Archangel's Heart

  "I know I've only been an immortal a zillionth of a second according to angelic time," she said dryly, "but I'm pretty sure there's no one more powerful than an archangel. Unless it's one of those Ancestor creatures Naasir told me about." She'd taken those Sleeping beings to be myth, but maybe not.

  "There is no one more powerful than the Cadre," Raphael confirmed. "However, in one situation and one situation only, another group can call the Cadre to a meeting. Attendance is mandatory--anyone who does not attend can have their territory divided with the might of all angelkind standing behind those who are given the resulting pieces."

  Elena whistled. "Sounds like an invitation to war." Especially since angelkind wasn't exactly united right now.

  "Yes--which is why no one refuses an invitation. It's not worth the aggravation when all possible threats will be at the meeting with you." Raphael nodded to behind her. "Aodhan is dodging crossbow bolts."

  Swiveling on her heel, Elena spotted the angel who seemed created of pieces of light, a thousand rays of sunshine sparking off the filaments of his wings, the glittering strands of his hair; he was darting this way and that while an entire squadron shot at him. The members of the squadron were wearing wraparound sunglasses in an effort to track the piercing blaze of him in the sky.

  Aodhan, meanwhile, dropped and dodged with uncanny skill.

  "And the prize for most bored goes to . . ."

  Raphael moved forward to stand beside her, his wing sliding over her own. "He's just staying in shape for the battle to come."

  Unfortunately, that was true. The battle would come and that damn shoe would drop. "This group that has the power to force the Cadre to meet, what's it called?"

  "The members call themselves the Luminata. They are a spiritual sect--not religious in the human sense." He paused, as if thinking of the right words to describe them. "The closest mortal analog is likely the Buddhist search for enlightenment. The Luminata seek to understand themselves individually and angelkind as a whole; their self-imposed task is to discover who and what we are in the greater scheme of the universe, and to accept whatever answer may come. They call it a search for luminescence."

  Spreading his wings, he folded them back in a susurration of sound she'd never associate with anyone but her archangel. "Many mortals believe in gods, but when death is but a faint glimmer on a distant horizon that may never be breached, such beliefs fade into confusion. The Luminata attempt to find luminescence in the now, rather than hoping for it on the other side of that distant horizon."

  "I met a holy man once during a hunt in India," Elena found herself saying. "He lived as a hermit, had nothing to his name but the clothes on his back, but his eyes . . . such peace, Raphael. I think he's the most peaceful being I've ever met. Even Keir doesn't have such a well of peace inside him." And the revered angelic healer had lived thousands of years.

  "From what I know, this is what the Luminata search for." Raphael continued to watch Aodhan's movements in the sky ahead of them. "A purity of soul that leaves them with no earthly questions or concerns."

  "Have they had any success in their quest?"

  "The only Luminata I've ever met are those who have been asked to leave the sect, and the once-novices--those who walked away from the life after a short attempt. So I have no basis to judge the luminescence of those who follow the path."

  Elena raised an eyebrow, but kept silent, interested in this sect that could call a Cadre of archangels to order.

  "At some point in our past," Raphael told her, "a point so far back that no one remembers--"

  "Did you ask the Legion? Their memories of the past are fading but they're not totally gone."

  "I did." Raphael's eyes went to a nearby high-rise, one that had a shape unlike any other in the city, and that was covered in the fresh green of living things, a building that was designed to be a living thing. For the Legion were of the earth and it was in earth, in growth, that they thrived. "But those memories, if they existed, are gone. The Legion know the Luminata only from more recent times."

  "Recent" being a relative term, Elena thought. "So a long time ago in a land far away, the Luminata . . ." she prompted.

  Raphael's laughter was a caress of sunkissed waves over her senses, the power of him no threat but a promise. "I wonder what the sect will make of you, Elena." Love surrounded her, so deep that she felt it in her bones. "As you say, long ago the Luminata were entrusted with a certain task. This task was given to them because it was--and is--believed that they are the only group that can be trusted to be impartial with it."

