Aloud, he instructed Gadriel to lead them to Riva.

“Sire.”

Elena had met Gadriel once before—in the Refuge. Though he was named after a legendary angelic painter renowned for the sumptuous sensuality of his works, the gray-eyed angel with chestnut hair was a bit stuffy and set in his ways. More importantly, however, he was deeply loyal to Raphael. Now, she took in everything around them as he walked on ahead, his comment about the “constant screaming tension” resonating.

Lijuan might be gone, but the echo of her presence lingered in the air. It was stares on the back of Elena’s neck from people in the courtyard, dust in the air that tasted of distant death, electric sensations beneath her boots—as if tiny insects were attempting to penetrate the soles and enter her bloodstream.

Favashi, she thought, had come into a tough situation even before the infection.

Shadows passed overhead right before they left the courtyard and entered the citadel, a wing of angels coming in to land. It was cool and dark inside, the stone walls smoothed by time. Elena felt the age of the building in her bones and when she put her hand against the wall, history itself spoke to her.

Nothing in New York was this old, this woven in time.

Gadriel led them to stone stairs far narrower than in modern angelic buildings, but still with enough span to accommodate wings. All the spaces in the citadel, she came to see, were built for angels. But it wasn’t an angel who sat in the center of the large chamber into which Gadriel showed them.

The vampire, his scent cardamom crushed with ice and rippled with a thick treacly sweetness, sat with his head in his hands. His skin was ebony, his hair kinky curls darker than his skin. He wore battered leather pants, along with a black jacket and tee of faded brown, and when he lifted his head, his red-rimmed eyes proved to have irises of a stunning indigo.

Elena barely stopped herself from going for the long blade worn against her spine. Old, this one was old. Nine thousand years, Raphael had said, but this wasn’t just age. This was the kind of power Dmitri would hold in another millennia or two. As for those eyes, she’d bet her new set of throwing knives that they hadn’t begun that way. It was vampirism that had taken what might’ve been more ordinary blue or gray eyes and altered them to this startling and unearthly hue.

Why wasn’t he Favashi’s second?

Power alone does not a second make, but I think he was her third.

“Archangel.” Riva rose to his feet in a clatter of limbs. His chair toppled behind him onto the thick Turkish rug.

Flushing, he bent to pick it up.

Gadriel whispered away at the same time.

“It has been an age, Riva.” Raphael held out his arm. “I think two hundred years at least.”

The vampire clasped his forearm, but the two didn’t embrace as Raphael would’ve done with Dmitri. “Not so very long when one has lived nine thousand years.” Riva’s voice was melodious and deep, but his fingers trembled before he broke contact.

“Tell me what has happened.” Cold and dark with power, Raphael’s words weren’t a request. “There is no use in lying. I can see it.”

Shuddering, the vampire seemed to pull himself together with a conscious effort of will. He wasn’t fully successful—his face quivered before he clenched his jaw, and though Elena couldn’t see his hands because he’d put his arms behind his back, she could tell from the strain in his muscles that he was gripping the wrist of one with vicious force.

“I lost time.” The column of his throat moved. “At least five hours. I have no memory of where I was or what I did during that time, but when I woke . . .” His voice broke.

“At this time,” Raphael said, “I am your liege. Speak.”

His entire body trembling, Riva began to shrug off his jacket.

Raphael, Elena murmured mind-to-mind. Should I step out? This wasn’t about humiliating the guy after all; no one this powerful would want to be seen as weak, much less by the consort to an archangel.

Raphael spoke directly to Riva. “My consort asks if you would prefer that she step out.”

The vampire’s eyes flared before he inclined his head in a deep bow. “No,” he said. “I thank you for your consideration, Consort, but I am too old to be shy in such matters.” Words spoken with a courtly grace and innate confidence that showed her a glimpse of who he was when not under such strain.

Jacket off, Riva reached down to pull off his T-shirt, revealing a ridged abdomen hard with muscle. Nothing unusual about that in a warrior vampire his age—what was unusual were the lines of black that snaked under his skin from the right side of his abdomen, so dark and oddly liquid that they were striking even against the rich hue of his skin.

Elena sucked in a breath. “Are they moving?” Tiny, incremental pieces of motion.

