“What did you do, Michael Salvatore?” she asked aloud, but really only to herself. “Take on a tractor?”
He laughed. It was a horrible, wonderful sound, filled with both pain and humor; it grated deeply through his raw throat.
Rhiannon closed her eyes. She tried to see him as he’d been before his injuries. It wasn’t hard. She had but to shut her eyelids for mere moments before his picture swam before her, whole and perfect and beautiful. It was always there of late, haunting the darkness that would have otherwise brought her peace. But right now, she was glad of it.
She closed her eyes, sat back on her haunches, and placed her hands to the blood-soaked shirt against his chest. The blood had grown cold under the air conditioning, and it felt creepy beneath her palms. But she steadied herself with a deep breath, and pulled her attention inward to focus on that internal image of him, whole and unharmed.
She imagined the tendons reconnecting, the bones melding together, the muscles mending. She imagined blood flowing confidently through veins once more whole, like tunnels of life-giving liquid. She thought of his skin, healed and un-marred. Then she imagined his heart beating steadily and strong, rhythmic and precious.
All sense of time vanished, and Rhiannon had no idea how long she’d been sitting there with her life-giving hands pressed to Michael’s chest. She wasn’t aware of the physical world, not fully, until she felt his palm gently cup her cheek.
Her eyes came open as warmth infused her face to sink and spread through her chest. He was sitting up now, one leg bent, one arm draped casually over his knee. His clothing still bore the evidence of his battle, but Rhiannon could both sense and see that the wounds he’d sustained underneath were completely healed.
Michael held her gaze, his blue eyes like neon oceans. “I know what Gregori told you,” he said, his voice as whole now as the rest of him. With incredible tenderness, he brushed his thumb across her cheek bone, and for some reason, Rhiannon felt like crying. No one had ever, ever, touched her with such care.
Michael smiled. It was a smile as tender as his fingers against her skin. “You saved my life. I owe you everything. I always have.”
Rhiannon couldn’t say anything. She didn’t really have the breath to speak. Her chest ached. Her body felt flushed.
“The least I can do is tell you the truth.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Michael slowly removed his hand. Rhiannon felt the world attempt to rush into the space he’d left empty. It was a cold and bereft world, and all she wanted to do was snatch his hand back.
The truth, she thought with whimsical despondence. How would I even know the truth at this point?
Michael gave her a slightly admonishing look, as if he could read her mind and didn’t approve of her mistrust.
Maybe he can, she thought. Gregori said he was a vampire.
“I’m not reading your mind, Rhiannon. I’m a cop. I can read nearly every thought you possess written clearly across your face.”
“Then how did you know Gregori had spoken with me?”
“I want to explain that to you, if you’ll let me.”
Rhiannon took a deep breath. It shook a little. She moved to sit cross-legged, feeling at once weary and weak. It had taken a lot of her strength to heal him. His injuries had been vast. “If you want to be honest with me, start by telling me why I came here today to find you in ribbons.”
“I’ll get to that,” he promised, sliding across the floor to sit directly in front of her, knee to knee. He took a breath as deep as hers had been, and she had the impression he was getting ready to drive down a very rocky road. “Your most recent memories were passed into me when you healed me. I don’t know why, but I’m guessing it has something to do with my vampirism and the fact that you’re my archess. You see, everything Gregori told you was true.” He blinked, and a slight frown marred his forehead. “Well, almost everything. He embellished a bit.” He studied her for a moment, and straightened, appearing to come to a final decision. “I could spend hours telling you all about it, Rhiannon. Or I can just show you. It would be a lot easier than explaining everything. If you trust me.”
Rhiannon frowned. “Show me?”
He nodded.
“What, you mean like with a Vulcan Mind Meld or something?”
He chuckled, his blue eyes crinkling with honest merriment. “You’re not far off, actually. What Gregori told you about me being a vampire was true. But what he didn’t tell you is that I’m more than that. When I was turned, I took on a lot of power, for lack of a better word. All at once.” He glanced away as he obviously tried to come up with the right words to explain the situation. “In effect, several of the abilities I absorbed melded and mixed, creating new ones.”
