"You are the one who saw the problem," Astaad said to Raphael. "Do you see a solution?"
"That the vampires and angels who are to guard and oversee Lumia make their homes in town. There is no need for them to stay in the barracks--whatever rules the Luminata created of late, it was never custom that the guards also take vows of celibacy."
Alexander laughed, the sound echoing inside the Atrium. "I know for a fact none of my warriors would've ever volunteered for guard duty had that been a requirement."
"Charisemnon," Raphael said, "do you particularly desire to rule the town? It will mean extra work for you in comparison to the rest of us."
Clever, Raphael. He'd just made it so if Charisemnon took over the town, he'd have his attention divided when Titus was massing on his border.
"No." Charisemnon waved a hand. "The oversight committee can handle the town."
"You must cede your rights to it," Elijah said, picking up the baton with a smoothness that said he'd guessed exactly what Raphael was doing. "Else, we will be accused of stealing your lands."
"Since when did you become such a stickler, Eli?" Charisemnon's tone made Elena blink--because it was clear the two men had been friends once upon a time. "Very well, I cede any ruling rights to the township, as per the borders marked on the map kept in the Refuge."
"It will not be a part of Lumia," Raphael said. "That must be clear. There must never be a repeat of an effective fiefdom."
"Agreed." Every single archangelic voice seemed to say that at the same time, their combined power so violent it made Elena's lungs hurt as her body struggled to take in enough oxygen for a couple of seconds.
"Our people will live in and rule the township," Favashi completed. "We will have to come up with a group that we trust." A frown. "It would be better if someone with wisdom and age was at the center."
"Sire." Aodhan's quiet voice. "If I may suggest the Hummingbird."
That, Elena was not expecting. Illium's mother was astonishingly gifted and had a sense of goodness about her that was haunting, but she was also fractured deep within. "Are you sure?" she murmured. "I've always thought she needs routine." The Hummingbird had come more often to New York since the time Illium fell from the sky, but even then, she tended to stick to the people and places she knew.
"She does," Raphael said, a frown on his face. "Why do you suggest this, Aodhan? You know she will not leave the Refuge beyond a certain period."
"The Hummingbird also has a compulsion to help others," Aodhan said. "And she does not need to be always at the township--she can return to the Refuge several times a year. Healing the people of the town will give her a purpose."
Something unspoken passed between Aodhan and Raphael at that instant, and Elena knew she was missing something, but she didn't ask. When Illium wanted her to know, he'd tell her. Until then, she'd keep her counsel. But she wanted to add something. "If you suggest her, make sure she has support staff."
A nod, before Raphael turned to the Cadre. His suggestion was met with shock . . . then slow and thoughtful agreement. In the end, it was decided to offer the task to her, and tell her that she could bring anyone she wished with her. Though she was technically part of Raphael's territory, no one appeared to have any concerns that she'd be partisan.
"The Hummingbird lives in her own world," Neha murmured. "She will not play politics."
That seemed to be it. The Cadre left one by one, after first ordering the exiled Luminata to gather their belongings in readiness for departure as soon as the storm passed. Neha took charge of Ibrahim, asking General Hiran, Valerius, and Xander to bring the injured man to her suite. Laric went with his patient.
Caliane was the last to leave. Touching her hand to Raphael's, she said, "Do not let death define you, my son."
"Gian's crime was against you," Raphael said to Elena's grandparents after his mother had exited the room, leaving the six of them alone. "You have the right to decide his punishment."
Elena saw rage fill the eyes of her grandfather, saw his fangs flash. But when he would've stalked toward Gian, Majda placed a single hand on his chest and shook her head. "We are not him," she whispered to Jean-Baptiste. "The archangel's advice was not for our grandchild's husband, it was for us. We are not him. We do not torture. We do not get drunk on ugliness and violence." Her voice shook. "We love. That is who we are."
Jean-Baptiste trembled, but forced his eyes off Gian's cringing body. "Archangel," he said roughly, his gaze locked with his wife's. "I would ask a great favor. Imprisonment, not death." He shook his head at Majda when she parted her lips. "We are not him, but he also does not deserve to die quickly. That is too much mercy."