  He raised one hand to stroke it over the arch of her wing, the touch an intimate one between lovers, as, not far in the distance, Aodhan took a crossbow bolt in the thigh. Pulling it out, he threw it back and kept dodging. Yeah, Elena thought, he might be training to stay in shape, but he was also bored. So was Illium, if the screams floating up from the city streets were any indication.

  He'd clearly kept up the dive bombing.

  "I think," Raphael said, "I must tell your Bluebell to stop scaring our citizens."

  Illium appeared in view a few seconds later, a grin on his almost too handsome face that Elena could see from here. Dipping his wings toward the Tower in acknowledgment of Raphael's order, he joined Aodhan's "dodge the bolts" game.

  One bolt went crazily wild at nearly the same instant, heading straight for Elena.

  Snatching it from the air with a single hand, Raphael passed it to her. "Whoever this is needs further training."

  Elena recognized the markings on the shaft, grinned. "Izzy." The young angel was still a baby in angelic terms. "You have to admit, he's brilliant for his age."

  "Galen wouldn't have recommended him for a Tower apprenticeship elsewise," Raphael said before continuing to speak about the Luminata. "By dint of their spiritual quest, the Luminata have no earthly ties and no loyalties beyond that to their quest for luminescence. They take no lovers, participate in no wars, and when they become Luminata, they sever all blood ties."

  "A perfect neutral body."

  "Yes. Such neutrality is a necessity because the task with which they're entrusted is to call a meeting of the Cadre should a certain span of time pass with no sighting of an archangel."

  Elena nodded slowly. "A safety measure of sorts." It made sense given the staggering impact the archangels had on the world. "Though," she said with a frown, "two years isn't that long in immortal terms."

  "The period of time that must pass before a meeting is called has never been specified," Raphael said, his eyes on Aodhan even as he spoke to her. "As a result, at some point--and weighing up all available knowledge on the situation--the Luminata must make a judgment call." Taking the crossbow bolt from her, he threw it with archangelic strength. Aodhan barely avoided it before the bolt fell victim to gravity, to be intercepted by the squadron tasked with making sure none fell to skewer the mortals below.

  The squadron had been intelligent enough to set up nets to catch the spent projectiles.

  "The purpose of the meeting," Raphael said as Aodhan and Illium began to dodge bolts in tandem, "is to determine if the missing archangel is dead or has gone into Sleep. If so, the archangel's territory must be divided, archangelic borders redrawn."

  Elena now understood why Raphael had never met a practicing Luminata. After Uram's death, the Cadre had apparently met within months to divide up his territory. Even when Alexander went to Sleep and his son attempted to take over the territory by hiding his father's withdrawal from the world, she'd learned the Cadre had rectified the situation within a relatively short period of time.

  Yet it had been two years since Zhou Lijuan, Archangel of China and Goddess of Death, disappeared from sight.

  2

  "We all know Her Creepiness isn't dead." Elena's lip curled at the thought of the archangel who'd sought to rain death on New York, and whose reborn were shambling mockeries of life. "That would be too easy."

  "Regardless, something must be done." Raphael's face
was all brutally clean lines, his expression that of a being who was one of the most powerful in the world. "Xi is keeping Lijuan's territory in check, the vampires under control, but for all his strength, he is no archangel. China is beginning to fray at the edges."

  Elena had no need to ask him how he knew--Jason was the best spymaster in the Cadre and he called Raphael sire. "You're worried about bloodlust?" Powerful vampires like Raphael's second, Dmitri, had iron control over their urge to feed, but the newer, younger vamps? Control was a gossamer-thin thread held in place by fear of the archangels.

  Elena's mother and two older sisters were dead because a vampire had broken the leash and turned into a ravening monster.

  Belle would never again throw a baseball because of Slater Patalis. Ari would never again scold then kiss Elena when she ran so fast that she fell and bloodied her knee.

  And Marguerite Deveraux would never again laugh with her husband.

