Archangel's Legion(101)

“Yes, because the monsters are so strong, they could tear off your head with their bare hands!” Stalking around the desk, he grabbed her by the upper arms and shook so hard that her teeth clattered. “Do you know what it’s like to watch a woman get her head torn off? The blood spurts hot and dark and it gets in your mouth, in your eyes, in your nose, until it’s the only thing you can see, all you can smell!”





32





Elena couldn’t move, even to break the bruising tightness of Jeffrey’s hold. She didn’t understand what he was saying, the words making no sense in the context of who he was: Jeffrey Parker Deveraux, his blood so blue, it was created from the foundations of the city. History, family, tradition, that was the Deveraux way. The blood and the death had come with Elena, Jeffrey’s “abomination” of a daughter.

“I was four,” he said, his breath hot on her face. “Playing under the covered bench where she cleaned her tools. She was agreeing how I’d make a great policeman, while I played with my trucks and she sharpened her blades”—eyes falling to the blades on her forearms, his fingers digging deeper into her flesh—“and that’s when they came for her. Three vampires who wanted vengeance for having been returned to their masters to face punishment.”

Elena started to tremble, her heart stuttering in her chest. As far as she knew, Jeffrey’s mother was alive and well and active on the boards of several major charitable organizations. Cecilia Deveraux was also not, and had never been, a hunter.

“When I tried to help her,” Jeffrey said, “they laughed and tossed me aside as if I weighed nothing.” Jagged words. “The fall broke my legs, one of my arms. I tried but couldn’t get to her. Instead I had to watch while they kicked my mother, beat her, breaking every bone in her body before they ripped off her head.”

“Papa.” It was the first time she’d called him that in an eon. “Papa, I’m sorry.” Sliding her arms around his chest, she held him, his body an icy rock. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Her father’s arms came around her, crushing her so tightly, she could barely draw breath. One hand cupping her head, the other around her upper back over her wings, he held her close to his heart, his breath choppy. When his body shuddered against her own, she thought he might be crying, but it was a thought her mind couldn’t accept.

Her father didn’t cry. The child in her confused and shaky, she just held on until his breathing evened out, his hand stroking over her hair with a gentleness she’d never again expected to experience from her father.

“I will always be your father . . . and I wish to God I wasn’t.”

The hateful words no longer hurt, not when she heard the fear she’d been too angry to hear the first time. Her father, this man who held her with such fierce tenderness, was afraid to watch his daughter die the same horrific death as his mother. It altered the bedrock of their relationship, left her without a mooring.

Dead certain the brittle moment would end the instant she stepped back, the wall of pain and loss that divided them once more in place, she held on for just a little while longer. So did he. In silence, their words locked down where they couldn’t hurt and cut and make the other bleed.

The world, however, continued to spin, the sound of a chopper passing overhead breaking the fragment out of time in two. They drew apart without a word, her father turning to walk to his desk, pick up his spectacles, while Elena backed out of the doorway. Heading around the side of the house, she gritted her teeth and made a vertical takeoff into the cold air, bringing herself to a hover in front of Eve’s window.

Her sister, the skin around her left eye purplish black, was waiting for her, came into her arms without hesitation. Elena saw Amy’s forlorn face in the window next door as they left, her hand pressed to the glass. It’s all right, Elena wanted to say. I’ll bring her back. Gwendolyn would accept nothing else. All Elena had to do was keep Eve away from Jeffrey until Gwendolyn returned. Her father, she’d realized at last, would never be rational when it came to hunters and hunting, the brutal wounds inflicted too young, the scars too aged.

Chest aching, she concentrated only on flying slow and steady toward the Enclave, the flash of blue that appeared in her vision an unexpected brilliance. “Ellie? Which beautiful maiden do you have there?” A wink directed at her youngest sister. “Hello, Evenstar.”

Eve poked out her tongue at Illium, having met the other angel on visits to the Tower to see Elena, but shifted into his hold when he offered. “I’m heavy,” she said, before Elena could protest.