“Learn.” He settled back in his chair. “You will live a very short life if you expect only honesty.”
Sensing the danger had passed—for now—she unclenched her fingers with an effort of will. The force of the blood rushing back into them was painful in its extremity. “I didn’t say I expected honesty. People lie. Vampires lie. Even—” She caught herself.
“Surely you’re not going to practice discretion now?” The amusement was back but it was tempered with an edge that stroked like a razor across her skin.
She looked into that perfect face and knew she’d never met a more deadly being in her life. If she displeased him, Raphael would kill her as easily as she might swat a fly. She’d be smart to remember that, no matter how the knowledge infuriated her. “You said I had to do a test?”
His wings moved slightly at that instant, drawing her attention. They truly were beautiful and she couldn’t help but covet them. To be able to fly . . . what an amazing gift.
Raphael’s eyes shifted to look at something over her left shoulder. “Less a test than an experiment.”
She didn’t twist around, had no need to. “There’s a vampire behind me.”
“Are you sure?” His expression remained unchanged.
She fought the urge to turn. “Yes.”
He nodded. “Look.”
Wondering which was worse—having her back to an enigmatic and highly unpredictable archangel, or to an unknown vampire—she hesitated. In the end, her curiosity won out. There was a distinctly satisfied expression on Raphael’s face and she wanted to know what had put it there.
Shifting, she turned sideways with her whole body, the position allowing her to keep Raphael in her peripheral vision. Then she looked at the two . . . creatures who stood behind her. “Jesus.”
“You may go.” Raphael’s voice was a command that awakened abject terror in the eyes of the one who looked vaguely human. The other scuttled away like the animal it was.
She watched them leave through the glass door and swallowed. “How old was . . .” She couldn’t call that thing a vampire. Neither had it been human.
“Erik was Made yesterday.”
“I didn’t know they could walk at that age.” It was an attempt to sound professional though she was creeped out to her toes.
“He had a little help.” Raphael’s tone made it clear that that was all the answer she was going to get. “Bernal is . . . a fraction older.”
She reached for the juice she’d rejected earlier and took a drink, trying to wash away the stink that had seeped into her pores. The older vamps didn’t have that ick factor. They—except for the unusual ones like the doorvamp—simply smelled of vampire, like she smelled human. But the very young ones, they had a certain rotten-cabbage/putrid-flesh smell that she always had to scrub three times over to get rid of. It was why she’d begun collecting the body washes and perfumes. After her initial contact with one of the newly Made, she’d thought she’d never get the smell out of her head.
“I didn’t think a hunter would be so disturbed at the sight of the just-Made.” Raphael’s face appeared oddly shadowed, until she realized he’d raised his wings slightly.
Wondering if that implied focus or anger, she put down the glass. “I’m not, not really.” True enough now that that first, instinctive flash of disgust had passed. “It’s the smell—like a coating of fur on your tongue. No matter how hard you scrape, you can’t get it off.”
Open interest showed on his face. “The feeling is that intense?”
She shivered and looked around the table for something else to take the edge off. When he pushed a cut grapefruit in her direction, she dug into it with relish. “Uh-huh.” The citrus fruit’s acidic juices dampened the reek a little. At least enough that she could think.
“If I asked you to track Erik, could you?”
She shivered at the memory of those almost-dead/ not-quite-alive eyes. No wonder people believed those stories about vampires being the walking dead. “No. I think he’s too young.”
“What about Bernal?”
“He’s on the bottom floor of the building right now.” The barely Made vampire’s odor was so noxious, it permeated the building. “In the lobby.”
Golden-tipped wings spread to shadow the table as Raphael put his hands together in a slow clap. “Well done, Elena. Well done.”
She looked up from the grapefruit, belatedly aware she’d just proven how good she was when she should’ve flubbed it and gotten out of this, whatever “this” was. Shit. But at least he’d given her some idea of the job. “Do you want me to track a rogue?”
He rose from his chair in a sudden, liquid movement. “Wait a moment.”
She watched, transfixed, as he walked to the edge of the roof. He was a being of such incredible splendor that simply seeing him move made her heart squeeze. It didn’t matter that she knew it was a mirage, that he was as deadly as the filleting knife she carried strapped to her thigh. No one, not even she, could deny that Raphael the Archangel was a man made to be admired. To be worshipped.
That utterly wrong thought snapped her out of her dazed state. Pushing back her chair, she stared hard at his back. Had he been messing with her head? Right then, he turned and she met the agonizing blue of his eyes. For a second, she thought he was answering her question. Then he looked away . . . and walked off the roof.
She jumped up. Only to sit back down, blush reddening her cheeks, when he winged upward to meet an angel she hadn’t seen until that moment. Michaela. The female equivalent of Raphael, her beauty so intense that Elena could feel the force of it even from this distance. She had the startling realization that she was looking on at a midair meeting between two archangels.
“Sara’s never going to believe this.” She forgot the stench of young vampire for the moment, her attention hijacked. She’d seen photos of Michaela, but they came nowhere close to the reality of her.
The other archangel had skin the color of the most exquisite, fine milk chocolate and a shining fall of hair that cascaded to her waist in a wild mass. Her body was quintessentially female, slender and curvy at the same time, her wings a delicate bronze that shimmered against the richness of her skin. Her face . . . “Wow.” Even from this distance, Michaela’s face was perfection given form. Elena fancied she could see her eyes—a bright, impossible green—but knew she had to be imagining it. They were too far away.
It made little difference. The female archangel had a face that would not only stop traffic, it would cause a few pileups in the process.
Elena frowned. Despite her appreciation for Michaela’s looks, she was having no trouble thinking straight. Which meant the damn arrogant blue-eyed bastard had been fucking with her mind. He wanted her to worship him? They’d see about that.
No one, not even an archangel, was going to turn her into a puppet.
As if he’d heard her, Raphael said something to his fellow archangel and winged back down to the roof. His landing was a lot more showy this time. She was sure he paused to display the pattern on the inside surface of his wings. It was as if a brush dipped in gold had started at the top edge of each wing and then stroked downward, fading to white as it neared the bottom. In spite of her fury, she had to face the truth: If the devil—or an archangel—came to her and offered her wings, she might just sell him her soul.