Archangel's Enigma (Guild Hunter) Read online

  “PARANORMAL ROMANCE DOESN’T GET BETTER THAN THIS.”

  —Love Vampires

  PRAISE FOR THE GUILD HUNTER NOVELS OF NALINI SINGH

  “Intense, vivid, and sexually charged.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “[A] heart-pounding, action-packed story line of love and loss; death and destruction; family and friends; intrigue and suspense.”

  —The Reading Cafe

  “It’s dark and edgy, and so atmospheric.”

  —Book Chick City

  “Mesmerizing . . . Fascinating world-building.”

  —Bitten by Books

  “The Guild Hunter series is not set in a peaceful world and Singh doesn’t pull any punches.”

  —The Book Pushers

  “[A] remarkable urban fantasy series.”

  —RT Book Reviews (Top Pick)

  “Completely awe-inspiring.”

  —Fallen Angel Reviews

  “Stunning, original, beautiful, intriguing, and mesmerizing.”

  —Errant Dreams Reviews

  “[Ms. Singh] has a knack for writing characters that are truly believable, and admirably strong and resilient.”

  —Dark Faerie Tales

  “One of the most immersive and consistently creative works in urban fantasy.”

  —Grave Tells

  “World-building that blew my socks off.”

  —Meljean Brook, New York Times bestselling author

  “A fabulous addition to the paranormal world.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “[A] powerful, riveting novel. I found myself wholly absorbed.”

  —Dear Author

  “Dark, lush urban fantasy, steeped in violence and power.”

  —HeroesandHeartbreakers.com

  Berkley titles by Nalini Singh

  Psy-Changeling Series

  SLAVE TO SENSATION

  VISIONS OF HEAT

  CARESSED BY ICE

  MINE TO POSSESS

  HOSTAGE TO PLEASURE

  BRANDED BY FIRE

  BLAZE OF MEMORY

  BONDS OF JUSTICE

  PLAY OF PASSION

  KISS OF SNOW

  TANGLE OF NEED

  HEART OF OBSIDIAN

  SHIELD OF WINTER

  SHARDS OF HOPE

  Guild Hunter Series

  ANGELS’ BLOOD

  ARCHANGEL’S KISS

  ARCHANGEL’S CONSORT

  ARCHANGEL’S BLADE

  ARCHANGEL’S STORM

  ARCHANGEL’S LEGION

  ARCHANGEL’S SHADOWS

  ARCHANGEL’S ENIGMA

  Anthologies

  AN ENCHANTED SEASON

  (with Maggie Shayne, Erin McCarthy, and Jean Johnson)

  THE MAGICAL CHRISTMAS CAT

  (with Lora Leigh, Erin McCarthy, and Linda Winstead Jones)

  MUST LOVE HELLHOUNDS

  (with Charlaine Harris, Ilona Andrews, and Meljean Brook)

  BURNING UP

  (with Angela Knight, Virginia Kantra, and Meljean Brook)

  ANGELS OF DARKNESS

  (with Ilona Andrews, Meljean Brook, and Sharon Shinn)

  ANGELS’ FLIGHT

  WILD INVITATION

  Specials

  ANGELS’ PAWN

  ANGELS’ DANCE

  TEXTURE OF INTIMACY

  DECLARATION OF COURTSHIP

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  ARCHANGEL’S ENIGMA

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2015 by Nalini Singh.

  Excerpt from Slave to Sensation copyright © 2006 by Nalini Singh.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  JOVE® is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  The “J” design is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information, visit penguin.com.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62890-4

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Jove mass-market edition / September 2015

  Cover art by Tony Mauro.

  Cover design by George Long.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  for more books visit:

  nerdebooks.com

  Contents

  Praise for the Guild Hunter novels of Nalini Singh

  Berkley titles by Nalini Singh

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prophecy

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Epilogue

  Special Excerpt from Slave to Sensation

  Prophecy

  Zhou Lijuan stared into the large metal disk that hung on the far wall opposite her throne. It was a piece of art given to her by an admirer long, long ago. The admirer was lost in the mists of her millennia-old memory, but she’d kept the gift—there was something about the sleek shine of the disk, the way the carvings on the edges had been done with such delicacy, that spoke to her.

  Even after thousands of years of having it in the throne room of her innermost stronghold, she found it fascinating. Perhaps because that disk reflected her as clearly as any mirror, and yet was not fragile. The metal disk might dent but it would never break. It had reflected her strength and ambition as a young archangel, wisdom and power as she grew older. Today, it showed her the ravages of war.

