Damaging a useful tool until it’s too fragile to function is a waste, was the coldly practical answer. It seems I may need to remind certain angels of that fact.

Sensing that Marcia was failing in her attempt to force words out through her terror, Elena motioned for Raphael to disappear farther back into the shadows and caught his raised eyebrow before he complied. I’ve got a theory—if she can’t see you, she can pretend you’re not here.

It seemed to work.

“We’ve had only two other donors in the time since the tainted donor, and the Tower is testing their blood now,” Marcia said in response to her question, the vampire’s eyes turned scrupulously away from the shadows that swathed Raphael.

“Surveillance images?”

Proving her intelligence and preparedness, Marcia held out a photograph of a thin young woman with stringy brown hair. “She has the blood that’s been marked as bad by Tower personnel.” The image shook as her fingers began to tremble.

Elena took it before it dropped to the ground. “You’re certain?”

Immediately hiding her hands behind her back, Marcia nodded. “I marked the time of each donation and printed out a still from the surveillance footage as soon as the donor left.”

“Anything else we need to know?”

Marcia swallowed, but got the words out. “I take sick donors all the time—they often need the money, and blood’s blood. Usually.” Sweat beading on her brow. “But she looked half-dead—much sicker than the last time I remember seeing her.”

It was possible the carrier wasn’t a true carrier, simply someone who could withstand the effects of the infection for longer. “Can you pinpoint the time of her previous donation?”

“I am truly sorry, Consort.” Marcia’s teeth began to chatter. “We a-allow anonymous donations so all I can say is that it was with-with-within the l-l-last week.”

Elena sent the vampire back into her café before she had a fear-induced heart attack, then turned to Raphael. “I hope you terrify the fucker who did this to her, or I’ll find him and personally cut off his balls after I beat him bloody.”

“An excellent punishment. Be assured it’ll be carried out.”

Passing the stills to Raphael without any feelings of remorse at the sentence she’d just passed, she set aside her simmering anger and, after checking to make sure the area was clear, went over to the donor doorway. It was a carnival of scents, not unexpected given the number of vamps who no doubt moved in and around the building—the real problem was that the tainted donor was human and Elena was a bloodhound attuned to vampires.

On the other hand, she’d sensed the presence of the disease in the drawn blood, so perhaps the carrier’s blood chemistry had altered enough to highlight her to Elena’s nose.

This Marcia is indeed a valuable tool, came Raphael’s voice into her mind. She e-mailed the photo to the Tower as soon as the alarm was sounded and Aodhan is following up on it. Ransom Winterwolf, however, may have the better contacts when it comes to the humans and vampires who frequent this area.

Elena stopped what she was doing to meet the painful blue of his eyes, extraordinarily pure, extraordinarily lethal. If I bring Ransom into this, she said, keeping the conversation on the mental level to avoid it being caught by the surveillance equipment, and he ends up with information you can’t permit a mortal to have, you’ll wipe his mind.

You know our laws, Elena.

Exactly. She thought of Illium’s punishment and knew she couldn’t ask special favors for Ransom. Raphael had already gone far beyond what could be expected of him when he’d permitted Sara into the Refuge. If Elena wanted to protect her friends, she was the one who had to put up the boundary walls . . . even if it meant they’d stop being a part of her life. Better that painful rupture than to watch them be treated as puppets by the immortals. Knowing those laws is why I won’t bring Ransom into this.

You’d let innocent vampires die?

That isn’t fair. Stepping up until they were toe to toe, she stood her ground. Ransom’s life is worth as much as that of any vampire—and I won’t be involved in stealing any part of it from him.

Some of the vampires who may yet die will be friends of his. The wild wind, the dark sea, crashing into her mind. Do you believe he’d protect his own life at the cost of theirs?

She knew Ransom, how loyal he was, how he’d bleed for others, but she was cut from the same cloth. You wouldn’t know about his connections if it wasn’t for me, so this decision is mine. And I won’t bring him in.

Elena, my city is under a stealthy attack. Raphael’s tone was a blade, his face coolly expressionless in a way that made her want to push at him until he dropped the mask. I can’t allow you to protect a friend at the cost of losing my territory.

