Archangel’s Ascension (The Guild Hunter Series)

“That’s better.” Giulia walked out wearing black sunglasses and with a plate in hand. “Here, I wasn’t thinking before. I hand-make these savory pastries. Marco’s favorites even after he became a vampire. He’d eat one half a day because that was all his system could handle so soon after his Making, but he’d finish them.

“Now I have too many when I bake but I can’t stop. Eat, eat.” A frown at Illium that was pure maternal disapproval. “Especially you. You never used to be that skinny.”

So they stood there and ate several of the little pastries heavy with mozzarella and finely sliced meat and other things that all added up to delicious. When Janvier and Ransom walked inside after pulling up on their motorbikes from two different sides of the city, the vampire and the guild hunter cleared off the plate.

“I wish I could process more,” Janvier groaned after he’d finished his second one. “Merde, but no one ever told me how much I’d miss eating when I became a vampire.” His Cajun accent was thicker than it had been prior to his recent visit to his family in Louisiana, the moss green of his eyes languid, and his brown leather jacket soft with how long he’d had it.

Illium had met his family, the vampire having invited him along to more than one fais do-do over the time they’d known one another. Descendants of Janvier’s adored little sisters, that family was a rowdy bunch that absorbed people into it with a warmth that was disarming. Illium had ended up full of Cajun moonshine, good food, and plenty of numbers slipped into his pocket.

Shy, Janvier’s family wasn’t, he thought with an inward grin.

“Marco felt the same.” Giulia’s smile was real and all the more poignant for the agony written in the swollen grittiness of her eyes. “He had a little book where he’d write out all his favorite things to eat, and then he’d schedule them. Said he had no time for bad food. Only the best. These were in permanent rotation.” The last words were a near-whisper.

“I don’t suppose you sell them?” Ransom said as he finished the last bite of his. “I’d love to take a box home for my wife and our little boy.” A charming grin. “I’d be the favorite forever.”

Giulia’s whole face softened. “I’ll make a new batch for you.” She waved off his surprised response. “It’s so nice to have young men around again. Marco’s friends, they always filled up my house. They still come, but…we’re all so sad.” A rough exhale. “We don’t know what to do with each other without him.”noveldrama

Turning toward her apartment at that, she invited Janvier and Ransom inside to shift the boxes. Once the two had carried them outside, Aodhan took one, Illium the next, and they flew them to the Tower before returning for the remaining two. Ransom and Janvier were still there, waiting just outside the main entrance to the building—a position from where they could keep an eye on the boxes.

“Giulia got a call from a friend.” While Ransom still had long hair he wore in a queue, was sleek with muscle, and had weapons close at hand like any hunter, his eyes bore a few more lines at the corners than they had when Illium had first met Elena’s hunter friend.

His new laugh lines, however, far outnumbered those.

The other man had fallen in love, sired a son with his beloved wife, Nyree, and was content in his skin as he hadn’t been back then.

Janvier wore the same air of contentment. He’d always been laid-back with strong family ties, but after winning the heart of the hunter with whom he’d been in love since the moment he’d met her, Janvier was just happier. While he remained as unhurried in speech and manner as always, his eyes lit up when his Ashblade was nearby.

“There’s my cher,” he’d murmur, before strolling over to talk her into a kiss.

Illium wanted that kind of settled forever with Aodhan, the kind that sounded boring on paper…but that was multiplying laugh lines and eyes that glowed with happiness, picking up treats just because and coming home to arms beloved today, tomorrow, and all the days to come.

But his and Adi’s ground was rocky yet, their path uncharted.

“Thanks for swinging by when I called,” he said to both men.

Janvier shot him a lazy salute while Ransom straddled his bike, his arms braced on the handlebars. “We were discussing putting the word out on the streets about Marco and Tanika.”

Illium would’ve been a fool to turn down the offer. Between the two and their associates, they had the gray heart of the city covered. “Appreciate that. We’re working with limited material.”

“We’ll send you anything we discover.” Rising to a seated position, Ransom bumped fists with Illium, nodded at Aodhan.

To Illium’s surprise, Aodhan held out a fist, too.

Eyebrow raised, Ransom bumped his fist to Aodhan’s, then inspected his own knuckles with a frown. “I half expected the shine to rub off…Sparkle.”

While Janvier tried to hide a laugh by ducking his head, Aodhan made a rumbling sound in his throat and turned to Illium. “Sleep with one eye open, Bluebell,” he warned solemnly.

“Smoke’ll protect me,” Illium replied as the other two laughed, even as his heart kicked at this further sign that Aodhan was dead serious about overcoming his dislike of touch on every level. Adi was done with the past, would allow no nightmare to anchor him in time.

The realization opened a door inside Illium he hadn’t even known was locked.

Despite the pastries they’d inhaled, they were both hungry by the time they got the last of the boxes into a large conference room at the Tower. Leaving Marco’s belongings there for the time being, they locked the door, then headed out to one of Illium’s favorite rooftop vendors. The morning clouds had drifted farther inland, New York once more doused in sunlight.

