Taking a deep breath, she took a single step inside, and he could almost touch the conflicting emotions tearing at her. When she turned and held out her hand, he al owed her to tug him into the smal space, nothing an angel would normal y even countenance entering. And when she asked him to close the door, he did so without argument.
She switched on the single yel ow bulb an instant later. “See this?” Her fingers lingered on a faded orange blanket. “It was my blankie.” A tremulous smile. “I wouldn’t go anywhere without it.” Sinking to the floor, she let her wings trail on the cold concrete.
He went down on his haunches beside her, listening and watching as she careful y folded the blanket, put it on her lap and opened a cardboard box overflowing with her childhood. She showed him drawings she’d made in school, toys she’d played with as a babe.
“We wil keep this for our child,” he murmured, holding a solid wooden bee meant to be pul ed along on wheels.
Elena gave a shaky laugh. “We’re having children are we?”
He’d never asked her before, but now, he raised his head. “Would you wish for a babe, Elena?”
“I’d be afraid for him or her al the time.” Nightmares whispered in her eyes. “I can’t imagine the terror.”
He thought of her childhood, thought of the blood that had christened her. However, when he would’ve spoken, she surprised him. “But you’re the one man I could see myself having rug rats with—you’re bad-ass enough to reassure me.”
Cupping her cheek as she rose to her feet, he rubbed a thumb over her cheekbone. “It wil likely take a long time.” Angels were nowhere near as fertile as humans. “We wil have a chance to get used to the idea.”
“I’l practice on Zoe. Poor kid.” With that laughing comment, she walked to another box, opened it.
And froze.
Coming to stand by her side, he saw her lift up an intricately patterned quilt to her nose, breathe in deep. “If I think hard enough, I can stil remember her scent as she used to kiss me goodnight.” A whisper so quiet, he almost missed it. “Gardenias stroked with a hint of a richer, more sensual fragrance.”
Reaching out, he touched the quilt, felt a quiet hum of power. “Elena.”
Elena looked up at the strange tone in Raphael’s voice, the heavy weight of memory easing for a fraction of a second. “What is it?”
His eyes turned a stunning cobalt as he rubbed his fingers across the soft old cotton. “There is power in this, the kind of power that comes only with blood.”
“This was on my bed,” she said with a frown. “Until Jeffrey packed away everything of my mother’s one winter while I was away at boarding school, this quilt covered my bed. Slater never went into that room. There can’t be blood on here.” She didn’t want the evil to have defiled this, too.
“No, not his blood.” Dropping his fingers from the quilt, he touched her wing. “It is the blood of the maker.”
Elena ran a finger over the fine stitching. “She created it by hand, probably pricked herself.” That scent was long gone, buried under the ghosts of the gardenias she wanted to keep fresh.
When Raphael said nothing, a warning sensation skittered up the back of her spine. “Archangel? Talk to me.”
“This kind of blood,” Raphael murmured, “this kind of lingering power ... it is not a mortal thing.”
“My mother was very much mortal.” Elena had seen her dead, her face bleached of color, those beautiful, laughing eyes turned forever dul .
Raphael closed his hand over her nape. “As a human, you once pushed me out of your mind. It should’ve been an impossible task.”
“Raphael, she wasn’t an angel, or a vampire. Only one thing left.”
“Not quite.” Eyes on the quilt, he said, “Vampires under two hundred years old can sire children. Those children are mortal.”
Elena blinked, stared at the quilt, back at him. Her life shifted on its axis with a grinding screech. “You’re saying I’m part vamp?”
“No, Elena. You were mortal before you became an angel. But your mother carried within her blood something powerful enough that it survived her passing. There is a vampire somewhere in your lineage.”
“I need to sit down.” But what she did was lean against Raphael, the quilt clutched to her chest. “My father ... he can’t know.” Jeffrey hated vampires, only put up with Beth’s Harrison because of business ties with Harry’s family. “I think it might break him.”
“There is no reason he should know.” Raphael stroked her hair off her face. “I would see more of your childhood—there is time enough for other things.”
“Yes.”