“Yes,” Raphael said with a slow smile. “I knew you would come see me before the seventh.”
Sharine laughed then, and it felt like warm raindrops against Elena’s skin.
“She’s . . .”
“I know.” Il ium’s muscles tightened under her hold. “El ie . . .”
“Hush.” She leaned into him, al owing her wing to brush over his. “She loves you, loves Raphael. That’s what matters.”
“Yes.” Smiling at his mother when the Hummingbird turned and held out a hand, he went to help her get seated.
The dinner was magical. Elena had heard Raphael use his voice in that way—until it felt like a tactile caress, but Sharine had honed it into an art form.
Listening to her was like being surrounded by a thousand streamers of sensation, al of them sparkling with bril iance.
And the stories she told—of Raphael’s and Il ium’s youth, such wonderful stories of bravery and fol y, al told with a mother’s pride in her sons. Sharine had not borne Raphael, Elena thought as she stood on their private balcony later that night, watching the Hummingbird take flight with Il ium by her side, but she had cared for him just the same. “She reminds me of some gorgeous hothouse flower.”
“One that’s been crumpled,” Raphael said, his hands on her shoulders as he pul ed her back against his chest, one arm sliding around to hold her pressed to him. “For the rest, you must ask Il ium.”
Placing her hand over his forearm, she shook her head. “I can’t. Not when I see how much it hurts him.” She’d believed she knew the greatest tragedy of the blue-winged angel’s life. He’d loved a mortal, lost her to angelic law and her human life span. But the pain she’d seen tonight, it was older, deeper ...
raw and aged and angry. “How long is she staying in the city?”
“She wil leave within the hour—she finds it difficult to linger far from home.”
As they stood there in silence, there was a spark of fire in the sky. Then another, and another.
The stars were fal ing.
There was no magic the next day. Even the spring sunshine promised by a stunning dawn was subsumed by bone-chil ing horror as the calm broke in the most decisive of ways.
Flying down, then up toward the bottom of Manhattan Bridge, Elena hooked her fingers in the massive metal structure and stared at the five bodies that hung from its bel y. They’d been spotted at daybreak by one of the craft that used this section of the East River—the witness was apparently stil puking his guts out.
Elena swal owed her own gorge as the bodies swung from the ropes.
Swinging so gently. One foot bare, one clad in a shiny highheeled shoe.
“No shadows,” she said, fighting the nightmare. “There are no shadows.” It was too early in the day, and for that mercy, she could only be grateful. “One, two, three.” Her fingers refused to release their grip.
Another river-borne wind. The bodies swayed.
Her stomach bucked, bile burning the back of her throat.
“Hey, you see anything useful?” Santiago’s distinctive voice came from the wireless device tucked over her ear.
“No,” she said, forcing the word out through gritted teeth. “Let me get closer.” And do my job. She would not let the past steal her future from her.
Taking a deep breath, she let go of the bridge finger by finger, then dropped low enough that she could spiral over the water before beating her way to a closer position. As she rose up over the choppy waves, she kept her eyes resolutely on the spot underneath the bridge where she intended to hook her arms in an effort to brace herself. “This would be easier if I was human,” she muttered.
“Yeah?”
She jerked, having forgotten Santiago could hear everything. “Harness would be useful,” she said. “Impossible to get wings into one though.”
“We’l have to get a special set made for you.”
Nothing in his tone said he was joking.
“Thanks.” For accepting her wings in as straightforward a fashion as he’d accept a new coat.
There.
Grabbing the metal in a secure grip, she held on with one arm as she hooked her leg over the beam. Only when she was in a stable position did she look down at the rope, thick and brown, where it had been tied to the beam. Her eyes skimmed forward—each of the five bodies hung from the bridge the same way, the ropes the same length.
“Someone took their time.” It wasn’t the broken necks alone that had kil ed them—most vampires over a decade old could survive that unless the break was close to decapitation, and hunter instincts whispered that these men were al over fifty, though not by too much. No, it was the fact that it looked like their hearts had been removed, too, their shirts plastered to their fronts by stains that could’ve come from only one thing. At this age, the dual shock would’ve been enough even without total separation of the head from the body.
“Had to be fucking what’s-his-name? The guy in the red and blue suit with the spider thing.”
“Not a movie buff, Santiago?”