“He is a hard angel to read, even for me, and I have known him nearly all his life.” All but the formative first years that had woven aloneness into Jason’s bones. “But never take Jason’s quietness for disinterest, Guild Hunter.” He ran his hand through the silk of her hair, the tiny feathers at the ends delicate yet strong.
Leaning her head against his thigh, she said, “You’ll have to do a rotation in China, won’t you?”
“Yes.” His gaze might’ve been on the glitter and lights of Manhattan, but it was a land of death and vanishings that he saw in his mind. “Mother stepped in during my absence and will continue to cover for me for the time being, but it cannot be for too long, or it will raise questions about my ability to do all that is required of an archangel.” Once that happened, war was inevitable.
Ice wove through his veins, the cold Cascade power eager for violence.
* * *
• • •
The next day, Elena learned that, despite her lack of wings, her DNA was “mostly” angelic, though that was only an interim result; her DNA was fluctuating and transforming from hour to hour.
“Frankly, Elena, you’re weird.” Lucius, calm and gentle, threw up his hands.
She laughed; it was either laugh or cry and she’d cried all the tears she was going to—now it was time to kick the future’s ass. “Is that your official diagnosis?”
“My official diagnosis is that you’re definitely immortal. The rest is subject to change.” The soft yellow of his wings rippled in unfamiliar agitation. “Also, you have strange glowing cells inside you. Come look through the microscope.”
Striding over to the device, she put her eye to the viewer. A happily glowing cell floated by, followed by one that looked normal to her non-scientist eyes. Drawing back, she checked the skin of her hands. “I’m not glowing. I stopped sometime last night.”
“If that changes, come straight here so I can take a sample. I need to see if your cells morph when you glow.”
“Uh-huh.” Elena couldn’t help thinking how she’d gone glow-in-the-dark in Raphael’s arms. “Give me a syringe.”
Lucius sighed, his handsome face set in lines that shouted, “Grant me patience.” “Do you know how to use one to draw blood?”
“Well . . . no.”
“Just prick yourself and put a couple of drops in here, then close the stopper.” He passed over a small glass vial, then added two more. “Get me samples from the archangel, too. He’s also got glowing cells.”
“What we did, it changed both of us.” His heart in her chest. Her heart in fragments in his system. Their minds locked together in the dream.
Leaving the infirmary, the vials tucked safely into a zippered pocket of the hip-length black leather jacket that Beth had sent over, she found herself drawn to the balcony at the end of the hall. Phantom wings tugged suddenly at her back, a maddening muscle echo her body couldn’t forget.
Gritting her teeth, she continued on. The balcony had no railing—and Elena not only didn’t have wings, her bone structure wasn’t strong enough to withstand any kind of a real impact, far less one from so high. She’d splatter herself into pieces.
Regardless, she stepped into the doorway . . . and lifted an eyebrow. “Did you summon me?”
“You were speaking of blood.” Under the haze of a misty rain, the Primary was a crouched gargoyle, gray and motionless but for his mouth.
Oddly, Elena wasn’t disturbed by his knowledge. The Legion were a hum at the back of her mind now, there without intruding. “You listened in?”
“No. We just feel it.”
That made no sense but this was the Legion. Making sense wasn’t their strong suit. “So, any input on the glowing cells situation?”
“The sire’s blood traveled across the bed and was absorbed by the chrysalis. We watched it. We did not interfere.”
And that was after the damn insane archangel had given her a piece of his heart. All that archangelic blood inside her when Raphael released violent energy meant for an archangel. Powered by his blood, her body had obviously stolen some . . . but what was it doing with it? “Anything else happen while we were napping?”
“Right before you woke, the filaments that formed the chrysalis grew and grew, spreading like spidersilk across Raphael and the room.” His bat-like wings stayed motionless even as the wind riffled his hair. “Before then, a long time before, we had a thought that the earth would help you, so we brought the soil from your garden and it was dark and rich, and we placed it over the chrysalis and the sire’s sleeping body.”
Elena thought back—they’d woken on such dark soil. A remnant of the Legion’s offering? “I remember bringing that soil into my greenhouse.” She smiled at the memory of Illium’s complaints about how hauling bags of soil was beneath his dignity—but he’d done it anyway, on the condition she plant some bluebells in the soil.
Her hands itched. “How is your garden? Can I come play?”
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Elena. Come. Come. We wait.
So much excitement that her head hurt but she didn’t censure them. They’d missed her, these strange beings unlike any others in the world. She’d missed them, too. “Give me a few minutes.”
The journey to the ground floor was the easy part—all she had to do was get in the elevator. Even crossing the grass to the Legion building didn’t take much out of her—she was definitely stronger after the psychedelic sex mojo with Raphael. Fine droplets of water beaded on her jacket, clung to her lashes, the cool, damp day beautiful to her. Then she reached the bottom of the wall of vines that led up to the entrance to the Legion’s home . . . and reality hit with a backhanded slap.
Visit’ll have to wait. Things ached inside her, the need for the earth curling her fingers into her palms. I’ll fall and break my butt right now.
Elena. Elena. Elena. One of the Legion landed beside her. Come.
She went to repeat that she couldn’t when she realized he was waving for her to move to the right of the climbing wall. Keeping her questions to herself, she followed him around the corner and, after he lifted it up, under a heavy weight of vines. There, hidden behind those thick ropes was a door that had been opened from the inside.
“Hot damn.” Soul flowering at the humid warmth that whispered outward from the doorway, she slipped in. The Legion fighter came after her. As she watched, he locked the door securely behind him—it involved two iron bars and a third crossbar.
The first thing she did was take off her boots and socks and curl her toes into the grass underfoot. The second was to shrug off her jacket. Fall was locked out, summer in full bloom within. She stood in a grove of orange trees plump with unseasonal fruit. Plucking a ripe one, she used one of her knives to cut it into pieces and held out a slice to the Legion fighter.