by Nalini Singh
“Or maybe a volcano,” Ash said with a shrug when Elena voiced her thoughts. “It’d make as much sense as a lava sinkhole.”
Everyone stared at the hunter turned vampire.
She threw up her hands. “That was just me mouthing off, not a prediction.”
Elena exhaled quietly, while Dmitri scowled at Ash, and Raphael’s expression remained unreadable to anyone but Elena. He wasn’t brushing off Ash’s mad forecast, despite the other woman’s disclaimer. He was probably already thinking of an evacuation plan—just in case.
The ongoing monsoon rains that had hit Africa’s deserts less than an hour earlier had everyone jumpy. According to early media reports, the Sahara was already so wet it had begun to turn into a river of orange sludge while the Kalahari’s drenching had people fearing catastrophic “flooding” from the sand. Desert residents all over the continent had begun to evacuate their homes, taking only what they could carry.
The situation was bad enough that Charisemnon and Titus, neighboring archangels and mortal enemies, had laid down their arms and were cooperating to move large numbers of people out of danger. Charisemnon was a sick bastard who preyed on impressionable young mortals in his territory and had everyone convinced he was all but a god—Elena figured he was helping so he didn’t end up with too few acolytes.
Titus, in contrast, was one of her favorite archangels, a hugely powerful being with a warm heart who was beloved by his people. And by the women he favored with his smile. He loved and he left and no one was angry with him. Women sighed and bit their lower lips and melted when reminiscing about their time with the Archangel of Southern Africa.
Raphael had spoken to both Titus and Charisemnon when news of the rains hit the world. The latter was no ally of his—not after the horror of the Falling—but he’d offered help if needed regardless. Because in some matters, the Cadre laid down all enmities and got on with saving the world. The two archangels had acknowledged the offer but held off from accepting it.
Titus had said, “We do not know what disasters may yet come, my friend. We must all husband our strength.”
Charisemnon had been even blunter. “I may need you when the plagues of locusts and snakes descend. I’m no longer so sure all of Mad Cassandra’s prophecies were so mad.”
So now, the five of them focused on a problem that had hit much closer to home.
Playing a blade restlessly through her fingers, Elena laid out the facts of Harrison’s attempted murder. “He wasn’t stabbed,” she said to Ashwini, “but the forensic team that took images of his throat wound say it looks like it was made by the same weapon as that used to decapitate your Quarter victims.”
To say the connection had come as a shock would be a gross understatement.
16
“Well, shit.” Arms folded, Ashwini braced her back against the wall nearest the door. “We just cleared our only suspect.”
Raphael’s wings whispered as he resettled them, white fire dancing along the edges of his primaries and his presence holding a razored edge. Her archangel was not taking the changes in her well. Neither was Elena. She wanted answers, but all she had were questions and—strapped to one thigh—a bottle of Nisia’s energy drink that tasted like chocolate and fruit at the same time.
Might as well embrace the silver linings where she could find them.
“Tell us what you discovered at your scene,” Dmitri said to Janvier and Ashwini. Raphael’s deadly second was wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans, as he so often did, the bronze color of his skin unchanged even in the heart of winter and the weapons on his body so cleverly hidden that Elena could spot only one.
“Two dead vampires in the same apartment,” Janvier said in his deceptively lazy Cajun accent, his body holding up the wall beside Ashwini. “Simon Blakely and Eric Acosta. Acosta looks to have been lying on the sofa. My brilliant Ashblade”—a slow smile at Ashwini—“tracked down the addict from whom he took a honey feed about six hours before the bodies were discovered.”
Honey feeds were the vampiric equivalent of shooting up. A mortal junkie would take a drug of the vampire’s choice and then, while that junkie was high, the vampire would sink his or her fangs into one of the junkie’s remaining uncollapsed veins. Actual inhalation, injection, drinking, or eating of drugs stood no chance against the vampiric metabolism, but a honey feed high lasted long enough to make it worthwhile.
Rich vampire junkies often “kept” human junkies as pets. The vamps supplied the drugs, and in return, the junkie was the resident source of a honey feed high. Sex was often but not always part of the bargain—the ones who wanted sex during a feed made sure to keep their pet junkies healthy and pretty. Less well-off vampires did deals with junkies on the street.
“Our honey feed connoisseur made good money as a bouncer for one of the high-end clubs,” Ashwini continued. “But, from what I got on the streets, he blew most of that on feeding his addiction. Preferred junkies on crystal meth. Said it made their blood taste like acid.”
“Appetizing.” Dmitri’s voice said he’d seen it all before.
“He used so much that he’d have been a meth zombie if he didn’t have the vampiric metabolism,” Ashwini added. “According to our users, he tended to zone out on the crash, hallucinate, nobody much home upstairs for a while.”
“So he may have been in a drug haze when he was murdered?”
“Non. We believe Acosta was in a drug dream when he was bound,” Janvier replied. “The killing came later.”
