Nalini Singh - Archangel's Consort

It was then Raphael realized that if one monster came to waking life, it might well strengthen another.

The conversation with Jeffrey, coming as it did on top ofthe painful visit to the morgue, left Elena feeling as if she’d been beaten by stone fists. It was tempting, so tempting, to go home and hide, just pretend that everything would be okay when she came out again.

Except, of course, that was a child’s ploy. Elena hadn’t had the luxury of believing in hopeless dreams since she’d been a scared ten-year-old slipping and falling in a family kitchen turned abattoir. “Do you know where Jason is?” she asked Dmitri when they exited the morgue.

Dmitri pressed the car remote to unlock the flame red Ferrari parked in the employees-only lot. “Tired of your Bluebell already?” A tendril of champagne circled around her senses, cut with something far harder.

Never had she felt that harsh edge in Dmitri’s scent. She pitied the woman he took to his bed today. “Yeah, that’s it. I’m building a harem.”

Opening the door to the Ferrari, Dmitri braced one arm on top. For a moment, his expression turned probing, and she had the feeling he was about to say something important. But then he shook his head, his hair lifting slightly in the dull breeze, and pulled out his cell phone, checked something. “He’s at the Tower.”

Surprised by the straight answer, she fought off the wickedness of champagne to say, “Can you ask if he’d mind meeting me at the house?”

Dmitri made the call. “He’s leaving now,” he said, snapping the phone closed. “Nowhere for you to take off from here.”

Elena looked up. “Hospital building is high enough. I’ll head up to the roof.” Suiting action to words, she made her way back into the building and up. It was an interesting journey. There were only a few hospital staff in the lower corridors, and the ones who did see her seemed to lose the ability to speak.

Deeply bothered by that reaction from the people of a city she considered home, she found her way to the elevator and pushed the button. Because the staff used it to move beds from floor to floor, the cage was plenty big enough for wings. Then the doors opened on the first floor.

Two nurses, chattering to each other, looked up. Froze.

Elena stepped back. “Plenty of room.”

Neither woman said a word as the doors closed on their stunned faces. Variations of the scene were repeated on the next four floors. It was funny ... except it felt wrong. This was New York. She needed to belong here—though she knew she would never again fit in the same way.

“Hmph.”

She glanced up at that sound to see that the doors had opened on the fifth floor to reveal an elderly man leaning on a cane. “Going up?”

He nodded and stepped in, making no effort to hide the fact that he was staring at her wings as he used his cane to push the button for his floor. “You’re a new one.”

“Very.” She stretched out her wings for him, the knots in her soul unraveling a little. “What do you think?”

He took his time replying. “Why are you taking the elevator?”

Smart man. “Felt like it.”

He laughed as the doors opened on his floor. “You sure sound like a New Yorker!”

Elena was smiling when the doors closed, something she would’ve never predicted minutes ago as she stood beside Dmitri. When the doors finally opened on the last level, she got out and made her way to the roof with firm steps, no longer feeling as if she’d been pummeled to screaming point.

The flight across the Hudson, assisted as she was by strong winds, went by fast. Jason was waiting for her in the front yard, his wings folded neatly back, his hair in its usual queue. It was the first time she’d seen his tattoo in full light, and the detail and intricacy of it made her suck in a breath.

Damaged by Lijuan’s reborn before Elena woke from her coma, the ink had been redone with such perfection after Jason healed that no one would ever know the difference. All curves and swirling lines, it spoke of the winds of the Pacific and the soaring beauty of the skies at the same time. “Where were you born?” she found herself asking, not expecting an answer.

“A small Pacific atoll that no longer exists.” There wasnothing in that statement. No pain, no sorrow, no anger. Nothing.

The very lack of emotion was another answer.

Letting Jason’s secrets lie, she said, “I was hoping you could teach me some tricks about flying in daylight without making myself too big a target.”

Jason narrowed his eyes, his attention going to her wings. “There are a few techniques you can use straight away, but for the rest, you’ll need to practice until you can pull yourself high above the cloud layer in a burst of speed.”

“Do you have time to give me a lesson now?”

A small nod.

“I flew a longer distance than usual today,” she admitted, “so I might be off the pace.”

“We’ll be moving slowly—it’s not about speed below the cloud layer, but about utilizing light and shadow to your advantage.”

Nodding, she fell into step beside him as he led her toward the cliffs. Evening shadows had fallen by the time he pronounced her proficient enough to continue the drills on her own. “I leave Manhattan tonight.”

“Take care, Jason.” As Raphael’s spymaster, he walked dangerous roads.

He looked at her straight on with those eyes as dark as the blade he carried along his spine. “What is it like to be mortal?”

Startled, she took a second to think, to consider. “Life is much more immediate. When you have a time limit, every moment gains an importance that an immortal will never know.”

Jason spread those amazing wings designed to blend into the night. “What you call a time limit, some might call an escape.” He was rising into the sky before she could answer; he was a shadowy silhouette against the first wash of night.

But his weren’t the only wings she spotted. Does Jason want escape so very much, Archangel?

Yes. His sole tie to the living world is through his service to me.

“Was it a woman, like with Illium?” she whispered as he came in to land with a rush of wind that blew the hair off her face.

“No. Jason has never loved.” Closing his arms and his wings around her, he turned his head to look out over the Manhattan skyline as it flickered to glittering life. “It would be better if he had—then he may have had some good memories to fight the dark.”

Elena tried to hold on to that thought as she fell into sleep that night, tried to tell herself to remember the laughter and the joy. But it was a nightmare that came after her, choking her with the smell of rancid blood and the gurgling whispers of a dead child lying on a morgue slab, the sounds shaped as fine, sticky strands that were very much real. The cobwebby filaments wrapped around her until she lashed out in panic, tearing herself awake to jerk up into a sitting position.

Her hand, she realized after long moments, was clenched tight around the hilt of the knife she’d hidden under the mattress on her side of the bed, the metal cold against her palm. Adrenaline pumping, she turned her head—to see Raphael awake and rising from the bed.

“Come, Elena.”

It took conscious effort to release the knife from her white-knuckled grip. Placing it beside Destiny’s Rose, the diamond sculpture that was a priceless work of art ... and a gift from her archangel, she took the hand he held out, let him tug her to a standing position. “Are we going flying?” Skin jittery, heart pounding double-time, she felt as if she would break apart.

Raphael gave her wings a critical appraisal. “No. You strained them today.” A glance at the wall clock. “Yesterday.”