Spotting the crowd around the vendor from above, Aodhan said, We eat on the bridge.

I’ll get the hot dogs, Illium responded at once—because there was a big difference between one-on-one contact and being stared at by fifty people who weren’t used to you.

I should— Aodhan began in a teeth-gritted way.

Nope. I’m putting my foot down. Illium wove steel into his voice. You’ve never liked crowds, Adi. Not since you were a kid. Don’t torment yourself just to prove a point.

Aodhan’s glance held not anger, but relief intermingled with affection. That’s an avatar I haven’t seen for a while. Ball-busting Illium.

Illium bowed even as his entire body melted at the open affection in Aodhan’s tone. Now stay put and look pretty while I—

He dove out of the way before Aodhan could throw a bolt of power at him, was still grinning when he landed.

Several of the junior wing he often trained were waiting for orders, and it ended up an impromptu gathering after he’d placed his and Adi’s orders. He’d been planning to drop by their training area later today regardless, but it was good to see them whole and healed from their wounds.

“It’s a plan,” he said when one of them suggested a proper gathering after another member of the wing returned from the Refuge. “I’ll bring the moonshine.” He rose up into the air to the raucous sound of their cheers.

After he’d handed Aodhan his food, the two of them flew to one of the massive bridges that spanned the Hudson, and took a seat on the top girders, where New Yorkers had become used to seeing the two of them. It was also far enough up that no one could stare at them in close proximity.

As for binoculars, neither of them was worried about that. Aodhan was so dazzling in this kind of light that he basically couldn’t be seen, and sitting close to him obliterated Illium’s image, too—though he didn’t much care if people looked.

They ate in quiet, basking in the sun, just watching the water and the cars.

No pressure to talk. No pressure to do anything.

No peace was as deep as the one he found with Adi. His best friend had always had the gift of quiet, could spend hours, even days, working on his art in silence. But until the kidnapping, Aodhan’s silence had welcomed Illium in—he’d never closed himself off even at his most intense. He’d look over now and then to where Illium sat polishing his weapons, or doing exercises to increase his strength, or reading lessons designed to take him from simple warrior to wing commander and beyond, smile, then go back to his work.

Illium, in turn, had never interrupted him except when he’d seen Aodhan work too long without fuel. Aodhan would take the food from him with an absent-minded glance, eat it without noticing what it was, and at some point much later, Illium would get a “Thanks. What did I just eat?” as his brain caught up to what his body had been doing.

It had always made Illium grin. “Jellied squid,” he’d say. “No, wait, I think it was crushed grasshopper sprinkled on a bed of pungent river moss.”

This…it felt like them again in a way Illium couldn’t explain to anyone else. He just knew that the long-locked door hadn’t only been unlocked, it was gone, destroyed from the inside out.

But tempting as it was to linger, they were both too invested in Giulia’s anguish, and the lust and obsession-driven murder of two young lovers. And Illium, he was viscerally focused on what this case meant to Aodhan. Would it dredge up memories better left forgotten? Would it cause harm or do good? There was no way to know until it happened; the only thing Illium could do was fly by his side.

That afternoon, it was to Tanika’s distraught family.

“All she wanted was a normal life,” her mother sobbed through her tears when they confirmed that the deaths were apt to have been murder, her ebony skin ashen. “A husband, couple of kids, a small place of their own. A nice apartment with a window box where she could plant flowers in the spring. She was a happy girl, our Tani, content with a normal life, not always searching for more.”

“Not like Marco.” Tanika’s father’s face was flushed red under the bluish paleness of his skin, his jaw working. “This thing, this evil? It came from him.”

His barrel of a chest heaved. “I got no problem with Giulia. She lost her boy, too. But he chose that life, chose to go into a world that isn’t for mortals. Chasing immortal life, chasing future things so far away that it don’t matter to no one now. He should’ve never taken my daughter into that world with him.”

“She had her own mind, Stavros.” His wife’s chiding was soft, the hand she curled around his bunched biceps gentle. “When was the last time she asked your approval on a boy, hmm?”

Stavros closed his palm over her fingers, the back of his hand nicked and scarred by life. “I told her, didn’t I? That she shouldn’t date a vampire, that it would all end in tears? Why didn’t she listen, Norma?” A roar of anger…but below the surface rage was a shivering pain that was tears contained in amber. “She was so small when I held her after she was born. Remember?”

“I remember. That funny smile they told us was gas, but she was always smiley, wasn’t she?”

Stavros’s nod was jagged, his hand tight on his wife’s.

Unlike many Illium had met over the years, these two had been glued tighter by their loss. But though they had love aplenty for their child, they had nothing to give Aodhan and Illium when it came to their daughter’s murder—just their certainty that the trouble had come from Marco.