  A husband who had died the day Marguerite took her life and who was now a man Elena barely recognized. Jeffrey might be walking and breathing, might even have another beautiful, intelligent wife, but he was no longer the man Marguerite had known, no longer the father Elena had loved before it all went so horribly wrong. Elena's two much younger half sisters knew a stern, unsmiling, and distant father when Elena had known a father who'd once blown soap bubbles with her for an hour just because it made her happy.

  I see memories in your eyes, Elena.

  Raphael's voice was the crash of the sea, the crisp bite of the wind in her mind.

  They're part of me. She'd accepted that, no longer fought them when they surfaced. And in return, the nightmares came less and less. Some nights, she still heard the blood dripping to the floor, still felt terror clutch her in a clawed fist until she woke sweat-soaked with her heart a painful drum in her chest, but other nights, she dreamed of racing through the house to hide behind her mother after Belle found her in her room.

  "I was a bratty little sister sometimes," she told the man who was her eternity. "I just wanted so much to be like my sisters that I'd sneak into their rooms and try on their shoes, their clothes, even if they didn't fit."

  Raphael touched the back of his hand to her cheek. "Such is the way of younger siblings everywhere, is it not?"

  "Yeah, I guess." Her lips kicked up, though sadness was an iron hammer on her soul. "Belle was so hot-tempered. She'd threaten me with all sorts of things . . . then she'd take my hand and lead me to her room and do my nails or brush my hair." Her oldest sister had possessed a wildly generous heart under the temper.

  "I didn't bother Ariel as much," Elena added. "She was calmer, quieter, but she had this mischievous sense of humor only people who really knew her ever saw." Memories cascaded through her, of helping Ari pull pranks, of sitting close to her sister's warmth while she read a story aloud, of the stunning turquoise of Ari's eyes.

  Smile deepening as the wind rippled through her hair, she took a breath, released it. "I wish I could talk to Jeffrey sometimes," she admitted. "He has so many of the same memories, things Beth wasn't old enough to remember." Her younger sister had been only five when Slater Patalis murdered Belle and Ari, and mortally wounded Marguerite's soul.

  He'd tortured her, too, but it was being made helpless while her daughters were brutalized that had broken Elena's mother. "It'd be nice just to sit and talk about our family." Instead, all they had between them were broken shards of grief and guilt and loss.

  The blue of Raphael's eyes turned dangerous. "He doesn't deserve to carry the title of father."

  "Ah but we don't choose our parents, do we, Archangel?" If anyone understood the complex emotions that tied her to her father, it was Raphael. His own mother had gone insane, murdered thousands, then risen over a millennia later apparently sane--and full of love for the child she'd once left shattered and bleeding in a remote field distant from any civilization.

  "No," Raphael admitted. "And I have promised not to kill Jeffrey, so let's talk about something else before I forget my vow."

  "Fair enough." At times, thinking of her father was enough to turn Elena homicidal, too. "Getting back to Lijuan--whether she's dead or not matters less than the fact she's vanished from sight?"

  A short nod. "Bloodlust has already begun to rise, though only in isolated patches. According to the report Jason sent in an hour ago, a small kiss of vampires massacred an entire village four days past."

  Elena's spine went stiff. "Xi have the kiss under control?" The angel was Lijuan's most trusted general and a power in his own right--though he was nowhere near as powerful on his own as he was when Lijuan was feeding him energy. "Shit. Is Xi displaying signs of being cut off from Lijuan?"

  "Jason has been unable to confirm either way, but Xi did eliminate the kiss very quickly." Raphael's tone cooled. "He can't keep it up, however. No one who is not Cadre can. And these incidents are only the start--let it go and the vampires will swarm a blood red infestation across China." His voice was so cold that she found herself running her hand firmly down the edge of his wing in a silent reminder that he wasn't only an archangel, distant and lethal; he was her lover, the man who owned her heart and whose own belonged to her.

  Raphael's expression didn't change, his voice still chilly, but he moved his wing so she could caress more of it. "If Lijuan rises again, new decisions will be made, but for the time being, we must work on the assumption that she overextended her new abilities to the point that she caused herself significant damage." He nodded in greeting at a passing squadron. "I do not believe her dead any more than you do, but I do think she may have chosen to Sleep."

