Any closer and the Bluebell’s feathers would singe, the Primary’s skin begin to ulcerate and slough off.
“Remind you of anything?” the Bluebell murmured, as sweat rolled down his face, steam a halo around him. His wet wings no longer dripped, the heat evaporating the water before it left his feathers.
The Primary considered the furnace below, sent the question to his brethren. They all said one word and so did he: “Cassandra.”
“Yeah.” The Bluebell drew back from the heat, an unreadable emotion on his face. “The last time she created a lava sinkhole, it swallowed a vampire. This time . . .” Darkness in eyes the color of aged coins the Primary had seen in the deep. “We wait. We watch.”
“We wait. We watch.”
9
Err, Archangel? That doesn’t look like blue sky anymore.” She hoped it wasn’t sky at all—because a world with a sky molten and deadly wasn’t a world in any kind of good shape.
Raphael’s response was unexpected. “Cassandra may still be falling into Sleep.” Gold lightning lived in his eyes, eerie and unfamiliar. “I lost her right at the end, before I earthed the power, but the descent into Sleep is a long process. If some vestige of her remains awake, she could be protecting us.”
Elena stared up at the dot far above, saw in it echoes of the sinkhole that had begun all this. “As long as she isn’t whispering creepy prophecies in my head, I have no problem with Cassandra.” The Ancient was just a messenger.
She sat up on a wave of effort. And belatedly realized a pertinent fact. “I’m buck naked.” All glowing skin, electrified hair, and breathless lungs. “Assuming that is Cassandra and she’ll allow us through, can you use your glamour, hide us?” She had no wish to flash New York with her bony ass.
“Glamour is child’s play with the amount of power currently in my system.” Hair yet afire at the ends and lightning cracking his skin, Raphael sat up beside her, looked up. He was beautiful beyond compare. He was also dangerous and deadly and a power.
His jaw muscles tightened. “Part of me does not wish to surface.”
Chest constricting to the edge of pain, she followed his gaze. “We have to have hope.” She was speaking as much to herself as to her archangel. “Without hope, the Cascade wins.”
“Hope.” Raphael brushed his wing over her back and the tattoo whispered sensation through her—as if she had feathers, too, over a wing understructure of bone and tendon and muscle and nerves.
Her ghost wings were torturous in many ways, but this? Elena gloried in it.
They rose to their feet together . . . and that was where she hit the first snag. Her spindly toothpick legs couldn’t support her body. She would’ve crumpled if Raphael hadn’t caught her, held her close. “Hope,” she said again when cold fury seared his features.
“Hope,” he gritted out, and it wasn’t the most heartfelt pledge—yeah, her archangel was pissed—but she’d take it given the circumstances . . . and try not to let her own anger take root. Elena P. Deveraux, Guild Hunter and consort to an archangel, was not about to let the Cascade twist her personality to bitterness and despair. She was going to fucking own this new chance at life.
Raphael spread his wings.
“Wait!” Elena nodded to the area behind the glory of his wings. “The amber and the statuette.”
Raphael lowered himself on one knee, his arm locked tight around her hips to stop her from falling. He used his free hand to grab the precious items and pass them up to her. Clutching them to her naked chest, she said, “Let’s do this.”
A last glance from eyes that were the wrong color and alive with deadly power before Raphael scooped her up in his arms. Elena pressed a kiss to his left pectoral muscle and hoped.
Flaring out his wings, he rose in an effortless vertical takeoff.
Elena whooped at the sensation—flight was beautiful and she’d never be jaded about it. And this, it might be their final moment of happiness if what lay beyond was a devastated wasteland.
Dipping his head, Raphael kissed her and she tasted power, love, Raphael, before they broke apart and turned their faces upward. “Together,” she said, her voice firm.
His response was immediate and absolute. “Always.”
The red-orange “sky” began to disappear as they got closer to the top, falling away on either side like molten doors sinking back into the earth. The two of them shot up and out. The temperature was just on the edge of cold, the sun bright.
Gold met silver . . . and they turned as one to look down.
Their home was gone. So was the greenhouse. Blast damage was evidenced by broken trees and what looked like a car flung upside down in a tangle of shattered wood, but their nearest neighbor was some distance away and that house appeared undamaged except for shards of glass that glinted in the grass around it. Its windows had blown out.
Nothing moved in that direction. No birds, no people, no cars.
The skies were empty.
“We must look toward the Tower.”
Elena clenched her abdominal muscles. “Do it.”
All the air rushed out of her a heartbeat later. Directly in their line of sight and not ten meters away hovered two familiar faces. “Bluebell.” A whisper. “And the Primary.” Both looked a touch worse for wear, but otherwise fine. At that instant, they appeared to be arguing—as much as the Primary argued with anyone.
Beyond them hovered countless more wings of Legion-gray . . . silhouetted against the skyscrapers of Manhattan. “Can you ask about Montgomery and Sivya?” Their butler and cook were the most likely to have been in the house when it exploded.
Raphael spoke mentally to Elena’s Bluebell on the heels of Elena’s request. Illium. He, too, needed to know this answer.
The blue-winged angel’s head swung toward them. His eyes scanned the skies in a futile search—Raphael and Elena were invisible inside the glamour.
Sire?
Raphael saw the angel swallow hard even from this distance, his body held with a rigid stiffness.
Elena and I have returned, Raphael said, for he would not draw out his people’s pain. Montgomery and Sivya?
Safe. Illium shuddered, every muscle in his body seeming to unlock. We cleared everyone within a large radius and your home was already a no-fly zone with heavily patrolled borders. There should be no casualties.
Raphael passed on Illium’s words to Elena. A shimmer of wet on her irises. Squeezing her eyes shut, she spoke in a voice thick with unspoken emotion. “I’ll take that as a win.”
“As will I.” They had not risen on the cold bodies of others, had not stolen life by sending others into the abyss.
Sire, what should I do now?
Raphael had never heard Illium sound so uncertain, so shaken. Watch over this chasm until I can return to refill it. The sides looked to have been forcefully compacted by his power. The hole should fill if he could collapse those walls.
Jason is in the city. Illium’s eyes still searched for them, though he was well aware of Raphael’s ability to create glamour. Together, we can take care of it.
“Your Bluebell needs to see us,” Raphael murmured to Elena. “I will ask him to come to the Tower.”
“I’d need to see us, too, if we got eaten by a chrysalis then exploded our house.” The strands of her hair waved around her face in the gentle but crisp wind, the tiny feathers glittering a touch in the sunlight.