Guild Hunter 02 , Archangel's Kiss(12)

He’d taken her mind twice since she’d woken, both times to protect her from hurting herself. Today, those same primal drives urged him to disregard her orders—she might’ve been hunter-born, but she wasn’t yet anywhere near strong enough to handle this.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Elena said, taut pain in every word, “but if you take my mind, if you force me to go against my instincts, I’ll never forgive you.”

“I won’t watch you die again, Elena.” The Cadre had chosen her because she was the best, relentless in her pursuit of her prey. But then, she’d been disposable. Now, she was integral to his existence.

“For eighteen years”—somber words, a haunted expression—“I tried to be what my father wanted. I tried not to be hunter-born. It killed me a little more each day.”

He knew what he was. He knew what he was capable of. He also knew that if he broke her, he’d despise himself for all eternity. “You’ll do exactly as I say.”

An immediate nod. “This is unfamiliar territory—I’m not going to go off half-cocked.”

Descending in a gentle dive, he came to an easy landing a few feet from the body—in the shadow of a dual-level home that bore the soft patina of age. Elena held onto him for a couple of seconds, as if getting her muscles under control before turning to kneel beside the badly beaten vampire. He crouched beside her, reaching out to place his fingers on the vampire’s temple. A pulse wasn’t always a good indicator of life when it came to the Made.

It took him several seconds to sense the dull echo of the vampire’s mind, a sign of how close the male was to true death. “He lives.”

Elena blew out a breath. “Dear God, someone really wanted to hurt him.” The vampire had been beaten so severely he was nothing much more than ground meat over bone. He might’ve been handsome, probably had been from the sense of age pressing against Elena’s skin, but there wasn’t enough left of his face to tell.

One eye was swollen shut. The other . . . the eye socket had been shattered with such vicious thoroughness that if you didn’t know he was meant to have an eye there, you’d never guess where his cheek ended and his eye began. Oddly, his lips had been left untouched. Below the neck, his clothing was driven into his flesh, evidence of a sustained and repeated kicking. And his bones . . . they stuck out—bloody, broken branches through what had once been a pair of jeans.

It hurt to see him, to know what he must’ve suffered. Vampires didn’t lose consciousness easily—and, given the savagery of the attack, she’d bet his attackers had kicked his head last. That way, he would’ve been conscious for almost the entirety of the ordeal. “Do you know who he is?”

“No. His brain is too bruised.” Raphael slid his arms under the vampire, a carefulness to his movements that made her heart squeeze. “I need to get him to a physician.”

“I’ll wait and—” She froze as he shifted the body to get a better hold. “Raphael.”

The air was suddenly kissed by frost. “I see it.”

There was a square of jarringly unbruised skin on the vampire’s breastbone, as if it had been left specifically unharmed. The cold-blooded nature of the beating made her stomach curdle. These people would have attacked his brain last. “What is that?” Because while the vampire’s skin wasn’t bruised, it wasn’t unmarked. A symbol had been burned into his flesh. An elongated rectangle, slightly flared at the bottom, sat atop an inverted curve, which in turn covered a small bowl. Holding it all up was a long, thin line.

“It’s a sekhem, a symbol of power from a time when archangels ruled as pharaohs and were called the scions of the gods.”

Elena felt her face flush hot and cold. “Someone wants to take Uram’s place.”

Raphael didn’t tell her not to jump to conclusions. “Do your track. Illium will watch over you until I return.”

She looked up as Raphael rose but couldn’t isolate Illium’s blue wings even against the light show of the approaching sunset. Thankfully, her legs waited to tremble until after Raphael had left. Her archangel had finally seemed to hear her today—she had a feeling he’d think long and hard before ever again forcing her to act against her will.

But there was nothing to stop him from picking her up bodily and dumping her in bed if he realized the extent of her exhaustion. Her wings felt like hundred-pound weights on her back, her calf muscles so much jelly. Blowing out a breath, she dug up a fraction more stamina from somewhere and started circling out from the spot where they’d found the body, glad that this area, while not abandoned, appeared shut up.