Page 32 of Archangel’s Lineage

The Cadre hadn’t lost one archangel in a pointless fight today.

It had lost two.

19

Despite the memories crushing her heart today, Elena had herself under control when she walked out of the suite dressed in jeans and an old T-shirt with the “Hunter Angel” logo on it. Her smartass friends had given it to her so long ago that the once glitter-filled logo was all but indistinguishable from the black of the tee, the material soft against her skin.

She found Illium with Vivek, the two of them ensconced in the private room that Vivek used to work on things so confidential they were unknown even to his senior team in the Tower’s tech command center.

“Guten morgen, Ellie,” he said when she walked in, and from the look on his handsome but too-thin face, he already knew about Jeffrey. No surprise. Information was Vivek’s job.

“Ayubowan, Vivek,” she said, continuing the game they’d been playing forever. “You yearning for sauerkraut today?”

“As much as you are for a cup of tea from Sri Lanka’s green fields.” He bumped fists with her from where he sat in his wheelchair.

Despite all predictions to the contrary, her fellow hunter’s transition to vampirism had come with more than one hiccup. Initial estimates had said that it would take decades after his Making for vampirism to heal the childhood spinal damage that had left him a tetraplegic.

The healers had been wrong—and right. Vivek could walk already. Only it caused him excruciating pain due to factors unknown. To further the complications, his left leg hadn’t matched the recovery schedule set by the rest of his body. It was much weaker than the right and went numb on him at times, forcing him to drag it along behind him.

But the man was as stubborn as any hunter in the Guild, and he did walk often with the help of a cane—but when it came to serious work, he preferred to do it from his wheelchair.

“After a lifetime in this, Ellie,” he’d said to her just last month, patting the side of his chair with an affectionate hand, “it’s an extension of my body. My speed in the chair and with all the various accessible interfaces is miles ahead of what I can do with my hands and legs.”

“It’s always been your choice, V,” Elena had said after making a Scrabble move that earned her triple points—to his curses. “Chair or legs, all I care about is that you’re happy.”

She was the one who’d asked him to consider vampirism in the first place; yes, the final call had been his and his alone, with no pressure from her, but guilt still sat heavy in her gut. “I hate that you’re in pain. It’s not what I promised you.”

“I dunno, maybe it’s to make up for years of feeling pretty much nothing and complaining about it. Fate decided to bitch-slap me.”

To say that Vivek’s sense of humor was dark was a major understatement.

Illium, who’d been leaning over one of the multiple screens on which Vivek had queued up satellite images, gave her a careful look, the aged gold of his eyes weighing up her state.

To this day, it gave her a little start each time she noticed his eyelashes were black dipped in blue. Add to this his wicked smile and his willingness to meet mortals on their own playing field and it was no wonder Bluebell had the most vocal fans out of the Seven.

“I got snacks.” He nodded at the tray set to one side.

“Sara made me bacon, and chocolate chip pancakes.”

“Stop bragging.” Vivek scowled, but that was his normal state of being. “Last time she had me over, she offered me black coffee thick enough to be tar, and bitter chocolate—to go with my sunny personality, she said.”

Muscles loosening at the normality, she grinned. “What did you do to provoke her?”

“Nothing,” was the suspiciously quick response.

Illium’s shoulders shook.

“So,” she said, biting back a laugh of her own, “any of the team spot the Refuge?”

“Nope.” Vivek wheeled himself to in front of the first screen. “Now, I’m going to test if I can see it.”

“Because you know where it is”—she nodded slowly—“know the precise spot where to look.”

Illium leaned his hip against the worktable. “Exactly.”

In strict terms, Vivek was too young a vampire to have any data on the Refuge, but he was different from the usual vampire in two important ways. The first was that because he’d been paralyzed when he was Made, he’d stayed immobile for a considerable period of time.

Vampirism healed by altering a person’s cells; it wasn’t a magic pill.

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