Nalini Singh - Archangel's Kiss

I will not be contained. I cannot be contained.

Lijuan’s voice in their heads, the seeming sanity of it more disturbing than Uram’s viciousness had been in those last minutes above New York. Now Beijing burned below them and in that rubble lay Elena. The primal core of him raged to go to her. But he held his position. Because his warrior with her mortal heart would expect nothing less.

He felt one of the tendons in his left wing snap against the wake of a power that slapped into him over and over. Only Favashi, younger than him, was showing signs of similar damage.

“Then she will kill you. She will make you mortal.”

He was weaker than he should have been, but he was also stronger. Looking up into Lijuan’s face, the human mask stripped away to reveal the screaming darkness, he said, “Now,” speaking to the archangels ringing Lijuan, knowing she was far beyond hearing. Now!

A savage cascade of power, all of it focused on one central target. Lijuan’s body bowed as the power hit her, the sky turning to daylight for a single startling second. When night returned, Zhou Lijuan was simply gone, the Forbidden City nothing but a black crater, Beijing a memory in immortal and mortal minds.

The agony of the dying was drowned out only by the silence of the dead.

He found Elena buried under the wings of two of his Seven. Jason and Aodhan were unconscious, the bones in their legs twisted. But those injuries were nothing to immortals of their age. They’d survive. Elena was far, far younger.

But she had the will of a hunter-born.

He felt the stubborn flicker of her life even as he picked her crumpled body up from the hard earth where she’d been thrown. Her hands were torn open, her face bruised, but her body . . . Stroking his hand down it, he realized he felt only a few fractures. Minor. Even for such a young angel. He should have let her rest, but he couldn’t bear the silence.

Elena.

Her lashes fluttered.

He couldn’t hasten her healing, having burned out his power in the fight to hold Lijuan. It would take time to recover.

Hunter mine.

Pale silver eyes looking into his.

Love, he thought as he held her to his heart, was an agony beyond compare.

Raphael wasn’t surprised to see Lijuan’s image form in the clear waters of a rain-filled pool just beyond the Refuge. He knelt by its side as Elena sat swaddled in a blanket, her face uplifted to the warm rays of the rising sun. But he felt her look his way the instant Lijuan appeared, though the sending would be invisible to her.

“I live, Raphael.” Lijuan’s voice was a million screams and endless silence. “Are you not afraid?”

“You’ve evolved,” he said, seeing her hand fade into mist, her face half disappear before it returned. “You no longer need the flesh. Our concerns are not yours.”

A laugh, whispers, and something more, something that spoke of caresses under the cover of dark as blood flowed warm and rich. “I have killed the last of my reborn.” Her form solidified, until it appeared almost normal. “Sometimes, I have need of the flesh.”

“Why tell me?” he asked. “They are your weakness.”

“I like you, Raphael.” A smile that froze the water in the pond, her visage framed in frost. “And your hunter, yes, she intrigues me still.”

He met those eyes that were beyond immortal and wondered at the truth. “Did you need to die to evolve?”

“Ask me that question when we next meet. Perhaps I will answer.”

“You walk between life and death,” he said. “What do you see?”

“Mysteries, answers, yesterdays, and tomorrows.” An enigmatic smile. “We’ll speak again. I do so like you, Raphael.”

The words echoed in the air as her image faded. Rising, he took the hand Elena held out, brought her gently to her feet. Her eyes were troubled as she looked to him. “Lijuan?”

“She isn’t a threat.” He drew her deeper into his arms. “I think, for now, Lijuan has little interest in the concerns of the world.” Her face had held an eerily childish joy in her new life, her new sphere of existence.

“That’s good enough for me.” A long breath, Elena’s arms snaking out of the blanket to wrap around him. “I want to go home, Archangel.”

Stroking his hand over the warm curve of her hip, he wondered if New York was ready for a hunter turned angel. “We leave with the next sunrise.”