Face twisted and hands fisted at his sides, Riva’s words were shards of glass. “I kept telling myself that I was imagining it, but it’s a lie I can no longer swallow. At first, they were nothing but scratches. I thought I must’ve fallen from my bike and hurt myself. I believed I had hit my head, and that was why I couldn’t recall the lost hours.”

Riva’s words tumbled out atop of one another; Elena could almost hear how he’d convinced himself that it had been nothing, just a stupid accident.

“Where in the city did you come to consciousness?” Raphael asked, while Elena continued to watch the viscous black lines, her fingers itching to cut them out. She couldn’t get it out of her head that the fucking things were eating Riva from the inside out.

“Not in the city—two hours outside of it, with my bike fallen on the ground beside me.” His shoulders slumped. “I knew even then that it was all wrong; that area was nowhere in my plans for the day.”

Pain in eyes too bright to be real, eerie in a way that meant he’d never be mistaken for human. “It’s clear I’m no longer fit for my duties.” Words spoken directly to Raphael. “You must replace me. Gadriel is more than competent enough to take over. I . . . I . . . Sire, I do not know what to do, where to go.”

Raphael raised a hand flickering with wildfire. “There is a risk this will kill you.” A deadly remoteness to him, ice in his tone. “Wildfire is not meant for vampires. It may, however, be the only thing that can kill what is inside you.”

Riva shivered but gave a crisp nod. “I am ready.”

“Sit.”

A snap of the vampire’s spine. “I cannot sit in your presence.”

“If you manage to remain conscious through this, I will be very surprised. Sit.”

Riva still looked uncomfortable, but obeyed. Elena, meanwhile, put her hand on Raphael’s arm. His skin was cold. Tone it down—that’s angel-level wildfire.

Raphael didn’t reply, but the wildfire faded until only the tips of his fingers burned. He touched those fingers to the living infection. Riva’s entire body arched, his hands clamping on the chair arms and his muscles straining as he gritted his teeth against a scream. Wildfire crackled over his skin, burning him alive.

The scent of cooked flesh hit Elena’s nostrils. Her gorge rose.

31

Jerking forward on the instinctive desire to help, Elena reached out a hand . . . and the wildfire jumped onto the back of her hand, a shocking bolt of energy. Power burned over every inch of her, the surface of her skin cracking open to display veins of gold before they sealed over again.

“Elena.” Raphael’s hand on her nape, hauling her close.

“I’m fine.” Her chest heaved. “It was just one hell of a rush. Too much power inside me.” Energy arced from her heart to Raphael’s. He took it with no outward effects—and she was no longer choking on wildfire.

Sucking in gulps of air, she pressed her forehead against his chest. “That was weird.”

“As always, hbeebti, you are a mistress of understatement.”

“Riva?”

“Unconscious but alive.” His next words raised every hair on her body. “It is as well that he lost consciousness before the wildfire jumped to you. Else, I would’ve had to take his memories, and that is not always a simple thing with vampires this old. It can leave them with permanently broken minds.”

Drawing back, Elena held a gaze as cold as the heart of midnight, devoid of humanity or mercy. “Remember your promise, Archangel.” She’d told him to check the villagers’ minds yesterday; had that led to this?

“You would hold me to that even for a vampire who belongs to another archangel?”

Elena narrowed her eyes. “As long as I exist, you don’t get to fall into that particular black hole.” Of a power so violent it sought to reshape his very soul. “I’ll never let you become cruel or heartless. Violating minds is a step on the wrong road.”

Ice glittered in his expression. “This power, it tells me I would be better off without the weakness of you.”

Elena folded her arms, set her feet apart. “And what do you think about that?”

“That regardless of what I believed about my hold on the power, this battle has just begun.” Cupping one side of her face with a hand frosted in ice, he said, “It seduces with its strength, makes me want to alter myself to better host it.”

Turning her head, she kissed his palm though her skin was numb from the cold of it. “Just remember what happened to Lijuan. Do you want to be His Creepiness?”

“I would much rather be your archangel.” Dropping his hand from her face, he looked at Riva again, and though it was with the calculating gaze of an archangel weighing up a threat, his voice held a hint of warmth when he spoke. “Riva will be fine, but we have a problem.”

Elena deliberately leaned her body against Raphael, using her own heat to warm him up. “This is no simple infection.”

“No. It’s too much of a coincidence that it attempted to take the leader of this city—the intent must’ve been for it to grow strong enough to control him. As Favashi was controlled.”