Elena.
She shuddered at the scent of the wind, of the rain. Relief made her careless, her body completely unprotected as Anoushka rose in a screaming rush, kicking Elena to the stones and clawing out with her hand.
Agony blazed down Elena’s thigh. She fell to the ground, hearing Anoushka’s body hit the stone wall with an audible snap at almost the same instant. Raphael touched her thigh a moment later . . . and she realized she couldn’t feel anything in that leg.
“Raphael,” she whispered, panicked. The numbness was spreading, crawling up her body, making her heart shudder.
His wings covered her from view as he leaned close. “A bare scratch.”
She knew it had been more than that. She’d felt her flesh being gouged out, but she understood the message. Nodding, she bit her lower lip and tried to stay calm. When she glanced down, she saw his hands on either side of the wound. They were glowing blue.
Fear rose, but she knew that couldn’t be angelfire. It wasn’t hurting her. In fact, she could feel a soft warmth at the site. As she watched, her eyes wide, an umber-colored liquid seeped out of the wound to discolor the paving stones. “Dear God.” It was an almost soundless whisper. The stuff was eroding the stone.
“You’re fine, Elena. It was simple shock.” Betray no weakness.
Elena let him pull her to her feet, sliding her foot over the discolored part of the paving as she did so. As Raphael folded away his wings, she realized two things. One, both the claw marks and the cuts on her arms had stopped bleeding, and two, the entire Cadre had come with Raphael. Neha knelt by her daughter’s slumped body, the sword flung aside, a spray of red marking its path on the stones. Her daughter’s blood was scarlet against the archangel’s dusky skin, her eyes ice when she glanced back. “She will die.”
Elena didn’t think Neha was talking about Anoushka.
37
Raphael’s face was expressionless. “Elena isn’t the one who orchestrated the brutalization of a child.”
Someone sucked in a breath and Elena realized it was Michaela, the female archangel’s body angled toward Anoushka though she stood to Raphael’s left.
“Lies,” Anoushka said, her breath coming easier as her body healed. “The hunter sought to make her name by killing an angel.”
It just came out. “I helped kill an archangel. I have no need to prove myself.”
Neha rose, her movement as sinuous, as silky as that of the pythons she kept as pets. “Give me your mind.”
Elena was suddenly drowning in the scent of rain, of the sea, as Raphael lifted a hand filled with angelfire. “No one will touch Elena. It’s Anoushka’s mind you should search.”
There was a blur of movement overhead and then Aodhan was landing beside Elena, though, given his angle of descent, it would have been far easier for him to land between Michaela and Raphael. The angel was covered in so much blood, it had turned his diamond-bright wings to rust. But that wasn’t what chilled the whole courtyard to silence. Aodhan had a vampire in his arms. That vampire was missing all his limbs. But he was still alive.
Elena fought not to show her horror. The last time she’d seen a vampire in that condition, the man had been a victim, tortured for days by a hate group.
“Sire.” Aodhan placed his burden on the stones. “I was detained by Anoushka’s Master of the Guard. His mind holds the truth.”
From the look on Anoushka’s face, there was no denying the vampire’s identity. Elena saw it only because she was looking directly at the Princess—a spark of pain, of loss. The angel actually felt something for this vampire. But not enough. Rising, she picked up the kukri in one of those reptilian snaps of movement, and threw it at the vampire’s neck.
Raphael caught it by the blade, his blood dripping onto the vampire’s ravaged chest. “Favashi, Titus, take his mind.”
The quiet Persian archangel closed her eyes. The big, black archangel did the same. It took less than a second.
“Guilty,” Favashi whispered, speaking to Neha. “Even if Astaad forgives the murder of his concubine, even if Titus forgives the killing of the female from his lands, even if Raphael forgives the torture of his man, the attempt on his mate’s life, you cannot save her.”
“She broke our supreme law.” Titus’s voice was incongruously soft for such a big man, the slabs of muscle on his chest gleaming around the steel gray of his breastplate.
“The abuse of a child,” Astaad murmured in an almost academic tone, stroking two fingers over his small, neat black beard, “may be the only true remaining taboo we have. Cross that line, and we may as well surrender to the darkness that stalks us all.”
“The boy isn’t dead,” Neha responded.
“Murder or vicious assault, the penalty is the same—and the child was so close to death as to make little difference.” An archangel with iron in his voice and eyes of golden brown. Elijah. “The worst is that she didn’t do it alone. She taught others to savor the pain of an innocent.”
“She planned to take other angelic children once she became Cadre,” Favashi said, her tone sorrowful but unbending, “to rule her angels by keeping their young hostage.”
“Witnessed.” Titus’s soft voice.
“Even I,” Lijuan murmured, a hint of surprise in her tone, “did not go that far.” Her eyes almost disappeared in daylight. “What have you birthed, Neha?”
What happened next was a blur. Michaela moved her hand in a brutally hard gesture. It took a second for Anoushka’s head to fall off her body, her blood fountaining in an arterial spray. Wet hit Elena’s face, her clothes, but she forced herself to stand her ground as Neha rose with a scream, her nails elongating and turning black even as Michaela continued to make those lethal slashing motions.
Sweet mercy. Anoushka was being cut apart piece by piece.
Moving at a speed no mortal would ever reach, Neha clawed Michaela’s face, leaving a spread of black. Michaela slammed her hand to Neha’s chest, shoving her back. The black marks on her face turned a noxious, putrid green. . . . then drew back, as if the poison was being rejected. By the time Neha got to her feet, Michaela’s face was whole again, the poison dripping to scar the square-cut pavings of the courtyard.
Neha twisted toward her daughter, anguish in her eyes. “She’s old enough to—”
Angelfire, cold and blue, engulfed what remained of Anoushka. Elena stared at the hard line of Raphael’s face, without mercy, an archangel passing judgment. It shook her to the core, the speed of the execution, but she didn’t disagree with it—the image of Sam’s crumpled and bloody body would be with her forever.
Neha’s scream rent the air, so piercing it was something other, something beyond comprehension. The Queen of Snakes, of Poisons, went to her knees in the courtyard, tearing at her hair with the clawed tips of her hands. Raphael stepped back and met Elena’s gaze. It was time to go. They left on foot, all of them, even Lijuan. A silent show of respect.
No one spoke even when they reached the blinding light of the main courtyard. It was empty, the first time Elena had seen it that way in all her time here. Shadows blotted out the sunlight an instant later, a heavy cloudbank rolling in from the east. Looking up, she felt a chill crawl down her spine.
It wasn’t over.
Elena entered their rooms behind Raphael, with Aodhan bringing up the rear. Jason had made a rare daylight appearance to take Anoushka’s Master of the Guard to healers, leaving Aodhan free to return with them. “Sire,” the angel said after they were behind the closed doors. “I’m injured.” It was a calm statement.
Elena watched as he peeled off his bloody shirt to reveal a gash so deep he’d been all but been cut in half. “Jesus. How the hell did you fly to us?”