Having flown to the Tower to drop off the biohazard container, Elena took the chance to duck into her and Raphael’s private suite to shower and change. Ransom had roared off to do the same—not only were they stabbing blindly in the dark with the background report still MIA, neither one of them would be much good at sneaking up on a fellow hunter with the stink that clung to their clothes and skin.
“Might as well wear a bell,” had been Ransom’s succinct assessment.
She’d just finished scrubbing her hair and body clean several times over when her cell phone rang, Jeffrey’s name on the screen. Grabbing fresh gear from the clothing she kept at the Tower, she let the call go to voice mail, having no intention of hashing this out over the phone.
Once dressed, her hair braided and her weapons in place, she got in touch with Ransom. “Do you need me right this sec?”
“No, I want to check out a tip on my own.”
Figuring he needed to connect with one of his street contacts, wary people who trusted Ransom alone, she agreed to meet up with him at an Upper East Side address in an hour and, walking out to the balcony, flew off into the cold wind coming off the water. She’d spoken to Raphael while she’d been in the shower, so she knew he was heading back to the Tower over that water, Aodhan by his side and two integrated squadrons at his back, having just completed a critical drill.
Preparation, Elena thought, for an unprovoked and already ugly war.
Words that might as well apply to her relationship with Jeffrey.
The woman who opened the door to the brownstone office had skin of gleaming mahogany, her hair cut in a glossy bob and her body encased in a neat skirt-suit of jewel green. Nothing at all like the vamp-addicted brunette who’d been Jeffrey’s last assistant, her skin pale from too many donations in too short a time.
“Do you have an appointment?” the current PA asked, her throat moving as she swallowed.
“No. Tell Mr. Deveraux I’ll wait for him in the back garden.” As she made her way to that tiny green enclosure through a narrow access path, her mind filled with images of another brownstone, another door. Sara and Deacon had changed the layout and size of their house so that Elena would feel welcome, and yet her own father had done exactly nothing to ensure the same. Not that Elena was surprised, only furious at herself for continuing to permit him to wound her.
Jeffrey appeared in the back doorway as she arrived. “Elieanora. I have a meeting in five minutes.” Curt impatience in eyes of pale gray set in an aristocratic face and hidden behind spectacles framed in fine gold, his pure white hair combed with neat perfection, his stone gray suit sitting easily on his shoulders.
No doubt, her father was a handsome man, the kind of confident male irresistible to women young and naïve enough to think they could penetrate his icy exterior. He’d have no trouble finding another mistress to take the place of the one who’d been brutally murdered during the hunt that had forever altered Elena’s life. Perhaps he’d already done so, already replaced the woman who’d looked nothing like the elegant beauty who was Jeffrey’s current wife. No, the poor woman had been a pale imitation of Marguerite . . . and a living symbol of the pain her father had never once acknowledged aloud after those first brutal days.
Instead he’d wiped Marguerite from their home in what Elena now understood had been a cold rage. His wife had betrayed him the day she wrapped that noose around her throat, and Jeffrey was still so angry at her for it. Elena could’ve forgiven him that rage, but what she couldn’t forgive was that he’d thrown one of Marguerite’s children out with the trash, too.
“You know why I’m here,” she said, fighting to remain calm, to not be reduced to the level of a screaming teenager.
“You had no authority to take Eve out of school.”
“Stop. I am not doing this dance with you today.” She kept speaking despite the chill of his eyes. “The reason I went to Eve was that she was hiding in a corner crying.”
Skin white over bone, a tic in his jaw.
“You know why,” she said, merciless in her love for a sister who was yet an innocent. “She’s your baby, and you told her to get out of your sight?” Elena made no attempt to hide her disgust. “You don’t get to do that, Jeffrey, not to her. She thinks you hung the fucking moon!”
“Watch the language,” he snapped, hands still in the pockets of his suit pants. “And my daughter is none of your concern.”
“She’s my sister, you bastard. Same blood, remember?” Voice vibrating with old anger that threatened to savage her intention to remain rational, she didn’t back down. “You made us, and you know what, I don’t even care anymore.” It was a lie she wished would become the truth. “But Eve, she cares. So grow a pair and be a man.”
“Elieanora!” Striding across the grass, he grabbed her shoulders and shook hard enough to make her teeth rattle. “I’m still your father and you will not talk to me that way. Marguerite taught you better than that.”
It was the first time in over a decade that she’d heard him say her mother’s name and for an instant, they both froze, before fury ignited in her blood. “Don’t you dare bring her into this! You chose to stop being my father a long time ago.”
Fingers digging into her shoulders, he ground out his next words. “I will always be your father . . . and I wish to God I wasn’t.”
Flinching at the vicious emotional blow, she finally remembered her hunter training and wrenched away, her wing smacking hard against his body as she twisted. “Yeah, me, too.” How could he do this every time? Cut her so deep? “But me and you, it doesn’t matter. Ancient history.”
The father who’d loved her had died with her mother, the shell left behind this cruel stranger capable of aiming a kick at a child’s soft heart. “You just think about whether you want to be having this same conversation with Eve ten years from now.”
She shouldn’t have done it, not with having already strained her wings once today, but she made a vertical takeoff, ignoring the words Jeffrey spoke as he reached for her. And when tears poured down her face, she told herself it was from the pain in her muscles. It wasn’t a total lie, her body screaming at the abuse.
Two minutes later, a tendon tore with an audible snap, and she realized she was now not only useless to Ransom, but that, in her unthinking fury, she might have made a fatal mistake.
7
She barely made it to the Tower, her knees slamming hard onto the concrete of the balcony outside the suite she’d left only twenty-five minutes earlier. When a tiny blue feather fluttered to the hard surface as she leaned on her palms in an attempt to fight the bright pain of the impact, she knew she wasn’t alone.
Illium landed beside her an instant later, his hands going to her shoulders and his wing sliding across her own. “Ellie, you’re hurt.”
She shrugged him off, still able to feel Jeffrey’s grip on her arms. “How long have you been following me?”
“Only a minute—it didn’t look like you were going to make the landing.”
“Well, I did, so go,” she said. “Go. Go!”
An instant after the words were out, she raised her head to apologize, but Illium was already dropping off the balcony. Hating herself for allowing Jeffrey to mess her up until she’d hurt one of her closest friends, she crawled and dragged herself into the living area of the suite, collapsing flat on her face the instant she was concealed from the windows, the carpet against her cheek and the crossbow digging into her hip. Reaching down, she managed to get it off, along with the miniature flamethrower, placing both on the left side of her body.
A whisper of sound not long afterward told her Illium hadn’t been offended—he’d simply gone for stronger weaponry. “Guild Hunter.” Words deadly and cool from the Archangel of New York. “You’ve hurt your wings.”