When he bent to kiss her cheek, Elena saw Caliane’s eyes sheen wet. “Come.” She took his arm. “Let me show you how my city has grown since last we met.”
“Mother.” Quiet steel. “You do not greet my consort.”
“Guild Hunter.”
Elena felt the urge to check the air for frost, the greeting was so icy. I thought you said she was never rude, she muttered on the mental plane, even as she made a graceful bow courtesy of Illium’s tutoring skills.
It appears you are a special case.
Stifling a laugh at the cool response, Elena fell into step beside Naasir as Caliane drew Raphael ahead. She’d have to tell Sara about this—her best friend found her “mother-in-law problems” beyond hysterical. As a woman who’d never imagined she’d trust any male enough to tie her life to his, much less meet and deal with his mother, Elena found it cathartic to share the weirdness of this part of her life with Sara.
“Consort,” Naasir said, in that smooth voice she had the sense could become a lethal growl without warning, “there’s something the Sire has asked me to show you.”
She couldn’t read him. At all. It truly was like talking to a big, predatory beast that hadn’t yet decided whether to eat her. Palm itching, she gave in and drew a knife, playing it desultorily through her fingers like a damn security blanket. “What is it?”
“This way.” He waved to a narrower pathway to the left.
Raphael, I’m going off to parts unknown with this vampire who isn’t a vampire.
He has promised not to bite without warning.
Imagining the fiendish revenge she was going to take on Raphael for teasing her so mercilessly, she followed the silver-eyed male who continued to make her senses itch and her primal hindbrain crouch in readiness for flight. “Can I ask a question?”
No response, no reaction.
Deciding that didn’t mean no, she plowed on ahead. “Who Made you?” Venom, with his reptilian speed and the eyes of a viper, had been Made by the Queen of Snakes and Poisons; it could be that Naasir, too, carried the mark of the one who’d Made him . . . if he had been Made and wasn’t a wholly unknown creature.
“A long-dead angel who thought to own me,” was his enigmatic answer, the silver in his eyes almost liquid. “I tore out his throat. After that, I ate his liver and his heart. The remaining internal organs weren’t as tasty so I gave them to his other creatures.”
Elena’s hand tightened on the handle of the knife, conscious Naasir carried gleaming blades of his own in the sheaths strapped to his arms. “I wouldn’t think a vampire who killed an angel would be permitted to live.”
A slow, feral smile. “I didn’t say I killed him.”
Every single hair in her body stood up, the same instinct that had probably saved her ancestors from saber-toothed tigers telling her to run the fuck away! Fast!
Except they’d reached an old temple that hadn’t yet been repaired, parts of it tumbled and covered with creeping vines sprinkled with tiny star-shaped flowers of blue and white. The eerie vampire-maybe-not-vampire led her up the steps. His next words were pragmatic and so civilized, she could barely believe it was the same man who’d spoken about eating an angel’s liver and heart.
“I made this discovery several hours ago,” he said. “As it’s on the edge of the city, easy to police, I decided to wait to act until the Sire’s arrival.”
An angel whispered out of the shadows on the heels of his words, her wings white with a kiss of delicate green at the primaries, from what Elena could see, and her clothing similar to Elena’s own—except this woman’s pants were of some kind of strong brown fabric instead of leather, and her white top a flowing thing rather than the more fitted styles Elena preferred. She wasn’t yet expert enough at fighting with wings to risk tangling herself or her weapons up in froufrou clothes.
“Consort,” the other woman said. “I am Isabel.”
Naasir’s partner, Elena realized, situated here to give the vampire winged backup. “Elena,” she said and held out her hand, the other woman having been away from Amanat during Elena’s previous visits.
Isabel shook it with a smile, her eyes an extraordinary dark brown, her black hair pulled back in an elegant knot at the nape of her neck, and her skin a tawny gold that reminded Elena of paintings she’d seen of Egyptian goddesses. “I’ve made certain nothing was disturbed,” Isabel told her. “Those who ventured this way took little persuading to seek other pleasures.”
A slight shift in the winds that traveled through the temple, Isabel’s blouse shaped to her body for a fleeting second as Elena’s senses jacked into high gear. The scent of decay, putrefaction . . . and below it, of disease.
Not needing Isabel or Naasir to show her the way, Elena walked into the damaged building, the roof a filigree that created delicate patterns of light and shadow beneath her feet. At any other time, she would’ve lingered, taken photographs of the effect to share with Eve, her youngest half sister utterly fascinated by the lost city come to life in a land far from its original homeland.
Today, however, she followed the scent trail in a near-straight line to halfway across the temple. The woman was sitting with her back against one of the intricately carved columns, one hand cradled in a basket of dead flowers, the basket positioned in a way that made Elena think the victim had set it down herself, her body too tired to go any farther. She wore a dress of deep red silk that flattered her femininity without being sexual, the fabric vibrant against the rich cream of her ravaged skin.
There smell was distinctive but faint, the current cold in the city having preserved the victim as she’d died.
Girding her stomach against the rush of pity and anger, Elena crouched down, her wings spreading on the icy smoothness of the stone floor. A single glance was enough to confirm that the unusually small number of sores that marked the woman were visually identical to those on the bodies of the New York victims. No other obvious injuries, but that could be deceptive.
Sadness overwhelmed her as she rose to her feet, the victim appearing a broken doll discarded by a careless child. Elena hoped she was now at peace, this lovely woman who’d spent a thousand years in Sleep, only to die before she’d ever explored the new world into which she’d awakened.
Leaving her sleeping against the stone, Elena walked out into the sunshine where Isabel awaited with Naasir. “How long was she missing?” she asked, walking down a few steps so she could spread her wings, needing to soak in the sunlight after the cold sadness within a temple clearly built to be a place of beautiful serenity.
“Eight hours at most.” Isabel’s tone was direct but it held the same heavy sadness that had seeped into Elena’s bones. “Amanat is a small, tight-knit city,” the angel continued, “and she shared a home with two cousins. They raised the alarm when she didn’t arrive home for their nightly meal.”
“Was she healthy before this?”
“It was taking her body longer to adjust to being out of Sleep than most.” Isabel walked down to join Elena in the sunlight. “As a result, though she was mortal and not averse to sharing her life force with the blood kin, she hadn’t fed anyone in many days.”
The latter comment made it clear Isabel and Naasir had stayed up-to-date with the discoveries they’d made about the disease. “Since you’ve had no other infected”—a quick glance at Isabel to confirm—“it likely means the enemy intended to use her as a carrier. Except that she was too weak to handle the virus.”
Isabel’s jaw firmed, eyes flint-hard. “Had she been stronger, she may not have understood she was sick until it was too late, thus infecting those she fed in good faith.”
Sad as the situation was, it did seem to confirm their theory that the disease could only be passed via a transfer of blood, and as Keir had stated, a certain amount of it. Otherwise, the archangel behind it wouldn’t bother with such a slow method of infection—one that meant he or she had to make contact with the human chosen as the carrier.