  Many in the world still thought her dead and it suited her to allow them to believe such, so long as they kept their hands off her territory. Her generals were taking care of security, though she didn’t think even Michaela was arrogant enough to attempt an incursion. All feared her.

  Good.

  But for the fear to remain, they could not see the woman in the metal mirror. Not yet. That woman had hair of a familiar icy white; Zhou Lijuan had been born with hair as black as night,
but the color had faded with the growth of her power, as if her strength had leached it all away. By the time she was a thousand years old, her hair was “white as snow.”

  Her mother had said that to her and if she tried very hard, Lijuan could sometimes recall the face of the woman who had given birth to her. Mostly because she had bequeathed Lijuan her fine facial bones. The reflection in the metal had dramatic cheekbones that pushed against delicately translucent skin so thin it appeared it might tear with a touch. Thin blue veins pulsed beneath, but it was the red blood vessels around the pearlescent shade of her irises that caught the attention.

  It was as if her irises were swimming in blood.

  And they were—Raphael had hurt her. Her rage at that knowledge was a violent cold deep inside her body. No one hurt Zhou Lijuan. She would annihilate the upstart Archangel of New York for the insult, but first, she would make him watch as she enslaved his mortal consort. And for that, she needed to have patience, needed to finish healing, needed to finish becoming.

  Because not all of her had regenerated the same as before Raphael tried to obliterate her from existence.

  Lifting her hand with muscles that were weak and quivering, she examined her nails. They had grown back a gleaming ruby red and hooked over her fingertips like the talons of a great bird of prey. The incisors in her mouth, too, weren’t the same. Her other teeth were pure white, the incisors dark scarlet.

  It was oddly beautiful. As befit a goddess.

  Those incisors weren’t functioning yet, however. She’d attempted to feed on the glowing lifeforce of loyal subjects who wished to sacrifice themselves so their goddess could heal quicker and with less pain, but while her incisors appeared strong, they weren’t mature. She couldn’t penetrate the skin, and even when she used a knife to make the cut, she could suck up only a little useless blood, not the lifeforce of the sacrifice.

  Agony burned her nerve endings every instant of every day.

  Her bones ached.

  Her wings couldn’t hold her aloft.

  Only her mind was whole.

  Laying down her fully regenerated right hand on the arm of the throne of jade carved with nightmares and dreams and considered a treasure among angelkind by those who had seen it, she focused on the kneeling form of the angel below the dais. He had his forehead to the floor, his wings held gracefully to his back. She couldn’t remember how long he’d been sitting there and she couldn’t quite make out his form with clarity.

  Her bleeding eyes didn’t always work as they should.

  “Speak,” she said, and the word came out through a ravaged throat, the sound a harsh whisper that nonetheless howled with screams.

  Raising his head from the floor, the man . . . ah, it was the Scribe. Yes, she recognized that yellow hair down to the shoulders. The Scribe placed his hands on his thighs and kept his head respectfully bowed as he began to speak.

  “I have finished my work on the prophecy, sire.”

  Her blood pulsed, her senses sharpening. She remembered assigning him this task in the months before the battle with Raphael, even remembered reading the prophecy in an old scroll when she’d been a mere angel. At the time, it had meant nothing and she’d forgotten it for an eon. Then had come her growing power, and with it, a faint whisper of memory that told her the scroll was important.

  It had taken her scholars and trackers almost a year to rediscover the ancient text, and since the moment of rediscovery, the words had become an echo at the back of her head, a drumbeat she couldn’t unhear.

  Archangel of Death. Goddess of Nightmare. Wraith without a shadow.

  Rise, rise, rise into your Reign of Death.

  For your end will come.

  Your end will come.

  At the hands of the new and of the old.

  An Archangel kissed by mortality.

  A silver-winged Sleeper who wakes before his Sleep is done.

  The broken dream with eyes of fire.

  Shatter. Shatter. Shatter.

  “Tell me,” she ordered the Scribe.

  The Scribe’s voice was crystalline as he said, “I have traced the origins of the prophecy to the Archangel Cassandra.”

  Lijuan’s hand curled over the armrest of the jade throne, the carvings cutting into her flesh as the tiny hairs on her nape rose in a primeval response. “You are certain?” Cassandra had gone to Sleep so long ago that she was more myth than memory, an Ancient among Ancients. But one thing about her legend had never changed: that on her ascension, she had gained the great and terrible gift of seeing the future.