"Imprisonment. It is done." Raphael looked at Gian. "You will not fly free for the same amount of time you imprisoned each of your victims, the terms to run consecutively. At which point, they will decide if you deserve the mercy of death."
Gian screamed. "No! I am the Luminata! I am--"
Flicking a faint touch of power toward him, Raphael sent him into unconsciousness. "Aodhan, carry him to an empty room and lock him there for the duration. Stand guard. We will take him with us and he'll serve his imprisonment under the same sky where Majda and Jean-Baptiste's blood flies free."
Thunder boomed above them, but when Elena looked up to the miraculously whole glass dome of the Atrium, she saw no flashes of lightning in the turbulent black sky. The storm was passing. Raphael would leave for China in a matter of hours . . . would fly into the territory of the Archangel of Death.
45
Stay safe, Archangel. Or I'll hunt you down.
The words she'd spoken to Raphael before she got on the plane to New York and he turned to fly back to rejoin the rest of the Cadre.
As always, he'd smiled, kissed her. "I would not dare be hurt. Watch over my city, hbeebti."
She would, to the very best of her ability.
Turning from the edge of the high Tower balcony from where she'd watched the skies for him since the instant she landed earlier that morning, Elena looked at the woman who stood in the doorway. Majda and Jean-Baptiste had come with her to New York, would stay for a little while, but Elena guessed they'd be returning to Morocco, to the place that had been their home.
Sadness lay a heavy shroud on Majda's features; it had been that way ever since Elena told her about Marguerite on the plane, about the baby Majda had fled with to safety. "Jean-Baptiste had told me to run if he ever disappeared," Majda had said after the first rush of tears. "Just run and keep going."
"Did you go to France because it was his homeland?"
A smile that held no joy. "No. That would've made it too easy for Gian to track us. My husband, though he has such a French name, was born in the Amazon jungle to scientist parents. I ended up in France by chance, stayed because my baby needed a home."
The two of them hadn't spoken much more about the details behind Majda's flight. They'd had time in Lumia, but Majda and Jean-Baptiste had needed that time to adapt to freedom and to just be with one another after decades of torment. One thing Majda had asked was why Elena was named Elena.
"After you," Elena had told her. "My father chose the name that's on my birth certificate, but I'm fairly certain my mother made sure that name was one that could be shortened to Elena."
It had made Majda cry again. "Sana Alayna," she'd whispered. "That is the name I used in Paris--most people who knew me called me Alayna. To a child, it must've sounded very much like Elena."
Now, Elena forced herself to stop watching the sky for her archangel, knowing it was far too early to see him, and walked to join her grandmother. Like most beings without wings, Majda didn't like to come out onto these railingless balconies where, when the wind was high, it could shove you right off if you weren't careful. "I want you to meet someone, Majda."
The beautiful woman with hair just a shade more golden than Elena's reached out to touch her fingers to Elena's cheek. "I am your grandmother, child."
"I know." Elena gave her
a wry smile. "But you look my age. I'm having difficulty getting my head around that." She wasn't sure she'd ever be able to address Majda by anything but her name.
Majda's expression altered, became layered with myriad emotions. "My parents didn't want me to marry Jean-Baptiste," she told Elena as they walked down the hallway. "He was young for a vampire but he was still a vampire. They knew of a woman in a neighboring town who'd been abandoned by her vampire husband after she began to turn gray."
"Unfortunately, that still happens." It was what Elena had worried most about when it came to her sister, Beth, but Bethie had gained an unexpected internal strength with the birth of her daughter. Elena didn't think this new, fiercely protective Beth would break even if Harrison pulled a disappearing act. Not that Beth's vampire husband seemed in any danger of ever doing that--he was terrified of losing her to time, regret in his every action.
Harrison had become a vampire first even though he and Beth had agreed that they'd wait until both of them were accepted. He'd been impatient, cocky. And he would pay for it through eternity. Because Elena's baby sister could never become a vampire--her body would reject the change in a gruesome, painful manner. Elena would one day have to watch her baby sister close her eyes forever, Beth's body no longer able to hold on to life.
