He kissed her.
And he tasted far too real, far too earthy, to be a figment of her imagination. When he drew back, she was stunned to see the emotion in his eyes. It was shocking enough to make her forget the magic of the wings at her back. "Raphael?"
That blue glittered fever bright, the skin pulled taut over his cheekbones. "I'm very angry at you, Elena."
"So what else is new?" she quipped, but found herself stroking the arch of his wing.
"I am immortal and you tried to save my life by endangering your own?"
"Stupid, huh?" Leaning close, she rubbed her nose over his. Stress-touches, she thought stupidly, they were called stress-touches, the little things that lovers did to anchor each other, the things that were their secret language. Her and Raphael's language had barely begun, but it held a promise so raw, so rich, her heart twisted inside her chest, almost afraid of the fury of it. "I couldn't let you be hurt. You belong to me." Such an arrogant thing to say to an archangel.
He closed his eyes, dropping his forehead against hers. "You'll be the death of me, Elena."
She smiled. "You need a little excitement in that boring old life of yours."
Those eyes opened, blinding in their intensity. "Yes. So you will not die. I've made certain of it."
She was half convinced she'd imagined the wings, but the beautiful sweep of midnight hadn't disappeared when she checked out of the corner of her eye. "How the hell did you attach prosthetic wings to my back in the course of a . . ." She paused. "Okay, no soreness from the wounds so, what, it's been a week? No, longer." She frowned, trying to reorder splintered pieces of memory. "I had broken bones . . . my back?"
The archangel smiled again, his forehead still touching hers, his wings arching over to shadow them in their own private world. "The wings aren't prosthetic and you've been asleep for a year."
Elena swallowed. Blinked. Tried to breathe. "Angels Make vampires, not other angels."
"There is one-how would you put it-loophole."
"Loophole? More like a giant cavern if I have wings." She held on to him, the only solid thing in a shifting universe.
"No, it is the tiniest of holes, barely a pinprick. You're the first angel to have been Made in all the years of my existence."
"Lucky me," she whispered, brushing her fingers along his nape and drinking in his sigh of pleasure. This moment, it felt frozen out of time. Here, she was simply a woman, and he was simply a man. But like all moments, it had to pass. "What are the requirements?"
"Nothing we've ever been able to manipulate, though angels have tried for millennia." Those incredible, unearthly eyes held her prisoner. "The one and only time an archangel can Make another angel is when our bodies produce a substance known as ambrosia."
A snapshot of memory-the golden, melting heat of his kiss, the delicate sweetness, the lush sensuality, the taste that was an erotic sensation and whispered caress in one. "The mythical food of the gods?"
"Every myth holds a grain of truth."
She couldn't help it, she kissed him again. And the taste of him rushed over her in a tumultuous wave. He was the one who broke the kiss.
You were very badly injured, Elena.
The aches inside her were a testament to that truth. That didn't mean she had to like it. "Tell me about ambrosia then." A bad-tempered command.
"Ambrosia," he said against her mouth, "is produced instinctively at a single point in an archangel's life."
Images of his shredded wings, the living burn of angelfire. "Near death?" She touched him, checking, exploring, convincing herself he was alive.
"We've all been near death more than once." He shook his head. "No one has ever been able to pinpoint the trigger."
"But?"
"But it is legend that ambrosia only rises when-"
She held her breath.
"-an archangel loves true."
The world stopped. The air particles seemed to still above her, the molecules suspended as she stared at the magnificence of the man who held her in his arms. "Maybe I was just biologically compatible." It came out a ragged whisper.
"Perhaps." The possession of lips against her neck. "We have eternity to discover the truth. And in that eternity, you will be mine."
She thrust her hands into his hair, feeling heat spread through her body in a rolling wave. But she couldn't surrender. Not until they got one thing straight. "Fine-so long as you don't think that gives you the right to rule my life."
He came over her as she lay back down. "Why not?"
She blinked at the cool arrogance of that question, and realized that her existence had just become a whole lot more interesting. Forget about hunting an archangel, she was about to learn how to dance with one without losing herself in the process. Exhilaration spiked through her bloodstream. "This is going to be some ride, Archangel."
Elena had had visions of flying in through Sara's window and startling the heck out of her best friend, but that was before she realized that while she might be awake, actual movement was a whole other story. Which was why she was still in bed when a blindfolded Sara was shown into her room at the Refuge.
Raphael had moved her to the angelic stronghold soon after his own recovery, but had managed to keep her hidden. Only the Seven and trusted healing and medical personnel knew about her. However, he hadn't even tried to argue when she asked to see Sara.
Her friend folded her arms and gritted her teeth as she was led across the carpet by Dmitri, who seemed to take perverse pleasure in wrapping his scent around Elena while she was too weak to defend herself. To everyone's surprise, she'd come through the transformation with both her hunter abilities and weaknesses intact.
