injured moved into internal rooms. Taking his leave of the healer under whom he’d been working, he entered the palace to find Neha seated on the thronelike chair at the head of the central room. The archangel had bathed and was dressed in fresh clothing, her wounds bandaged.
    Those bandages told him both that the wounds were healing at a far slower rate than they should—and that Nivriti was no longer an ordinary angel.
    “So, now you are a peacemaker?” Neha’s tone was dangerously neutral.
    “You are one of the more rational archangels,” he said, and in spite of her acts after Anoushka’s death, the words were true. “To lose you would create more problems than it would solve.”
    “Exactly how rational do you believe me to be?” A subtly calculated look.
    “Enough to take and use what Lijuan could teach you about accelerating the emergence of your new abilities,” he said, “without allowing yourself to fall into her web.” It was a wild shot in the dark.
    “Finally,” Neha said in a sinuous whisper, “we come to it. That was why you were so eager to assist me, was it not?”
    “I am a spymaster.”
    Neha’s smile was cold. “And to ask you to act in any other way would be akin to asking an eagle not to eat a rabbit.” Picking up a baby eyelash viper that had slithered across the floor to her, she draped it over her shoulders, absently stroking its yellow orange skin. “Yes, Lijuan has been most neighborly of late.”
    Jason could guess. The trauma of Anoushka’s death had left Neha prime pickings for a predator like Lijuan. “I have wondered one thing,” he said.
    Neha raised an eyebrow.
    “Whether Lijuan can somehow siphon power, or is attempting to learn how to do so, from others in the Cadre.” It was a theory so nascent, he hadn’t even mentioned to Raphael. “Her offer to assist you would then make more sense.”
    “Well, well, well.” Neha rose and walked down the shallow steps below her throne to shake her head. “Such a waste that you will never rule. Yes, the helpful Lijuan thought to play me.” A flash of teeth. “But she forgets, I have played this game for millennia, too, and I know how to get what I want.”
    Jason was near certain there was, in truth, no true secret to accelerating the development of power, that Lijuan had simply taken advantage of the Cascade effect. At least nine thousand years of age, she’d had millennia to mine the Refuge library for such secrets, even had she not come into her power at a time when several Ancients yet sat on the Cadre. They could well have told her of the Cascade.
    Such a plan would befit the Archangel of China’s intelligent, devious mind, but to bring it up now would be to make Neha look the fool, so he kept his silence and considered his report to Raphael. Though he couldn’t speak of the Lijuan–Neha connection, he could now discuss Neha’s new abilities—her display over the city had made them public.
    “If you wish to keep my favor, Jason,” Neha said, sari whispering along the carpet as she walked to the window that looked out over the courtyard garden, “you will discover how Nivriti was able to do what she did, and then you will tell me.”
    “I do that and I become part of your personal war. Raphael would not be pleased.”
    “Do you always do what pleases Raphael?”
    Jason knew the arch question was meant to prick his pride, but the fact was, he served Raphael out of choice, not compulsion. “I will leave your territory tonight,” he said, his tone even.
    Neha’s wings flared, the indigo filaments catching the light, before folding neatly to her back as she turned to hold his gaze. “Tell me, when did you gain the ability to use shadows in such a fashion?”
    He said nothing, for she could expect no answer. The truth was,