Guild Hunter Book 1 - Chapter 36

Raphael walked out onto the third-floor balcony, Elena's words still vivid in his mind. You're a little bit human now.

Lijuan had warned him to kill Elena for that very reason. His reaction to being shot, the pain, the blood, had strengthened his belief that this hunter was dangerous to him. But what if, with the danger, came something else, an immunity to the madness of power, of age? After all, he'd wakened from the Quiet much sooner than he should have.

As he waited for Jason to arrive, he considered who he'd been when he first met Elena. He'd torn into her mind, terrorizing her without the least care. Could he do so again? Yes, he thought, having no illusions as to his natural goodness. He was fully capable of doing the same again. But whether he'd choose to do it . . . there lay the true question.

Jason entered the balcony from above, landing in a neat way that made him the most perfect of spies. "I expected to see Illium here."

"He's keeping watch over Elena." Raphael would've preferred to give her a vampiric driver as well, but another vampire that close would hamper her ability to pick up Uram's trail. So she was driving herself, with Illium flying above. Raphael was housebound by his angelfire-scored wing-it was healing at a rapid pace, and he could still fly, but to do so would strain the injury and he needed to be in top condition for when Uram rose again.

Elena had been gone for most of the day, calling him with updates as she cleared one section of Manhattan after another. It was strange to realize that despite having a myriad of other matters on his plate, he . . . missed her. She'd become important to him, this mortal with the spirit of a warrior. "Now, tell me."

"It's as you thought," Jason said. "Lijuan wakes the dead."

Raphael felt the biting freshness of the water-tinged breeze coming off the river, and wondered if Lijuan would be as she was if she hadn't killed the human who'd threatened to make her a little bit mortal. "Are you certain?"

"I saw her raise them."

"Do they live?" He turned to face the other angel.

Deep revulsion whispered in the depths of Jason's eyes. "I wouldn't call it life, but there is some spark within, some glimmer of the person they once were."

This was worse than anything Raphael had thought. "Not puppets as we believed?"

"They are that, but they're also more. Abominations that walk, see, hear but never talk. Their silence is drowned out by the screams in their eyes. They know what they are."

Even an archangel's soul could feel the chill hand of horror. "How long can she maintain them?"

"Of the reborn I saw, the oldest was a year old. He was starting to become senile, that spark long gone." A pause, and then the usually temperate angel said, "It's a mercy when that part of their soul dies."

"And Lijuan has complete control over these reborn?"

"Yes. For now, she plays with them as one would with a new toy. But there may come a time when she turns them into an army."

That cold hand closed around his heart. For if the reborn marched on the living, civilization would fall as terror overtook the world. "Those she wakes-are they the newly dead?"

"No," was the disturbing answer. "Those are easier, but she's begun on the older dead-even those that have . . . rotted. She's somehow able to clothe them in flesh." Jason paused.

"What is it?"

"It's rumored their new flesh comes from consuming the bodies of the more recently dead, the ones Lijuan does not wish to reawaken, and I know they must then drink blood to survive." Jason's voice dropped even lower. "There are also whispers that she gains something from the rebirths, somehow absorbs power."

A bloodborn of another sort, Raphael thought, knowing that no hunter had been born-human, vampire, or angel-who could destroy Lijuan should that prove true. "Have your men maintain watch." Jason was the perfect spy, but as Elena had guessed, he was an even better spymaster. "We must know if she begins large-scale rebirths." The Cadre of Ten could do little while Lijuan played in her own lands. More, most of the members would choose to do little. They each had their own games, their own perversions. Raphael couldn't judge them-he'd countenance no interference in his domain, either.

Elena saw a fragment of humanity in him. But was he human enough to save himself from becoming another Lijuan? "Go. Rest. We'll talk more later."

Jason dropped off the balcony before rising in a steep climb, his wings visible until he rose up above the cloud layer. It was why the angel much preferred the night.

Dmitri.

Sire. The response was close. The vampire entered the balcony a few moments later, having just returned from their healers. "Venom reports that the cleanup at and around Jeffrey Deveraux's office, as well as at the museum, was completed earlier this afternoon. Geraldine is dead."

Raphael's first thought was of Elena-she'd be saddened at the death, though the woman had been all but a stranger. "What of the survivor we found at the warehouse?"

