by Nalini Singh
Oh. “How about you turn it upside down and land it that way instead?” She squeezed his arm, felt muscle and tendon shift under her touch as he took more of her weight. “No fatalities, Bluebell.”
Illium blinked, met her gaze ... then gave a slow, wicked smile. “Where do you go?” When she told him, he said, “I’ll meet you there.”
She released his arm and dropped below the turbulence as fast as possible, clearing off in a direction that would take her out of the path of any activity. But she wasn’t so distant that she missed the sight of Illium flying above the machine.
Her throat dried up, and if he’d been close enough to hear her, she’d have told him to stop. Dear God, those blades would shred his wings if he made a single error of judgment. But then Illium—laughing, playful, powerful Illium, did something and the blades just . . . stopped. He let the chopper free-fall for two stomach-churning seconds before catching it from below and flipping it over.
She realized the fiend was having fun.
Shaking her head, she carried on toward Ignatius’s apartment, which ended up being very close to the Tower. Thankfully, the high-rise had a flat roof, so she didn’t have to make a tight landing. Skidding across the rough surface, she took a minute to catch her breath before searching for and finding the entrance to the building. It was locked.
“Ash, thank you again.” The other hunter had not only taught Elena how to pick locks with the skill of a master jewel thief—and didn’t that just bring up all sorts of intriguing questions—she’d given Elena a set of slim lock-pick tools that she carried in a special pocket built into the knife sheath on her thigh.
Pulling out the pick she needed, she went to work. “Too easy.” She squeezed through the tiny metal door, a hiss escaping her mouth as her right wing scraped along the rusty edges.
Glancing back, she saw that while a few deep blue feathers bore flecks of metal, there was no blood. Probably the best she could’ve hoped for, she thought, deciding against the elevator at the end of the service corridor—who knew how tiny that would be. Instead, she took the stairs down three levels to the floor where Ignatius had had his apartment.
She scented him the moment she opened the stairwell door and stepped into the corridor—the burnt treacle of his scent was imprinted in the walls, in the carpet. But not only his. There were, in fact, so many vampiric scents threaded through the air that she wondered if this wasn’t an “overflow” building, used by vampires who weren’t high enough in the hierarchy to rate a room in the Tower, but needed to be close to it.
A door opened down the hall as she stopped in front of Ignatius’s apartment.
Crushed diamonds in aged brandy, decadent chocolate stroking over her breasts, fur sumptuous and thick against her most intimate flesh.
9
“What are you doing here?” She got the question out between gritted teeth, fighting the hotly sexual need aroused by Dmitri’s insidious scent—a need that was a compulsion disguised as seduction. It made her wonder just how many hunter-born had fallen prey to that snare. And what Dmitri had done to them.
“I had business with another resident.” The vampire strolled over, his hands in the pockets of his stone gray suit pants. He’d discarded the jacket and the open collar of his white shirt exposed a triangle of skin the shade of sun gold honey.
Rich, dark eyes met hers . . . right as another wave of scent—luscious and primal in its erotic promise—crashed over her senses. Her knees threatened to crumple. “So,” she managed to get out through a throat gone husky with driving hunger, “the truce is over?”
“Wouldn’t want you to think we were friends.” It was the kind of thing she was used to hearing from Dmitri, but there was a thrumming anger beneath the words today, the same anger she’d sensed as they stood looking down at Betsy’s desecrated body.
She didn’t take it personally. She’d stood over too many broken and mutilated victims, knew what it was to want to strike out, make someone pay. The desire was a quiet, unremitting fury that could destroy. If her friends in the Guild hadn’t pulled her back when she’d gotten too close, hadn’t taught her the brutal necessity of emotional distance, she’d have fallen into the abyss long ago. So yes, she understood—but that didn’t mean she was about to allow Dmitri to use her as his whipping boy.
He was so close now that the heat of him caressed her body in long, languid strokes, his scent twining around her like a thousand silken strands. Breathing through her mouth, she put one hand on his heavily muscled shoulder, leaned in close as if she planned to whisper in his ear ... and bit down on his earlobe.