Is that a threat you’ll go over my head? Aware her temper had been hair-trigger of late, she tried to maintain her grip on it. You’d make me an accomplice in the betrayal of a friend? It was a breach of trust she’d never expected. What if it was one of your Seven?

He isn’t. He’s a mere mortal.

17

The cold response was an emotional slap, another reminder that when push came to shove, mortals remained disposable to Raphael.

Fine, she said, conscious that something precious was about to break between them, a fracture that could never be repaired. You do what you like, but you have to know I’ll never again trust you the same way.

A faint glow, his wings white fire in the darkness. Emotional blackmail?

No. No anger now, simply a spiraling sense of incipient loss that made her chest hurt, her jaw clenched so hard that pain shot up her temples. I’m fighting to retain my sense of honor, of loyalty. If I can’t trust you not to abuse the information I give you about my friends, how can you ask me to tell you anything?

Our conversation isn’t over. Hauling his consort bodily around when she turned back to the donor station, Raphael extended his glamour to cover her.

What else is there to say? A hardness in her eyes that he hadn’t seen since the very beginning of their courtship. A mere mortal, isn’t that your final judgment?

No one could push him to the edge faster than Elena, slamming right through centuries of unyielding control. I allowed Sara into the Refuge. It had been an act that went against their most deeply held laws, permitted only because he took full responsibility for Sara’s silence. The others believe I erased her memories. Only for you did I leave her mind untouched.

That’s supposed to make me grateful forever? A red flush high on her cheekbones, the ring of silver around her irises glittering against the paler gray. Love doesn’t work like that.

Yet it allows you to turn your back after throwing such words at me? A memory of the question she’d asked that had sent him hunting Jeffrey, a reminder of the poison that continued to act on her, years after it had been introduced into her life.

He realized he couldn’t allow her to remain blind to that toxic influence. I’m not your father, Elena.

Her breath coming fast and shallow, she shook her head. Jeffrey has nothing to do with this.

He has everything to do with it, Raphael countered, thrusting his hands into her unbound hair as she raised her own hands to grip at his arms, as if she would shove him away. We will not go through eternity with you expecting the worst from me.

A visible flinch, but his stubborn, furious consort refused to back down. That’s not what I’m doing. Her body trembling from the force of her emotions, she said, I know you, and I know how you see humans: as fireflies that live and die in a heartbeat, not worth anything.

I fell in love with a mortal! Until she was his eternity. Do you question that, too?

Her eyes widened at the enraged question. “No,” she whispered aloud, before returning to mental speech. Your love is the one constant in my life, but I’m so afraid of what immortality will demand from us, what it’ll steal.

It can take nothing we do not give.

Then you need to listen to me. Stubbornness again, her expression that of the warrior she was, one who’d fight to the death to protect those who had earned her loyalty. My friends, they’re my family. I need to be able to protect them—if you take that away from me, you may as well cut out my heart.

It had been an age since he’d seen mortals as she did, since he’d formed a friendship with a simple farmer who’d come to be a man he trusted not only with his life, but with Elena’s. I have forgotten, it seems, that I, too, once had a human friend I wished to protect. He’d failed, Dmitri’s life torn asunder—and the failing had marked Raphael, too, changed him in ways that could never be undone.

Then you understand. Elena’s hair shone white in the harsh light that lit up the donor doorway. It’s not safe for my friends to be drawn deeper into the immortal world. Not unless you trust them to keep—

No. Our laws exist for a reason. And it wasn’t simply because angels thought humans beneath their notice. The games immortals play would break mortals in a heartbeat.

Silence from his consort, followed by a simple, resolute declaration. Then he can’t be here.

He can’t be here, Raphael agreed, his mind playing back the memory of the day he’d found Dmitri gripping a blood-drenched knife, his chest a ruin, the other man having attempted to carve out his heart in an attempt to join his murdered family.

Raphael would never forget Dmitri’s grief and the horror that had preceded it . . . and he would not have Elena carry such memories for all eternity. I will not force you to drag your friends into our world.

• • •

Emotionally shaken as a result of an argument she knew had drawn a bright line in the sand of the life she was building with her archangel, their relationship coming out of it stronger rather than fatally damaged, Elena returned to the task of untangling the complicated murk of scents around the donor door.

Even so focused, she couldn’t forget what Raphael had said: We will not go through eternity with you expecting the worst from me.