“Pathologist found evidence of rope burns around his wrists and a nasty gag around his mouth.” Ashwini reached over to tuck in the tag sticking out from the back of Janvier’s dark green T-shirt. “Nothing obvious on his ankles, but we figure he must’ve been bound there as well.”
Arms folded, Dmitri leaned back against his desk. “It would seem your killer wanted the victim to know what was being done to him.”
“Yep,” Ashwini said. “Amputations came first, the throat-slitting the coup de grâce.”
Janvier said a string of words in his native tongue that sounded like a tease. Ashwini showed him a blade star in return. Janvier’s grin was wickedly playful.
Catching the byplay out of the corner of her eye, Elena chewed on the information the couple had shared. “How could a single person have gotten the drop on two vampires? Could we be talking more than one assailant?” She was thinking about Ash’s earlier mention of vampire gangs.
“We considered that, but everything points to one scarily organized murderer.” Ashwini pressed a boot up against the wall. “Indications are that Blakely was secured first, while Acosta was spaced out and pretty much useless. A yeti could’ve walked past him and he’d have said ‘groovy suit, dude.’”
True enough. Honey feed highs didn’t last long, but crystal meth, cocaine, heroin, or ketamine, the short period was intensely euphoric for users. A habitual user like Acosta had probably been used to hallucinations, even craved them as the sign of a good hit.
“Also, Blakely was . . .” Janvier’s moss-green gaze went to Ash. “What is the quaint saying, cher?”
“Caught with his pants down,” she supplied. “In flagrante frickin’ delicto.”
That certainly explained how one perpetrator had gotten the better of two vampires. “Blakely’s sexual partner?”
“In the wind.” Ashwini’s earrings moved gently as she spoke. “All we found of her were her panties. Could’ve been a small man who likes frilly panties—I’m not one to judge—but word on the street is Blakely was strictly into women, so I’ll go with female.”
Elena thought of Harrison’s panic about Beth and Maggie. “Escaped or was let go?”
“She would’ve been as naked as the victim, and, as the pros I talked to were happy to share, Blakely liked to be on top. No way she could’ve put up a fight.”
“That tells us something, does it
not?” White fire continued to dance on Raphael’s wings as he walked to the plate glass window behind Dmitri’s desk. “Our killer isn’t indiscriminate.”
Elena bit down hard on the inside of her cheek, unable to forget Harrison’s sheer fear. “Yet from Harrison’s reaction, this unknown threatened Beth and Maggie.”
“Your sister is married to Harrison, and Maggie is his daughter,” Raphael pointed out. “The woman in the Quarter was apt to be no one important to the dead vampire. She wasn’t on the killer’s target list.”
Jesus, that made too much sense.
“Which amputation goes with which victim?” Dmitri asked into the grim silence.
“Our friend in the bed had the family jewels hacked off—while he was very much alive and gushing blood. Assailant then stuffed said jewels into his mouth.” Ashwini glanced quickly at an incoming message on her phone before putting it back into her pocket. “And, yeah, I’m not finding that a coincidence, either. Same informants who told me about his sexual habits say the vic was a bit of a Don Juan.”
“A different jeune fille every night.” Janvier’s shoulders brushed Ash’s, the two of them having shifted subtly during the course of the conversation. “Such men leave a trail of anger in their wake—and often tread where they shouldn’t.”
“Any chance the killer is a woman?” Elena asked, slipping her knife back into an arm sheath.
Ashwini shook her head. “Can’t say either way right now. One other thing—second mutilation was also done while the victim was alive.”
“He slit Harrison’s mouth,” Elena murmured. “A different kind of mutilation, but mutilation all the same. Also done while he was alive and trying to hold his throat together.”
“Agreed.” Dmitri was nothing but business right then, all hard angles and violent vampiric power under total control. Not a man who would ever be led by blood hunger, ever be made a slave to the need to feed; no, Dmitri had fought that battle and won it long ago.
“All else aside,” he said, “it’s the intelligence involved that makes this killer dangerous. They might enjoy torturing their victims, enjoy watching the victims’ panic and pain, but they haven’t been careless.”
“He also had the willpower to cut his losses when necessary.” Janvier’s eyes, the rich green color reminiscent of the bayou, held Elena’s. “He ran rather than attack your father and ’tite Eve, likely because he had no idea of the threat he’d be facing. He’s a planner and he’s patient.”
Elena felt cold seep into her bones at the thought that Eve and Jeffrey could’ve easily ended up sprawled bloody and lifeless on the carpet.
Two more lives lost.
Two more graves dug.
Two more ghosts to haunt the living.
One more sister gone forever.
Shifting from the window, Raphael held her gaze with the crushed sapphire of his. You did not lose another sister, Guild Hunter, he said in a voice chill with the ever-growing power that scared her so for what it might mean for them. And that sister was armed and ready. Eve will not be caught unawares like your elder siblings.
