Archangel's Kiss (Guild Hunter 2)

Wings rustled as Aodhan and Jason emerged out of the night to flank them.

Neha ignored everyone but Raphael. "I will forgive you, Raphael." Flat, toneless words.

"Anoushka broke our greatest law. For that, she died."

Raphael stayed silent as Neha turned and left without another word, heading toward a circle of vampires with brown eyes and skin that spoke of an ancient land of heat and a sleek, hidden violence, much like the tigers that prowled its forests.

"How much," Elena said, withdrawing her hand from its position over the butt of her gun, "of that did she actually mean?"

"None and all."Neha will act as an archangel, but hate is a poison in her soul.

Releasing the breath she hadn't been aware of holding, Elena let her gaze drift forward, to the steps that led up to what was, without question, a throne. Lijuan sat on a masterfully carved chair of what was almost certainly ivory. Three men stood beside her - Xi, with his wings of red on gray; a Chinese vampire with a flawless face; and the reborn who'd served Elena and Raphael that first night. But he was no longer the sole one of his kind.

They stood on the edges of the crowd, a silent army with eyes that tracked all movement.

There was an odd sheen to their gaze, a hunger that made her instincts rise in warning.

Flesh, she thought, remembering the report she'd read sitting in Jessamy's sunny classroom, they lived on flesh. "Her reborn surround us," she said, wondering how the other guests couldn't smell the rot, the musty smell of a grave desecrated.

Raphael didn't shift his gaze off Lijuan, but his words told her he was conscious of everything around them. "An angel without wings is a creature maimed, prey brought to ground."

She took a deep breath, mind awash with the images of that sunset in the wildflower garden, Illium's sword a silver blur as he amputated the wings of Michaela's guard. It was instinct to tighten her own wings even further before turning her attention toward the throne once more.

To find Lijuan looking straight at her.

Even from this far away, Elena felt the bone-crushing impact of that gaze. She wasn't surprised when the archangel rose, and the gathering fell silent.

"Tonight," Lijuan said, her voice carrying effortlessly on the eerily warm air currents,

"we celebrate a new beginning for our race, the Making of an angel."

Heads turned, following Lijuan's gaze, until Elena felt the weight of stares from every side. Some were curious, some angry, others malevolent. And one . . . Her nape prickled.Evil. It stroked over her, a malignant kiss she wanted to reject with every breath in her. But she stayed silent, unmoving. Let them think her unaware, let them believe her an easy target.

"Elena," Lijuan continued, beginning to move down the steps and toward them, "is a unique creation, an immortal with a mortal heart." The crowd parted in front of her, watching her progress . . . except for an awestruck human/vampire couple who didn't get out of the way fast enough. "Adrian." It was less than a whisper.

The reborn male - the one with skin that spoke of the savannah - tore out the human woman's heart, sinking his fangs into her neck at almost the same instant to tear open her jugular. She was still standing when Adrian reached over to rip out the male's throat, wrenching the vampire's body apart with his hands until the unfortunate male was nothing but a pile of discarded meat. The dead human female lay beside the lumps of flesh, steam rising from the viscera as Adrian - hesitating for a second, as if tempted to lick up the blood that had soaked into his skin - took out a handkerchief and began to wipe off the mess.

Moving past the butchered couple as if nothing had happened, Lijuan came to stand in front of Elena. "That mortal heart, some would say, is a weakness that will steal the gift Raphael has given you."

"Better a mortal heart," Elena said in a quiet voice, "than a heart that feels nothing at all."

A smile, almost girlish, and all the more terrible for it. "Well said, Elena. Well said." A single clap of her hands, an unspoken command. "To mark this occasion, this meeting between the ancient and the barely born, I'd like to present you with a remembrance - a gift from the old to the new, one so special, so unique, that I have kept it hidden even from my own court."

The pain caused by Lijuan's last gift was still a burn on her soul, but Elena steeled her spine, held her place, knowing this was a test she had to pass - or she'd be discounted for the rest of her existence as nothing but Raphael's once-mortal toy.

"Phillip." A glance at the Chinese vampire with that heartbreakingly beautiful face.

Phillip melted away into the crowd.

"It will be but a moment." Lijuan turned her attention to Raphael. "How is Keir? I haven't seen him in centuries."

It was an attempt at small talk but it fell oddly flat, as if Lijuan was putting on a mask that didn't quite fit. Elena heard Raphael respond, but her eyes were locked on the shadows where Phillip had disappeared, her heart pounding one sluggish beat at a time as a single drop of sweat rolled down her back.

The evil whispered nearer with every beat that passed, until she could almost taste it on her tongue.

Dirt, that sweet rot that accompanied all of the reborn.

A spice for which she had no name, a hint of ginger, warm golden sunlight.

She knew what the horror would be before Phillip reappeared with a handsome mahogany-haired man who'd been blessed with eyes of darkest brown, eyes that invited a woman into temptation. He'd been a movie star before being Made. Young girls had put posters of him on their bedroom walls, giggled as they whispered his name.

His eyes locked with hers.

"Come here, little hunter. Taste."

The words were a husky whisper inside her head, a thousand screams rolled into one.

She knew Lijuan was speaking to her, but all she heard was that singsong voice that had haunted her for almost two decades.

"Run, run, run." A giggling parody of Ari's dying attempt to help Elena. "She won't run.

She likes it, you see."

Elena felt the nightmare spiraling out beneath her, a bottomless pit from which she might never escape. It sucked at her, tinged with the laughter in the monster's eyes, the nauseating joy in his expression - as if they were bound,as if he had a claim on her . She felt her legs begin to tremble, her heart jerk as she found herself back on that floor, scrabbling back on bloody tiles with hands that kept slipping, kept holding her prisoner. It was wet, cold, but Ari's eyes -

A rush of rain in her head, untainted and strong, a scent that thundered of the sea, of the wind.Elena, I stand with you.