Now he had the decency to look slightly chagrined, and his cheeks took on color. “If I wanted to read your mind, I could. You were right to suspect me. But I’m not Rhiannon. What I will do, for you, if you agree, is allow you to read my mind. I’ll let you in,” he said, leaning forward and placing his fingertips to his temple. “In here.” He straightened again, lowering his hand. “And you’ll know everything.”
Rhiannon fidgeted. She made a soft, desperate sort of sound when the uneasy fluttering sensation she’d been feeling in her gut finally became strong enough to make her twitch. There were butterflies in there, thousands of them. The entire Swallowtail Foundation atrium could have existed inside her stomach, and it wouldn’t have felt any different.
Vampire, incubus, fallen angel, mind meld. Words and images swam through her head, flashing in and out of existence like fish suddenly appearing before a diver in the deep blue of a bottomless abyss. It was a lot to take in.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t believe the supernatural aspects. She’d had plenty of experience with the “hidden” sides of existence. It wasn’t that, at all.
What she couldn’t quite wrap her dizzy head around was her part in all of it, the possibility that she could be someone so important. That she could be an angel. And not only an angel, but the last of four very special angels that had been lost to four other very special angels long, long ago.
Őrangyalom.
You are my guardian angel.
Michael’s fingers were touching her again, this time to lift her chin, and raise her eyes to his. Once more, his warmth infused her. Admittedly, it gave her strength too, clearing her head a little.
“What do you say?” he asked.
“Will it hurt?”
“Physically, no,” he told her. “But as to whether it hurts emotionally…. I suppose that depends upon how well you come to accept and handle the truth, Rhiannon.” Again, he brushed her flesh with his thumb, this time across her lips. A shiver she could barely suppress ran its course through her body from head to toe. “But I have a feeling that a fighter like you will be able to handle it just fine.”
Rhiannon’s breathing hitched, her heart skipped a beat, and every ounce of hesitation fled from her all at once. Fuck it.
“Fine,” she said aloud. “Do it.”
There was no hesitation. No seconds of build-up, no making her wait. Michael seemed to know exactly what she needed. She had never been a very patient person, and she hated unpleasant surprises. Jack-in-the-box moments had always terrified her.
He spared her of that now, taking her face between both hands and tossing her consciousness head-long into another world, all at once.
She saw it all play out in front of her like a movie. Each scene told a story, and each story told ten more. She saw his realm, Michael’s. She witnessed the place where he and the others like him had once resided, in some far off dimension so vastly different than her own. She saw within it creation and destruction, saw mistakes made, battles lost, and wars won. She witnessed the years passing, time sliding inexorably by, slow when it needed to go faster, fast when it needed to slow down.
Then she saw Earth, the blue marble in the vastness of an endless Cosmos, a tiny period at the end of a single senten
ce in a single book in a library the size of an ocean in a multiverse with a billion ocean libraries. Upon that tiny planet, she saw what he had seen, knew what he’d come to know.
And then she was opening her eyes, and Michael was leaning over her.
There are moments in a person’s life, if they’re extremely lucky, when everything in the world finally makes sense. In those moments, it feels like the centrifuge of life stops spinning, and everything comes speeding back toward the center to coalesce into a clear, perfect picture. The carnival music ends. The blur of confusion goes away. And you’re whole again.
The moment moved over and through Rhiannon, bringing the man above her into sharp focus. Perfect, she thought.
Mine, she thought next. And in her heart of hearts, she knew it wasn’t a selfish statement. It was something true. It was meant to be.
“Feeling okay?” he asked. “You were out for a few minutes there.”
Rhiannon nodded. At least, she thought she did. Then she licked her lips because they’d gone dry. “I knew The Masked One was a vampire.”
Michael blinked. Then he threw back his head and laughed, clearly not having expected her to say that. He shook his head, and his eyes shined. “He was the first.”