HARD.
“Fuck!” He wrenched away with preternatural speed.
“Game over?” she asked with poisonous sweetness as she struggled to catch her breath. “Or do you want a matching set?”
“Bitch.” A slow, sensual smile that no longer held the raw edge of rage. “Always liked that about you.”
Sliding back the dagger she’d pulled the same instant that she bit him, she said, “I can’t do this with you here.” Even muted as it was now, his scent blinded her to anything else in the vicinity. It was a drug, that scent, addictive and toxic. “Get out or I’ll kill you.”
Her flat statement made him blink, rock back on his heels. “You sound as if you really mean that.”
At that instant, she did. Allowing the knowledge to seep into her expression, she met those eyes filled with a confident, potent sexuality. Slater had touched her with his scent, nearly broken the mind of the child she’d been—a child who didn’t understand why her body liked what the monster was doing to her. Her horror of compulsion ran deep, deep enough to drive her to the most primitive savagery in a bid to survive.
Dmitri inclined his head, withdrawing all but a final taunting tendril of scent. “I think you might want this.” A slender metal key dangled from his finger.
She stepped aside.
To her surprise, he prowled forward and inserted the key into the lock without further jerking her chain. Her eyes were drawn to the droplets of blood on his shoulder. “You bring out the worst in me.”
Nudging open the door, he turned, a faint smile on that face meant for silk-sheeted bedrooms and blood-soaked fields of battle. “Thanks.”
“Did you come inside before I got here?”
“No.” He leaned in the doorway while she walked through and into the living room. “I hear your Bluebell is here.” A pregnant pause.
Neck prickling in warning, she shifted to keep him in her line of sight. “What?”
“Be careful with Illium, Elena.” A soft caution. “He’s vulnerable to the humanity you carry within.” He was gone the next instant.
Frozen by the impact of the unexpected words, she started when she heard the whisper of angelic wings. “Stay there.” She kept her back to Illium as she spoke. “I want to do a walk-through first.”
“Your wish. My command.”
His unruffled agreement cut the taut rope of tension running up her spine. Glancing over at him, she saw that he was playing a carved silver knife in and around his fingers, each flick blindingly fast. Her friend, she thought. He was her friend, just like Ransom, just like Sara, and she wouldn’t damage that friendship with false worries.
He has a fascination with mortals.
Raphael had said that to her before she’d woken with wings of midnight and dawn.
“Why are you staring at me, Ellie?” Illium said without taking his eyes from the blade dancing around his fingers.
The words were instinctive, something she might as easily have said to rib Ransom. “You’re so pretty, it’s difficult to resist.”
A flashing grin, a hint of that aristocratic English accent in his response. “It’s hard to be me, it’s true.”
Snorting, but with her composure restored, she began to inspect the apartment. It was much as she’d expected. Ignatius had been neat enough, but not obsessive about it. She could see a glass in the sink, a sweater thrown over the sofa, and
the bed, though made, was done so in a way that said he was more worried about comfort than anything else. There was even a flower in a vase on the bedside table—a bit exotic for her taste, but vampires tended to go for the dark and lush.
Returning to the living area, she nodded Illium inside. “There’s nothing weird here. No scents that shouldn’t belong, no signs that he was losing his mind.” Vampires in bloodlust often destroyed their homes during the first surge. “Supports what we saw at the scene—that he was in control of his faculties when—”
“Elena.” Illium’s voice was as lethal as the sword he wore along his spine.
Guard up, she walked to where he stood in the bedroom doorway, followed his gaze to the glossy black of the hothouse orchid that stood on the bedside table. “Tell me what that means.”
He didn’t reply, his gaze focused inward.
An instant later, the wind and the rain, crisp and clean, filled her mind. Illium tells me it is a pale, scentless facsimile of the original, but it is nonetheless her symbol. Raphael’s voice was so strong, she knew he had to be in the Tower. My mother is waking.
