Elena would've questioned him about that had she been here. And she would've worried about her "Bluebell." "How is your healing progressing?"
Flaring out the wing that had borne the worst damage, Illium winced. "It's almost complete." He looked at Raphael's healed body, a body that had been eaten through with an incredible amount of angelfire. "The difference between angel and archangel."
"Is age and experience." Raphael went closer, looked at the wing . . . and laughed for the first time since the night he'd fallen with Elena. "Now I understand your expression."
Illium snorted. "I look like a damned duck." His words weren't far off the mark. The feathers that had grown over the injured section were soft, white, and delicately . . . fluffy. "I hope to hell these baby feathers fall off and get replaced by real ones. They will, won't they?" He sounded worried.
"Do they impede flight?" Having spoken to the healers and medics himself, he knew Illium had been permitted short bursts of flight.
"No. But they're not as efficient." He stared down, swallowed. "Please tell me this is only a stage of healing. I've never had this happen before."
Raphael wondered what Elena would've done in this situation. Probably taken every opportunity to tease. His heart clenched. "They'll shed within the month," he said. "You lost so much of your wing when you hit the pier, including several layers of skin and muscle, that you're effectively regrowing it from the inside out, instead of just replacing your feathers."
Relief whispered through Illium's eyes as he dropped his wing. "Without anshara I'd still be lying in bed, unable even to move."
Raphael's mind drifted back to those months when his own body had lain broken. The field had been isolated, his mental abilities young. Only the birds and Caliane had known he was there. "Yes."
"Sire . . . you've yet to punish me for losing Elena that day." Illium's features were drawn, his normally ebullient personality buried beneath the formal words. "I deserve to be censured. I am one of the Seven, one of your most experienced men, and I let her be taken."
Raphael shook his head. "It was no fault of yours." He was the one who'd made the fatal mistake. "I should've known Uram could hasten his recovery through blood."
"Elena," Illium began, then stopped. "No, questions are useless here. Just know that your Seven stand behind you."
Raphael watched the other angel leave via the balcony, then, after a moment's pause, did the same himself. The wind lifted him up, his repaired body still aching but otherwise fine. He'd be back to total strength within a few weeks. Until then, his Seven would ensure his territory remained safe from covetous eyes.
Lijuan and Michaela, likely Charisemnon and Astaad, too, would never understand that kind of loyalty. Perhaps only Elijah and, in this matter, Titus, had any hope of comprehending what the Seven had given him. Dmitri was the oldest, Venom the youngest, but together, the three vampires and four angels had been with him for a remarkable number of centuries, their allegiance unwavering-but that didn't mean they were ciphers. No, his Seven had all fought with him at one time or another, arguing against his decisions even to the point of putting their lives on the line.
Charisemnon had cautioned him about Dmitri more than once. "That vampire has ideas above his station," the archangel had said. "If you're not careful, he'll take your Tower for his own."
And yet Dmitri had held off all challengers for the three months that Raphael lay in a healing coma. The first month, he'd gone so deep that he'd descended below anshara. Had Dmitri-or any of the six others-wanted to end his immortal life, they could've struck a deal with another archangel and betrayed his place of rest. Instead, they had protected him; more than that, they had protected his heart.
The young children playing in the New Jersey park looked up with open mouths as he flew over them. Their awe turned into screams of delight as he landed on the grassy verge that surrounded the playground equipment. He watched as mothers, and a few fathers, tried to contain their children's excitement, afraid of giving offense to an archangel. Fear whispered in their eyes and he knew it would always be so. To rule, he could not appear weak.
Small hands touched his wing. He glanced down to see a tiny child with tightly curled black hair and skin that spoke of distant lands of sunshine and warmth. As he bent to lift the child in his arms, he heard a woman's cry of panic. But the child looked at him with innocent eyes. "Angel," he said.
"Yes." Raphael felt the warm beat of the boy's humanity and it gave him solace. "Where is your mother?"
The boy pointed to a terrified-looking young female. Walking across, Raphael handed over her child. "Your son has courage. He'll grow up into a strong man."
The woman's panic disappeared under a wave of burgeoning pride.
As Raphael walked through the children, several others dared pat his wings. And when their tiny, soft hands came away shimmering with angel dust, they laughed in innocent joy. Sara raised an eyebrow when he reached her. "Showing off, Archangel?" Her hands squeezed the handles of the baby carriage in which a small girl-child slept, peaceful, unaware of monsters and blood.
"Uram never walked among humans," he said instead of answering.
She began to push the carriage along a narrow path powdered with the barest layer of snow, the first caress of winter. No one interrupted them, though four intrepid children dared follow a few feet behind-until their parents called them back. In Sara's carriage, her child raised fisted hands, fighting dream battles. It was fitting, he thought. After all, Zoe Elena bore the name of a warrior.
"Did Dmitri lie?" she asked after several minutes of silence. "Is Ellie dead?"
"No," he said, "Elena lives."
