Fly with me, Elena.

Her wings unfurled, though her voice remained silent.

Keeping an eye on her, he took her on a wild, exhilarating ride through mountain ridges and passes, the air cutting across their cheeks. She followed with grim determination, finding ways around obstacles when she couldn't move fast enough to slip in through the small gaps Raphael utilized. It took concentration, which was exactly what he'd counted on.

By the time they landed, she was swaying on her feet. He all but carried her inside and put her to bed, nudging her into a dreamless sleep with a small mental push. She'd be angry with him for it, but she needed her rest. Because their time was nearly up.

Lijuan's ball was in a week.

Chapter 29

Elena lay in bed as Raphael dressed the next morning, watching him pull on one of the specially designed shirts that flowed around his wings. She felt tender, bruised. He'd held her all night, she thought. He'd kept the nightmares at bay. For him, she'd find the strength to fight a guilt that threatened to choke her.

Sitting up, she took a sip of the coffee sitting beside Destiny's Rose. "How do your shirts seal at the bottom?" She'd never seen any buttons below the wing slots. That seemed to be what most of the powerful angels preferred, the closures small and discreet - all but invisible. The younger angels, in contrast, seemed to go for more intricately designed options, each as unique as the wearer.

Raphael raised an eyebrow. "I'm an archangel and you ask me how my shirts stay sealed?"

"I'm curious." Focusing on the distraction to keep her mind off the past, she put down the coffee and crooked a finger.

The archangel was apparently in the mood to obey, because he left his shirt unbuttoned to walk across, brace himself with his hands on either side of her, and bring his mouth down over hers. The kiss was a claiming, no two ways about it. Long and deep and slow, it curled her toes, brought her nerves to burning life, made her moan in the back of her throat. "Tease," she accused softly when he lifted his head.

"I must ensure you never lose interest."

"Even if I live a million years," she said, caught in endless blue, "I don't think I'll ever find any man as fascinating as you." Acute vulnerability hit a moment later. She pushed at the heat of his chest. "Show me the shirt."

A tipping up of her chin, a kiss that told her the archangel was in a tender kind of mood.

"I do as my lady commands." He turned to give her his back.

Pushing off the sheets, she sat up on her knees. "There's no seam," she muttered, peering at the bottom of the slots. "No button, no zip. I half expected Velcro."

Raphael coughed. "If you were not mine, hunter, I'd have to punish you for that insult."

Her archangel was playing with her.It was an odd realization, and one that made the heavy weight on her heart lift a fraction. "Okay, I give. How do you seal the slots?"

He held out a hand, shifting to face her. "Watch."

It took real effort of will to turn her head from the gorgeous plane of his chest. If she wasn't careful, she thought, the archangel might yet make her his slave. Her eyes widened the instant she spied his hand. "Is that what I think it is?" Blue flame licked over his hand, making her heart kick.

"It's not angelfire." He closed his hand, ending the light-show. "It's a physical manifestation of my power."

She blew out a breath. "You use that to seal the edges?"

"The edges aren't actually sealed. Look carefully."

She'd looked plenty carefully, but now, she lifted up the shirt almost to her eyes. And that was when she saw them. Strands of finest blue, so fine as to be almost invisible, threaded through the white of the linen. How much power, she thought, stunned, must he have to do something like this without thought? This man would never ever tell her she was too strong, too fast, too tough. "I'm guessing us peons can't do this?"

"It requires the ability to hold power outside the body." Turning, he rubbed a thumb over her lower lip. "As yet, you have very little power so the point is moot."

She caught his wrist, looked up. "Raphael, am I going to have to Make vampires?"

"You're an angel Made, not born." He caressed her with his thumb once more. "Even Keir doesn't know the answer to that question."

And Keir, she knew without asking, was an ancient. "But if I do - "

"It'll not be anytime soon." A rock-solid answer. "Your blood was free of the toxin when you woke. You'll be tested several times a year now that you're awake."

"Is it hard? To Make someone?"

Raphael nodded. "The choosing is difficult. It's to the Cadre's benefit not to select those who're weak, who'll break, but mistakes happen."

Hearing what he'd never enunciate, she pressed a kiss to his palm.

"However the act itself," he said, his voice dropping, "is as intimate as you choose to make it. For many, it's a clinical process akin to giving blood. The human is put into a medicated sleep during the transfer."

Relief made her shudder. "I thought it would be like when you kissed me." The intimacy of it had shaken her to the soul.

Cobalt flame. "Nothing will ever be like our kiss."

Heart thundering, she rose to stand on the bed, her hands on his shoulders. He looked up the naked sweep of her body."Elena."

She kissed him. His response was an inferno, but she felt the tension beneath the surface.

"We have to leave soon don't we?"

"Yes." His hands smoothing over her butt, slow and easy. "We'll take mortal means of transportation to Beijing."

"Wouldn't it be more impressive to fly in?"

