Archangel's Kiss (30 page)

“It’ll not be anytime soon.” A rock-solid answer. “Your blood was free of the toxin when you woke. You’ll be tested several times a year now that you’re awake.”

“Is it hard? To Make someone?”

Raphael nodded. “The choosing is difficult. It’s to the Cadre’s benefit not to select those who’re weak, who’ll break, but mistakes happen.”

Hearing what he’d never enunciate, she pressed a kiss to his palm.

“However the act itself,” he said, his voice dropping, “is as intimate as you choose to make it. For many, it’s a clinical process akin to giving blood. The human is put into a medicated sleep during the transfer.”

Relief made her shudder. “I thought it would be like when you kissed me.” The intimacy of it had shaken her to the soul.

Cobalt flame. “Nothing will ever be like our kiss.”

Heart thundering, she rose to stand on the bed, her hands on his shoulders. He looked up the naked sweep of her body.
“Elena.”

She kissed him. His response was an inferno, but she felt the tension beneath the surface. “We have to leave soon don’t we?”

“Yes.” His hands smoothing over her butt, slow and easy. “We’ll take mortal means of transportation to Beijing.”

“Wouldn’t it be more impressive to fly in?”

“Endurance flying requires muscle strength you don’t have yet.” A practical answer, but his hands slid lower . . . lower. “It’s to our benefit that she consider us weak going in. It’ll make her careless. We’ll need every advantage if she truly has crossed the line into irrevocable madness.”

“Raphael . . .” She shuddered, thrust her hands into his hair. “Galen’s right. I do make you vulnerable. And she knows my weaknesses.”

 

 

T
wo hours later found Elena back in the beaten earth ring that had become as familiar to her as her own face. Probably because she’d been up close and personal with it more than once.

“So,” she said, staring into the slitted, inhuman eyes of her sparring partner, “you do occasionally lose the suit.”

Venom smiled, displaying the canines she’d seen weep poison, his face at once starkly beautiful and unalterably alien. He’d not only lost the suit, he was dressed only in a pair of flowing black pants that shifted like liquid as he moved, his body as sinuous as the snake that looked at her out of those eyes.

And that body . . . yeah, it was definitely worth a second look. But she was more concerned at the ease with which he played with the foot-length curved knives in his hands. They reminded her almost of some short swords she’d seen, but they were a little
too
short, a little too curved. Not sickle-curved, but more of a soft, smooth flow. Blades meant for lethal grace.

Of course, identifying them didn’t matter. It was what he could do with them that counted. She met his smirk with one of her own. “You didn’t catch the knife I threw at you in New York.”

He shrugged, gleaming dark gold skin over pure, lithe muscle. “I caught it.”

“By the sharpest edge.” She tested the long, slender blades Galen had handed her. Shorter than the rapier he’d started her on, they were weighted so she could throw them, too. If Venom’s blades were made for grace, hers were made for power and maximum damage, both edges razor-sharp—she could gut someone with surgical precision if necessary. “Sloppy of you.”

“I guess I’ll have to make up for it today.” Lowering his body into a semicrouch, he began to circle her, his movements almost painfully slow.

She moved in the opposite direction, wanting to get a handle on his style. Most people telegraphed their next move with some type of a tell. She was very aware of her own tell—her feet. It had taken years of training to ensure they never pointed in the same direction she intended to move. Venom didn’t telegraph with his feet.

She shifted her attention to the next most common tell—the eyes. All the air rushed out of her lungs at the contact. Her brain continued to have trouble accepting what she saw when she looked into Venom’s eyes. Just then, the slitted irises contracted and she took a startled step back.

A soft laugh.

Bastard was playing with her. Gritting her teeth, she kept her gaze locked to his as they continued to circle each other. It was on the second complete rotation that she felt herself blink, stagger a little.

She threw one of the blades without warning. He moved aside with snake swiftness but still ended up on his back on the ground with a nasty gash in his arm.

Galen was beside them in a single instant. “What was that?” he snapped, his jaw a hard line. “Throwing away your weapon before the fight starts isn’t exactly going to keep you alive.”

Elena didn’t take her eyes from Venom. The vampire held a hand over his bleeding arm, but his smile . . . Slow. Taunting. Daring her to call him on it. Dropping her head, she lunged . . . and slammed the second blade right between his legs.

“Fuck!” He scrambled backward, flowing to his feet in a way that was simply not human. Normal bodies didn’t move with that kind of liquid fluidity.

Galen was looking at Venom now. “Did you try to entrance her?”

“She should be prepared for the unexpected.” Venom’s eyes glittered bright green as he returned his gaze to Elena. “I would’ve had her in another half a turn.”

“I could’ve also cut off your balls if I’d aimed a little higher,” Elena said, retrieving her weapons. “You want to play more games or can we get to work? We’re on a deadline.”

“This’ll take a few minutes to heal.” He removed his hand to show that the wound was still gushing blood. “Now I can compare notes with Dmitri.”

Ignoring his sly words, she set about practicing the moves Galen had drilled into her when she wasn’t throwing knives at Illium. The terse angel watched her go through the entire set and gave a short nod at the end. Feeling unaccountably pleased, she pointed the tip of one blade at Venom. “Ready?”

He twirled both weapons in his hands. “I never did get a taste of you.”

Everything went cold, quiet. She was no longer aware of the taunting heat in Venom’s eyes, the light layer of snow on the ground, Galen’s watchful presence. All she knew was the hunt.

Venom struck without warning, moving with the swiftness of the snake that was patently a far bigger part of him than just his eyes. But Elena was already gone, her blades crossed in front of her as she moved, one hand slicing out to run a thin line of blood across the vampire’s chest.

