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“You know, that Charisemnon guy always wigged me out. Now I know why. ” Folding her arms, she met his gaze. “I’ve asked Sara to make me inactive on the Guild roster for the time being. Tell me what you need me to do to help you ready the city for an assault. ”
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He cupped her jaw, proud of the woman who was his own, who didn’t flinch from standing by his side, come what may. “Talk to the vampire leaders, have them contain the panic within the groups to which they have access. We can’t afford any more impromptu executions. ”
Elena scowled. “Talk? I figured you’d want me working with the ground troops or something. ”
“Talk—not as a hunter, but as my consort. ” Dropping his hand from her jaw, he wrapped his arm around her waist in readiness for takeoff. “Your presence will make the seriousness of the request apparent without further orders on my part. ”
“I suppose I can dig up some civilized-but-scary manners. ” A kiss on the mouth as they rose into the air, the taste of her lush intoxication. “I don’t know absolutely all of the vamp leaders. Does the Tower have a list?”
“Illium’ll go with you. He knows each by name. ”
“Wouldn’t he be the better option to talk to them?”
“Before I had a consort, yes. Now, you speak with my voice. ”
That ring of silver bright under the winter sunlight, her expression suddenly solemn. “I won’t let you down. ”
“I know. ”
Ten minutes later, he watched her take to the skies with Illium. Do not allow her to come to harm.
I’ll protect her with my blade and my life.
Shifting his attention from the midnight and dawn of Elena’s wings on the strength of Illium’s promise, he picked up the phone. It was time for his second to return to New York.
• • •
Raphael spent the rest of the day finalizing the transfer of his senior vampires and angels into the city, while Aodhan handled daily Tower operations and Dmitri—linking in from the jet Raphael had sent for him and Honor—worked with his trusted people to ensure their permitted weapons reserves were at maximum. The next step would be to place anti-wing guns on a number of rooftops.
“We’ll do it in the short lull after the late revelers head home and the early risers are yet asleep,” Illium told him, the lights of a night-cloaked Manhattan glittering at his back as the two of them stood at the apex of the Tower. “Better the guns appear overnight than to have the curious watching and broadcasting our efforts in the daytime. ”
“Agreed. ” Raphael’s city never truly slept, but it was quietest in those twilight hours. “Do you have enough people to get it done within that time frame?”
“Yes. Aodhan can also assist now that Dmitri has returned to take over Tower operations. ” A steady glance from golden eyes shadowed by thick black lashes dipped in blue. “Sire, you can’t be here. ”
When Raphael raised an eyebrow, Illium stood his ground. “Forget the enemy, the morale of our own troops will take a severe hit if you’re seen to be assisting in such a ‘mundane’ task. ”
Raphael knew the angel was right. “The task is yours,” he said, and spent the next hour drilling a specialized night-maneuvers squadron before heading home.
His consort was in her solar, cleaning her weapons with a single-minded focus that told him she wasn’t seeing the lethal items at all. Taking a seat across from her, he picked up a cut-glass tumbler and poured himself a drink from the decanter she kept for him, a silent invitation into her inner sanctum. “Illium tells me you charmed the vampire leaders. ” Whatever she’d done, the effect had been immediate, the city calmer, vampires on their best behavior.
She snorted. “Illium did the charming. I talked business—vamp leaders are all about that—and rampaging vampires are bad for it. We came to an understanding. ” Lashes flicking up, humor in the gray. “I may have channeled you at your politest and scariest, to drive home the point that you’d be very, very disappointed should they fail in their task. ”
Lips curving, he took another sip. “You are proving to be a most efficient consort, Guild Hunter. ”
“Don’t you forget it. ” A dagger pointed at him to underscore her command, before she went back to her cleaning.
“Is it your father’s revelation that occupies your mind?”
A nod. “I had a bit of time before you got home, so I logged into the Tower’s information network from here. ”
“Did you find her?”
“Yes—the facts weren’t hidden. I just didn’t know to look for them before. ” Fingers clenching on the dagger, Elena met eyes of pitiless blue that watched her with an intense patience that told her she mattered. “Her name was Elizabeth Parker. ” Her heart pounded in sympathetic memory of the stunned shock she’d felt at the discovery. “Belle and Ari were his firstborn, but he didn’t give them her names, just me and Beth. ”
Elieanora Parker Deveraux and Elizabeth Marguerite Deveraux.
