She was following the trail even as the thought passed through her head, barely aware of Venom remaining beside the body while Illium flew overhead. The scent meandered through Central Park, as if the killer had taken a stroll. Given his confidence, she more than half expected to lose him as soon as she hit the pond, but surprisingly, he hadn’t gone into the water.
Instead, she found herself following him to the edge of Fifth Avenue. Where the sensual whisper of oleanders snapped off with such suddenness that she knew he’d gotten into a cab. Blowing out a breath, she waved Illium down. “Trail’s cold,” she said when he landed. “Might as well lead me to the other site just in case he did scope that out.”
It was only as they were flying over the Hudson that she realized they were heading toward Raphael’s estate. Figuring the burial site had to be somewhere beyond, she found herself deeply shaken when Illium dove down to land on the edge of the wood that separated the mansion from Michaela’s U.S. home. He stayed in position as she walked in. Archangel?
Slightly to your right, about fifty meters ahead.
Raphael held out a hand when she reached him, but she didn’t take it, staring at the rectangular coffin-sized hole in the earth. “When exactly,” she said, “were you going to tell me he was going to be buried on the grounds of our home?” She understood that he had to control his vampires in ways that might seem cruel to her, but this ...
A chrome blue gaze met hers, vivid even in the night shadows. “I needed him close enough that I could maintain a mental watch.”
“How many others?” she whispered, feeling sick to her stomach. She’d walked these woods before, might well have stepped over them.
“None, Guild Hunter.”
The ice in his voice should’ve scared her, but she was too furious. “You know this is wrong, Raphael, keeping this from me. Yet you did it intentionally.” His expression didn’t change, but she knew without a doubt that she was right. “Why?”
“Because you have a mortal heart.” A pitiless statement.
She shook under the verbal blow. “Is that so wrong?”
“It is not a matter of right or wrong”—metallic blue, so very, very inhuman—“but of fact. This would have disturbed you to an extent that would’ve made it impossible for you to live here.”
It was the absolute truth, made no less so by the fact that he’d seen it with such cold clarity. Anger battled with other, deeper emotions, and it took her almost half a minute to find the control to say, “I want to ask you for something, Archangel.” He’d given her his heart, given her power over him, but until now, she’d never gambled anything on that power.
“What would you have, Guild Hunter?” So formal, so distant.
The part of her that was still the child abandoned by mother and father both was terrified of pushing him too far, until he left her, too. It was a nauseating sensation—but this was a stand she had to take. “Strike this punishment from the books. Surely there are other ways?”
Raphael was as unmoving as stone in front of her for a long, long moment. “Is it a boon you ask, Hunter?”
“No,” she said with slow deliberation. “I ask this as your consort. This . . . it’s not worth tainting the relationship between us.”
The Archangel of New York closed his fingers gently around her throat—not a threat, but a mark of possession. “Is our relationship so weak?”
“No.” She would fight to the death for it ... for him. “It’s something extraordinary—and it deserves to be protected against all the crap the world is going to throw at us.”
The metal receded as she watched, replaced by a penetrating, piercing shade akin to the mountain sky at noon. “Ah, Elena. So eloquent.”
“I mean it.” Her stomach was so tight, a thousand knots within.
“I will have Dmitri think of another suitable punishment.”
Air rushed into her lungs as she took a true breath. “I’m sure he’ll have no problems.” Dmitri was one of the oldest vampires she’d ever met—and he had a thing for pain. “There’s nothing here, scentwise.”
“I didn’t truly expect it. He was meant to be transported here later tonight, after having had time to put his affairs in order.” Raphael stroked his thumb over his consort’s pulse. “What is it I sense in you, Elena?” Fear, an insidious intruder, one that would steal her from him.
She gave a slight shake of her head. “Not you.” A pause. “Me. I’m a little messed up. Sometimes it all just roars back to the surface.”
Stroking his hand along the back of her neck, he tugged her close, took her lips in a slow, deep caress that reminded her the nightmares had no claim on her now—she belonged to an archangel.
His hunter lifted her fingers to her kiss-wet lips when they parted, eyes huge in the darkness. “Shokran, Archangel.”
“You are welcome, Guild Hunter.” Wings brushing over his consort’s, he turned to walk back to the house with her. “This murder is a message. It can be nothing else.”
“The question is who—” Elena froze. “The killer’s scent was heady with oleander. It’s a flower, but it’s also a toxic poison.”
“Neha.”
Leaving an exhausted Elena to her bath—though the idea of joining her was a much more pleasurable thought—Raphael walked down to the library and put through a call to Neha. The Archangel of India took her time answering, and her visage, when it appeared on the screen, was pure arctic chill. “Raphael.” With her hair pulled off her face into a tight bun and her features free of artifice, she had a pure, unadorned beauty.