Our children are too rare to be used as pawns."

Raphael knew that in spite of the way she'd phrased that, Neha was one of the few members of the Cadre who treated human children as precious. That didn't stop her from ending adult lives - but any resulting orphans grew up in the lap of poisonous luxury, the memories of their parents' agonizing deaths wiped from their minds.

"Anoushka," she now said, stroking the python she'd placed in her lap, "says you know of the distasteful object that was left in her bed."

"You have many enemies." And Anoushka, he thought, was beginning to grow a phalanx of her own.

Her hand moved over the snake's viridian skin, sleek, sensuous, as if she were petting a lover. "Yes."

"Have you heard anything from the others that may help in the hunt?" The one they sought may well have made mistakes in any acts predating the assaults within the Refuge.

"Titus and Charisemnon have closed their borders - none of my people can get in or out." An irritated light filled those dark eyes. "Favashi mentioned something about losing a few of her older vampires two months ago. She hasn't yet tracked down the perpetrator." This time, Raphael saw open disbelief.

Neha, he knew, would have killed and kept killing until someone confessed. It wasn't the best way to get to the truth - but then, the Queen of Poisons had never had a rebellion in her lands. "How is Eris?" It was only as the words left his mouth that he realized he'd lied to Elena. Therewas another long-term archangelic pairing. But it hadn't been a lie with intent - he'd simply forgotten about Eris, as most people did.

"He lives." Neha's words were chilling in their very preciseness. "Anoushka is going through her people to find the traitor who defiled her bed. I'll let you know if she unearths anything of value."

As he terminated the connection, Raphael thought of the last time he'd seen Eris.

Three hundred years ago.

Chapter 20

Elena was reading a dossier of current events in a corner of the classroom while the kids created presents for Sam using arts and crafts when the sea crashed into her mind.

Something's happened, she thought before Raphael could speak, scanning the classroom with frantic eyes to ensure everyone was present.Not another child?

Lijuan has sent you a gift.

Her soul iced over at the thought of what an angel who used death as her symbol would consider a suitable gift.Do you know what it is?

It's keyed to your blood.

She couldn't help her shiver.We're going to visit Sam. I'll be by after. She had a feeling the gift wouldn't exactly put her in the right frame of mind to be seeing a hurt child.

Come to my office. I'll send someone to guide you.

Anyone but Galen.She had nothing against his skills as a weapons master - bastard was good. But his dislike of her was as solid as rock. And even on such short acquaintance, she understood that he wasn't the kind of man who'd easily change his mind. Better to save them both the aggravation and avoid unnecessary contact.

The sea began to retreat.I must go.

She wanted to ask him what else was going on, but decided to keep her questions 'til their meeting over the "gift." For now, she was going to focus on the children, their excitement infectious as they readied themselves to visit their friend . . . not an archangel who found pleasure only in the dead.

Raphael flew to a distant corner of the Refuge, the echo of Elena's mental touch still resonant in his mind. Elijah was waiting for him on a rocky outcropping far from prying eyes, his golden hair whipped by the mountain winds. Landing, Raphael joined him on the cliff edge. "What have you found?"

"They haven't just closed their borders," the other archangel replied. "Titus is readying himself to move against Charisemnon."

Archangels didn't meddle in each other's affairs, even when those affairs led to mass bloodshed, but they needed to be prepared. "Titus refuses to accept that his evidence might be false?"

"He will not believe that amere angel could've played them so very easily," Elijah said,

"sparking a war that keeps them entangled in their own lands while this pretender desecrates the Refuge."

Raphael stared out at the white-capped peaks beyond the gorge, thinking about their policy of noninterference. "Even in a border war, thousands will die. And yet we consider that an acceptable toll to maintain the balance of power within the Cadre."

Elijah took a long time to reply. "That's a very human statement, Raphael."

"Then she will kill you. She will make you mortal."

Lijuan had said that to him, after advising him to kill Elena.

The older archangel had been right - Elena had changed something in him. He bled faster, healed slower. But he'd also been given the most unexpected of gifts. "Perhaps it'll keep me sane when I reach Lijuan's age."

"So one of us is brave enough to say it." Elijah nodded. "She is not insane in the accepted sense."

"Her mind isn't broken," Raphael agreed, "but the things she's using that mind for -

they're not what she would've done had she been truly thinking." Lijuan was no longer anything close to what was known, but she'd always played the political game with a clear head.

"Are you sure?" Elijah bent down to pick up a pebble that had somehow ended up on the otherwise barren ridge. "None of us witnessed her youth, but there are whispers that she was fascinated with death even then. Some say . . . no, I cannot lay that slander on her without proof."

Raphael said what the other archangel wouldn't. "That she took the dead to her bed."

