Archangel’s Ascension (The Guild Hunter Series)

Lailah looked over to the left. “Cato!”

A male voice sounded in the background.

“A moment, Aodhan. Cato is dealing with one of the animals. I will go speak to him then return. I want to make certain of my memory and Cato is often better at the details of that time.”

Aodhan muted his end of the feed after she’d disappeared from the screen. “That is not the woman I met in the Refuge.”

Arms folded, Illium was leaning back against the wall. “I like this one better than the one I’ve always heard about.”

“So do I,” Aodhan said.noveldrama

Lailah appeared on the screen again, and he unmuted his feed.

“Yes,” she said, sounding a touch breathless. “I did remember correctly. An angel who used to linger here was obsessed with that diamond the rare times I wore it—exclusively when my father was visiting. She has had many names over the years, but Cato says the last one he recalls is Bijou.”

A name that translated to “jewel” in French. An affectation? Or how she saw herself?

The name rang no bells in Aodhan’s head, but he didn’t run in courtier circles. Jason or one of his people would be more knowledgeable. They made it a point to watch everyone, even those who appeared to be pointless pieces of fluff. Many a spy had hidden in those ranks. “Do you think this Bijou might’ve taken it?”

“I would not accuse anyone, but she was the one with the most avaricious eyes when it came to that particular stone.”

“Can you describe her?”

“She changes her hair color often—and I think these days, she would also change her eye color, but her natural shade is a hazel green that is startling in its paleness. It’s part of why I remember how she looked at the stone; her stare is disconcerting. In all honesty, I’d have given her the cursed stone if Charisemnon wouldn’t immediately have noticed should it have appeared on anyone else.”

“So if she took it, she knew not to display it.”

“I can see her hoarding it, pleased with her secret. Bijou had that way about her, a sense that she was always watching, ready for any vulnerability that she could either utilize—or gloat over knowing. She’s old but not particularly powerful, so she grasps for power in other ways.” No judgment or anger in Lailah’s tone, the words nothing but a description.

Bijou didn’t matter to her. Not as Andi mattered.

“Her hair, it has always been long and straight anytime I’ve seen it,” she added. “She was proud of that. Her skin is like Cato’s—so pale as to look bloodless.” A faint smile. “Though Cato is at last gaining a hint of color after all his time in the sun.”

“Her wings?” Those were often the most distinctive things about an angel.

But Lailah said, “Cream, with no other elements. I believe that’s why she plays up the cosmetics and clothing so much—I thought her wings lovely and elegant, but she couldn’t bear having what she called ‘pedestrian’ feathers. She used to color parts of her wings, too, but you know how difficult it is to get color to last on angelic feathers, so she gave up on that.”

Aodhan could’ve ended the call then, but he found himself curious about this woman who appeared to have stepped out of centuries of bondage of a kind unknown to most. “You’re different, Lailah,” he said without artifice. “You’re not lost any longer.”

A smile so haunted, it hurt. “Oh, Aodhan, I am still very much lost—but I’m trying to build myself a road that takes me out of this black maze in which I find myself.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “Please don’t mention our conversation to Andromeda. Our child has found her wings, and I would that she fly in freedom without looking back. There’s nothing good for her here, no joy in what I or Cato represent.”

“I won’t mention it.” Even as he spoke, Aodhan wondered if Andi was as ignorant of her parents’ current state as Lailah believed. A scholar did not blind her eyes. But this scholar had also been a child in a household tainted by Charisemnon, so perhaps this was the one subject on which she wished to remain ignorant.

Aodhan would not gainsay whatever decision it was that she’d made.

“Will you tell me what you do now?” he asked. “I am curious only, so if you’d rather it remain private, I will not importune you to speak.”

Her expression softened. “Our home has always been a haven for animals, and now that is our focus. We have let it be known that we will care for wild orphans, for wounded creatures, for any such being that needs us. We did much the same in the war, attempting to protect the wildlife against the scourge of the reborn, for animals played no part in that atrocity and yet it was their drinking water that was fouled by the dead, their land that was infested.”

Passion pumped fire into her cheeks. “You do not know the depth of our gratitude and respect for Archangel Titus, he who has allowed us to retain oversight of these lands. He has said that we are to think of ourselves as guardians of the wild, tied to his court under that duty.”

Those lovely eyes so like Andi’s, but with such terrible pain in their depths, met Aodhan’s. “I would like to live that title until it erases what I once was, until it is all I am. So would Cato. And so we work here, in our small slice of the earth, watching over the animals.