It hurt to think about.
"Yet you married Jean-Baptiste anyway," she said to her mother's mother.
"I love him, have loved him from the instant we first bumped into each other in the marketplace." Majda spread her hand over her heart. "It felt as if I'd found a missing part of my soul."
"Did you plan to apply to become a vampire?"
A nod. "But we had no expectation that I'd be accepted--Jean-Baptiste was a young vampire himself, hadn't earned the right to ask the favor of a powerful angel." Majda touched her hand to Elena's wing, a wondering light in her eyes. "And to think we now have an angel in the family."
"More than one," Elena pointed out. "You also have Raphael and Caliane."
Gentle laughter as Majda dropped her hand, but the sadness, it never faded. "We married with the knowledge that I would leave him after a mortal lifetime--I was overjoyed that I would never have to worry about his death. For my husband . . . it was hard."
"It is hard," Elena said, thinking of Sara, of Beth, of Zoe, of Maggie, of Deacon, of Ransom . . . So many strong, unique lives that would one day no longer exist. "But my friend, Sara, she pointed out that immortals live dangerous lives. Knowing I could actually die before her helps me deal."
Majda gave her a considering look before her lips kicked up. "Of course, you are right." She shook her head. "My parents are gone, but it's not as if Jean-Baptiste and I have had an easy life for the past six decades." The dry way she said that told Elena a hell of a lot about her grandmother's strength.
"When did Gian become obsessed with you?" she asked, having the feeling her grandmother could talk about this today.
"He tried to court me a month after my wedding." Majda hugged her arms around herself, running her hands up and down her arms. "At first, I was kind. I thought he simply didn't realize that I was married, so I told him I was a new bride and that I honored my husband." An exhale. "I added that last because there are women who do not honor their husbands when angels invite them to their beds."
"Angel groupies."
"Yes, is this what you call them? We used to call them angel-drunk." Majda got into the elevator with her, and Elena pushed the button to take them to the ground floor. It was a floor she rarely visited now that she had wings--but today, she wouldn't be flying across the sky.
"Of course," Majda added, "it wasn't only women who could become drunk on the angels, though we did not talk about that in my time."
"I'm guessing Gian didn't stop his efforts to win you?"
"No, he did," Majda said to her surprise, "and I thought that he was one of the better angels from that place." A twist to her mouth. "Then Jean-Baptiste came home in a fury one day. Gian had called him into his office and offered him money if he would surrender his rights to me." Her body shook. "As if I was a thing to be bought and sold."
"Bastard." The deep, dark hole where Raphael had dropped Gian wasn't a harsh enough punishment as far as Elena was concerned. Maybe rats would get into that hole, start feasting on him. At least he couldn't use his powers to escape. Anything he blasted would just fall on top of him, crushing him to a pulp. Of course, they weren't leaving that to chance. Illium had helped bug the hole with cameras and microphones so the Tower could monitor it, make certain Gian didn't find a way out.
And with each and every breath he took, the former leader of the Luminata had to inhale the bitter knowledge that he was buried in the same place where his victims--and their granddaughter--walked free. Majda and Jean-Baptiste had asked not to be told where exactly in the territory Gian was imprisoned; it was enough for them that he was paying for his crimes--they didn't want to take the chance of obsessing on the location of Gian's prison should they become aware of it.
Majda's voice broke into Elena's thoughts, the other woman continuing her story. "I was young, and I was afraid my husband would blame me for Gian's interest. Many men would have." Her tone was pragmatic, that of a woman who'd seen such unfairness too many times to be surprised by it. "But he didn't. He said he knew I would never dishonor our vows, that the dishonor was Gian's and Gian's alone. And he said the same to Gian's face."
"Grandpa has guts," Elena said, then shook her head as they stepped out of the elevator. "Yeah, I can't call him Grandpa, either. He's way too hot." And that thought wigged her out but it was a hard one to avoid when others in the Tower insisted on pointing it out.
Majda's laughter was startled. "He adores you already, you know." A deep smile that reached her sad eyes. "Not simply because you are the child of our child, but because you have so much courage and fire."
