Tensing her stomach against the urge, she wiped off her tears and blew out a breath. “Not as bad as it could’ve been.”
“They go for the eyes,” Illium said, sounding coherent and functional as he stood guarding the gaping hole in the stone below the dais, his sword in hand. “Good thing it was dark in there or your eyeballs would’ve been leaking down your face by now.”
Elena stared at him. “Thank you for that cheerful thought.”
The damn blue-winged idiot winked at her, those astonishing lashes closing over one golden eye.
“Raphael, can we kill him now?” she muttered, trying not to think about the fact that she had holes seared into her flesh.
Raphael’s bones cut against his skin as he helped her to her feet. “Not yet, Elena. We may have need of him.” It was said with such frigid calm that for a moment, she thought he’d taken her seriously.
Then she followed the direction of his gaze into the dark maw of the chamber where she’d been trapped. “No.” She gripped his arm. “You’re not going in there.”
A glance so arrogant, she knew most beings—mortals and immortals both—would’ve fallen to their knees in submission. “Leave me, Guild Hunter. Illium will take you to the roof, to safety.”
“Sire—” Illium began, no hint of laughter in his expression now.
“Illium.” A single word. A command.
Illium looked as if he wanted to argue, but in the end, he bowed his head. However, Elena wasn’t one of Raphael’s Seven. She didn’t have to obey his orders. Moving around to face him, she folded her arms. “If your mother is so powerful,” she said, “then she can meet us out here just as well as in that pit.”
“Caliane is not used to coming to anyone.”
She raised an eyebrow and hoped like hell her next words wouldn’t get them killed. “Or maybe she’s only powerful when she has her prey trapped and alone. You’ve never had trouble facing anyone down in the full light of day.”
The temple shook at her feet, trembling so hard she almost tumbled into Raphael. For a moment, she was afraid the entire structure would collapse, burying them. But she’d forgotten that Caliane was a goddess in Amanat—and that her people slept vulnerable beneath the stone roof.
When the trembling stopped, everything was as it had always been. Except that Raphael and Illium had their eyes trained on the dais. On what had appeared atop the stone.
Raphael strode up to what he now realized was an altar, aware of his consort and Illium coming to stand beside him, their swords drawn. But his attention was on the stone slab before him. Six feet long and three feet wide, perhaps as deep, it was a cool pale grey and free of ornamentation. Like the door below, the slab appeared seamless, but unlike the door, he didn’t know how to unlock this puzzle.
Raphael.
Placing his palm on the stone that should’ve been cold but instead held a lingering warmth, he dropped his shields a fraction. Mother.
There was no answer, but he knew . . . “She is awake.” It was too late to kill her while she lay weak and vulnerable.
Could you have done such a thing, Raphael?
Her voice, that beautiful, haunting voice, it penetrated to his very bones, stripped him bare. I am an archangel.
Yes. Such pride in that single word, a wonder of words unsaid. You are the son of two archangels.
He spread his fingers over the stone. Are you sane, Mother?
Laughter in his mind, painful in its familiarity. Is any immortal ever truly sane?
The temple shuddered again, but this time, it was different, dust and rock raining down from the ceiling. Raphael felt the touch of death an instant before he sensed the power of another archangel. “Lijuan is here.”
“Wait!” Elena grabbed his arm when he would’ve turned, headed out. “I can taste your mother’s scent in the air—exotic and rich and sensual. Black orchids.”
“I must go, Elena.”
“But it’s leavened with a strange, unexpected note of sunflowers.” Her fingers clenched on his arm. “There were no sunflowers on the body of the tortured girl, on the bridge, on the vampires who went mad in Boston. The scent was too pure, too much the essence. Do you see?”
Thank you, Guild Hunter. He was already moving, Elena and Illium running across the temple floor behind him.
They exited out into the streets of Amanat to see the Archangel of China in physical form, throwing arrows of power at the temple building. Each bolt was black. There was nothing inherently evil in black—all of Jason’s abilities manifested in that midnight shade—but Lijuan’s power was riddled through with a rotten core that made Raphael recoil.
Rising to face her in the air above the temple, he blocked one of her shots with the vivid blue that was the manifestation of his own power. “I did not ask for your assistance, Lijuan.”
Her hair whipped off her face. “She cannot rise, Raphael. You must not let your emotions blind you to the truth of her madness.”
He knew Lijuan spoke the truth—to a point. Blocking another arrow of power, one that slammed him back several feet through the air, he gathered angelfire in his palms. It might no longer do her mortal harm, but with her in her physical form, a direct hit would still cause significant damage. “The question of her insanity remains unanswered.”
“She took the young one,” Lijuan said, her hair electric with black strands that Raphael realized were streamers of pure dark energy. “And your consort looks injured. Those are not acts of sanity.”
Perhaps not, Raphael thought, but most archangels walked a fine line between sanity and insanity. “Any one of us may have done the same.” He spoke not to defend Caliane, but to oppose Lijuan—and because his mother, while she had acted with the cold arrogance of power, had done nothing as yet to speak of madness. Lijuan on the other hand ...
“What of the people she murdered around the world? The ones hanging from the bridge in your city?” A hail of black rain designed to gouge and kill.
He swept out of the way, throwing back a volley of angelfire that she swamped in black. “Those acts did not bear her touch, Lijuan. They bore yours.” It was a guess. The murders and torture could well have been orchestrated by Neha, but Lijuan was the one with the most to lose if Caliane rose.
A pause in the rain of black fire. Then a soft, girlish laugh. “You always were clever.”
He attacked her with angelfire while she was distracted. Lijuan raised a wall of black flame to block him, her power incomprehensible. And her voice, when it came next, was nothing the least bit human. “Good-bye, Raphael.”