  And when an angel chose to Sleep, it could be centuries or millennia before they awoke. Caliane had Slept for more than a thousand years, and that was barely a drop in the ocean. "I guess I better pack for the Refuge then." Raphael's earlier words had made it clear he wouldn't be asking her to remain behind in New York, as he had more than once before.

  At first, she'd fought the restraint, frustratingly conscious that he wanted her safe within the borders of his territory rather than in danger by his side. Later, she'd come to understand that, at certain times, Raphael needed his consort to be visible in the heart of his territory while he was gone. It settled people, because surely no archangel would leave his consort behind were the storm clouds of war gathering on the horizon?

  "It'll be nice to see Jessamy and Galen again," she said. "Naasir and Andi, too." Venom was also still at the Refuge, but Elena didn't know the snake-eyed vampire as well as she did the others.

  Raphael's response was unexpected. "I'm afraid we will have to wait to see our people at the Refuge. This meeting will be held on neutral ground, with no access to any strongholds or armies. Each archangel can bring their consort should they have one, plus one other."

  Elena felt like she was racing to catch up. "I didn't know there was any other neutral ground." The world was sharply delineated into areas of archangelic control. The Refuge alone stood separate.

  "There are a rare few small areas," Raphael told her. "Mere acres in each case. In this particular circumstance, it is the land that was given over to the Luminata so long ago that no one knows the names of those on the Cadre that made the decree."

  "Where?"

  "Lumia, the Luminata stronghold, stands in the land your grandmother called home."

  "Morocco?" Delight kicked her bloodstream. "I love Morocco!" Though she had no ties there, she'd passed through the country during her days as a single hunter, felt its heartbeat sync with her own, as if her blood recognized the hot, desert land filled with a stark, golden beauty.

  "From the covert flyover I did when I was a youth," Raphael told her with a smile, "Lumia is located on a hilly rise, an elegant stronghold that has stood for eons. There are no roads to break up the wilderness that surrounds it--to visit Lumia, you must have wings or you must brave a harsh trek made no less difficult by the high walls on the very edges of their land."

  Elena was about to ask hi
m to tell her more when her brain finally clicked. "Hold on," she said with a scowl, placing her hands on her hips again. "Yeah, people can't bring armies but Charisemnon's will be closer than anyone else's." The disease-causing and cowardly bastard responsible for the horror of the Falling, an event that had seen New York's angels plummet to the earth in an agony of fear and suffering and death, was the Archangel of Northern Africa.

  "Unfortunately, yes." Raphael's own anger was frost in the air. "But Titus will no doubt mass his army on Charisemnon's border when he leaves for the meeting, forcing Charisemnon to do the same or leave his border open to Titus."

  "I always knew I liked Titus." Elena bared her teeth. "When do we leave?"

  "Unless one of the Cadre refuses to attend, we go on the dawn."

  Implicit were the words that if someone did say no, it could set in motion a chain of immortal violence that would end with a devastated world. Because when archangels fought, people died and cities fell.

  *

  Two hours later, in the library of Elena and Raphael's Enclave home, that danger was no longer a concern. According to Jessamy, who was in touch with the Luminata in her role as the angelic Historian, every single archangel had RSVP'd to the meeting. "Except Lijuan, of course," Jessamy corrected, the other woman's fine-boned face up on the screen placed on one wall of the library.

  Elena's blood began to pump a little faster. "That settles it then--we'll be on the plane tomorrow morning."

  Raphael had already told their pilot to be on standby.

  Had he been going alone, he would've probably flown on the wing, but Elena wasn't strong enough or fast enough to do that over such a long distance. She was getting there, could now achieve a vertical takeoff nine times out of ten--though it always cost her. Her body simply wasn't "old" enough in immortal terms, to have grown the necessary muscle strength. So when she forced a vertical takeoff, she did so knowing she'd have a shorter time in the air and could possibly rupture a tendon and be grounded until it healed.