Guild Hunter: Archangel's Shadows Part 33

His lips curved, the sea a cras.h.i.+ng wildness in her mind. I will see you in our bed, Guild Hunter.

Count on it, Archangel.

Ashwini walked into Banli House to be told that Tanu and Arvi were in the winter-and-night-cloaked gardens. Stepping outside, Janvier by her side, she followed the sound of animated voices to find her sister sitting on a wrought-iron garden seat under the moonlight, Arvi by her side. Tanu had a thick blanket wrapped around her, while Arvi was wearing his coat.

They were both smiling, their conversation fluid.

"As.h.i.+!" Tanu's face lit up. "Come, sit." She held her blanket open.

Heart breaking into a thousand shards of pain and hope, Ashwini accepted the welcome and leaned into her sister's side. Arvi rose at the same instant, held out his hand. "We never met properly. I'm Arvan, Ashwini's older brother."

"Janvier."

The men shook hands, then Arvi retook his seat beside Tanu, while Janvier located a metal outdoor chair, brushed off the snow, and set it up to Ashwini's left in front of the seat. Then the four of them sat talking under the moonlight. Carl brought out coffee at some stage, and, warmed by the liquid, they remained outside for hours more.

Tanu was vivacious and intelligent and occasionally sharply sarcastic in her replies as she'd been before the degeneration. And Arvi, he laughed helplessly at several of Tanu's retorts. But for that single incident five years past, Ashwini hadn't seen him that way since she was a young girl. It made her realize just how much of her brother had broken when Tanu fragmented.

Throat tight, she looked helplessly toward Janvier. He reached quietly under the blanket to take her hand. The two of them were silent for the most part, Ashwini content to sit with her sister's arm around her while Tanu and Arvi spoke, two pieces of a whole that had been torn apart and who'd found one another again for this single magical night.

"It's time," Tanu said with a smile as fire kissed the sky on the horizon, dawn whispering its arrival. "I'm so happy to have spent this time with you and your Janvier, As.h.i.+." Her sister hugged her tight before releasing her from the blanket. "You grew up as smart and as wild and as beautiful as I always knew you would."

Reluctant to go, but knowing she had to, Ashwini rose to her feet to find herself pulled into her brother's warm, strong arms. "I'm sorry for not being the big brother you needed," Arvi said against her ear. "But I have always, always loved you. I am so proud of you for what you've become."

Tears choking her throat, she hugged him with all her might. "It's okay, Arvi. I understand."

She hugged Tanu again as well, her arms wanting to hold on forever. "I love you, Tanu. You and Arvi both."

Face devoid of darkness, Tanu kissed her on both cheeks. "Live an extraordinary life, won't you, As.h.i.+? Fate has promised me you'll make it."

Ashwini couldn't speak. Nodding jerkily, she grabbed Janvier's hand and left the garden. It wasn't until they were in the car halfway down the long drive that she let the sobs come.

"Cher." Janvier pulled over to the side, beside a winter-barren oak and hauled her across the stick s.h.i.+ft into his lap. "Ashwini, what's wrong?" One hand on her hair, he held her against him, his other arm locked around her waist. "Please talk to me."

She couldn't, not for a long time. The first wave of the sun's rays had warmed up the sky when she whispered, "They're gone."

Janvier grew motionless around her. When he moved, it was to press a kiss to her hair. Voice thick, he said, "You knew they were saying good-bye."

"Arvi started dying the day Tanu began to disappear." Her brother had done what was necessary to bring Ashwini up, had even become a celebrated surgeon, but he'd been a ghost of the Arvi she'd once known. "Tonight . . . today, Tanu was herself, truly herself, for the first time in years, and I saw Arvi again."

"They made the decision together."

"Yes. Everyone used to say Arvi was the alpha of the twins, but they were always equal." And so, after years of saving Tanu from herself, Arvi had waited for her to come back long enough to make certain of her wishes, waited for a decision uncontaminated by the mysterious disease that haunted the women of their family.