Yes. She knew that now.
Her entire body tingled with his nearness. She saw Michael at the cliff’s edge as a warrior. She saw him in battle after battle, tall and resplendent. Now she knew what kind of person he was – not the monster Gregori had insisted, but a man good and true and strong and right. He was everything she had ever wanted in a mate.
Michael’s eyes darted to her mouth again, and his pupils expanded.
Of all who will perish at the Culmination’s hands, the Four Favored will go first.
Before she fully realized what she was doing, Rhiannon had her hands against Michael’s broad chest. With some effort, she shoved hard, pushing him away. She sat up, breathing hard. He was heavy.
“I could use a drink. You?” She hurriedly got to her feet and left the living room before she could look back to see Michael’s no doubt baffled expression. In the kitchen, she opened his refrigerator door and stared blankly inside. Her heart was racing, and her body was uncomfortably flushed.
Focus, damn it.
But a moment later, she felt the now familiar heat at her back and knew he was directly behind her. She hadn’t even heard him approach.
Vampire. Cop. And who knew what the incubus in him was capable of?
She watched as he braced an arm against the side of the refrigerator, and the muscles in his forearm flexed. Her mouth went a little dry. She tried not to move.
“Sorry, I don’t shop much.” His lips were just behind her left ear. “I’m accustomed to using the mansion for food; it’s always stocked. All I’ve got left here is beer.”
Rhiannon exhaled quickly. “That’ll do!” she nearly squeaked.
She grabbed the two cans still left in the plastic six-pack holder, tore one of them away, and spun around to face him. She shoved the can into his chest to hand it to him. It was like punching a brick wall.
As soon as he straightened and his hand came over hers to take the can, she ripped her fingers away and slid past him the way a cat would scoot around an alley corner. That was how she was feeling now, like a cornered cat.
She moved hastily back into the living room and paced a little beside the couch, somewhat afraid to sit down. Where would he sit if she did? Next to her?
She glanced at him when he came to the archway to the kitchen again. He was smiling now, and it was a knowing smile.
He looked sinful in that smile. And in those jeans, despite the drying blood on them. And in that torn, tight tee-shirt that lifted slightly around his narrow waist to reveal taut ridges of a six-pack….
He’s an archangel.
Everything she’d learned from him only moments ago came spinning back into her. With a plop, she sat down on one end of his leather couch. The apartment itself was relatively inexpensive; Formica countertops, linoleum and cheap carpet flooring, few decorations. He hadn’t gone to any trouble to make the apartment luxurious, probably because he had the mansion to go back to when he wanted to. Which she would love to see, herself.
But the couches were honestly nice. She’d been wanting some thick, leather ones like this for a while.
With shaking fingers, she popped open her can of beer and internally congratulated herself on distracting her mind with the furniture.
She looked down at the brand of beer in her hand. It wasn’t a brand she knew personally, but in general, she hated beer in cans. It got warm too quickly, and there was always a tinny taste to it from the metal.
“I hate beer in cans too,” Michael said easily. He’d leaned one shoulder up against the side of the archway and tucked a thumb into the waistband of his jeans. “But this is all the store across the street carries.” He took a long swig and swallowed it down. “It’ll do in a pinch.”
Rhiannon didn’t bother wondering how he knew what she’d been thinking. He’d already assured her he wasn’t reading her mind, and from what she’d learned of him during their Vulcan Mind Meld, she had to admit she believed him. He wasn’t that kind of person. Michael was a man of his word. Plus, what he’d said about being a cop and being able to read people’s expressions was also true. She wasn’t exactly hiding things from him.
“So tell me something,” he suddenly said, cutting through the mounting tension with casual ease. “When was it you first found out about your powers as an archess?”
Rhiannon blinked. “An archess….”
He chuckled. “Sorry. I know it’s a new term for you. But that’s what you’ve been known as to my brothers and me for thousands of years.”
Rhiannon took an absent-minded drink of her beer. When she lowered it again, she said, “I can’t believe there are three others out there like me.”
