Illium continued to hold her until she pushed at his hands and took a step to the left, creating more distance between her and Riker. "Raphael?"

"It's done." Eyes the rich, unique color of Venetian gold looked into hers. "He won't be long."

Elena had to fist her hands, grit her teeth, to fight the thundering need to run after that fading scent. Riker stood on Illium's other side. But his eyes, they never moved off her.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose. Michaela had obviously never rescinded the order she'd once given Riker - to kill Elena.

"You run to your master," the vampire said without warning. "Like a child."

"Raphael is my lover, not my master." She cursed herself for responding to the barb the instant the words left her mouth.

"Is that what you think?" he said, and it was a croon, soft and mocking in its sweetness.

"They call you his pet."

Her spine went rigid, the words too close to the ones Raphael had said to her when she'd woken. "How's that purse your mistress had made?" she asked, reminding him that Michaela had once flayed the skin off his back, then cured it. "She still taking good care of it?"

"The best." His tone didn't change, and that was the creepiest thing of all. Riker was so far in the abyss that he liked it. "Your master comes."

Refusing to respond to the taunt, she waited until Raphael walked up to stand beside her.

"Michaela is not pleased," were his first words.

"Do you care?"

We're in her home, Elena. The rules of Guesthood apply.She tried to temper her tone, but it was difficult, her hunter senses shoving at her with escalating force. "I can smell the vampire who took Sam. The scent leads that way."

"Follow it."Michaela is furious, but she wishes to see you humiliated more.

Then she's going to be disappointed.But it niggled at her, that the other archangel would be so sure of Elena's failure, because the vampire who'd abducted Sam had been here, no ifs, no buts. The tart bite of orange, the sweetness of chocolate - she could all but taste it.

It was so pungent, so rich, she almost missed the scent hidden beneath.

Snow falling on apples.

Chapter 15

"Sam." It was less than a whisper as she began running, far more interested in that gentle scent than the one that had drawn her here. The hallway ended at a door, a heavily carved slab that had been varnished until it glowed darkest amber.

Her palms slammed up against it as she came to a halt. "He's behind here."

"No, he's not." Michaela's voice lashed the air as she appeared from their left, her face and body pristine once more. A silent testament to the power of an archangel. "I shall enjoy delivering your punishment for violating my home without cause."

"There'll be no punishment," Raphael said. "She falls under my protection."

Michaela smiled, small, satisfied, vicious. "But she doesn't accept you as her master.

You cannot stand as her shield."

And Elena knew Michaela was really, really looking forward to making her scream. It didn't matter. "Open this door."

Michaela waved a languid hand at Riker. "Do as the hunter says."

Elena shifted away to avoid physical contact with the vampire as he moved to do his mistress's bidding. The door swung inward to reveal a room swathed in shadow, but for the faint snow-reflected silver of the moon. Elena didn't need light to find her target.

Walking inside, she headed unerringly to what proved to be a large chest when Riker threw on the wall-mounted lights, their glow a muted honey.

"Can a baby immortal survive without air?" she whispered desperately as she struggled to lift the heavy lid.

"For a time," was the chilling answer as Raphael took over the task, while Illium stood watch.

For the first time in her life, Elena hoped she was wrong, that Sam wasn't in that trunk.

But the Cadre had hired her because she was the best - she didn't make mistakes. "Oh God!" Instinct had her reaching inside, but she hesitated an inch away from that tiny curled-up body. "I'll hurt him." He was so bloody, so very broken.

"We must take him to the healers."

Nodding, she brought out that crumpled body in her arms. Sam's wings had been crushed, the fine bones likely shattered. The majority of the blood had come from what looked like a head wound, as well as a cut on his chest. A chest that wasn't moving.God, please. "Is he alive?"

Raphael, his face a stone mask, touched the boy's cheek, and it was only then that Elena saw thesekhem branded into that delicate skin.

"Yes, he lives."

Rage a hurricane inside of her, she held Sam as close as she dared and went to walk past Michaela, but the archangel was staring at Sam, such a stricken expression on her face that Elena felt her throat lock, her feet root to the floor.

"He's alive?" the archangel asked, as if she hadn't heard a single word that had passed

'til then.

"Yes," Raphael answered. "He lives."

"I can't heal him," Michaela said, looking at her hands as if they belonged to a stranger.

"Raphael, I can'theal him."

Raphael walked forward to place one hand on the female archangel's shoulder. "He'll be fine, Michaela. Now we must go."

Elena, already at the door with Illium, waited only until Raphael was in the hallway before handing over her precious burden. "You're faster. Go."

Raphael left without further words. Elena was about to follow when she heard Michaela say, "I didn't do this." It was a broken sound.

Shaken, she looked back to glimpse Riker kneeling beside his mistress, her glorious wings dragging on the floor as she collapsed to the ground. "I didn't do this," she repeated.