Swallowing past the lump of grief inside her, she reached into her jacket pocket. "Arvi gave me this." He'd slid it in during the final hug she would ever receive from her big brother.

Janvier took the small envelope, shook it open in the pa.s.senger seat. A golden key fell out, along with a folded piece of paper. "I think it's to a safe-deposit box."

She smiled through the sadness. "That's Arvi, organized to the end."

When Janvier pa.s.sed her the notepaper, she unfolded it to find instructions on how to access the box. Arvi had written in his strong, sloping hand: Everything you need to settle our estates is in there. I know we're leaving you alone, but I've made sure you'll be able to afford every resource you could ever need.

Tanu says she's dreamed a dazzling future for you, and I want to believe her, but if fate isn't so kind, then you'll have the money to fight it. I couldn't find the answer, but another surgeon might.

Make sure Tanu's brain is autopsied; compare it to the results of Mom's autopsy-I had it done privately after the accident. The report is in the safe-deposit box, along with full scans of her brain. The a.s.sociated slides are in a special medical storage facility you'll find the details of in the box. Make sure the pathologist follows the format exactly so you get all the required information. If he balks once he has cause of death, hire a private pathologist to redo that part.

You've lived without fear for so long. Keep on doing it, keep on being the strongest of us all.

With all my love-Arvi The grief slammed into her anew and with it a beam of blinding knowledge. "Don't go with me, Janvier." She sat up, held the beautiful moss green eyes that had laughed with her across the world. "Don't make that choice when it happens for me."

Arms locked around her, Janvier shook his head, his jaw set in a way she'd seen only rarely. She'd lost the argument every single time. "No," he said, "that you cannot ask of me."

"Yes, I can." She gripped his jacket on either side, tried to shake him. "Think of Arvi-he saved so many lives." Angry tears formed. Blinking them away, she said, "Those gifted hands will never again pick up a scalpel, never again give someone hope."

"He lived a shadow life," Janvier growled. "You said it yourself. It was his choice to go today, when he was happier than he'd been for decades!"

"Arvi has been heading toward this since the day Tanu was first diagnosed! You're whole, healthy."

"I won't be after you!" His fury filled the car, his voice raw. "I won't be me after you."

"Honor came back for Dmitri," Ashwini whispered, sharing a secret she'd spoken to no other. "I promise you I'll come back for you." She might not wear the same face, the same name, but she'd know him. Always, she'd know him. "No matter what it takes. I'll come back."

His eyes glittering wet, Janvier's fingers dug into her hips. "You're sentencing me to an eon alone. How can you ask that?"

"Because you're strong enough to bear the pain."

"No, I'm not."

She kissed him, her hand curved around his neck. "You need to be. I need to know you'll be here when I return."

He wouldn't look at her, his muscles rigid, and she knew she'd lost the battle today. But it wasn't over. The disease inside her might snuff out her light, but she would not let it snuff out Janvier's.

Fourteen days later and a week after Felicity and Lilli were laid to rest, Janvier drove his Ashblade high into the mountains, where she scattered the ashes of her sister and her brother on the wind. According to the autopsies, Ta.n.u.shree and Arvan Taj had died of heart failure. Inexplicable, said the pathologist, but not unheard-of in twins. Whatever it was that connected them, it sometimes snipped both lives short when only one was wounded.

Two syringes had been found in Arvan Taj's pocket, filled with a drug that would've stopped their hearts if the needle was stabbed into the organ, the plunger pushed down. Neither syringe had been uncapped, much less used. The siblings bore no marks on their bodies.

It was as if once they'd made the decision to go, their hearts had simply stopped beating. They'd been found at peace on the wrought-iron seat where Ashwini and Janvier had last seen them, Arvan's arm around Tanu's shoulders and her head against his chest, their eyes closed and the sunrise warm on their faces.

