She put the message tube on Raphael's desk. "I can't accept this."

He lifted a finger, keeping his back to her as he stood by the windows, phone to his ear. It seemed odd to see an archangel with such a modern device, but her reaction made no logical sense-they were masters of technology, no matter that they looked like something out of fairy tale and legend.

How much truth was in those legends, no one knew. For all that angels had been part of mankind's history since the earliest cave paintings, they remained shrouded in mystery. Since man, as always, hated a vacuum, those of her kind had spun a thousand myths to explain the existence of angelkind. Some called them the scions of the gods, others saw them as simply a more advanced species. Only one thing was certain-they were the rulers of the world, and they knew it.

Now His Highness kept talking in a low murmur. Irritated, she started prowling around the room. The deep shelves on the side wall caught her attention. Made of a wood that was either a true ebony or had been treated to appear that way, they displayed treasure after treasure.

An ancient Japanese mask of an oni, a demon. But this one held an edge of mischief, as if it had been made for a children's festival. The artwork was precise, the colors brilliant, though she felt the age of it like a heavy weight in her bones. On the shelf next to it sat a single feather.

It was an extraordinary color-a deep, pure blue. She'd heard rumors of a blue-winged angel in the city over the past couple of months, but surely those rumors couldn't be true? "Natural or synthetic?" she whispered almost to herself.

"Oh, very much natural," came Raphael's smooth voice. "Illium was most distressed at being stripped of his prized feathers."

She turned, lines marring her forehead. "Why did you damage someone so beautiful? Jealous?"

Something sparked in his eyes, hot and certainly lethal if let out. "You would have little interest in Illium. He likes his women submissive."

"So? Why take his feathers?"

"He needed to be punished." Raphael shrugged, walking to stand less than a foot from her. "It was being grounded that really hurt him-the feathers grew back within a year."

"A blink of time."

The danger level seemed to lessen at her sarcasm. "For an angel, yes."

"So, were his new feathers like before?" She told herself to stop staring into those eyes, that no matter what he said, such contact had to make it easier for him to invade her mind. But she couldn't look away, not even when those flames turned into what looked like tiny whirling blades. "Were they?" she repeated, her voice rough with sudden hunger.

"No," he responded, reaching out to trace the shell of her ear. "They grew back even more beautiful. Blue edged with silver."

Elena laughed at the scowl in his voice. "That's the color scheme of my bedroom."

Naked heat sizzled between them. Powerful. Vibrant. His eyes still locked with hers, Raphael trailed his finger down her jaw to her neck. "Are you sure you don't want to invite me in?"

He was so utterly beautiful.

But male, very male.

Just one taste.

It was the darkness in her, the small core conceived on a blood-soaked kitchen floor the day she lost her childhood.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

"Come here, little hunter. Taste."

"No." She jerked away, palms damp with a thin sheen of fear. "I just came to return the rose and ask you if you had any more information about Uram's whereabouts."

Raphael lowered his hand, his face contemplative when she would've expected fury at being denied. "I'm good at vanquishing nightmares."

She stiffened. "And creating them. You left that vampire out in Times Square for hours." Stop, Elena, her mind ordered. For God's sake, stop! You have to make him give you an oath of safety-but her mouth wouldn't listen. "You tortured him!"

"Yes." Not even a tinge of remorse.

She waited. "That's it? That's all you have to say?"

"Did you expect guilt?" His expression stilled, became cold as frost. "I'm not human, Elena. Those I rule are not human. Your laws don't apply."

She clenched her hands painfully hard. "The laws of common decency, of conscience?"

"Call it what you will but remember this"-he leaned in, speaking in an icy whisper that cut across her skin with whip-lash cruelty-"if I fall, if I fail, the vampires go completely free, and New York drowns in the blood of innocents."

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

She reeled under the impact of those brutal images. One a memory. One a possible future. "Vampires aren't all evil. Only a small percentage of them ever lose control, same as the human population."

His hand cupped her cheek. "But they're not human, are they?"

She remained silent.

His hand was hot, his voice glacial. "Answer me, Elena." The arrogance he displayed was breathtaking, but what made it worse was that he had every right to it. The power of him . . . it was beyond staggering.

"No," she admitted. "Bloodlust-ridden vampires kill with a viciousness that's unique-and they never stop. The death toll has the potential to reach thousands."

"So you see, iron control is necessary." He came even closer, until the fronts of their bodies touched and his hand slid down to her waist. She could no longer see his face without tilting back her head. It seemed like too much effort at that moment. All she wanted was to melt. Melt and take him with her, so he could do erotic, luscious things to her aching body.

"Enough of vampires," he said, his lips on the shell of her ear.

"Yes," she whispered, her hands stroking up his arms. "Yes."

He kissed his way down past her ear, along her jaw, before answering. "Yes."

Ecstasy laced her bloodstream, a biting pleasure she had no desire to resist. She wanted to peel off his clothing and find out if an archangel really was built like a man, to lick his skin, mark him with her nails, to ride him, possess him . . . be possessed by him. Nothing else mattered.

His lips touched hers and she moaned. The hands on her hips tightened as he lifted her without apparent effort and began to kiss her in earnest. Fire traveled through the raw eroticism of the openmouthed kiss to curl her toes, coming to pool in the vee between her thighs. "Hot," she whispered when he let her breathe. "Too hot."

