“Lijuan has control over her puppets. I don"t believe she has enough control to manipulate them over that distance, however, which makes me think she had someone else there whom Dmitri"s men didn"t find.”
“Someone the reborn thought he had to follow.” She blew out a breath, wondering what kind of an evil could scare the dead. “What did Dmitri do to him?”
“Gave him what he wanted.”
Elena"s hand clenched on the railing. “Good.” She"d want that same mercy if she was ever turned into the horror of one of Lijuan"s reawakened dead.
“Her games,” Raphael said, “they"re escalating. The act against your mother"s grave came on my territory, violating our implicit agreement not to enter each other"s lands without permission.”
“Plausible deniability. She can always say she knew nothing about the actions of her underlings.”
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“We would all know it for a lie, but yes, she"s far enough removed from the act to do so credibly.” Raphael"s wings spread, one sliding over her back in a quiet caress. “It"s time for us to make our own move.”
She glanced at him, saw the pitiless angle of his jaw, remembered that this was the archangel who"d executed another. “You"ve already made it.”
His lips curved in a smile no mortal would ever want to see. “Lijuan shows signs of believing that her status as the oldest among us makes her untouchable.”
“Could you kill her if necessary?”
“I"m not sure Lijuan can truly die.” He said the terrifying words with quiet power. “It"s possible she"s lived so long, she"s become the truest of immortals, straddling the line between life and death.”
“Except,” Elena said, feeling a ghost walk across her grave, “it looks like she prefers the dead over the living.”
“Yes.”
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27
“Fuck! ” Illium dodged one knife, swiveled to find the tip of his opposite wing pinned to the wall. “Two knives is cheating!”
Something feral in Elena smiled in satisfaction—poor Illium was bearing the brunt of the turbulence incited by her father"s call a day ago. “Strike one for the hunter.”
The blue-winged angel reached over and pulled out the knife. Dropping to the earth, he handed it to her, hilt first. “Lucky hit.”
“Sore loser.”
“It was getting pathetic watching you fail.”
“Look at that,” she said with a mock gasp, “I think I nipped off a few feathers in the process.
Poor, poor Bluebell.”
He grinned, those golden eyes bright with mischief, with an ability to play that seemed to have been leached out of the other immortals. “Next time,” he said, “I"m going to run you around so bad, they"ll have to carry your whimpering body out of here.”
Cleaning off the knife, she slid it back into her arm sheath before bringing her hand up to hide an exaggerated yawn.
“If you two have finished,” Galen said in that humorless way of his, “we still have an hour to go.”
She glanced at Illium"s wing—to see that it was already almost completely healed. “I guess it"s time to put a few more holes in you.”
“Tell you what,” Illium said. “If you manage to hit me three times in a row, I"ll give you a diamond necklace.”
“Make it a diamond-studded decorative knife sheath and you"ve got a deal.”
Illium raised an eyebrow. “Not very practical.”
“It is if you"re planning to wear it with a ball gown.”
“Ah.” A gleam of interest. “Fine. And if you don"t hit me three times, you have to take me along with you on a hunt.”
“Why?” she asked, perplexed. “They"re hot, sweaty, often exhausting.”
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“I want to see how you hunt.”
A pulse of memory: Illium is fascinated by mortals .
Maybe that was why she liked him so much. He saw her former status not as a weakness but as a gift. “Alright.”
He stuck out a hand. “Done.”
She shook it. “Now do your job, butterfly.”
He left the ground in a sweep of wind, a single blue feather floating to her hand. She put it in a pocket, saving it for Zoe. So far, she had several of Raphael"s golden-tipped ones, two of Illium"s, and a few of her own.
“Go!”
Eyes on the target, she balanced her throwing knives in hand and set her feet. Her sight was sharper than when she"d been human, but not by much—not yet.
In the end, she hit Illium twice more, missing a third strike by the barest flicker of a feather.
Illium swooped down. “I get to go on a hunt.”
“See if you"re smiling when we end up in some mosquito-infested swamp.”
“I"m not scared of mosqui—”
She was swiveling on her heel before Illium stopped speaking, having picked up the scents of three unfamiliar vampires. But it was an angel she found in the doorway, his exotic cheekbones and near-black eyes nowhere near as unusual as the wings she glimpsed before he folded them inward.
Dark gray patterned with streaks of vivid, striking red.
Stunning wings.