Sucking in a breath, she stared at the luxuriant black of the petals, a color so deep and rich she’d never before seen its like. She was controlling Ignatius?
Perhaps. It’s more likely she simply took advantage of urges he would have otherwise kept contained.
Elena blew out a breath, biting down on her lower lip. It’s a little pat, don’t you think, Archangel?
A pause. Wait there. I will join you.
Turning to Illium, Elena raised an eyebrow. “How did you know about the orchid? You weren’t born until hundreds of years after Caliane’s disappearance.”
“I did read some of my history books in school.” A disgruntled look. “Jessamy used to threaten to tie me to a desk unless I did my homework.”
She could just see him, a blue-winged boy with eyes of gold and a smile full of mischief. But tempting as it was to follow that thought, she focused on the death that seemed to be stalking those closest to her. While she wasn’t convinced that Caliane had anything to do with this, about one thing she had no doubts whatsoever. “Raphael is the ultimate target.”
Everyone else was collateral damage.
Her hands fisted against the cold-blooded malice of that truth just as Raphael walked into the room. Brushing his wing over her own, he moved past her to pick up the orchid. “Illium,” he said, “leave us.”
“Sire.”
Only after Illium was gone did Elena walk over to put her hand on Raphael’s arm, her eye on the flower that had seemed an innocent decoration minutes earlier. “Even if your mother is waking,” she said, having had time to think things through, “the turmoil around the world says that that awakening is hardly a calm, ordered thing. But going after my half sisters? That was very much a calculated act—a conscious act.”
Raphael dropped the orchid onto the clear glass of the bedside table. “You are forgetting my rage.”
“No, I’m not. That came out of nowhere, like the ice storms and other disasters. Who’s to say the rest of the Cadre isn’t feeling the same impact?”
Raphael went motionless. “You are right, Elena. I will speak to my people, find out if any of the other archangels have acted unlike themselves of late.” Lifting his hand, he stroked his fingers along the sensitive arch of her wing.
She shivered. “You ask me—someone is using the disruption caused by the waking of an Ancient to his or her own advantage. Everyone knows the possibilities, knows that the one who wakes might well be your mother.” And that even an archangel could be blinded by the black crush of memory. “They’re trying to rattle you.”
“They harm what is mine,” Raphael murmured, “by harming those you love.” His hand fisted in her hair. “It is a coward’s game.”
Hearing the cold condemnation in that statement, she knew the architect—or architects—of this vicious game would soon find themselves in the crosshairs of the Archangel of New York.
They were about to take off a few minutes later when Elena mentioned she was heading over to see if Sara had returned to the office.
“Illium will go with you.”
Elena blew out a breath, ready for battle. “Raphael.”
“I do not have time for this, Guild Hunter.”
She went to snap back a demand that he make time, but one look at his expression and annoyance was swept aside by a deeper, far more intense emotion. “Raphael, you look ...” Cruel. Heartless. “What are you going to do?”
His answer was austere. “A vampire thought to betray me. Now I must punish him.”
Ice trailed up her spine. Closing the small distance between them, she put her hand on the tip of his wing, holding him to her. His responding glance was that of the immortal he was—someone for whom mercy was a weakness. “Would you stop me, Elena?” A question asked without intonation as she moved to face him.
Spreading out her own wings to keep her balance on the edge of the roof, she narrowed her eyes. “I’m no innocent. You damn well know that.”
Midnight strands of hair danced over his face as the wind stroked through them, possessive as a lover. “Yet you stand in my way.”
“I know you need to control your vampires.” Every hunter knew the truth—that the almost-immortals were predators under the skin. Given free reign, they’d drown Manhattan in crimson, turn it into an abattoir devoid of life. “You have to deal with transgressions hard and fast to ensure no repeats.”
Raphael continued to watch her with that quiet, remote patience.