He said something as the blow landed. She didn’t hear it, her mind set to kill.

This time, the monster wouldn’t get in, wouldn’t murder Ari and Belle, wouldn’t break her mother’s heart so badly that she never left that kitchen saturated with the screams of her children.

Her eye picked up the minute tensing of Venom’s thigh muscles and she struck before he could. This time, he avoided her blades, but not the foot she swept out to trip him. But she’d made a mistake. A line of fire rippled up her side.

Stupid. She’d forgotten she had wings to worry about now.

Flicking a quick glance at the wing to ensure the damage wasn’t serious, she twirled one blade, making it sing in the cold mountain air, and turned her attention to those eerie eyes again. Take those out and he’d go down. It was an utterly emotionless thought.

Venom’s eyes contracted at that instant, his blades coming up in a defensive posture as he blocked her attempts to do him mortal harm. But Elena was past the point of thinking, moving with the speed and strength that made her hunter-born. Venom yelled something at her but all she heard was a cold hiss.

She went for his eyes.

A slam of black exploding in her head. Then nothing.

 

 

R
aphael landed next to Elena’s fallen form, his rage finely honed. “Did you incite this?” he asked as he picked her up in his arms, careful, so careful.

Venom wiped blood off his face. “Nothing worse than I’ve said to her before.” The vampire’s gaze lingered on Elena. “I think I made some quip about tasting her.”

“You know I’d kill you for the attempt.”

“Our task is to protect you from threats—especially those you might not recognize.” Venom met his eyes. “Michaela, Astaad, Charisemnon, each will attempt to kill her at some stage, knowing it’ll shake you. Better to get rid of the problem now.”

Raphael spread his wings in preparation for flight. “She’s more important to me than all of you. Don’t ever forget.”

“And you’re an archangel. If you fall, millions will die.”

Unsaid were the words—better for a once mortal, new angel to die in his stead. But that wasn’t a bargain Raphael would ever make. “Choose your loyalty, Venom.”

“I made my choice two centuries ago.” Those slitted eyes flicked to Elena. “But if she courts death, it’ll find her.”

Well aware of what the vampire was speaking about, Raphael rose to the sky, holding Elena close to his heart. It was inevitable he’d remember the last time he’d held her so limp in his arms. Immortality hadn’t made her safer, only more likely to survive the hurts sure to come her way. But he could do nothing to protect her from the memories that haunted her.

Galen’s mental call had almost come too late. If Elena had managed to touch Venom’s eyes, the cold-blooded creature that lived within the vampire would have struck out, sinking its fangs into her unprotected flesh.

It would’ve left her paralyzed, in agony.

And while in the grip of the cobra’s hunger, it was quite possible Venom would have cut off Elena’s head before Galen could intervene, causing true death.

Laying her on their bed, he reached into her mind.
Elena.

Her head shifted from side to side as she moaned, as if fighting a savage internal battle. His promise to her—to keep his mental distance—warred with the protectiveness that clenched around his soul. The urge was even stronger today than it had been yesterday. It would be so very easy to reach in and erase what hurt her.

Brushing tangled strands of hair off her face, he repeated his command out loud. “Elena.”

Her eyes flicked open and for a single instant, they weren’t the silvery grey he’d become used to. Instead, they were almost midnight, filled with a thousand echoes of nightmare. Then she blinked and it was gone. Staring up at him with a confused expression on her face, she rubbed at her forehead. “I feel as if I’ve been hit by a two-by-four. What happened?”

“I had to intervene when you decided to turn training into mortal combat.”

Her hand dropped from her face. “I remember.” A whisper. “Is Venom alright?”

“Yes.” But his concern was for her. “The memories are starting to seep into your waking life.”

She pushed up into a sitting position. “It was like I was a different person. Not even that—like I was a machine focused on only one thing.”

“It sounds like the Quiet.”

Elena shivered at the memory of what he’d become in the Quiet, the soulless creature who’d treated human lives like so many effortlessly snuffed out flames. “Do you think it’s the change—the immortality?”

“A factor.” He nodded. “But it may be that it’s just time.”

Time she remembered all the things she’d rather forget. “I want to speak to my father.”

“H
e has no right to your apologies.”

Her head jerked up. “How did you know?”

“The guilt is a stain on your soul.” Running his fingers down her face to close around her throat, he leaned in until their lips were a heartbeat apart. “You will not crawl for him.”

Elena flinched. “But
I’m
the reason Slater chose our family.” That, nothing could change.

“And your father’s the reason that what remains of your family is broken in two.”

She had no answer to that—because he was right. Jeffrey had splintered their family the day he threw her out, her things so much garbage on the manicured grass verge of the Big House. The neighbors on their tony street had been too well mannered to stare openly, but she’d felt their watching eyes. It hadn’t mattered. All that had mattered was that he’d destroyed what little remained of the relationship between them when he tried to break her.

“It’s a festering sore between us,” she said, placing a hand over Raphael’s heart. “I know now that he hates me because Slater was drawn to me.” Like Dmitri, Slater had been able to entrance hunters with scent, but that hadn’t been his only gift. “Can Dmitri track me?” she asked, something clicking into place inside her.

“Yes.”

No mortal, she thought, no hunter knew that. “That’s what Slater did. He scented me somewhere and changed course toward our neighborhood.” Slater shouldn’t have gained the scent ability—he’d been too young. But the vampire hadn’t been normal in any way, shape, or form. “I could feel him getting closer, taste his scent on the wind.” She’d tried so hard to convince her father, begging, pleading, screaming at the end.

Later, her mother rocking her, telling her she’d talk to Jeffrey. “Give him time,
azeeztee
. Your father was brought up with tradition—it takes a while for him to accept new ideas.”