"He clearly has a thing for women with courage and fire," Elena said to the woman who must have an incredible well of both to have survived the decades she'd spent as a prisoner.
Majda's eyes lit up even more. "Clearly."
Elena said hello to Suhani as they walked through the lobby, her mind skipping back to their first meeting--on the day her life changed forever. "I can guess the rest," she said after Suhani replied with a wave and a smile, the receptionist proud of the fact that she was the first person to whom Elena had ever spoken in the Tower, not counting Dmitri, who'd been on the door that fateful day. "Gian kept up the pressure--"
"No," Majda interrupted. "He backed off and we thought he'd accepted the rebuke." She drew a deep draught of the New York air as they stepped out into the sunny day, the noise of the city assaulting their senses. "This city you live in, it is extraordinary. So big and chaotic and yet with such a vibrant pattern to its chaos."
Elena felt a flicker of hope. "You're thinking of staying?"
"Yes." The clouds returned. "We will visit our town one day soon, but we'll go knowing that most of the people we loved are gone. And our memories of it are forever twined with pain and fear."
She reached out to take Elena's hand. "This place, it is our granddaughter's home, and it is new. We will become new here, too." A smile. "Old in our love--that has never faltered. But new in our paths." She looked curiously at the large vehicle that had just come to a standstill at the end of the path to the Tower.
It was a Hummer SUV that had been gutted so the back was open but for metal bars that provided a handhold. "Wings," Elena said, jerking her thumb back to indicate hers. "I wanted to ride with you and this was the best option." She glanced around. "Where's Jean-Baptiste?"
"He should be here soon," Majda answered. "I told him you'd asked to meet--but he has found a friend in the vampire who sounds like liquid music when he talks. They were with Dmitri when I left."
"Janvier?"
"Yes, Janvier." A sparkle in Majda's eyes. "That one has charm bred into his bones, just like Jean-Baptiste." The sparkle grew. "You have not seen it yet for he is so
very angry, but I think when it reappears, you will understand how I stood no chance when he decided I was the woman for him."
Elena grinned at the idea of her grandfather being a smooth-talking charmer. "You two fit." Just like she fit with Raphael, Janvier with Ashwini.
"Yes." Looking back toward the Tower door, as if searching for him, Majda said, "It hurts him to talk about Marguerite, so I will tell you what you should know before he arrives."
"You don't have to--"
"It is part of your history, azeeztee--"
Elena didn't hear the rest through the slam of emotion, her heart a tornado in her chest. "No one has called me that for two decades."
"She remembered?" A rasping whisper. "My precious baby remembered?"
Elena nodded. "Her mother's kisses, the way you had such a soft voice when speaking to her, the words you used most often."
Tears glittered in Majda's eyes. "She didn't believe herself abandoned?"
"No." Elena frowned. "She grew up believing you died in a bus accident where your body was washed away."
"Sister Constance." A shaken whisper. "She did what I asked, must've used the bus crash when it happened at the right time." Sobs broke her words into pieces.
Elena didn't hesitate. She leaned in and took the woman who was her grandmother into her arms. And thought--she's so small. Like her own mother had been. It was Jeffrey who'd given Elena her height. Wrapping her wings around Majda to shield her from prying eyes, she held her grandmother as Majda sobbed for her lost child who had grown up knowing she had been deeply loved by her mother.
"Gian left me alone for a year," Majda whispered some time later, her sobs having left a rasp in her throat and her arms still around Elena. "I thought he'd moved on, but he hadn't. And when I became with child, he was enraged, though I didn't discover that until he had me captive. He beat one of the other Luminata so badly that it took him months to recover."
"Hell." All those angels were over a thousand years old, with the attendant healing powers, which meant Gian had turned someone into mincemeat. As he'd nearly done to Ibrahim. The angel remained in anshara under Laric's watchful eye, the healer having chosen to stay in Lumia until Ibrahim was healed. He had the Cadre's permission to continue on at Lumia afterward, but he'd decided to head for the Refuge and the Medica, where Keir had already offered him a position.