“We have few staff—none for the house. We’ve shut up most of it. The staff we do have help with the wounded beasts. A mortal even! He is a physician of animals, a wondrously clever man, and Cato is learning under him, for Cato, too, is proving clever in ways he was never allowed to know.

“He grew up under Charisemnon, too, you know. We were…companions in our strange exile.” A love in those words that was a gentle creature with wobbly legs. Because Lailah and Cato had only ever, Aodhan realized, known each other as the ghosts they’d become to survive Charisemnon’s court.

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

Lailah’s smile was sad. “Most don’t. The man who sired me never allowed Cato, this beautiful child of a favored courtier, to be anything but a pretty ornament. You should see him now, Aodhan—he helped birth a rhino calf yesterday!”

“And you, Lailah?” he asked, his heart aching for the child hidden within Lailah, the one who was so proud of her companion in pain—and survival.

“My task is protection of the animals”—her face glowed again—“and of the lands. I’ve also been showing the mortals near us that they can look to us for help should they have need. They will bring us their wounded animals now, and no matter if it’s a humble goat, we turn no beast away.”

Aodhan found himself hoping that she’d make it out, that the whispering dark wouldn’t pull her back under. And though it was presumptuous, for they barely knew each other, he said, “Don’t allow the shadows of the past to steal your future bright, Lailah. Remember, what was taken was done so without your consent.” She’d told him so on that strange foggy morning in the Refuge; never could she have understood so well otherwise. “You bear no blame.”

Eyes shimmering, Lailah inclined her head. “I will fight, Aodhan. Perhaps one day, I will feel worthy enough to reach out to the child I failed over and over again. That is the bright goal that drives both Cato and me.”

When Aodhan turned to Illium after ending the call, the other man said, “Jason’s out of touch for a few hours so I sent the description of Bijou to both Dmitri and the sire. Neither recognized her.”

“Let’s ask Jessamy before we track down one of Jason’s people.” The spymaster’s agents were scattered through various territories, a number deep undercover, and Jessamy had a steel trap mind when it came to angelkind.

Closing the distance between them, Illium brushed his fingers over the edge of Aodhan’s left wing with a tenderness that undid Aodhan. How, he thought, had he ever lived without this?

“You were very kind to Lailah,” the other man said.

“Speaking to her, I gained a fleeting glimpse of what it must’ve been like to grow up as Charisemnon’s child—and I realized that my nightmare was but one of many.” He pressed his forehead to Illium’s. “It isn’t a thing of comparison.”

He tried to find words to say what he wanted to say.

But it was Illium who did. “You have the experience to know that while she did things to Andi that have caused the gulf between them, she was also a child once, a child raised in the grip of evil.”

“It makes me wonder how many wounded ones walk the earth,” Aodhan said, the knowledge a quiet sorrow within. “And it makes me realize how lucky I am.” His nose brushing Illium’s. “I was never alone in the fight, not even in that box they put me in.”

Illium stopped breathing. “Adi,” he murmured, cupping the side of his neck with one hand, his lover’s tendons strong against his touch. “You don’t have to talk about that.”

“I know.” Aodhan pulled back only enough that they could look each other in the eye. “But proving that I can is important to me. I’d like to show you something after we talk to Jessamy.”

As it was, Galen was the one who answered their call. “She’s sleeping,” the weapons-master said in a gruff tone. “Was working on an ancient script till all hours for days. Finally went down today.” Scowling, he shoved a hand through the deep, pure red of his hair. “I used to think scholars were soft and gentle creatures.” A snort. “No one warned me about their refusal to back down when on the quest for knowledge.”

After leaving a message with him, they decided to go over everything they had so far, to ensure they hadn’t missed a critical clue and to make a plan for their next move. They were just finishing up when Jessamy returned their call. Her chestnut hair in a loose braid, and her face marked by sleep lines, she held a large mug of something that was emitting curls of steam.

The mug was misshapen, no doubt created by a student.

“Galen said you called.” Her voice, husky from her recent sleep, put Aodhan in mind of a hundred childhood pranks, a thousand happy moments of her holding his hand as she walked him to the playground or just crouched down to talk to him, those kind brown eyes a gentle horizon. The same eyes had watched over him in the Medica.

She’d brought him his favorite sweets from childhood, and a book of stories of wild imagination. Stories to give him escape. It hadn’t worked, not then. But he’d read the book in the darkest part of night three decades later, found peace for a few hours at least.

