“Are you keeping Sam asleep?” Elena asked.
“Yes. He"s too young to remember not to move his wings, so we won"t bring him back to full consciousness until the bones have knit back together.”
Raphael"s fingers tightened on her skin. “Are any of his injuries likely to cause long-term harm?”
Elena stared through the glass in dismay. “Angels can be hurt that way?”
“When we are very young,” Keir said, “yes. Some injuries take centuries to heal fully.” Brown eyes lingered on Raphael"s face. “It takes a ruthless kind of will to survive that much pain, but Sam won"t need it. He has no hurts that won"t heal within the next month.”
Elena pressed her palm to the glass. “I can"t understand the malice that could lead someone to do this.”
Fingers brushing the pulse in her neck, her archangel"s rage so fiercely contained, she wondered what it cost him. “You"ve seen innocents drown in blood, and yet you ask?”
“Bill,” she said, naming the hunter who"d butchered a string of young boys before Elena had ended his life, “did what he did because of a mental illness that eroded the soul of the man he was. But this was a calculated act.” The brand on Sam"s cheek, the ugliest of abuses, had been covered by a bandage. “Will that fade before he wakes?”
“I"ll make certain of it.” Keir"s tone turned so cold it was as if he was another man, a man who"d never known a healer"s mercy and never would. “This is a deed that threatens to taint the Refuge forever.”
Raphael stared through the glass. “His mind?”
“He"s young.” A long glance up at Raphael. “The young are resilient.”
“But scars remain.”
“Sometimes, the scars are what make us who we are.”
102
REB
Elena wondered at the scars that marked the son of two archangels, whether he"d one day share them with her. She wouldn"t push, knew exactly how bad old wounds could hurt. A year. A century. It had little bearing when it came to the heart. The scars formed in that suburban kitchen when she"d been barely ten had indelibly marked her. They"d marked her father, too, but in a different way. Jeffrey Deveraux had chosen to deal with it by wiping his first wife and two eldest daughters from his memory.
Her nails dug into the palm of her hand. “I"m going to go see if I can find any trace of the vampire.” The city was huge, but she might get lucky—and it was better than doing nothing.
“I"ll return with you,” Raphael said. “Keep well, Keir.”
The other angel lifted his hand in a small wave as they left.
“Do your healers have special abilities?” Elena asked.
“Some do. Some are more akin to human physicians.”
“They"d have seen things go from leeches to transfusions to organ transplants.” Arriving at the waiting area, she wrapped her arms around Raphael and let him take her up to the ledge.
Illium"s wings were shadowed blue against the snow when they walked out, his face turned up to the flakes falling soundlessly from the night sky “The water, Ellie,” he said, “it"ll wipe away the scents.”
“Damn.” Water was the one thing that ended any hope of a scent trail. Melting a few flakes in the palm of her hand, she tried to think positive. “Sometimes, snow isn"t so bad—I once successfully tracked a vamp because the snow trapped his scent instead of washing it away.”
“Then you need to hurry.” Raphael spanned her waist with his hands. “Illium, Naasir thinks he may have found something in the north quadrant.”
Illium"s eyes almost glowed against the clean lines of his face. “I"ll go and help him check it out.”
Pressing her lips to Raphael"s ear as they rose into the air, Elena asked a question that had been simmering at the back of her mind. “Is Illium getting stronger?”
He was badly injured by Uram, went into a deep healing sleep known as anshara . It was the first time he’d done so—sometimes, there’s a change in a man after anshara .
“How strong will he get?”
Unpredictable. He swept down, the wind frigid across her cheeks. We’re in the area around Sam’s home.
103
REB
“Nothing in the air. Put me down—I"ll see if I can track him through the snow.”
But that, too, proved futile. “It"s not a total loss.” She blinked away a flake caught on her lashes.
“It"s so cold, the snow won"t melt anytime soon. That gives me time to search across the Refuge.”
“How far through snow can you pick up a scent?”
“A couple of feet at most.”
Raphael looked up. “The skies will open tonight.”
“Then I guess we"ll be staying up.” Elena met the midnight storm of his eyes, felt compelled to reach up, cup his cheek. “We"ll find the bastards.”
He didn"t soften under her touch, didn"t become any less distant. “The fact that they dared take a child, it speaks of a deep rot, a rot that must be excised before it infects our entire race.”
“Nazarach and the others?”
“They were all in open sight.”