“She was a good girl,” her mother said. “A bit too ‘head in the clouds,’ as her nonna used to say, but it just made her all the more fun to be with. She was never into anything dangerous—her favorite thing was to go to those fairs where they dress up like in medieval times.”

“She had no enemies,” Stavros reiterated.

Tanika’s friends were of the same mindset. Her coworkers, too.

“We get creepers sometimes,” one of the other clerks at the fashion boutique said. “You know, men who come inside here not to buy for their ladies, but to chat up the clerks and customers, or fondle the lingerie.” Her lip curled. “But Tani had what we called her Stavros side—no-nonsense, exactly like her dad. Don’t think he ever figured that out, though; to him, she was just his baby girl.”

A wet laugh. “But I never saw a creeper approach Tani—and just so I’m not giving you the wrong impression, we don’t get that many overall. Maybe one or two every six months.” A pause. “I miss her so much. She just…she had this happy inside her that infected everyone around her. You know?”

Despite the coworker’s belief that Tani hadn’t been bothered by a “creeper,” Illium asked for any saved security footage. He wasn’t expecting a positive response, not given the passage of time—but they got lucky. The owner was a cyber-packrat, and the war had helped with retention, too.

“We were online-only until last month,” the lanky man told them. “Our building was vaporized in the war, and shops weren’t a priority rebuild, not like hospitals and schools.” A smile accompanied by a damp sheen to the eyes. “If you see the archangel, please say thank you. We figured we’d be forgotten in a war between archangels.”

Illium knew the man was referring to the system set in place to ensure that those who had to wait for a rebuild didn’t lose their homes or businesses in the interim.

“Most of us have more money than we’ll spend in our entire immortal lifetimes,” Dmitri had said when they’d been working on the post-war plan. “No point in allowing parts of the city to turn derelict—or to have the same happen to the people who make it what it is.”

Not every archangel’s second would’ve said the same. And not every archangel would’ve agreed with his statement. But meeting Elena had forever altered the trajectory of Raphael’s life; there’d been a time when Illium was scared of who his archangel was becoming under the twin forces of power and age.

He’d also known he could do nothing to stop it—he was too young, didn’t have that relationship with Raphael. Dmitri did, but Dmitri’s dark past, of which Illium had only now gained a true glimpse, had put him on a similarly cold and violent path. Then had come Elena and her stubborn mortal heart and an unstoppable cataract of change.

This was the end result—a vibrant post-war city with a people who were blood loyal to their archangel. “I’ll pass on your words to the archangel,” Illium said to the owner. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

“We loved Tani.” The damp was a thickness in the other man’s throat now. “She was just one of those people who made the world a brighter place.”

Illium’s fingers curled into his palm, his neck stiff with tension.

“I’ll go over the security footage,” Aodhan told him after they left the shop. “I know you want to see Catalina and she’ll be waiting for you.”

Despite Illium’s desperate need to watch over Aodhan—and wouldn’t that piss Adi off if Illium said it aloud?—he didn’t demur. Catalina was an important part of his life, one half of a treasured friendship that had created an enduring groove in his heart.

At times, Illium could still feel the weight of Lorenzo’s coffin as he helped carry his friend to his final resting place. So heavy he’d been, when in life, he’d been light on his feet, a man who’d twirled Catalina into a dance while flour dusted the air and Catalina laughed and told him she was halfway through mixing a batch.

Illium, tell him to be sensible!

When Catalina went, too…Illium’s heart would hurt for a long time.

“I’m glad you’ve gotten to know her,” he said to Aodhan, his throat dry. “I don’t want to be the only one who remembers her in the eons to come.” Mortal lives went by so fast, ancestors remembered in the heart for but a few generations. “I wish you could’ve known Lorenzo, too. So many hours we sat together over a glass, talking about nothing and everything.”

He rubbed a fisted hand over the aching in his chest…then spoke a truth he could no longer shy away from, not if they were to build a relationship honest and deep. “You were gone for so long, lost to me in a way I didn’t even understand until you started to come back. Without Lorenzo and Cat…

“Lorenzo knew my sorrows and my joys, as I knew his. Catalina understood my pain and my triumphs, as I understood hers. Lorenzo was mortal but his shoulders were as strong as yours or mine, able to bear the weight of what I entrusted to him. And Cat? You’ve met her. You know.”

He’d felt disloyal at the start, that he was building a friendship so profound with anyone but Aodhan, but after a while, it would’ve been a disloyalty to Lorenzo, Catalina, and Aodhan to compare them in any way. Each friendship was its own living, breathing joy. And Aodhan…his Adi…was stitched into his very being.

Aodhan shifted so that his wing just brushed Illium’s, the whisper of contact an act of painful intimacy. “I’m happy you had them,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “And I mourn that I can’t tell Lorenzo how much it means to me that he was there for you at a time I couldn’t be.”

His best friend’s expression turned stark. “Catalina will break my heart to pieces one day but to know her is a gift. Go, Blue. Spend the time with her.”