Archangel's Heart (Guild Hunter 9)

The chains were heavy iron.

“I’ll take care of it, Guild Hunter.”

Stepping back, Elena let Raphael pulverize the irons and caught Majda in her arms.

Her grandmother’s legs were shaky, her arms, too, but those arms came around her with unexpected fierceness. “Marguerite’s baby?” Tears in every word. “My granddaughter.”

Going down to the floor with Majda in her arms, Elena fought her own tears. “You need blood,” she said, recognizing the cinnamon spice and wild raspberry scent of this woman as that of a vampire.

Her grandmother pushed away Elena’s wrist when she offered it.

Elena tried again. “You need to drink.” Majda wasn’t emaciated or starving like the other vampire, but she was weak, as if she hadn’t fed for at least a week or longer.

Majda shook her head. “Not from my bébé, from my Marguerite.”

Realizing her grandmother was still disoriented, Elena went to make a small slit in her forearm, but Raphael was there before her. “Let me, hbeebti. I am far stronger and she’ll heal faster.”

Her grandmother’s eyes flicked from Elena to Raphael at the word hbeebti, her pupils dilating. When Raphael’s wing pressed over Elena’s as he crouched down to offer Majda his forearm, she scuttled back . . . and then her gaze seemed to focus on Elena’s own wings. Her breath began to come faster.

“I’ll explain,” Elena said, desperate to help her. “But please drink, Grandmother.”

Elena didn’t know if it was the “please” or the “Grandmother” that did it, but Majda made her way cautiously closer and, lowering her head, sank her fangs into Raphael’s wrist. She jerked back after a single long pull at most, and when her lashes lifted, there was a glow to her eyes that reminded Elena of Raphael’s wings.

“Not an angel,” Majda said even as her skin smoothed out to flawless beauty, her hair turning glossy and shiny.

In a matter of heartbeats, she looked no older than Elena.

“No.” Elena just stared. “He’s an archangel.”

And her grandmother was astonishingly beautiful.

Her eyes were also no longer locked on Elena. “Jean-Baptiste!” Scrambling to her feet, she ran to the other vampire, the one Gian had been torturing.

He was still feeding—and Gian was the one who was shrinking and shriveling, the vampire growing healthier in a slow motion contrast. His eye had healed first, the crusted blood and ocular fluid around it falling away in flecks when he blinked. His hair was no longer straw but becoming softer blond, his body filling out in a way that told her he was a tall, solidly built man when not starved.

Still, the transformation was nothing close to that with Majda.

Then Raphael got up, pulled Gian away to drop his wasted but still alive form to the floor, and pressed his wrist to the vampire’s bloody mouth. The vampire fed, jerking the same way as Majda had done at the punch of power, but he didn’t wrench away, his starvation too great. He drank for at least a minute before he lifted his head.

By then, he had starkly handsome features that looked oddly familiar to Elena.

“You have her hair, her skin,” Raphael murmured. “But much of the rest, it comes from him.”

And it really hit her; she was staring at her grandfather. And Raphael was right—much as she superficially resembled her grandmother, it was her grandfather whose genes had held sway over both Marguerite and Elena, though if anyone had asked her to explain exactly how, she’d have been stumped.

“They’re my grandparents,” she whispered, trying to make sense of it all.

“Not a single doubt. And both appear to be sane.” Having already removed Jean-Baptiste’s chains, Raphael turned to Gian while Majda sobbed and kissed her husband at the same time, uncaring of the blood that smeared his lips.

Looking away to give them privacy as they embraced, Elena watched Raphael go to Gian, haul him up with a single hand fisted in his shirt. “Explain yourself.”

Gian opened his mouth but nothing came out. Too much damage from the feeding, Elena thought, then, when the Luminata clawed at his throat, she realized the blade star was still lodged in there somewhere. “He needs help to get that blade star out,” she said, her tone flat. “I have a hunting knife.”

“No, Elena, this we will do in front of the Cadre.” A glance at her grandparents. “You will follow us.”

It was the male who answered. “Yes, sir.” In the light silvery blue of his eyes was understanding of Raphael’s identity. And around him hung the same sense of raw power Elena sensed in Ashwini’s Janvier. Like Janvier, her grandfather might’ve been young in immortal terms, but he was strong—else his blood wouldn’t have held power enough to linger through his child.

When those eyes turned to Elena, they held incandescent joy. “Marguerite’s daughter?” he asked Majda in a chaos of intermingled disbelief and joy. “Our baby’s baby?”

Throat thick, Elena touched her hands to theirs. “We’ll have centuries to talk, an eternity.” She couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that she was looking at her maternal grandparents, but one thing she knew: this woman of her family hadn’t been murdered. She’d survived. She lived. “But first, we need to take care of this asshole before the storm ends and the Cadre flies away.”

They had no context for her statement, but Majda and Jean-Baptiste were willing to follow her lead, their hands interlocked. Both had used the backs of their forearms to wipe the blood off their mouths.