Frustrated, she growled low in her throat and grabbing at the white linen of his shirt, pulled him down toward her. She knew she’d startled him, but his hands locked tight around her hips to keep her from overbalancing on the ledge.
“You,” she said against those perfectly shaped lips that could turn cruel without warning. “You’re my priority. Punish who you must, but don’t do anything so terrible that it pushes you into the Quiet.” She hadn’t known him in that inhuman, emotionless state, was terrified of losing him to it even now. “Not that. Never again, Raphael.”
A shudder passed through him, his hands flexing on her hips as he tugged her to his body. “You hold me to the earth, Elena.”
Able to feel the heated strength of him against her abdomen, she nipped at his lower lip with her teeth, relief a whisper of rain against her senses. “Don’t you forget it.” Moving her hand down to play over the amber he wore on the ring finger of his left hand, she used those same teeth on his jaw. “You belong to me, Archangel. And I look after what’s mine.”
An hour after he’d watched Elena’s wings sweep out toward the Guild in a play of midnight and dawn, Raphael turned his attention to the vampire who huddled in a chair in front of the black granite of his desk, a weak, whimpering creature who’d sought to steal from an archangel. The stupidity of the act aside, the fact that he’d even considered he might get away with it argued to a greater rot. Raphael intended to excise that rot from existence before this day was done.
“Do you know what I’m going to do with you?” he asked softly from where he stood by the huge window that looked out over Manhattan. He’d punished and executed many over the centuries that he had ruled, but he had not expected betrayal in the heart of his territory and that honed his anger into a gleaming blade.
“Sire, I didn’t—I—” Blubbering words running together in an unintelligible babble.
Raphael let him speak until he ran out of words. “Tell me why,” he said, turning to watch for his hunter in the skies as he had a habit of doing.
A sniffle, a sucking in of air. “She said you would never know.”
Raphael swiveled to face the vampire. “Who?”
Compulsively rubbing together his hands, he said, “One of the head accountants.”
“I want a name.” How deep did this treachery run?
“Oleander Graves.”
Raphael knew all of his senior people, and tha
t name wasn’t on the list.
“She said you’d never know,” the vampire blubbered again, bringing Raphael’s mind back to the unpleasant task at hand. “She was so beautiful.”
Weak, Raphael thought in disgust. The male was so weak, he should’ve never made it into the Tower, but even immortals sometimes made mistakes. Without further words, Raphael reached out with his power and crushed the vampire’s rib cage into his chest, piercing his internal organs.
As blood bubbled out of the man’s mouth, Raphael knew that to those outside the Tower the punishment would appear barbaric. They knew nothing of the bloodlust that lurked near the surface of so many vampiric minds, how easy it would be for the monsters to roam free. And this damage would heal in a day at most. The real punishment was yet to come. “You are to go to ground for the next decade.”
Panic in those eyes, a plea that Raphael could not heed, not if he intended to keep the Hudson from running a dark ruby red. He was an archangel—even if every vampire in the city surrendered to bloodlust, he’d gain control within hours at most, but to do so, he’d have to slaughter hundreds of the Made. “Go.”
As the vampire left, clutching broken ribs and fighting not to dribble blood on the pristine white of the carpet, Raphael turned back to the window. The sentence was just, but it would likely break a mind as weak as the one that had just scuttled out of his office. Any other punishment would’ve given encouragement to others who might seek to betray me. Reaching out to speak to Elena was not a conscious decision.
Raphael?
I sentenced him to be buried alive in a coffin-sized box, he told his hunter with the heart of a mortal. He will be fed enough to be kept alive and whole, but he will remain in that box for ten years.
Shock, worry, pain, he felt the cascade of her emotions like blows.
I’m sorry, Raphael. I’m sorry he put you in a position where you had to make that choice.
In spite of her earlier words, he’d expected her to be horrified by what he’d done, for this was not something she could have expected. It was not a human punishment. But he’d forgotten that she was a woman who’d survived a monster, who understood that sometimes there were no easy choices. Come to me after your talk with Sara. I would hold you.