“You didn’t have to call straight after you woke.” Illium threw up his hands. “Galen will have our heads.”

A grunt sounded off-screen. “You’re safe. It’s all her doing.”

A soft smile on Jessamy’s face, she murmured something to Galen in a language Aodhan couldn’t understand. When he glanced at Illium, Illium shook his head. But it was clear Galen knew exactly what she was saying, because he growled back an answer in the same language.

“Hey, no secret love messages in front of the children,” Illium protested.

Jessamy’s smile made her eyes crinkle. “What did you want to ask me, small sparkles and small blue wings?”

Aodhan laughed. If anyone had earned the right to tease them thus, it was the teacher they’d tormented with their rambunctiousness. “We’re trying to trace an angel once called Bijou.”

Jessamy sipped her drink as he repeated Lailah’s description of the angel, her eyebrows drawing together to create a pointed vee. “She’s not using that name now, and her hair is an ice-white, her eyes sharp green, but I’m certain it’s the same person.”

A small nod to herself. “She likes altering herself in whatever way is available in that time period. She once told me she would do the surgery that mortals do to change their faces if angelic healing wouldn’t override the changes within two or so years.”

“Two years,” Aodhan murmured. “Lailah did say she was old but not powerful.”

“You spoke to Lailah?” Jessamy’s gaze was suddenly opaque, her fingers tightening around the mug. “How are she and Cato?”

“Both seem to be doing well. They’re focusing on the animals that live around them. Lailah asked me not to mention her to Andi.”

“I won’t, either,” Jessamy said at once, with no attempt to hide her protectiveness where Andi was concerned. “The decision to reach out or not must be Andromeda’s and hers alone. As for your Bijou, if it’s the angel I’m thinking of, her current name is Vixen.”

“Vixen?” Illium rolled his eyes. “She has a high opinion of herself.”

“I don’t know her well, but I think part of her problem is that she doesn’t have that high opinion,” Jessamy countered. “About four centuries ago, her long-term vampiric partner left her rather cruelly. He’d found a younger lover—an angel of barely a hundred and three. An adult by angelic law, but the tryst made distasteful by the difference in their ages. He was well over two thousand by then.”

Big age gaps were common in the world of immortals—Galen and Jessamy were the perfect example. The same could be said for Dmitri and Honor, or Elena and Raphael. The critical difference was that they’d all been fully adult at the time, both biologically and in terms of their mental and psychological development.

Had Elena been born an angel, however, it would’ve been an entirely different story.

There was a line you did not cross with born angels, an age before which they simply weren’t mature enough to be considered equal partners to anyone but their peers. Their kind matured slower, and the decade after they first left the Refuge?

Vulnerable didn’t begin to describe it.

In the Tower, young Izak, though several years senior to the girl Jessamy had mentioned, was still treated as a fledgling. Not in a way that was condescending, rather with the awareness that he was at a critical stage of his development, and that it was their responsibility to nurture him to his full adult strength.

“A predator.” Illium’s statement was clipped.

“Just so,” Jessamy said. “I was worried about the girl both because of her youth, and due to the disturbing depth of Vixen’s rage. However, the girl’s parents were senior courtiers in Uram’s court at the time, and they ensured she was soon separated from the predator—and he knew never to try the same again.

“Vixen, too, was smart enough not to make an enemy of an archangel. Instead she found her own young lovers and began to parade them around.” Jessamy sighed. “Her concerning rage aside, I felt sorry for her for a time. She did have good reason for her anger after all—and if she’d turned it on her former lover, I’d have felt no ambivalence about my response, but as it was…”

A long pause before she continued. “Her lovers continued to drop in age until it became a distasteful morass where those of us who were aware of her proclivities began to warn young angels of her predatory nature. She never tried for anyone under a hundred, but that’s the best I can say about her.”

“She turned into the person who hurt her,” Aodhan murmured.

“Sad, isn’t it?” Lips turning down, Jessamy shook her head. “I have seen it again and again through time, and I’m certain those close to Vixen attempted to warn her of her descent—she was never a loner, that one—but she either would not or could not listen, her brain chemistry forever altered.”

The angelic librarian tapped a fingernail against the mug. “She’s well aware of the ill feeling toward her in the Refuge, near our most vulnerable. I haven’t seen her walking these pathways for at least a half century, perhaps more.