"Endurance flying requires muscle strength you don't have yet." A practical answer, but his hands slid lower . . . lower. "It's to our benefit that she consider us weak going in. It'll make her careless. We'll need every advantage if she truly has crossed the line into irrevocable madness."

"Raphael . . ." She shuddered, thrust her hands into his hair. "Galen's right. I do make you vulnerable. And she knows my weaknesses."

So did I, Elena. And yet you hold my heart.

Two hours later found Elena back in the beaten earth ring that had become as familiar to her as her own face. Probably because she'd been up close and personal with it more than once.

"So," she said, staring into the slitted, inhuman eyes of her sparring partner, "you do occasionally lose the suit."

Venom smiled, displaying the canines she'd seen weep poison, his face at once starkly beautiful and unalterably alien. He'd not only lost the suit, he was dressed only in a pair of flowing black pants that shifted like liquid as he moved, his body as sinuous as the snake that looked at her out of those eyes.

And that body . . . yeah, it was definitely worth a second look. But she was more concerned at the ease with which he played with the foot-length curved knives in his hands. They reminded her almost of some short swords she'd seen, but they were a littletoo short, a little too curved. Not sickle-curved, but more of a soft, smooth flow.

Blades meant for lethal grace.

Of course, identifying them didn't matter. It was what he could do with them that counted. She met his smirk with one of her own. "You didn't catch the knife I threw at you in New York."

He shrugged, gleaming dark gold skin over pure, lithe muscle. "I caught it."

"By the sharpest edge." She tested the long, slender blades Galen had handed her.

Shorter than the rapier he'd started her on, they were weighted so she could throw them, too. If Venom's blades were made for grace, hers were made for power and maximum damage, both edges razor-sharp - she could gut someone with surgical precision if necessary. "Sloppy of you."

"I guess I'll have to make up for it today." Lowering his body into a semicrouch, he began to circle her, his movements almost painfully slow.

She moved in the opposite direction, wanting to get a handle on his style. Most people telegraphed their next move with some type of a tell. She was very aware of her own tell - her feet. It had taken years of training to ensure they never pointed in the same direction she intended to move. Venom didn't telegraph with his feet.

She shifted her attention to the next most common tell - the eyes. All the air rushed out of her lungs at the contact. Her brain continued to have trouble accepting what she saw when she looked into Venom's eyes. Just then, the slitted irises contracted and she took a startled step back.

A soft laugh.

Bastard was playing with her. Gritting her teeth, she kept her gaze locked to his as they continued to circle each other. It was on the second complete rotation that she felt herself blink, stagger a little.

Fuck!

She threw one of the blades without warning. He moved aside with snake swiftness but still ended up on his back on the ground with a nasty gash in his arm.

Galen was beside them in a single instant. "What was that?" he snapped, his jaw a hard line. "Throwing away your weapon before the fight starts isn't exactly going to keep you alive."

Elena didn't take her eyes from Venom. The vampire held a hand over his bleeding arm, but his smile . . . Slow. Taunting. Daring her to call him on it. Dropping her head, she lunged . . . and slammed the second blade right between his legs.

"Fuck!" He scrambled backward, flowing to his feet in a way that was simply not human. Normal bodies didn't move with that kind of liquid fluidity.

Galen was looking at Venom now. "Did you try to entrance her?"

"She should be prepared for the unexpected." Venom's eyes glittered bright green as he returned his gaze to Elena. "I would've had her in another half a turn."

"I could've also cut off your balls if I'd aimed a little higher," Elena said, retrieving her weapons. "You want to play more games or can we get to work? We're on a deadline."

"This'll take a few minutes to heal." He removed his hand to show that the wound was still gushing blood. "Now I can compare notes with Dmitri."

Ignoring his sly words, she set about practicing the moves Galen had drilled into her when she wasn't throwing knives at Illium. The terse angel watched her go through the entire set and gave a short nod at the end. Feeling unaccountably pleased, she pointed the tip of one blade at Venom. "Ready?"

He twirled both weapons in his hands. "I never did get a taste of you."

"Come here, little hunter. Taste."

Everything went cold, quiet. She was no longer aware of the taunting heat in Venom's eyes, the light layer of snow on the ground, Galen's watchful presence. All she knew was the hunt.

Venom struck without warning, moving with the swiftness of the snake that was patently a far bigger part of him than just his eyes. But Elena was already gone, her blades crossed in front of her as she moved, one hand slicing out to run a thin line of blood across the vampire's chest.

He said something as the blow landed. She didn't hear it, her mind set to kill.

This time, the monster wouldn't get in, wouldn't murder Ari and Belle, wouldn't break her mother's heart so badly that she never left that kitchen saturated with the screams of her children.

Her eye picked up the minute tensing of Venom's thigh muscles and she struck before he could. This time, he avoided her blades, but not the foot she swept out to trip him. But she'd made a mistake. A line of fire rippled up her side.