“I’ve been looking forward to it.” Fast and unorthodox, he’d be an excellent opponent from whom to learn. “Though we’ll have to have ground rules.”

He scowled. “You said cheating was okay.”

“It is—for me. Raphael’s an archangel. You’re a centuries-old vampire.” Elena wasn’t sure of Naasir’s exact age, but she had the feeling it had to be around the six- or seven-hundred mark. “I’m not as strong as you.” Raphael had told her she had to be blunt with Naasir.

He is highly intelligent, but he becomes frustrated with too much subtlety. That doesn’t mean he isn’t capable of understanding it—but that he gets annoyed with people who force such subtleties on him.

Tonight, Naasir looked at her with the silver eyes that held such wildness her senses kept telling her he was nothing known, nothing understood. “I could break your neck without effort,” he said, as if simply stating a fact. “The sire would not like that.”

“Neither would I.” Her dry response made him grin, fangs flashing. “I say we do a couple of practice runs so you can gauge your strength against mine.” Elena liked sparring with those stronger than her; it was the only way to get better. Their enemies sure as hell didn’t go easy on her because she was significantly weaker than the average adult angel.

But, she had to be smart about it. No use being too proud and ending up dead because Naasir didn’t realize he wasn’t dealing with a warrior angel his own age. “How about tomorrow?”

“I will ask Janvier if he and his hunter need help with their hunt.”

Elena felt her body tense again at the horror of what had been done to the Little Italy victim, at the idea that Lijuan might somehow have left a taint in their city. “I really wish the wicked witch would take a dive straight into hell.”

“Did Raphael tell you I once tried to bite her?”

“No.” Eyes wide, she turned to face him. “What happened?”

“I was a child. She laughed because she thought I was joking.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t—I wanted to kill her because she smelled like bad meat. Wrong.”

“In that case,” Elena said, “we’ll soon be best friends.”

Naasir wrapped his arm around her neck, his very sharp teeth close to her ear as he said, “You smell good, Ellie.” A tiny bite, playful rather than serious. “Do you think Janvier smells his hunter?”

Elena smiled at the whisper and decided to set aside thoughts of Lijuan and the death the insane archangel left in her wake. Tonight it was about loyalty, about friendship, and about the ties that bound them all to one another, angel, vampire, and mortal. “I hope so.”

•   •   •

Janvier watched Ashwini perch on the arm of the chair where Honor had taken a seat, Ash’s long, long legs clad in black jeans and her eyes bright as she listened to something Mahiya was saying to them both. His hunter appeared in good spirits despite her lack of success at unearthing a clue, but he’d felt the screaming tension in her when they’d first walked into the house. Others might’ve identified her response as fear at the proximity to an archangel but he knew different.

It was the history Raphael carried in his bones. At a thousand five hundred years old—give or take a decade or two—Raphael was young in relation to the other archangels. Lijuan was rumored to be ten thousand years old, while no one knew Caliane’s true age; Janvier had heard guesses that went from two hundred and fifty thousand years old to double that. He couldn’t imagine living that long—it made him better understand why older angels chose to Sleep for eons and why some vampires settled on a peaceful goodnight.

“You look at her as a man only looks at one woman in his lifetime, be he mortal or immortal.”

Janvier met the archangel’s gaze, the power in it staggering. “There has never been, nor ever will be, anyone like her.”

“Such gifts don’t often appear,” Raphael said, his attention on Ash. “In my lifetime, I’ve met three others like her: mortals who needed time beyond a human life span to allow their gifts to grow to their full potential.”

“Do they live?” Janvier asked, knowing the angels liked to make sure the unique and the gifted survived into eternity.

Janvier had once been sent on a mission to locate a reclusive composer who resided in a castle deep in the Caucasus Mountains. The commission had come during his years as a free agent and it had carried the seal of Astaad, Favashi, and, unexpectedly, Titus. All three archangels had loved the composer’s works with such passion, they’d offered to Make him without need for a hundred-year Contract. All he’d have to do was continue to create his symphonies, fill the world with music.

A remarkable offer, yet the composer had refused it. “My music,” he’d said, his eyes holding a spark Janvier had seen only in the gifted and the mad, “is precious because it is touched with my mortality. Should I become a man with eternal life, I will no longer be able to create that which brings the archangels such joy. I would become a shade, dead inside even as I lived forever.”

So he wasn’t surprised when Raphael said, “Two are gone, having chosen a mortal existence despite all the temptations laid at their feet. One resides in Nimra’s territory, in a peaceful part of the bayou.”

Janvier realized he knew exactly who Raphael meant. “Silvan.” Five hundred years old, the vampire had a level of power that often eluded those twice his age. Despite that, he preferred a life of solitude over any position more lucrative and influential. “Those of my family who live in the area say he can walk in dreams.”