“My present description of her is from a letter I received from a scholar in Elijah’s region some eight months before the war—yes, I’m sure I have the time right. He mentioned her peripherally as part of a group he met for lunch, but he’s a sketcher, and he sketched her in color. I’ll send you a copy.”

Aodhan thanked her. “Even if she’s changed her hair or eye color since, it’ll be much easier to trace her now that we have a name and starting point. Now rest before you drive Galen to distraction—because as far as I can tell, either you adopted a wolf and forgot to tell us, or that’s our Barbarian growling off-screen.”

Jessamy’s laughter merged with Galen’s grumbling before she waved goodbye.

“Our quarry was in Elijah’s region eight months prior to the war,” Aodhan said to Illium. “Not difficult for her to make it to New York, be resident here during the period covering Marco’s stalking and murder. As far as we know, the stalking began approximately six months before his death.”

Illium’s phone rang. Glancing at it, he said, “It’s Jason,” and threw the audio-only call onto the big screen so they could both hear it better.

It turned out the spymaster had unexpectedly flown into a zone with reception.

When they asked him about Vixen née Bijou, he said, “I’ve run across her here and there over the centuries. Hold on, the signal’s improved.” A flicker on the screen before his face appeared. “She attaches herself to the fringes of an archangel’s court, but the closest she ever made it to the inner circle was her acquaintance with Lailah.”

He turned, seemed to be listening—and that was when Aodhan realized Mahiya must be with him. A fact Jason confirmed with his next words. “Mahiya says she spent a few years hovering around Neha’s court in the period after she left Africa, but there’s a gap in my knowledge of her after that time. We only have her on a specific watch list, and if she doesn’t run foul of that, she gets to live her life.”

“Targeting all but underage angels?” Aodhan guessed.

Jason nodded. “Jessamy sent out an alert about the situation. And my people don’t forget their tasks, so if she hasn’t come to our attention, it’s because she’s kept her nose clean there.”

“Could she have switched to young vampires?”

Jason angled the camera so they could see Mahiya, her braided hair ashine in the sun.

“Yes,” Jason’s princess said. “When she was in India, I saw her with a vampire who was yet under Contract.”

As vampires were mortal adults when Made, their brains and psyches fully mature in comparison to immortals of the same age, such relationships crossed no ethical boundaries unless that vampire—per their Contract—happened to be under the control of the other party at the time. The latter was considered distasteful.

“We’ve had word that she was last seen in Elijah’s territory,” Illium said. “But we suspect that she moved to New York before the war.”

The tattoo on the left side of Jason’s face stood out in stark relief as he turned slightly in the air. Long strands of his unbound hair waved across his face at the same moment.

After pushing them back, the spymaster said, “I’ll send a message out to my people. If she is in the sire’s territory, she might’ve attempted to insinuate herself with one of the powerful angels in the region. Check with Vivek, too.”

The Tower’s chief intelligence officer, however, struck out on the topic of Vixen. “Must not have poked her head above the parapet,” he muttered as he continued to search his databases. “Gap could also be a result of post-war chaos. Balls did get dropped even by me.”

Leaving him with a scowl on his face, Aodhan contacted Janvier to ask if he and Ashwini could plumb the gray heart of the city for any details of their target, to the Cajun vampire’s easy agreement.

“We should check out Erotique, too,” Illium suggested, the two of them having walked out to stand on the railingless balcony outside that level of the Tower. “Vixen sounds like the kind of person who’d want to be seen at the hottest club in town.”

Aodhan shuddered. “Being closed up inside a small space filled with discordant music and erratic lights is not my idea of enjoyable.”

Illium smirked. “Come on, Sparkle. I’ll protect you from the googly eyes of the other patrons.”

Aodhan smacked him in the back using his wing.

Having not expected it—it was a thing done among children in the Refuge, not adults—Illium tumbled off the balcony with a startled shout. Aodhan’s shoulders shook as he walked over to watch the other man straighten himself out, then shoot back up to scowl at him.

“Really?” his friend said in a stern voice, hands on his hips. “Are we younglings now?”

“You’re just mad you didn’t think of it first.” The only way to succeed in that particular game of one-upmanship was to take your target unawares. With Illium, that was close to impossible. “Admit it,” he said, aware of their audience of amused angels nearby.

“Grr.” Illium did an excellent impression of the Seven’s resident chimera. “I won’t forget,” he threatened. “A century or nine after today, long after your memory of this insult has faded…bam, off you go.”