The pathologist had done the specialist autopsy requested on Tanu's brain, but the results had appeared ordinary at first glance. However, when Ash took that report and its a.s.sociated findings, as well as her mother's, to a neurosurgeon who had been a friend of Arvan's, the doctor had discovered an abnormality deep in the temporal lobe. A tiny, tiny malformation that was identical in mother and daughter, except that Tanu's was slightly larger.

"It's like nothing I've ever seen," the doctor had said. "No one could've ever picked it up without having the two slides side by side." His brow had furrowed. "I don't think it had anything to do with her death," he'd told Ash, unaware of the Taj history on the female side. "But even if it was malignant, there would've been nothing we could do. It's in an inoperable location and I don't know of any drug created to deal with something like this."

Ash had taken the news better than Janvier. It was Ash who'd held him, who had comforted him. His strong, beautiful lover.

"There," she whispered now, putting down the second urn. "I felt them go. I think they were waiting to make sure I was all right." The long white cotton scarf she wore around her neck, the same color as her tunic and leggings, threw the sorrow on her face into sharp relief, the wind blowing back the rich silk of her hair.

Sliding his arm around her, he stood with her on the mountaintop and he thought of the promise she'd asked him to make. "If you're right and people sometimes come back, then I'll come back with you." He couldn't imagine it any other way. His soul would find hers, no matter the unknown beyond death.

"You are an awful, mule-stubborn man."

"I love you, too."

A quiet, husky laugh as she tilted up her head. "I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't let this thing in my head take you, too."

"I'm over two hundred years old," he reminded her. "By rights, I should already be dust in the earth. Eternal life for its own sake has no meaning for me-I'm angry only because I won't get to live it with you."

Reaching up to stroke her fingers through his hair, she sighed. "Let's have hope in Tanu's dream and discuss your stubbornness another time." A hard pull of his hair that made him wince. "When I have a kukri at your throat."

He nipped her lower lip, smiled. "Full throttle all the way, cher."

Her eyes warmed. "All the way, cuddlebunny."

43.

t.i.tus arrived with only three warriors the night before the block party was scheduled to begin. Elena didn't have to be told that the small unit was both a gesture of trust and a display of his confidence in his own strength. Folding in his wings as he landed on the Tower roof, his warriors coming down behind him-two males and one female-t.i.tus headed toward Elena and Raphael.

"t.i.tus." Raphael walked forward to meet the other man halfway and held out his arm. "You are welcome."

t.i.tus grabbed Raphael's forearm, Raphael's own hand closing over his in the clasp of warriors. "I am glad you are here to welcome me, Raphael," he said, his words a boom that made Elena realize the archangel usually modulated his voice so as not to drown out everyone else in his vicinity. "You are a pup, but a strong one I'd have at my back in any battle."

"And I would have you, though you are heading toward frail old age."

t.i.tus's laugh at Raphael's riposte was huge. "Well met, young pup. Well met."

Breaking the handclasp with a deep smile, Raphael turned to Elena. "My consort."

She stepped forward. "Archangel t.i.tus," she said, keeping it formal until he gave an indication that informality was welcome.

Her restraint was thanks to Jessamy. Elena had been in Remedial Protocol School that afternoon, since this was the first time she was welcoming an archangel to her city who had no consort and who was unrelated to Raphael, but who'd known Raphael as a boy and had, in fact, helped train him.

All of which, apparently, changed everything.

At this rate, she thought with an inward snort, she'd have the protocol thing sorted in, oh, another nine hundred years, give or take. "You made good time."

t.i.tus made his reply in the softer tone she was used to hearing from him. "A good wind."

"If you and your people would follow us," she said, hoping Raphael was right and t.i.tus was laid-back enough that she could soon drop the protocol c.r.a.p. It was making her head ache. At least she hadn't had to put on a gown for this. "We have prepared suites for you."

"A short moment to wash, nothing more," t.i.tus said. "I would explore your city. It has been an age since I have visited these lands."

Elena led the group over the side of the roof and down to a guest balcony where Dmitri was waiting. He greeted t.i.tus with the familiarity of old acquaintance and mutual respect, then led the escort through to their rooms, while Elena showed t.i.tus to his. Turned out that since Raphael had a consort, he couldn't do certain tasks himself if she was able, without it being taken as an insult.