Riker stroked Michaela's hair back from her face, the devotion in his eyes a brilliant, blinding thing. "You did not do this," he said, as if in reassurance. "You could not."

"Elena" - Illium's lips brushing her ear - "we must go."

Snapping her head back around, she followed his lead, not speaking until they were out in the ice-cold air. "I had her all figured out," Elena said in a low whisper, conscious of the large number of vampires who surrounded the house. "She was the Bitch Queen and that was that."

"A big part of her is exactly that."

"But what we saw today . . . where did that come from?"

She felt Illium hesitate. His words when they came, were quiet. "Angels don't have many young. It is our worst pain to lose a child."

Michaela had lost a child.

The realization shook her, skewing her view of Michaela in a wholly unexpected direction. "Then this bastard wasn't out to hurt Sam, not really." That somehow made it worse. "He was out to hurt Michaela."

"Or," Illium said, "his aims were higher. Titus and Charisemnon are already warring over a girl-child Charisemnon swears he didn't take, and Titus swears he did. Whether this angel had anything to do with that, or simply took inspiration from it, they're locked in their own world, indifferent to outside concerns."

The pieces fell into place. "He failed to pit Elijah against Raphael, but if you hadn't grabbed me when you did, if Riker had managed to touch me - "

"Raphael would've gone for blood."

"Sam wasbait ?" Her stomach roiled.

"If the trap had been successful, it would've taken two more archangels out of the equation."

Weakening the Cadre, leaving room for a power play that would turn a sociopath into an archangel. "I need to check the grounds," she said, forcing herself to think past the abhorrent nature of this act, to ignore the gut-wrenching sight of Sam's blood on her hands, her clothes. "There's a chance the vampire left here on foot."

Illium pulled out his sword. "Go."

Michaela's vampires smelled like many things - cloves and eucalyptus, burgundy and agar, with base notes as far apart as sandalwood and the darkest cherry-flavored kiss. But there wasn't even a hint of citrus, of oranges dipped in chocolate. "Nothing," she said more than thirty minutes later, having checked in an almost hundred foot radius around the house, vividly conscious of their silent audience.

A few vamps had moved out into the open, their eyes gleaming as they trailed her. One had even smiled. It made her beyond glad that she was armed to the teeth.

"Do you want to do a sweep from the air?"

"Yeah." But she wasn't hopeful, not given how much time had passed.

Illium flew her over the estate several times, but she had to shake her head in the end.

"No." They didn't speak again until he brought them to an easy landing in front of a low white building that blended harmoniously into the fine coating of snow. "Hospital?"

A small nod. "This is the Medica."

She strode inside . . . and almost stepped off a ledge and into thin air. Illium caught her as she backpedaled. "Damn it," she muttered, her heart racing. "I will remember this!"

"It'll become second nature after a while."

Rubbing her face, she looked down. Wings filled her vision, a hundred different shades, a thousand unique patterns. And still she couldn't see to the bottom of the cavernous space - which meant the building was more than three-quarters underground. "Is this the waiting room?"

"They're here because of Sam," Illium said, sliding his arms - muscular, familiar now -

around her in a caress of warmth. "Come, I'll take you to him."

That won't be necessary.Elena found herself being plucked off the ledge by an archangel, her palms pressed against his chest as he took them down through the cascade of wings and to the wide open space at the very bottom. "Were you able to track the vampire any further from Michaela's?"

"No. Looks like his angelic accomplice brought him in, took him out." She kept her mind on the mechanics, not sure she could handle thinking about the assault on Sam. The poor baby had to have been so afraid. "The question is - how did they get into the house in the first place? Her security is impressive."

"But are her men loyal?" Words potent with the coldest of rages as they entered an area of pristine quiet.Riker might be her creature, but she hasn't yet broken them all. "Come, you must meet Keir."

She went to reply, but the words stuck in her throat. "Sam." The glass enclosure in front of her was drenched in soft white light. Sam's fragile body lay unconscious on a large bed in the middle, his wings attached to some kind of thin metal frame that spread them out on the sheets. His mother sat beside him, leaning into the embrace of a shaggy-haired male angel with solid shoulders. Sam was badly injured, but he looked better than when she'd first taken him into her arms. "Am I imagining it?"

"No." The taste of the wind, of the sea, clean and fresh, an unspoken assurance. "He recovered a little of his spirit during the flight to the Medica."

Slipping her hand into his, she squeezed it in silent relief just as an angel rounded the corner from the opposite end. The male was maybe five feet six and as slender as an eighteen-year-old boy, his uptilted eyes a warm brown, his black hair framing a dusky face that was pretty in an almost feminine way, his jaw pointed, his mouth lush. What saved him was the confidence with which he carried himself, the sense of male-ness that was justthere .