Ice silvered the air and it was a cool mist that surrounded her, seeping into her pores in a stroke of possession. "Better?" He kissed her again before she could answer, his tongue inside her, his body hard and perfect and-

Nothing else mattered.

The words were wrong. The thoughts were wrong.

Sara mattered.

Beth mattered.

She mattered.

Raphael's lips traveled down her neck and to the flesh exposed by the open buttons of her shirt. "Beautiful."

I have not taken a human lover in eons. But you taste . . . intriguing.

She was a plaything.

To be toyed with and discarded.

Raphael could control her mind.

Giving a scream of pure rage, she kicked off him hard enough to send herself sprawling. The shock of pain as her tailbone connected with the floor snapped the final tendrils of a desire so visceral, so addictive, it made a fool out of her even now. "You bastard! Is rape what turns you on?"

For a single fleeting second, she thought she saw shock shadow his expression, but then that familiar arrogance looked back at her. "It was worth a try." He shrugged. "You can't say you didn't enjoy it."

She was so mad she didn't stop to think, to consider why she'd come here. Giving another scream, she rushed him. To her surprise, she got in a few good licks before he grabbed her arms and forced her against a wall.

His wings spread out to block her view of the room and it wasn't until he growled, "Leave us!" that she realized someone else had entered.

"Yes, sire."

Vampire. Dmitri.

And she'd been so fucking disoriented, so filled with manufactured lust turned into rage, that she hadn't heard him enter. "I'm going to kill you!" Her sense of violation had her humiliatingly close to tears. She should've expected such tactics from Raphael but she hadn't. Which made her an A-grade moron. "Let me go!"

He looked down at her, the blue of his eyes suddenly dark-as if a storm had rolled in. "No. In this state, you'll force me to hurt you."

For a second her heart kicked. He cared. She screamed again. "Get out of my head!"

"I am not in your head, Guild Hunter."

The use of the formal title was a verbal slap, one that brought her back to her senses. Instead of responding with the blood-fury boiling inside her, she took several deep breaths and tried to go to that calm place in her mind, the same place she went to whenever the memories of Ariel-No, she couldn't return there. Why wouldn't the past leave her alone today?

Another deep breath.

The scent of the sea, cool, crisp, powerful.

Raphael.

She opened her eyes. "I'm fine."

He waited several long seconds before releasing her. "Go. We'll discuss this later."

Her hand itched to go for a weapon but she simply turned on her heel and walked out. She had no intention of dying-not until she'd carved out Raphael's lying eyes and thrown them in the deepest, dirtiest cesspool she could find.

As soon as he heard the elevator doors close, Raphael called down to security. "Don't lose her. Ensure she stays safe."

"Yes, sire," was Dmitri's response, but Raphael heard the edge of disbelief.

He hung up without responding to the unasked question. Why had he allowed the hunter to live after she attacked him?

Is rape what turns you on?

His mouth tightened, his knuckles whitening as he fisted his hands. He'd done and been accused of many things through the ages. But never had he taken a woman against her will. Never. He hadn't done so today either.

But something had happened.

It was why he'd allowed her to assault him-she'd needed to vent her rage, and his disgust with himself was such that he'd welcomed the blows. There were some taboos that should never be broken. That he'd crossed a bright line he'd laid down centuries ago made him wonder about his own mental state. He knew his bloodstream was clear-he'd been tested yesterday-so this wasn't a result of the toxin putrefying his mind, sending his powers out of control.

Which left him with the unknown.

He swore in a low, ancient language long dead. He couldn't ask Neha, the Queen of Poisons. She'd see a weakness and immediately move to strike. None of the Cadre who might know the answer could be trusted in this except for Lijuan and Elijah. Lijuan had no interest in petty power. She'd gone too far, changed into something not wholly of this world. Elijah, Raphael wasn't sure about, but the other male was the scholar among them.

The problem was, Lijuan eschewed modern conveniences like the phone. She lived in a mountain compound hidden deep within China. He'd either have to fly to her or . . . His fist tightened even further. He couldn't leave his city while Uram roamed. Which left only one real choice.

As he turned to stride out, his eye fell on the message tube Elena had left behind. Destiny's Rose was an ancient treasure, one he'd earned as a young angel in the service of an archangel of ages long past. Legend said that it had been created by the combined power of the first Cadre. Raphael didn't know the truth of that, but it was undeniably priceless. He'd given it to Elena for reasons he didn't entirely understand. But she would have it. It bore her name now.

Grabbing the tube, he headed up to the penthouse and, specifically, to the room of pure black in the dead center. The human covens would see that room as evil. They saw darkness as evil. But sometimes, darkness was nothing more than a tool, neither good nor evil.

It was the soul of the man using the tool that changed things. Raphael's hand clenched on the message tube. For the first time in centuries, he wasn't sure who he was. Not good. He'd never been that. But neither had he been evil . . . until today.

Poison

They were fools, all of them. They thought he was going to die.

He laughed, despite the pain that sliced through his eyes and into his body, agony that threatened to turn his bowels to water, his bones to so much pulp. He laughed until it was the only sound in the universe, the only truth.

Oh, no, he wasn't going to die. He was going to survive this trial they called poison. A lie. An effort to consolidate their own power. Not only was he going to survive, he was going to come out of it a god. And when he was done, the Cadre of Ten would tremble and the earth run dark with rivers of blood.

Rich, nourishing, sensual . . . blood.