Sara's hands tightened until her bones pushed white against skin the color of smooth, dark honey. "It doesn't take this long for the transition from human to vampire. Once you do whatever it is you do, most vamps are up and functioning-well, walking around at least-within a couple of months at most."
Raphael chose his words carefully. "Most vampires don't start off with broken backs."
Sara nodded jerkily. "Yeah, you're right. I'm just-I miss her, damn it!"
Zoe woke at the sound of her mother's distress, her forehead beginning to crinkle with angry lines.
"Sleep, little one," Raphael said, "sleep."
The child smiled, her lashes closing to create half-moon crescents against plump cheeks.
"What did you do?" Sara asked, shooting him a suspicious look.
Raphael shook his head. "Nothing. Children have always liked my voice." Once, at the dawn of his existence, he'd guarded the nursery, guarded their most precious treasures. Angelic births were rare, so rare. It was logical, their healers and learned ones said. A race of immortals didn't need a very high replacement rate. But being immortal didn't shield one from the need to create a child.
Sara's face softened. "I can see that. When you spoke to her . . . it was different from how you usually sound."
He shrugged, sensing the world begin to sigh with the coming of night. "Sara, Elena wouldn't want you worrying."
"Then why the hell won't she even give me a call?" Sara demanded. "We all know something's wrong! Look, if she's paralyzed"-she swallowed-"it doesn't matter to us! Tell her to stop being a prideful bitch and give me a call." A sob caught in her throat but she refused to shed it. Another warrior. Kin to his own.
"She cannot speak to you," he told her. "She sleeps."
Sara's eyes were wild with grief when she looked at him. "She's still in a coma?"
"In a sense." He stopped, held her gaze. "Trust me to care for her."
"You're an archangel," she said, as if that explained everything. "Don't you dare keep Ellie alive on machines. She'd hate that."
"Do you think I don't know that?" Stepping back, he flared out his wings. "Trust me."
The Guild Director shook her head. "Not until I see Elena with my own eyes."
"I'm sorry, Sara, but no."
"I'm her best friend, her sister in every sense of the word bar one." She reached down to tuck Zoe's blanket more firmly before turning her head. "What right do you have to keep her from me?"
"She's mine, too." He tensed his muscles in readiness for flight. "Take care of yourself and those you call your own, Director. Elena will not be happy if she wakes to find you a worn shadow of yourself."
Then he flew, and the silence was so huge, it crushed him. Wake up, Elena.
Still, she slept.
Wake up, Elena.
Elena frowned, batting away the sound. Every time she tried to sleep, he told her to wake. Dratted man. Didn't he know she needed to rest?
Elena, Sara has set her hunters on me.
As if he had anything to worry about from even the toughest vampire hunter.
She's threatening to tell the media I'm doing unnatural things with your body.
A smile in her mind, in her soul. The archangel had a sense of humor. Who knew?
Ellie?
He never called her Ellie, she thought, yawning. The first thing she saw when she blinked open her eyes was blue. Endless, fathomless, brilliant blue. Raphael's eyes. And that quickly, she remembered. The blood, the pain, the shattered bones. "Damn it, Raphael. If I have to drink blood, I'm going to suck your gorgeous body dry." Her voice was husky, her anger absolute.
The archangel smiled and it held such fierce joy that she wanted to grab on to him and never let go. "You're very welcome to suck any part of my body you wish."
She wouldn't laugh, wouldn't surrender to the hunger she saw in those immortal eyes. "I told you I didn't want to be a vampire."
He fed her chips of ice, cooling her parched throat. "Are you not at least a little glad to be alive?"
She was a lot glad. Being with Raphael . . . oh, well, how bad could blood taste? But-"I'm not doing any vampire lackey stuff."
"Fine."
"I'm only drinking your blood."
That made his smile widen. "Fine."
"That means you're stuck with me." She jutted out her chin. "Try to throw me off for some bimbo and we'll see who's immortal."
"Fine."
"I expect-" That was when she felt the weird lumps under her back. "Whoever made this bed did a shit job. It's all lumpy."
Blue, blue eyes laughed at her. "Really?"
"Hey, it's not fun-" Her words ended on a choked breath as she turned her head and saw what she was lying on. Wings. Such beautiful wings. A rich, evocative black that swept gracefully outward in subtle increments of indigo, deepest blue, and dawn until the primaries were a vivid, shimmering white gold. Midnight wings. Incredible wings. And she was squashing them. "Oh, my God! I'm crushing an angel. Let me up!"
Raphael helped her rise when she held out her hand. The tube stuck into her arm hindered her movement. "What?"
"To keep you alive."
"How long?" she asked, shifting to look over her shoulder. His answer was lost in the rush of white noise that crashed across her brain. Because she hadn't been squashing anyone . . . but herself. "I have wings."
"A warrior's wings." He brushed his finger over one edge and the sensation rocketed through her entire body. "Wings like blades."
"Oh," she said when she could speak again, "I guess I really am dead then." That made sense. She'd always wanted wings and now she had them. Ergo, she was dead and in heaven. She turned. "You look just like Raphael." He smelled of the sea, a clean, fresh bite that made her body sing.