Dropping the useless metal, she rolled to her feet, a knife falling into her hand.

"So," Anoushka said, the top of her left wing bearing a burn mark that had her hissing in pain. "That ruffian Raphael insists on keeping in his Seven managed to teach you something after all."

"I'm hunter-born," she said, shifting to keep Anoushka off balance as the angel played with the blade in her hand.

Anoushka moved with her, sinuous, graceful.

Recalling Venom's little trick, she kept her own gaze slightly to the left. Anoushka laughed. "Oh, youare smart. Such a shame you were too young to save your family."

Elena jerked as if kicked, her guard dropping for a fragment of a second. Anoushka struck, slicing deep into Elena's arm before she managed to get out of the way. Ignoring the burn, ignoring the heart-pain caused by the angel's words, Elena caught a second knife in her free hand. "To the death, then?"

"Did you really think otherwise?" Anoushka swept out with thekukri , her movements blindingly fast.

Elena threw both knives, heard Anoushka deflect one with the blade as she twisted out of the way of the other. And still the angel managed to cut a line into Elena's unmarked arm.

The bitch was playing with her.

It was, Elena realized, Anoushka's sole weakness. That and an ego that made her believe herself fit to be an archangel. "They say your blood is poison."

"Thomas drank from me before he went to scare you." A piece of swift bladework that had Elena falling to the earth, only just managing to roll out of the way before Anoushka sliced off a piece of her wing. "Impressive." A mocking bow, as if they were sparring in the most civilized of fashions.

She could feel the blood loss from the deep cuts on her arms beginning to have an effect.

Not disabling. Not yet. But it was going to slow her down soon. "Thomas's death was a delayed response to the poison?"

"He thought he'd been honored above all others, allowed to sip from my veins."

"So he was dead no matter what happened, even if he didn't find me?"

"He was getting a little too possessive, the sweet dear." A sigh. "Such fools are men.

Even Raphael - he should've killed you the first time he met you. Now you are his weakness."

Elena saw something in Anoushka's expression change at that instant, and knew death was looking her in the face. She threw a blade. It went harmlessly to the ground as Anoushka moved . . . but that move put her in direct sunlight, blinding her for a split second. Elena's next two knives slammed home in her eye sockets, driving her backward.

Anoushka screamed, dropped thekukri . Ignoring it, Elena retrieved the short sword hanging from her belt and - without giving herself a chance to think - slammed the blade down into the angel's heart, pinning her to the earth. Blood bloomed across the white of Anoushka's top as Elena opened up her mind and screamed.Raphael! She didn't care who the fuck else heard her, as long as he did.

Hissing in open fury, Anoushka ripped the knives from her eyes, throwing them to the side. As she jerked upward, in spite of the blade that anchored her to the earth, her nails clawed, Elena remembered that Anoushka was her mother's daughter. Moving out of the way in the nick of time, she twisted the blade while it remained in the angel's body.

Anoushka's scream was a thin, bloodcurdling cry as she fell back to the ground, her poisonous fingers dropping to flutter on the paving stones. Fighting the nausea in her stomach, Elena twisted the blade again, turning Anoushka's heart into so much mush.

It would regenerate, but right now, Anoushka lay twitching on the ground, her mutilated eyes bleeding red on her cheeks.

Her mother's eyes, so beautiful, so like her own, sightless and distorted, the veins scarlet against the white.

Elena wrenched herself out of the memory, fighting the abyss that threatened to suck her in, leave her helpless.

"I'm not strong enough. Forgive me, my babies."

Elena had tried not to hear those whispered words. She'd been half asleep that night, Beth still so small, tucked in beside her. Her baby sister had always been afraid of her new room in the Big House. But she'd slept soundlessly that night, as if sure Elena would keep her safe. Only Elena had heard their mother enter their bedroom, only Elena had tried not to understand.

Elena.

She shuddered at the scent of the wind, of the rain. Relief made her careless, her body completely unprotected as Anoushka rose in a screaming rush, kicking Elena to the stones and clawing out with her hand.

Agony blazed down Elena's thigh. She fell to the ground, hearing Anoushka's body hit the stone wall with an audible snap at almost the same instant. Raphael touched her thigh a moment later . . . and she realized she couldn't feel anything in that leg.

"Raphael," she whispered, panicked. The numbness was spreading, crawling up her body, making her heart shudder.

His wings covered her from view as he leaned close. "A bare scratch."

She knew it had been more than that. She'd felt her flesh being gouged out, but she understood the message. Nodding, she bit her lower lip and tried to stay calm. When she glanced down, she saw his hands on either side of the wound. They were glowing blue.

Fear rose, but she knew that couldn't be angelfire. It wasn't hurting her. In fact, she could feel a soft warmth at the site. As she watched, her eyes wide, an umber-colored liquid seeped out of the wound to discolor the paving stones. "Dear God." It was an almost soundless whisper. The stuff was eroding the stone.

"You're fine, Elena. It was simple shock."Betray no weakness.