She and Raphael were continuing to "discuss" her status as Guild Hunter.
The lush caress of liquid satin across her skin, tempting and inviting. Rubbing her arms, Elena scowled at Dmitri and was about to speak when Sara blew out a breath. "I don't know what your boss thinks he's going to achieve by abducting me. We're not going to end the strike."
Strike? That explained Raphael's cheery mood this morning. If the hunters were refusing to do their job, vampires had to be reneging on their Contracts left, right, and center. "Now my head's really swollen."
Sara froze, then scrabbled to pull off her blindfold as Dmitri slipped out of the room, closing the door behind himself-but not before encasing Elena in another decadent wave of scent. She was still getting her breath back when Sara's blindfold dropped to the floor.
Her friend's eyes went wide. Then she turned sheet white under the exotic beauty of her skin.
"Christ, Sara, don't faint!" Elena yelled, reaching out as if to catch her.
Sara braced her weight against a chair. "I'm hallucinating. Or that fish they fed me on the plane was laced with LSD."
"Sara, if you don't come and hug me, I'll shoot you." That gun Sara had put under her pillow had saved not only her own life, but Raphael's as well. "It's me, you idiot!"
Sara swallowed, then rushed to the bed. Their arms wrapped around each other so tight that breathing became optional. Elena didn't care. Blubbering, they started to talk at the same time, laughing and crying.
"Thought you were-"
"-Raphael said-"
"I said, no way in hell-"
"Damn straight-"
"-and Ransom was ready to come up-"
"-woke up and I had wings!"
They both stopped, stared at each other, giggled, then drew back.
"Holy crap, you have wings." Sara took the cup of coffee on Elena's bedside table and chugged it. "Is that what I think it is?"
Destiny's Rose glittered from its position on her bedside table. "Raphael's being stubborn."
Choking, Sara put down the empty coffee cup and thumped her fist on her chest a few times before saying, "Now, explain to me why you have wings."
"I don't know if I can. I'm learning as I go here-but what the heck is this about a strike?"
Sara grinned. "Got me here, didn't it?" Her smirk was very satisfied. "They've been keeping you from us, Ellie, telling us you were alive but nothing more. We thought you'd been paralyzed-" Her breath hitched and suddenly her hurt was a living, breathing entity between them. "Couldn't you have called me, Ellie? A year. Didn't you trust me?"
Elena squeezed her friend's hands. "I woke up exactly twenty-four hours ago. The first person I asked to see was you. But don't tell Ransom, or he'll get jealous."
"You were in a coma for a year?" Sara's mouth dropped open. "How come you're mobile? Are you? Your muscles-"
"Yes," she said before Sara's fears could take root all over again. "I don't know. They said something about healers and exercise but I'm sorta stuck on the wings."
Sara shook her head, reached out to touch, then snapped back her hand. "Angels don't like it when-"
Elena grabbed her friend's hand, put it on the sleek feathers that were her own. "I'm still me."
Sara's hand whispered over her wing, and though the sensation was nothing like when Raphael touched her, it was a kind of intimacy-the kind between friends. "Ransom still with Nyree?"
Sara nodded, laughter in her eyes as she dropped her hand back down to the sheets. "I don't think he can believe it himself. So, you have wings."
"Yes."
"Angels don't Make other angels."
"Then what am I? Chopped liver?" A disturbing tendril of thought wormed its way into her brain. She'd said she was still the same, but was she really? Could she share everything with Sara now when to do so might be to expose the secrets of an entire race? Later, she told herself, she'd think about that later. "So, do you like my wings? Aren't they the most exquisite things you've ever seen?"
Sara started laughing. "Vanity, thy name is Elena."
"Thank you very much," she said on a wave of determination. Losing Sara's friendship wasn't an option. And if she had to fight an archangel to keep it, so be it. "Now, tell me all the goss."
Outside, on the jagged rocks that guarded the Refuge, Raphael stood shoulder to shoulder with Dmitri. "A human sits in the Refuge," he said, his hair whipped back by the wind. "It breaks one of our deepest taboos."
"She has no idea of the location-you can wipe her mind to ensure she can't betray what little she does know." Practical words from the leader of his Seven.
"Yes." But he wouldn't and that was the change that was his. "Or I could trust Elena's word on Sara's sense of honor."
Dmitri nodded, and when he next spoke, his tone was quiet. "Elena will change us."
"She already has." As wild and relentless as these fierce mountain winds, his hunter would never simply accept the way of things. And for a race of immortals, that might be the rudest of awakenings. Anticipation hummed in his blood.
"Jason's returned," Dmitri said, pulling him back to the present.
"When?"
"Two days ago. Some of Lijuan's reborn managed to injure him, but he'll recover within the week."
Raphael nodded, knowing that more changes were afoot than the Making of an angel. "So it begins."