  Legend stated that she’d chosen to Sleep soon after she clawed out her own eyes in a vain effort to stop the visions. Her eyes had grown back within the day, and in the hour afterward, her dress still bloody, she’d disappeared. Most of her prophecies had been lost in time and the ones that remained were often disregarded as the scribblings of some unknown fantasist.

  “Raphael is the one kissed by mortality.” Lijuan didn’t understand how such a weakened archangel had almost been able to bring her down, but she would not make the mistake of underestimating him again.

  “I have no answers for the last-mentioned, for the broken dreams with eyes of fire,” the Scribe responded. “But the silver-winged Sleeper can be only one.”

  Lijuan’s grip on the armrest grew vicious as her back spasmed. Her wings had grown back after her brain and spinal column, as per the angelic hierarchy of what was important, but they were weak and prone to causing her torso to spasm, further exacerbating her remaining injuries.

  Breathing through the vicious sensations, she stared into the metal disk that acted as her mirror, and spoke the name of the Sleeper who needed to die. “Alexander.”

  1

  Seven months Naasir had been hunting. Seven months since he’d told Ashwini he was ready to find a mate. Seven months and still his mate hadn’t made herself known to him. Didn’t she know he was looking for her?

  Crouched on the railing-less edge of a high Tower balcony, he growled.

  A Legion fighter who’d just flown past turned to give him an appraising look. Naasir snapped his teeth at the bat-winged male and was pleased when the fighter changed direction to head to the Legion’s new home. Naasir liked that home, even if it had walls. It was a high-rise that had been turned into a giant greenhouse, windows taken out to form balconies, walls replaced with massive sheets of glass where possible, and a flight tunnel created in the central core, a tunnel big enough to accommodate wings.

  With fall now a blaze of red and orange and yellow across Central Park, the engineers had also added clever transparent “curtains” of what Illium had told Naasir was a high-tech material that allowed the Legion to fly in and out at will, but that maintained a warm, growing temperature within. Each time a fighter went through, the curtains fell automatically back in place, trapping the heat inside.

  Naasir had snuck into the high-rise soon after he first returned to New York two weeks earlier. The inside was structured so that the remaining parts of the internal floors and ceilings jutted out at unusual angles; the distance between one and the next was often deep. Enjoying the lush greenery within, the vines climbing up the sides already starting to take strong hold and small trees digging in their roots as flowers bloomed, Naasir had made his way to the top regardless—without alerting the Legion he was in their territory.

  He didn’t think the Primary had been pleased when Naasir appeared on the glass of the roof, but the leader of the Legion was loyal to Raphael, and Naasir was one of Raphael’s Seven, so they existed in a wary truce. Just thinking about the Legion made Naasir’s skin prickle and muscles tense.

  They were so old and so other that he often had to fight the compulsion to bite them.

  Despite that, or perhaps because of it, he sometimes felt that the strange fighters who flew on wings devoid of feathers, were more like him than anyone else in the entire world. Naasir might not have wings, but he was as other. Except, where there were seven hundred and seventy-s
even in the Legion, he was only one.

  You are angry with us because we are many, but you know deep within that you are one of us. A child of the earth. Bitterly young in comparison to our eons-long existence, but with a connection to life that is primal.

  The leader of the Legion had said that to Naasir with a straight face. The other man—though man didn’t feel like the right description—truly believed his words. He didn’t understand that Naasir wasn’t anything natural. He hadn’t been born of the earth; he’d been created by a monster.

  A monster whose liver and heart Naasir had clawed out and eaten.

  Teeth bared, he looked down at the balcony to his left and two floors below, noting that it was one of the rare ones with a railing. Dmitri had said he couldn’t jump to the city streets because he’d end up flattened like a pancake, but this jump wasn’t far and the wind, while brisk, wouldn’t push him right to the edge. Muscles bunching a split second after his eye fell on the other balcony, he jumped.

  Cold air rushed past his face, pasting his T-shirt to his body and stinging his eyes, and then his bare feet hit the hard surface of the balcony. Absorbing the impact through his entire body, having purposefully ended up in a feline crouch, he found the wind had pushed him farther than he’d expected—another couple of inches and he’d have hit the top of the railing, would’ve had to scrabble for purchase to keep from tumbling out into open air.