Elena let him pull her to her feet, sliding her foot over the discolored part of the paving as she did so. As Raphael folded away his wings, she realized two things. One, both the claw marks and the cuts on her arms had stopped bleeding, and two, the entire Cadre had come with Raphael. Neha knelt by her daughter's slumped body, the sword flung aside, a spray of red marking its path on the stones. Her daughter's blood was scarlet against the archangel's dusky skin, her eyes ice when she glanced back. "She will die."

Elena didn't think Neha was talking about Anoushka.

Chapter 37

Raphael's face was expressionless. "Elena isn't the one who orchestrated the brutalization of a child."

Someone sucked in a breath and Elena realized it was Michaela, the female archangel's body angled toward Anoushka though she stood to Raphael's left.

"Lies," Anoushka said, her breath coming easier as her body healed. "The hunter sought to make her name by killing an angel."

It just came out. "I helped kill an archangel. I have no need to prove myself."

Neha rose, her movement as sinuous, as silky as that of the pythons she kept as pets.

"Give me your mind."

Elena was suddenly drowning in the scent of rain, of the sea, as Raphael lifted a hand filled with angelfire. "No one will touch Elena. It's Anoushka's mind you should search."

There was a blur of movement overhead and then Aodhan was landing beside Elena, though, given his angle of descent, it would have been far easier for him to land between Michaela and Raphael. The angel was covered in so much blood, it had turned his diamond-bright wings to rust. But that wasn't what chilled the whole courtyard to silence.

Aodhan had a vampire in his arms. That vampire was missing all his limbs. But he was still alive.

Elena fought not to show her horror. The last time she'd seen a vampire in that condition, the man had been a victim, tortured for days by a hate group.

"Sire." Aodhan placed his burden on the stones. "I was detained by Anoushka's Master of the Guard. His mind holds the truth."

From the look on Anoushka's face, there was no denying the vampire's identity. Elena saw it only because she was looking directly at the Princess - a spark of pain, of loss. The angel actually felt something for this vampire. But not enough. Rising, she picked up thekukri in one of those reptilian snaps of movement, and threw it at the vampire's neck.

Raphael caught it by the blade, his blood dripping onto the vampire's ravaged chest.

"Favashi, Titus, take his mind."

The quiet Persian archangel closed her eyes. The big, black archangel did the same. It took less than a second.

"Guilty," Favashi whispered, speaking to Neha. "Even if Astaad forgives the murder of his concubine, even if Titus forgives the killing of the female from his lands, even if Raphael forgives the torture of his man, the attempt on his mate's life, you cannot save her."

"She broke our supreme law." Titus's voice was incongruously soft for such a big man, the slabs of muscle on his chest gleaming around the steel gray of his breastplate.

"The abuse of a child," Astaad murmured in an almost academic tone, stroking two fingers over his small, neat black beard, "may be the only true remaining taboo we have.

Cross that line, and we may as well surrender to the darkness that stalks us all."

"The boy isn't dead," Neha responded.

"Murder or vicious assault, the penalty is the same - and the child was so close to death as to make little difference." An archangel with iron in his voice and eyes of golden brown. Elijah. "The worst is that she didn't do it alone. She taught others to savor the pain of an innocent."

"She planned to take other angelic children once she became Cadre," Favashi said, her tone sorrowful but unbending, "to rule her angels by keeping their young hostage."

"Witnessed." Titus's soft voice.

"Even I," Lijuan murmured, a hint of surprise in her tone, "did not go that far." Her eyes almost disappeared in daylight. "What have you birthed, Neha?"

What happened next was a blur. Michaela moved her hand in a brutally hard gesture. It took a second for Anoushka's head to fall off her body, her blood fountaining in an arterial spray. Wet hit Elena's face, her clothes, but she forced herself to stand her ground as Neha rose with a scream, her nails elongating and turning black even as Michaela continued to make those lethal slashing motions.

Sweet mercy.Anoushka was being cut apart piece by piece.

Moving at a speed no mortal would ever reach, Neha clawed Michaela's face, leaving a spread of black. Michaela slammed her hand to Neha's chest, shoving her back. The black marks on her face turned a noxious, putrid green. . . . then drew back, as if the poison was being rejected. By the time Neha got to her feet, Michaela's face was whole again, the poison dripping to scar the square-cut pavings of the courtyard.

Neha twisted toward her daughter, anguish in her eyes. "She's old enough to - "

Angelfire, cold and blue, engulfed what remained of Anoushka. Elena stared at the hard line of Raphael's face, without mercy, an archangel passing judgment. It shook her to the core, the speed of the execution, but she didn't disagree with it - the image of Sam's crumpled and bloody body would be with her forever.

Neha's scream rent the air, so piercing it was somethingother , something beyond comprehension. The Queen of Snakes, of Poisons, went to her knees in the courtyard, tearing at her hair with the clawed tips of her hands. Raphael stepped back and met Elena's gaze. It was time to go. They left on foot, all of them, even Lijuan. A silent show of respect.

No one spoke even when they reached the blinding light of the main courtyard. It was empty, the first time Elena had seen it that way in all her time here. Shadows blotted out the sunlight an instant later, a heavy cloudbank rolling in from the east. Looking up, she felt a chill crawl down her spine.