Nalini Singh: Angels' Blood

Her friend folded her arms and gritted her teeth as she was led across the carpet by Dmitri, who seemed to take perverse pleasure in wrapping his scent around Elena while she was too weak to defend herself. To everyone’s surprise, she’d come through the transformation with both her hunter abilities and weaknesses intact.

She and Raphael were continuing to “discuss” her status as Guild Hunter.

The lush caress of liquid satin across her skin, tempting and inviting. Rubbing her arms, Elena scowled at Dmitri and was about to speak when Sara blew out a breath. “I don’t know what your boss thinks he’s going to achieve by abducting me. We’re not going to end the strike.”

Strike? That explained Raphael’s cheery mood this morning. If the hunters were refusing to do their job, vampires had to be reneging on their Contracts left, right, and center. “Now my head’s really swollen.”

Sara froze, then scrabbled to pull off her blindfold as Dmitri slipped out of the room, closing the door behind himself—but not before encasing Elena in another decadent wave of scent. She was still getting her breath back when Sara’s blindfold dropped to the floor.

Her friend’s eyes went wide. Then she turned sheet white under the exotic beauty of her skin.

“Christ, Sara, don’t faint!” Elena yelled, reaching out as if to catch her.

Sara braced her weight against a chair. “I’m hallucinating. Or that fish they fed me on the plane was laced with LSD.”

“Sara, if you don’t come and hug me, I’ll shoot you.” That gun Sara had put under her pillow had saved not only her own life, but Raphael’s as well. “It’s me, you idiot!”

Sara swallowed, then rushed to the bed. Their arms wrapped around each other so tight that breathing became optional. Elena didn’t care. Blubbering, they started to talk at the same time, laughing and crying.

“Thought you were—”

“—Raphael said—”

“I said, no way in hell—”

“Damn straight—”

“—and Ransom was ready to come up—”

“—woke up and I had wings!”

They both stopped, stared at each other, giggled, then drew back.

“Holy crap, you have wings.” Sara took the cup of coffee on Elena’s bedside table and chugged it. “Is that what I think it is?”

Destiny’s Rose glittered from its position on her bedside table. “Raphael’s being stubborn.”

Choking, Sara put down the empty coffee cup and thumped her fist on her chest a few times before saying, “Now, explain to me why you have wings.”

“I don’t know if I can. I’m learning as I go here—but what the heck is this about a strike?”

Sara grinned. “Got me here, didn’t it?” Her smirk was very satisfied. “They’ve been keeping you from us, Ellie, telling us you were alive but nothing more. We thought you’d been paralyzed—” Her breath hitched and suddenly her hurt was a living, breathing entity between them. “Couldn’t you have called me, Ellie? A year. Didn’t you trust me?”

Elena squeezed her friend’s hands. “I woke up exactly twenty-four hours ago. The first person I asked to see was you. But don’t tell Ransom, or he’ll get jealous.”

“You were in a coma for a year?” Sara’s mouth dropped open. “How come you’re mobile? Are you? Your muscles—”

“Yes,” she said before Sara’s fears could take root all over again. “I don’t know. They said something about healers and exercise but I’m sorta stuck on the wings.”

Sara shook her head, reached out to touch, then snapped back her hand. “Angels don’t like it when—”

Elena grabbed her friend’s hand, put it on the sleek feathers that were her own. “I’m still me.”

Sara’s hand whispered over her wing, and though the sensation was nothing like when Raphael touched her, it was a kind of intimacy—the kind between friends. “Ransom still with Nyree?”

Sara nodded, laughter in her eyes as she dropped her hand back down to the sheets. “I don’t think he can believe it himself. So, you have wings.”

“Yes.”

“Angels don’t Make other angels.”

“Then what am I? Chopped liver?” A disturbing tendril of thought wormed its way into her brain. She’d said she was still the same, but was she really? Could she share everything with Sara now when to do so might be to expose the secrets of an entire race? Later, she told herself, she’d think about that later. “So, do you like my wings? Aren’t they the most exquisite things you’ve ever seen?”

Sara started laughing. “Vanity, thy name is Elena.”

“Thank you very much,” she said on a wave of determination. Losing Sara’s friendship wasn’t an option. And if she had to fight an archangel to keep it, so be it. “Now, tell me all the goss.”

Outside, on the jagged rocks that guarded the Refuge,Raphael stood shoulder to shoulder with Dmitri. “A human sits in the Refuge,” he said, his hair whipped back by the wind. “It breaks one of our deepest taboos.”

“She has no idea of the location—you can wipe her mind to ensure she can’t betray what little she does know.” Practical words from the leader of his Seven.

“Yes.” But he wouldn’t and that was the change that was his. “Or I could trust Elena’s word on Sara’s sense of honor.”

Dmitri nodded, and when he next spoke, his tone was quiet. “Elena will change us.”

“She already has.” As wild and relentless as these fierce mountain winds, his hunter would never simply accept the way of things. And for a race of immortals, that might be the rudest of awakenings. Anticipation hummed in his blood.

“Jason’s returned,” Dmitri said, pulling him back to the present.

“When?”

“Two days ago. Some of Lijuan’s reborn managed to injure him, but he’ll recover within the week.”

Raphael nodded, knowing that more changes were afoot than the Making of an angel. “So it begins.”