“That is true love if ever I heard it,” he said to his delighted consort.
“I’m going to kiss him when I see him next,” she vowed.
“I suppose as he is so loyal I shall resist the urge to smite him.”
Elena’s laughter wrapped around him as the two of them flew across the choppy waters of the Hudson. As they did so, he spoke to the others of his Seven who were within his mental reach: Dmitri, Jason, Venom.
A dark-haired form appeared on a high Tower balcony moments later. Though he was but a pinprick from this distance, Raphael had no doubt at all that it was the vampire who had walked by his side for a millennium: Dmitri. His friend and his blade.
Your suite is ready. Dmitri’s voice was as hard as stone. Keir is in the city, as is Nisia.
Send both to meet us. He understood the hardness in his second—Raphael had been the same when he’d found Dmitri again after his friend had been abducted and tortured and broken in a way that had forever changed him. Some emotions were too big to show. They had to be contained in a tight fist lest they crush you.
Raphael—how bad is it?
When Raphael repeated Dmitri’s question to Elena, she snorted. “Tell the Dark Overlord that we’re breathing but also glowing. And if he tries any scent games, I’ll sharpen my toothpick arms and stab him with them.”
Lips curving, Raphael passed on the message.
I see the white-haired bad influence is still with you. Despite the cutting words, Dmitri’s tone had begun to unbend, as he permitted himself to believe in their return.
Jason’s voice was the next in Raphael’s head. Sire. Do you wish a report?
And that was Jason, loyal to the bone but unable to speak of emotions to anyone but the woman he loved. Soon. For now, handle the borders. I’m guessing the explosion was spectacular. It may attract attention.
The explosion lit up the sky across the entire city, Jason confirmed. Lady Caliane sent her best squadron to New York to help protect our borders. I will join them with a Tower squadron.
Venom’s voice slipped into his mind in a sinuous flow. Sire. It has been too long a wait.
The vampire with the eyes of a viper was often considered sophisticated and urbane—but Venom’s voice held no sophistication then, was open in a way Raphael knew the vampire was to only a rare few. He responded without words, with the kind of mental contact only an archangel could make.
Even as he did so, huge winged birds took off from the roof of a skyscraper below them.
“Raphael, are those condors?” Arching her head over to the side, Elena blinked. “I swear I just saw a jaguar sunning himself on a roof.” She rubbed at her eyes.
Raphael had caught the same fleeting impression of a pelt of spotted black and gold; halting in the air, he turned to check.
He and Elena stared at the splendid beast together. As if sensing them, it raised its head and yawned, exposing a set of gleaming canines.
“This land will soon be far too cold for such creatures,” Raphael murmured.
“No, see—someone’s set up heat lamps for it to sit under.” As the beast lazily shifted its tail back and forth, Elena whispered, “Don’t look now but there are a bunch of pumas over on that other roof.”
“Elijah.” An archangel who had once been a general in Caliane’s army, and who could call birds of prey as well as large cats.
“He must’ve sent them to help protect your territory while we were lost in weird-ville.”
“Not the first thought that would come to the mind of another archangel,” Raphael murmured. “Yet I find I agree with you.” Perhaps it was the droplet of humanity in him, or maybe it was the relationship he had built with the Archangel of South America, but he didn’t believe Eli would attempt to annex his territory.
He resumed his journey to the Tower.
10
Venom stood waiting beside Dmitri now, his body held in that languid way that was natural to him—but there was nothing languid about the youngest member of Raphael’s Seven. He was coiled as tight as Dmitri. That no one else waited on the balconies told Raphael that—excepting the healers—his men hadn’t informed anyone else of their return.
He swept by deliberately close to the balcony, much as he had with Illium. They held their feet under the buffeting, their heads angling up as if following his flight path onto the balcony that led to his and Elena’s Tower suite.
The doors stood open, Keir and Nisia on the other side.
“Can I reach out and poke Nisia?” Elena whispered, even though her voice would not escape the power of the glamour. “Will she feel it?’
Lips curving, Raphael said, “You remain sore about what Nisia said to you?” She had never actually finished telling him about that conversation, but it wasn’t difficult to imagine Nisia making Elena an unwary victim of her somewhat sharp sense of humor.
“Maybe. Just a little.” Teeth biting down on her lower lip as they passed the healers, she stretched out a hand to tap the exposed part of Nisia’s collarbone.
The healer jumped, her hand rising to her chest and her simple gown of midnight blue swirling. “Ringworms,” she said very precisely in the aftermath, sending Elena into a paroxysm of laughter.
Raphael had to make himself let her go. Laying her down on their bed, he forced himself not to help as Elena pushed herself up into a seated position and began to tug the sheet up over her body. Wounded or not, his consort remained a warrior and that was how he’d treat her.
“Psst.” Elena pointed at the wardrobe. “Pants, Archangel. Only I get to admire that delicious view.”
Raphael raised an eyebrow, his lips tugging up slightly at the corners; in truth, he’d forgotten his own state of undress in his concern over her. “I live to obey, hbeebti,” he said, and found a pair of dark brown pants he often wore while sparring with Elena or his Seven.
“Ask me some day about a time more than a thousand years past when I was in a company of warriors who wore only paint on their skin when they went into battle,” he said afterward.
“Pictures or it didn’t happen,” she said, a little breathless as she finished tucking the sheet under her armpits.
He laughed, and he’d have thought that an impossibility only moments earlier.
Behind them, Keir and Nisia had shut the balcony doors, now pulled blackout curtains across them. Elena and Raphael rarely made use of those. Most often, the doors were shielded only by curtains of gauzy white. No one in the city was suicidal enough to land on this balcony and attempt to stare inside, but Raphael appreciated the healers’ care. Elena would choose when she wished to show herself—no one would steal that choice from her.