The sea crashed into her mind, a violent storm.I'm on my way. Keep her calm. If she releases her power, it'll destroy the Refuge itself.
Making a split-second decision, Elena wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, the cuts on her lips still seeping blood. "I'll take you to Sam."
The female archangel waited.
The hairs on the back of her neck rising in primitive warning, Elena took the lead, hearing the whisper of Michaela's dress as she followed.Galen and Venom are both down. Galen's eyes had blinked open in the last few seconds, but Venom looked bad, really bad.I think she broke his spine, maybe his neck. And a vampire could die from a broken neck if enough other damage had been done.
He's not dead yet.
The last word was curt. A chill curled around her heart. She'd never thought she'd mourn his loss, but Venom had shown himself willing to lay down his life to protect a child. It made him better, far better, than an archangel who'd level the Refuge while enraged with power. It reminded her too much of another archangel - one bloated with toxin. Just how much of Uram did Michaela carry?
Heart thudding, Elena stopped in front of the glass enclosure where Sam lay in peaceful sleep. She saw Keir arrive out of the corner of her eye and tried to warn him off with a frantic movement of her hand, but Keir shook his head. "Sam's resting," he said in an easy tone, as if an archangel wasn't about to go nuclear beside them. "The healing is progressing extremely well."
"He won't be scarred?"
Elena found Michaela's question peculiar until she realized Michaela wasn't talking about the boy's superficial injuries.
"No, there'll be no permanent damage." Keir put an arm on Michaela's, braving the heat that blazed from her skin. "He'll grow up as he should."
Elena watched Michaela place her hand on the glass. "He's so fragile." The blaze faded in a slow wave. "So breakable."
"Children always are," Keir said, his tone gentle, his eyes ancient in that youthful face.
"It's a risk we take."
"Too much," Michaela whispered. "The risk is too much."
The tableau froze in Elena's mind - an archangel of impossible beauty dressed in blood, her hand lying on the glass, her fingers trembling with emotions that brought tears to Elena's throat. What would Michaela have been, she wondered, if she hadn't lost her child? Would the selfishness that touched her every move have matured into something better? Or would she have become another Neha, creating her child as a poisonous mirror?
"Better to break their necks when they're born."
Elena slid out the gun. If Michaela made a single move, she'd empty the entire clip into the archangel's wings before Michaela could turn, use her powers to disarm Elena.
Because given the choice of a possible ricochet versus certain death for Sam, she'd chance the ricochet.
"Don't you think so?" the archangel said to Keir in a voice that was jarring in its thoughtfulness.
"We do not kill our young."
Silence. When the archangel drew back from the glass, her face was as Elena had always seen it - perfection without mercy. Turning away with a nod to Keir, she left in a sweep of bronze wings and white silk stained dark red, her beauty imprinting an afterimage that was hard to ignore.
Elena let out a shuddering breath.She's gone.
Take Keir to Venom.
Elena was already moving in that direction, Keir at her side. They arrived to find Galen - his face a mess of blood and torn skin - kneeling beside the fallen vampire.
"He's severely injured. Snapped spine, fractured skull, collapsed lung. His heart may have been pierced by a broken rib."
"He bit Michaela," Elena said, not sure if that made any difference.
"Then he likely discharged the poison in his fangs." Keir began to run featherlight fingers over Venom's body. "That'll make him easier to handle."
"Can his poison harm an angel?"
"Not in an enduring way," Galen responded, "but it causes violent pain in most."
"He's dying." Sitting back on his heels, his face white with strain, Keir nodded at Galen.
"Will you carry him to the treatment room?"
Galen slid his arms beneath Venom's broken body. Elena bit back her negative response, born of the mortal knowledge that said the victim of a spinal cord injury shouldn't be moved. Keir surely knew a lot more about treating such injuries in vampires than she ever would. As they moved to the room, she felt the scent of the sea, the wind, fill her mind.
Relief kicked her like a bucking horse. "Raphael's here."
But could even an archangel save a vampire so broken? What would it do to Raphael to lose one of his Seven?
Chapter 31
Elena was wiping the blood off her cheeks when Raphael left Venom's room. "I have need of your gifts, Elena."
She put down the damp towel she'd found in one of the empty treatment rooms. Her face still hurt, but not as much as it would have if she'd still been human - healing had already begun on some level. "The dead angel?"
A nod.
"Venom - is he . . . ?"
"He's not easy to kill."
They didn't speak on the flight to the body. The site where it lay was a huge tumble of rocks. Making a quick appraisal of the dangerous, uneven area, she realized landing was going to be problematic. Pride might have led her to attempt it anyway, but she was supremely conscious that right now, Raphael needed her functional, capable of doing a task only she could.A little help.
Changing position so he flew above her, Raphael ordered her to fold her wings. It was surprisingly hard to go against her newborn instincts, but she managed to snap them shut.