“Don’t cal me El ie.” That was reserved for her friends.
He hissed at her, spitting poison.
Elena dived and rol ed, kicking his feet out from under him before he could shift position in one of those reptilian bursts of speed.
“Stop!” Il ium’s voice as he strode into the circle. She’d been surprised to see him this morning, as the Hummingbird was meant to have arrived last night. However, according to Il ium, his mother had been delayed by a storm and wouldn’t be landing for a few hours. “Both of you, up.”
Rising to a standing position, Elena watched as Venom flowed up, just itching to kick him flat again. “You could’ve blinded me.”
A liquid shrug. “You would’ve recovered, but it would’ve hurt like a bitch. And next time, you’d remember.”
Elena closed her eyes and counted to ten. “Yeah, you’re right,” she said, raising her lids.
Venom blinked, those slitted eyes contracting when he lifted his lashes back up. “You leave me at a loss for words.” But not for actions it seemed, because he bent to give her the most elegant of bows before rising to blow her a kiss. “Another round?”
Il ium, his expression subdued as it had been for too many days, turned to her. “Mind if I have a go?”
“Kick his ass.”
Stripping off his shirt and boots, Il ium held out his hand for one of Venom’s blades. Lips curving, Venom passed it over. “Sure you can handle me, pretty, pretty Bluebel ?”
“Did I ever tel you about my snakeskin boots?” A savage grin, and she knew Venom was about to bear the brunt of whatever haunted the blue-winged angel.
Venom swirled his blade in hand. “I do think I need some new feathers for my pil ow.”
Il ium shifted into a combat stance. “Cal the winner, El ie.”
Stepping out to the side of the circle, where she’d placed a bottle of water, she put down her weapons and took a seat on the grass. “Ready? Go!”
Her heart was in her throat within ten seconds, the water forgotten. Because neither Venom nor Il ium was holding back now, and they moved at the speed of death. The tip of a blade a bare mil imeter from an eye, a foot about to snap a spine, an edge about to sever a head. It was like watching a fight in fast-forward, Il ium’s wings bril iant splashes of blue, his hair a wild sweep of black dipped in sapphires, Venom’s skin shimmering golden brown as sweat glimmered and caught the light.
Rising to her feet, she kept her eyes glued on them, trying to catch moves, figure out vulnerabilities. “Stop!”
They broke apart to glance at her, chests heaving—two half-naked males covered in sweat and holding wicked-sharp blades by their sides. Il ium was beautiful, Venom so other as to be strangely compel ing. Together, she thought with one part of her mind, they created a damn nice view. Sara would cal them eminently lickable.
“Venom took it,” she said.
That slight English accent of Il ium’s was very apparent as he said, “Hel he did.”
“He had his teeth on your jugular.” She knew enough to know that while Venom’s poison wasn’t lethal to angels, it would’ve hurt like hel , breaking Il ium’s concentration.
Venom rocked back on the bal s of his feet, a slow taunting smile on his face that had Il ium threatening him with dismemberment. That only made the vampire’s grin widen and then they were at it again, moving with a fluidity and grace that turned them into living pieces of art.
It was tempting to simply watch, but she began to note down moves and countermoves she thought she could utilize—because one way or another, she was getting her name back on the Guild roster as a ful y functioning hunter.
Raphael stood on the very edge of the Tower roof, looking out over Manhattan. The city bore few scars from the destruction caused during his battle with Uram. It had stood firm and proud against the quakes and the storm winds that hit a week ago, and now sparkled bright beneath the sun’s rays.
“Shh, my darling, shh.”
Images of the young girl’s bloodied body surrounded by long, green grass intertwined with his mother’s voice, but the memories didn’t suck him under.
Not today. This was his city. He had built it, and he would hold it, no matter if his mother thought to wrench it from him. “Boston?” he asked Dmitri. “Any further problems?”
“No,” the vampire answered from beside him. “The calm has held since the earthquake.”
No calm, this, Raphael thought. It was more akin to the unnatural quiet that settled over an area before al hel broke loose. “I—” He halted as his senses picked up something so unexpected as to seem impossible. “Dmitri, we’l have to continue this later.”
Most others, even in his Seven, would have retreated, but Dmitri looked up to the sheet blue clarity of the sky. “Who is it?”
“Lijuan.”
The Archangel of China . . . and of Death.
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