"I was able to trace her ident.i.ty. Her name is Holly Chang, age twenty-three." Dmitri folded his hands behind his back. "She doesn't carry the mutant variant of the toxin, but she does carry something."

Raphael remembered his conversation with Elena. "Does she need to die?"

"Not at this stage. She's not contagious-and we need to discover the truth of whatever it is Uram did to her."

"Is she human still?"

Dmitri paused, frowned. "No one is certain what she is-she needs blood, but not as much as a vampire, and she does gain some energy from food. She may be the result of an aborted attempt at conversion."

"Without the proper procedure and with the mutant strain in Uram's blood, it should have been impossible."

"The healers and doctors think she may simply have been unlucky enough to be one of those who are easily Made-but now that she's been partially transformed, an attempt at full conversion may kill her." There was a long-buried edge in Dmitri's voice. Like Holly Chang, Dmitri had been Made against his will.

All because Isis had known Raphael's weakness-that he had a heart. More, she'd known that Dmitri was the descendant of a mortal Raphael had once called friend. So she'd stolen Dmitri's mortality . . . and made Raphael watch. That had been almost a thousand years ago. And Raphael had thought his heart dead for most of them.

Before Elena began to matter.

"Be easy, Dmitri," he said now. "We won't abuse her, but we must monitor her progress." If she carried the taint of the bloodborn, she had to die.

Dmitri nodded. "I've got her under twenty-four-hour watch." Another pause. "If I may, sire."

"Since when do you ask for permission?"

The vampire's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Elena makes you vulnerable. I don't know how, but she does." His eyes went to the injured wing. "You're healing at a slower rate."

"Perhaps an immortal needs a vulnerability," Raphael said, thinking once more of Lijuan's "evolution."

"I-" A cell phone rang.

Raphael nodded at Dmitri to go ahead and answer, readying himself to take off. Dmitri's raised hand stopped him. "It's the Guild Director."

Raphael took the phone. "Director."

"I don't know what the h.e.l.l you've got Ellie into but I have a feeling it has to do with the girls disappearing around town." Her dislike of him was a taut thread that vibrated with pure anger.

"Elena is lucky to have you for a friend."

"If anything happens to her, I don't care who you are, I'll shoot you myself." Worry mingled with the violent anger to turn her voice harsh.

Had it been anyone but Sara making the threat, Raphael would've meted out swift punishment-perceived weakness in an archangel could lead to death for millions. But he'd never been a hypocrite. He'd done unconscionable things in the Quiet, crossed an inviolable line when he forced this woman to betray one of her deepest loyalties. The scales were not close to even. "Do you have something to share, Director?"

"Five bodies were just found in Battery Park, all drained of blood. They were hidden very well."

Uram had acted fast to replenish his energy. "Have the authorities been alerted?"

"Sorry, couldn't stop it," Sara said, telling him she had her finger very much on the pulse of the city. "But the bodies are in transit in morgue vans-I'm guessing you have to make them disappear. Don't kill the attendants when you do it."

"That won't be necessary." Sometime after his two-hundredth birthday, Venom had gained the power to entrance humans, much as a cobra did its prey-something Raphael was sure Elena would be aghast to discover. The vampire used it rarely as Neha would not be pleased to realize she'd lost so valuable an a.s.set. However, it would come in useful today-none of Uram's victims could be allowed to be put under the microscope. Holly might be the only survivor, but that didn't mean Uram wasn't forcing the others to drink his toxic blood . . . or worse. "Thank you for the information."

"Don't thank me. Just keep Ellie safe from whatever monster you've let loose."

Yes, Uram was a monster. With a monster's strength. Raphael's heart suddenly sped to a killing beat, though the air was still, the winds silent. "Give Dmitri the details." Handing back the phone, he took off from the balcony. His wing ached but he pushed onward, attempting to contact Illium as he flew.

A dull silence was his only answer-not the blankness of death, but something close. He got a little more when he tried Elena. Pain and nausea and anger.

He arrowed a thought toward Dmitri. Forget the bodies for now. Find Elena.

I'm contacting my men.

Jason. The black-winged angel was a master at coordinating the wings of angels under Raphael's command. Locate Illium. He's down.

I'm on my way. I'll brief the wings en route.