“Eleanore, Juliette, and Sophie,” Michael supplied. “They’re good people. Like you. I know you’re going to love them as much as they’re going to love you.”
That heat Rhiannon had felt earlier due to his nearness wasn’t going away. This talk of her being like the other archesses was only making her think about the mating that drew them together. And that mating made her think of Michael.
She cleared her throat. “I… I was almost seven when I first realized I had abilities others didn’t have.”
Michael raised his chin, and his expression became serious, tuning into her with the attention of a seasoned cop. He moved to the loveseat across the coffee table from her and sat back to listen. It was odd to have the complete attention of someone like him. It had been thrilling enough before, but now that she knew how important a figure he was, it bordered on baffling.
“One of the boys at the orphanage absolutely loathed me,” she went on. “His name was Simon. I’m not sure why he hated me so much. Sometimes it just happens. Anyway, one day he and I wound up being left alone. We were being punished for something – I don’t even remember what. The others were taking the day out for a field trip, and we had to stay home.”
It was like it had happened yesterday. Rhiannon was surprised how fresh the memory was even though she hadn’t given the event much thought in almost thirty years.
“Simon told me he was going to feed the pigeons, and he lured me up onto the roof of the four-story building the orphanage shared with the battered women’s safe house. Once I was up there, he slammed the stairwell door shut and locked it from the other side.”
She took another long drink of her beer, this time because the memory made her thirsty. “It was the height of summer, not a cloud in the sky, and that year Manhattan temps were triple-digit.” She shook her head. “There was no water up there and no shade and it was only ten a.m. The night watchman wasn’t going to make his rounds until midnight.”
Across from her, Michael shifted, leaning forward to place his beer on the table, rest his elbows on his knees, and lace his fingers together. His ey
es watched her with keen interest, and his expression was grim, as if he could tell where the story was headed. And maybe he could. He was a smart man.
“I was young, but after an hour or so, I was already thirsty. I started to get scared when no one came to look for me, and then I remembered that everyone was out at the library for the day, and they would be eating at McDonalds and then viewing Disney’s seven-year re-release of Snow White at the Eastern Theater after that. They wouldn’t be home until late. I was going to be stuck up there alone until well after dark.”
She paused and licked her lips. “The sun started burning my skin.” She rubbed her arm as she recalled the way the sun had seared into her; she’d always been fair. “It was four stories down to the ground, and it was solid concrete. But I was so thirsty, and so hot.” She closed her eyes as memories pressed in. “Do you know what it’s like to look your imminent demise square in the face and know that you’ve come to that point, that ending? I had only two options available to me, and both would probably kill me.”
Michael didn’t answer. Rhiannon took his silence as encouragement for her to go on. “I wouldn’t know it until later, but it was six o’clock in the afternoon when I finally decided to jump.”
A stillness settled into the living room, and Rhiannon glanced at Michael. Blue eyes pierced her soul with more intensity than the sun had sliced into her all those years ago.
“I broke both legs. I know that now. I was lucky I didn’t paralyze myself. At the time, all I knew was pain. So much pain.” She took another drink of her beer, and realized it was empty. The can trembled in her grip.
Michael stood and stepped around the coffee table, taking the drink from her hand and replacing it with his own, which was mostly still full. She nodded thankfully and took a long swig. Michael sat back down, but this time he sat beside her.
His warm scent wafted over her, masculine and laced with remnants of aftershave and soap. It was comforting in a most uncomfortable way.
“It was the first time I ever healed anyone,” she went on. “I didn’t even know I was doing it. I just looked down at myself and I was crying and holding my legs. I was just wishing the pain would go away and I would be normal again.” She swallowed hard. “And then I was.” She shook her head as guilt and remorse sliced through her. “If I’d recognized then that the power was coming from me, I could have helped Willow when she was attacked later on. But even though that was the first time I ever used any of my abilities, I just couldn’t fathom how it had happened. It took me years to realize that particular magic, the healing magic, was my own, and even longer to figure out how to use it again.”