"I hope everything is to your liking," she said to t.i.tus.

He surprised her by throwing back his head and laughing with the smile-inducing lack of inhibition she'd already come to expect from him. "Ah, you must forgive me," he said when he caught his breath. "I see this role sits ill on you-you are meant for battle, not for such niceties."

Elena grinned. "I can rock a dress when I put my mind to it."

"Perhaps I will see this at the celebration you have planned."

"You never know." Walking forward, she held out her arm as Raphael had done, saying, "I'm not yet as immortal as you," at the last minute as she remembered Raphael's warning about t.i.tus treating her as a blooded angelic warrior.

t.i.tus clasped her forearm. It was hard enough to jar her teeth, but not hard enough to break anything. "You will be," he said. "Then I will say I knew you when you were a fledgling." Another huge laugh. "As I knew your consort when he was a pup."

Leaving him to freshen up, she stepped out to join Raphael on the balcony. "You were right," she said. "I like him. He's like a hunter-only much more powerful."

"You should trust your consort."

Sliding her wing over his, she leaned her shoulder against his. "I wish the thing with Cornelius and Giorgio hadn't happened, that we could go into this celebration without that ugliness." Her heart hurt for Ash, too, though the other hunter seemed to have a serene peace inside her when it came to the loss of her brother and sister.

She'd returned Elena's fierce hug after the funerals, murmuring, "Don't be so sad, Ellie. Your sisters aren't trapped in that house; they're flying on their own wings."

Elena couldn't explain how Ash knew that the funerals had brought back visceral memories of the deaths of her own sisters, or how she knew about the horror that had taken them, but Elena held the other woman's words close to her heart. Ash had always glimpsed more than anyone should, seen beyond this world. If she said Ariel and Mirabelle were no longer imprisoned in the blood-soaked house that had once been their childhood home, then Elena could do nothing but believe it.

Raphael slid his arm around her waist. "I feel your sorrow."

"Just working through stuff," she said, her emotions heavy but not agonizing. "Thinking about how some people are so kind and generous, others the opposite." Not many would've reached out across their own grief to ease that of another, as Ash had done for her, and it was a kindness Elena would never forget. "The world would be a better place if we could erase all the Corneliuses and Giorgios from it."

"I've lived long enough to understand that there will always be some ugliness in the world." Raphael stroked a tendril of hair that had escaped her braid back behind her ear. "We cannot erase it, for it acts as the foil for joy, for goodness."

"I guess I'm not old enough to accept that yet." It didn't matter that Cornelius and Giorgio were currently serving out their brutal and ongoing punishments in distant underground bunkers. "I feel so much fury for the pain caused, the scars left on the hearts of good people."

"Never lose that part of yourself, Elena." Raphael's eyes held a lick of wildfire in their depths that spoke of the changes going on inside him. "Before you, I had become jaded, unable to see the light or the dark. It is not an existence to which anyone should aspire."

Rubbing her cheek against his hand, she said to h.e.l.l with shocking their guest should he step outside and drew her archangel down for a kiss. "To life."

"To life, hbeebti."

Ashwini sat with her legs hanging off the edge of the Tower roof, watching the revelers on the rooftops around them and in the streets far below. Music came from every side, merging and mixing and becoming a wild, vibrant melody. Wings pa.s.sed overhead, the area a sea of angels landing on roofs and on the tarmac as they joined in the celebration in different areas.

Illium flew down to the under-renovation Legion building right then, the silver in his wings s.h.i.+mmering in the lights beaming out of the Tower. The Legion fighters were, for the most part, sitting in crouched positions on different parts of the Tower. Ashwini hadn't yet figured out if they were bemused by the entire thing or fascinated.

A male head was suddenly in her lap, hair of liquid silver on the black of her jeans.

"You'll fall," she said to Naasir, petting his hair as she knew he wanted.