Alexander and Caliane walked into the room just as Gian finally got the fingers of his left hand around the blade star and tore it out to throw it across the floor in a spray of blood. His fingers flopped backward a heartbeat later, the blade having cut through bone when he gripped the blade star. The severed fingers fell to the floor even as Gian attempted to hold them to his hand. Which was now nothing but a lump of bloody meat.

Raphael felt more than saw Elena’s lips kick upward. “I owe Ash dinner at the flashiest vampire restaurant I can find.”

“I am glad your friend is on our side, hbeebti.” Janvier’s lover—and now wife—was extraordinary in many ways, but her ability to glimpse pieces of the future was one that had first put her on immortal radar.

“Me, too.”

Movement, Elena’s grandfather walking over to retrieve the blade star. Jean-Baptiste Etienne had learned from watching Gian, picked up the weapon with the shield of a doubled-up handkerchief that must’ve been in the clothing he wore, and utilizing only the very tips of his fingers.

Rising to his full height, he used the handkerchief to clean off the blood, then walked back to pass the blade star to Elena. “An expedient tool. You shouldn’t lose it.”

Elena grinned. “Thanks.”

Stubborn courage indeed, Raphael thought. Not many vampires would have walked into the center of a group of archangels at any point. Who did this vampire belong to?

“Jean-Baptiste?” It was Favashi’s voice, the surprise on her face unhidden and so genuine Raphael couldn’t doubt it. “You are meant to be dead. The Luminata reported your death to the steward of my court.”

“My lady.” Jean-Baptiste bowed in deepest respect to his sire.

When he straightened from the bow, his voice rang around the Atrium. “As you see, I am not dead.” His eyes held those of his archangel. “I have been kept on the brink for decades. It is Raphael’s blood that courses through my veins today, that gives me my strength.”

A dangerous glance at Gian, who was still gripping his throat but had to be healing behind it now that the blade star was gone. “I took this one’s blood, too, but he is weak, nothing.”

Bowing again, the vampire returned to stand beside Majda, who herself had come to stand next to Elena. That close, only the blind would miss the family resemblance between the three. Raphael heard a gasp, more than one, as all the remaining members of the Cadre took their places in the circle.

43

Caliane chose to flank Jean-Baptiste in a silent display of family unity.

On Raphael’s left stood Alexander.

He and the Ancient parted in silence when Aodhan, Xander, Laric, and Valerius arrived with a makeshift stretcher bearing Ibrahim’s broken body. They placed the stretcher in the circle, close to Neha, then backed off. Having witnessed Neha’s earlier reaction, Raphael wondered at the placement until Neha sucked in a breath and went down on one knee. She was still in the dark green clothing similar to a fighter’s leathers, her hair braided and her face clear of the cosmetics she usually wore.

God, Raphael, Neha is a warrior goddess.

Yes, Raphael said. She is also a Queen. That is her duality.

It was the warrior goddess who touched her hand to Ibrahim’s bruise-blackened and swollen face. “Who did this?” Her voice was a whip of fury, her wings aglow.

And Raphael realized that Neha hadn’t actually seen the beaten man’s face until now.

Aodhan, who’d come to stand behind Elena and Raphael, quietly filled them in. “Valerius recognized Ibrahim from Neha’s court. He was a respected scholar, one much in Neha’s favor until he came to join the Luminata.”

No one answered Neha.

Rising to her feet, the Archangel of India stared at Raphael. “You know the answer.”

“I know some of it.” He began to speak, starting with the fear that strangled the nearest township.

“They are mortals,” Charisemnon interrupted, and for once, his view wasn’t an outlier.

Raphael had once been part of that group, believing a life that was over in a firefly flicker had no relevance to him. He’d forgotten that Dmitri had once been mortal, the years having jaded him. Until a hunter faced him down with a foolish courage that dug its way into his heart. As he fell with Elena’s broken body in New York, he’d known there would be no one else like Elena in all his existence, her firefly flicker a dazzling light that had marked him, branded him forever.

“It is natural that they should fear their masters,” Michaela added with a mocking smile directed at Elena. “Such is the way of the world.”

Raphael felt Elena bristle, but his hunter was no green youth; she faced the archangel with expressionless calm. “Yes, they are mortals,” he said. “But those mortals are not the Luminata’s to rule. Or did you cede them the right to their own fiefdom?” The latter question, he directed to Charisemnon.

The Archangel of Northern Africa narrowed his eyes. “Morocco is mine. Lumia and Lumia alone is theirs.”

Leaving the other man to consider that fact, Raphael then spoke about what the Cadre would consider the most egregious crime. “Using the shield of seeking luminescence, the Luminata—at least a certain percentage of them—have been living a life free of all oversight. These men do not consider themselves as having to respect the boundaries we have laid down for all angelkind. They believe themselves above the Cadre.”

The wings of every archangel in the circle began to glow.