"No one younger than three hundred." His wing brushed hers as they stood side by side, staring at the dense blackness. "I'll begin sweeps of the area." And then he said what she hadn't been able to articulate. "There's a chance the fall wasn't successfully executed."
Elena's whole being rebelled against the idea of Sam's small body lying irrevocably broken in the cold dark. "If those bastards have hurt him, I'll gut them myself."
That is why you're mine, Elena.
Watching as he stepped out into the night air, she closed the door and walked back to the front. All the angels were gone, but a vampire moved out of the shadows as she exited the house. His skin was a shade that drew the eye, inviting tactile contact - a dark, dark brown with an undertone of true gold. The color was so rich, so warm that it shimmered even as the moon slid behind a cloud, enveloping the Refuge in purest night. But his eyes, a brilliant, impossible silver, pierced the darkness as if it didn't exist. Hair of the same shade as his eyes fell around his face, sleek and cut in jagged lines that accentuated the angle of his jaw.
"A tiger," she whispered, watching him walk to her, though to call it a walk was a gross disservice. His stride was the fluid, silent prowl of the animal she sensed around him.
"You have the scent of a tiger on the hunt." Rich, vibrant, deadly.
"I am Naasir." His voice was cultured, his words gracious, but those metallic eyes watched her with unblinking focus. "Dmitri asked me to assist you."
"You're one of the Seven." There was power in Naasir, not like Dmitri's - sensual and lethal - but sharply feral, as if that exquisite, strokable skin was nothing but a mask for the predator within.
"Yes."
The clouds parted, throwing a beam of moonlight onto his face. And she realized the vampire's eyes reflected as brilliantly as a cat's.Impossible . But Naasir wasn't the mystery she had to solve tonight. "I'm going to start canvassing the area," she said, "see if I can find a landing point." It'd be a crapshoot given how far angels could fly, but she needed to do something.
"Dmitri's organizing the vampires and younger angels into a similar search."
And, Elena thought, they'd cover ground far faster than she could - especially when she had no starting point for a scent-track. But she needed to dosomething . Looking away from Naasir's unblinking stare, she found her eye caught by a needlelike formation in the distance. Her heart ricocheted off her ribs. "How well do you know the Refuge?"
"Very."
"Show me to Michaela's section." Raphael had been ruthless with the other archangel's humiliation. Maybe the angel who'd brutalized Noel had crawled back out of his hole . . .
or maybe Michaela had decided on payback, striking at the heart of those who looked to Raphael for protection.
"This way." Naasir began to move with the preternatural grace of a being at home in the night.
She could only just keep up with what she guessed was a crawl for him.
Stepping out into an open area a few minutes later, he raised his arm in some kind of a signal before turning to her. "Michaela's home is far on foot."
Elena felt her spine lock as Illium landed less than three feet from them. She trusted no one but Raphael to carry her. Not only did she have a problem with trust, the act seemed too intimate, too close. Especially given the near painful sensitivity of her wings.
However, tonight, there was a far more pragmatic reason for her reluctance. "I go up,"
she said, "I might miss the vampire's scent on the ground if he wasn't flown straight to Michaela's."
Illium held out a hand. "It'll be much quicker for you to fly to Michaela's, check the grounds, then return."
Knowing he was right, she squelched her personal reluctance and went to him, aware of Naasir vanishing into the dark. "Is it me or is Naasir about as tame as your average mountain lion?"
"Compared to him, the lions are tabby cats." Illium closed his arms around her waist as she wrapped hers around his neck, her wings held tight to her spine. It made her easier to carry - and it hid the incredibly sensitive inner curve where her wings grew out of her back.
"Your bruises."
"Don't drop me because you're worried about holding on too hard."
"I won't let you fall." It was an intimate whisper against her ear as he rose into the air.
"Famous last words," she muttered, the wind whipping the hair off her face, threatening to steal her breath, her words.
"You're spoiled, Ellie. You're used to being carried by an archangel." He skimmed under several other angels, heading toward an elegant group of buildings on a relatively smooth piece of ground. The land around the buildings was lit with delicately shaped metal lanterns, the paths a lilting melody of form and function.
"Are there gardens down there?" she asked, Illium's breath warm against her cheek as he bent his head to catch her question.
"She rarely visits, but Michaela's gardens are famed in the Refuge. Even in the cold, she finds things that will grow, sometimes even bloom."
Bloom.
Her mind cascaded with images from the garden of wildflowers - blood-soaked petals littering the ground, maimed bodies crushing the flowers, and most powerful of all, the setting sun glinting off Illium's sword as he amputated wings with merciless efficiency.
She wondered if those angels were still there, lying forsaken in the dark.
"She may be many things - cruel, malicious, selfish," Illium murmured as he brought them to a smooth landing on the outer terrace of Michaela's home, "but I don't think the Queen of Constantinople would harm a child."