Raphael flew harder, cursing his own stupidity. Uram didn't need to rest to heal, not when he could hasten the process through blood. Another advantage of the bloodborn, another thing that made them feel as if they'd made the right choice. At this point, Uram would believe himself sane-he'd begun to think, to make decisions, but his personality was warped on the deepest level, his brain swimming in the toxin.

The worst thing, Raphael thought as he pushed himself to reach Elena, was that such devolution didn't happen overnight. Uram's servants had to have known but, unlike Raphael's powerful Seven, the other archangel had kept no one strong nearby. No one but Michaela. Raphael's mouth twisted-he was sure the woman who'd once been called the Queen of Constantinople had helped her lover evade the protocols set in place to prevent exactly this type of thing. Perhaps she'd wanted Uram dead, but more likely, she'd wanted to see what would happen, ascertain if the rest of the Cadre was lying to her.

He reached the part of Manhattan directly across from Castle Point, the spot where Elena had last checked in. "I have a good feeling about this," she'd said. "The scent's been diffused by the moisture in the air, but I'm going to keep circling until I hit a stronger concentration."

"I'll send more angels your way."

"No, don't pull them off the grid searches yet. This could be a trick. I'll get Illium to contact you if I think I have a bead on him."

Elena had obviously been far closer to the Angel of Blood than she'd believed.

As he flew over the area, looking for her car, his eyes-sharp, like a raptor's-found Illium instead. The angel's blue wings stood out even as he lay half-submerged beneath a pier. Diving, Raphael ignored the onlookers who'd begun to gather on the pier as well as the rescue boat powering Illium's way. Several humans had actually jumped in and were helping to keep Illium's face out of the water, though they'd been unable to lift him given the weight of his waterlogged wings. They scattered at Raphael's approach.

Scooping the unconscious angel out of the water, he rose to the sound of camera shutters and cries of wonder mixed with sorrow. Illium had become well-known in the city since his arrival from duties at the Refuge, his blue wings distinctive, his personality infectious. They thought him dead, forgetting that he was immortal.

Uram could have killed Illium, but he'd chosen the faster option and disabled, clearing the way to his real target. Illium, wake. Raphael held position high above the cloud layer, Illium's shattered body cradled in his arms. The other angel's wings were torn, his bones broken from the high-velocity impact with the water. Bruises and cuts marked his skin where he'd probably hit something in the river. He'd lost an eye.

It would all heal. That didn't mean it wouldn't hurt. But his flamboyance aside, Illium was a soldier, a fighter. Which was why Raphael didn't let him rest. Rather, he focused his mental abilities and slapped the angel awake from within his very mind. Illium came to with a gasp. But no scream.

A single perfect eye opened. "b.a.s.t.a.r.d was waiting in the clouds," he whispered, not wasting time with unnecessary apologies. "Glamour. Ellie . . ." He shuddered, fighting his body's need to go into a healing sleep. "I think she saw me go down. C-c-close. He looked healed . . . but was weak." The last word was almost soundless as his body literally kicked him into the deep comalike state from which no one and nothing would be able to wake him for at least a week.

Though he was far younger than Raphael, he might just be old enough to enter anshara itself. It would allow him to heal much quicker, dampening the agony and rebuilding his body before he woke. Otherwise, once the coma broke, he'd be in as much pain as any other being. With so many broken bones, it would be excruciating.

Raphael knew that too well. His mother's last words to him had been said as he lay bleeding on the ground, his wings shredded so badly he'd had no chance to slow his descent. He'd hit the earth at a velocity that would've torn a mortal to pieces. His body hadn't survived too well either. He'd lost pieces. Young as he'd been, it had taken years for everything to fully re-form. Those in anshara healed exponentially faster. But there was no magic cure.

Not unless you were a bloodborn angel bloated with toxin.

Jason's black wings appeared through the clouds. He held out his arms, face drawn. "I'll take him."

Raphael handed over Illium's body. "The rest of the wing?"

"I told them to search for the hunter."

"Get Illium to a healer." He dove back down to the pier, pulling glamour around himself before he came into view. What Illium had fought to tell him was very important. If Uram hadn't healed on all levels, then he wouldn't have been able to fly far with Elena's body weighing him down.

Live, Elena, he said, willing her to fight, to break out of the darkness that cloaked her mind in a suffocating prison. Live. I have not given you permission to die.

Nothing. Silence. Such silence as he'd never before known.

Live, Elena. A warrior does not lie down for the enemy. Live!