A sharp glance. "You've heard the rumor?"

"You forget, Elijah, both my parents were archangels."

"Caliane and Nadiel knew Lijuan in her youth?"

"No. But they knew those who had." And what they'd told his parents had been whispered behind the thickest veil of secrecy. Because by then, Lijuan had already become a being to be feared.

"Now she's the only ancient," Elijah said, his voice contemplative. "They call us immortals, but we, too, eventually end up dust on the sands of time."

"After millennia," Raphael pointed out. "As Elena would say - are you not curious about what awaits us on the other side?"

"According to many humans, we are the messengers of their gods."

Raphael glanced at Elijah. "After Lijuan, you're the oldest among us. She's a demigoddess in her territory. Did you ever consider setting yourself up as one?"

"I've seen what happens to those who take that path." Elijah didn't look at Raphael, but his meaning was clear. "Even had I not, I have Hannah. What I feel for her is far too real, far too much of this world."

Raphael thought of the way his parents had loved each other, that powerful, almost exalting love, compared it to what he felt for Elena. There was nothing exalted about the hard ache of his cock when he touched her, the pulsing lust of his need. "Titus and Charisemnon will slaughter hundreds," he said at last, "but it's Lijuan who remains the true threat.

"My men tell me her army of the reborn has doubled in number over the past six months." And there were disturbing rumors that some of her soldiers were the very newly dead - as if they'd been sacrificed to feed the cold embrace of Lijuan's power. "If she unleashes them on the world, it will augur the start of another Dark Age."

The last Dark Age had devastated civilizations that had grown up over thousands of years, destroying buildings and works of art so magnificent, the world would never again know their like. Millions upon millions of humans had fallen - collateral damage in a war between angels.

But then, they hadn't been fighting armies of the dead, nightmares given flesh.

Elena watched child after child accompany Jessamy into Sam's room. Keir had brought the boy up into a half-awake state where he was aware of what was happening but felt no pain. A chaotic mix of happiness and rage tore through her as she watched him beam at the gifts his classmates had brought him.

How could anyone be immoral enough to hurt such innocence?

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

"She likes it, you see."

Pain shot through her jaw as she wrenched herself back to the present, but it wasn't enough; her daylight hours were no longer safe from the long hand of nightmare. She could see Ari's eyes staring into hers, that bright turquoise gaze going slowly dull as Slater fulfilled his monstrous thirst. Ari had whispered at Elena to run, but her older sister hadn't been able to run herself, her legs not just broken like Belle's, but torn off altogether, a barbaric amputation.

Kindling.

That's what the broken bones sticking out of her thighs had looked like, the blood drying as it came into contact with the air.

"She won't run." A giggle. "She likes it, you see."

"Would you like to see him?"

Swiveling on her heel, Elena stared unseeing at Jessamy's startled face, her mind locked in that kitchen awash with a suffering that would stalk her for eternity.

Jessamy touched her with a hesitant hand. "Elena?"

"Yes," she said, forcing the words out past the brutal hammer of memory. "Yeah, I'd like to see Sam."

"Go on in." Jessamy's eyes held a quiet concern, but she didn't pry. "I'm herding the other children back to the classroom."

Digging up a smile from somewhere, Elena shut up everything else and walked inside Sam's room. "So," she said, "this is how you get out of writing Jessamy's essays."

A sparkle in that gaze she'd worried would go forever dull. According to Keir, Sam remembered nothing of his abduction - likely as a result of the head wound. There was a good chance he'd remember later on, but the healers and his parents planned to prepare him for that eventuality. By then, he'd be stronger, hopefully more able to process the events of that terrible night.

"No," Sam said, his voice husky. "She said I have to catch up."

"Sounds like her," Elena whispered, then gestured at the gifts. "You got a good haul."

"Did you bring me a present?"

Elena grinned. "Did I ever? I even asked your parents if I could give it to you."

Excitement had him straining forward. "What is it?"

"Hey, careful." Settling him back on the bed, she reached into her pocket to bring out a small dagger tucked into an intricately designed metal sheath.

Sam's eyes went huge as Elena put it into his hands. "I was given this after I completed a hunt for an angel in Shikoku, Japan. He told me it was a thousand years old." She touched the ruby at the bottom of the hilt. "The legend is that this ruby was once part of the eye of a dragon."

Small fingers ran reverently over the jewel. "What happened to the dragon?"

"He was such an ancient being that one day, he simply decided to sleep. After a while, he turned to stone, becoming the biggest mountain the world had ever seen." As she spoke, she couldn't help but remember the times her mother had told her and her sisters stories as they lay tumbled in their parents' bed.

Even Belle, far too cool for everything, had sprawled on the floor, painting her toenails or reading magazines. But she'd never turned a page while Mama told her stories.