Releasing and setting the dagger aside when her fingers began going numb, she dropped her head in her hands. “It’s almost as if it took him that long to trust in the happiness he’d found, have enough faith to open the door a fraction to his past. ” Only for the horror to be repeated. “God, Raphael, no wonder he’s so damn fucked up. ”
“Tell me about her. ”
It was exactly the question she needed to hear. Somehow, she had to find a way to come to terms with a fundamental change in the fabric of her history, her vision of her father altered in a way she was having difficulty comprehending. And even though she knew Raphael had no sympathy for Jeffrey after what her father had done to her, he listened as she released the torrent of words and questions and confusion.
Hours later, when she’d emptied it all from inside her head and could think again, he took her to bed and held her safe from the nightmares, his wing spread over her body in a heaviness of silken warmth that made her feel safer than any weapon.
• • •
Raphael decided to rest in truth this night, his hunter’s skin warm against his own. She’d talked herself out and, in so doing, come to a kind of peace with the ghost of a woman she’d never met, but who’d thrown a shadow across her entire existence.
“Elizabeth Parker,” she’d said quietly at the end. “She’s a part of me and I’m glad I know that. ”
Now, she lay tucked trustingly against him, her wings tangled around his body in the way of angelic lovers, his own acting as her blanket. Only when he was certain she’d fallen into a deep, nightmare-free sleep did he press a kiss to the warm curve of her neck and close his eyes.
He dreamed again of that forgotten field, and of a woman’s bare feet as light as air on the ruby-flecked grass, his mother walking away from him after he fell to the earth, his body bloodied and bones broken.
Except . . .
He stood able-bodied on that field—and it was the same field, on the same day. He’d never forget the breathtaking clarity of the sky; the way the dew sparkled as if a careless hand had spilled a thousand translucent gemstones on the lush green blades; the distinctive patterns of light and shadow formed by the blossoming tree to the right; the tiny insect that crawled painstakingly across the grass, food held in its pincers.
He’d watched that insect for what felt like hours as it made its way across the field. When the food slipped out of its pincers, it would stop, pick it up again, and restart its journey. Lying broken on the grass Raphael had thought of himself as an insect, too, an insignificant, discarded piece of angelic flotsam beneath an endless sky.
Today, he could step on that insect without thought, ending its existence and struggle, but he took care to walk around it, the clear morning sunlight a cool brightness on his face, the slight wind adding to the sense that dawn had just broken. Tilting back his head, he saw nothing in the sheet of blue above . . . no, there was his mother. Though he stood in th
e wrong place, his view was the same as on that fateful day—when he’d watched her from a hidden vantage point, needing to see her free and beautiful just once more before he sought to bring her down, end her life.
She’d caused the death of every adult in two thriving cities, creating a silence painful and eternal. The survivors had all been children, little ones so bruised in the heart that they’d curled up and died of terrible sorrow, hundreds upon hundreds of tiny lives snuffed out without ever being given the chance to truly burn.
He’d known all that, understood she needed to be stopped, but she’d still been the mother who’d once sung him such lullabies that the Refuge stood silent to hear her. So he’d taken that single moment to watch her, to remember who she’d been before the madness sucked her under.
Graceful and strong, her wings backlit by the sun, she flew above him . . . but now there was a cloud across the sun. That wasn’t right. There had been no clouds that day, the sun a burning orb that baked his spilled blood to crystalline hardness and threatened to boil him alive from the inside out.
The clouds grew darker and darker, until they blotted out the sun. And his mother, she was gone. All he could see was a thick blanket of featureless gray. Beneath his feet, the verdant grass had turned brown, the insect a carcass. And the wind, it blew cool across his face, but it wasn’t fresh.
It tasted old.
There was no scent of putrefaction or of death, simply a sense of unfathomable age, of dark, hidden places full of secrets and whispers. Breathing it in, he continued to walk across the field, for someone was waiting for him. He was halfway across the dried-up landscape—so old, this place—when he saw that dawn had come . . . no, that was Elena’s wing arcing over him as she folded it away to reveal the skylight above their bed, the world outside the hazy formless gray of the time just before true daybreak.
The rim of silver around her irises glowed in the muted darkness as she leaned closer. “I didn’t mean to wake you. ”