Elena remembered Eve’s fierce concentration, the gleam of her long blade, thought of the way Jeffrey had given Eve her coat and Elena a scarf. He would’ve fought bitterly for his daughter’s life. She let herself believe the two would’ve won against a murderous assailant, because the alternative was a crushing blackness that suffocated.
I needed that, Archangel. More than his words, she’d needed to know he remained her Raphael even while power burned hot and blue in his eyes.
“Harrison might have answers for us,” she said aloud, “but he’s been put into a coma.” Beth’s husband had lost so much blood prior to Jason’s donation that his young vampiric body was in a state of violent shock.
“We’ll have to work with what we have until he wakes.” Ashwini straightened. “Janvier and I’ll continue to dig into the Quarter killings while you come in from the Harrison angle. We’ll pool information.”
Elena nodded; Ash and Janvier now had far deeper connections in the gray underground of the city, of which the Quarter was ground zero. “You said you cleared a suspect?”
“A junkie who got into an altercation with Acosta earlier in the week,” Ashwini clarified.
“He was naked in the glass display mezzanine at Club Masque during the time of death and for hours on either side.” Janvier’s liquid voice held a shrug. “The man, he has endurance.”
Ashwini parted her lips, paused, finally said, “Do you think Beth knows anything?”
Elena had already considered that particular question. “I’ll ask her.” But she wasn’t hopeful of a positive outcome. Beth and Harrison had a different relationship to Ashwini and Janvier—and Elena and her archangel. Beth was the homemaker and Harrison the man of the house, the one who handled finances and everything else outside of Beth’s domain of family and children.
Elena didn’t know if Harrison spoke to Beth about the more dangerous aspects of being a vampire, or if Beth would even want to know those facts. Everyone dealt with tragedy and loss in a different way; Beth had done so by insulating herself in a happy routine with defined lines. Elena just hoped her questions wouldn’t bring her sister’s fragile construction tumbling down.
It will begin in liquid fire
In sand that flows
In ice sharp as knives
In the death of one
—ARCHANGEL CASSANDRA, ANCIENT AMONG ANCIENTS, LOST TO AN EONS-LONG SLEEP
17
Ashwini and Janvier left first, off to prowl the Vampire Quarter for new leads.
Desperate inside in a way she couldn’t explain, Elena was about to drag her archangel out for a kiss before she went to Beth, when Dmitri got a call from Naasir.
“Ice?” Dmitri wasn’t a vampire who often betrayed surprise, but that one word was spiky with it. “How bad?”
The answer had his skin going tight over the bones of his face. “I will inform the sire.” A short pause. “If he requests it. Otherwise, head back to the Refuge.” Hanging up, Dmitri looked to Raphael. “Naasir and Andromeda decided to make a short trip to Alexander’s territory.”
That territory was Persia. Elena had no details of how Naasir, a wild and unique member of Raphael’s Seven, was tied to Alexander, but she was aware that Naasir had an open welcome to the Ancient’s territory—and, technically, Naasir’s mate, Andromeda, belonged to Alexander’s court.
“Ice in Alexander’s sun-filled lands?” The Legion mark burned almost too bright on Raphael’s temple.
“Not only ice. An ice storm in Qatar.”
Elena sucked in a breath. “Those poor people won’t have the clothes, the heating . . .” She knew parts of Alexander’s territory could get frigid, but Qatar was warm even in the winter months. “Are Naasir and Andi safe?”
“Yes. I’ve told Naasir to assist if asked but to return to the Refuge otherwise.” Dmitri’s features were grim. “There is little we can do quickly.”
“I will speak to Alexander.” Eyes of deep Prussian blue held Elena’s. Go to your sister, hbeebti, I will tell you the outcome.
Filled with a raw need for him at this moment when life drew them in different directions, she blew him a mental kiss, but his eyes didn’t lighten, his features set in lines so perfect they were brutal.
Drink, Elena. A hard order. You must not get any weaker.
Elena stopped in the corridor to rub her fingers over the spot under her heart, her wings slumping for a moment. I’m a fighter, Raphael. A reminder to herself as much as him. Even if the weapon involved is some weird healer mixture that tastes like chocolate blueberries and ripe apples.
Raphael’s response was a sea storm inside her mind, the lightning flashes within it incandescent. Letting the searing power of him sweep through her, she finished the drink she had in the bottle then detoured to r
efill it. That done, she ate three energy bars . . . while considering the new cut on her left arm.
She’d absently shoved up her sleeve while mixing up more of the drink and there it was. Higher up than the first, the cut was a fine line she could’ve gotten anywhere.
The problem was that it was paper-cut thin but an angry red. She checked both arms then pushed down her sleeves. She’d examine it again in a couple of hours. Right now, her priority was Beth. Elena had sat with her after Nisia finished the tests on Elena’s wings, only leaving her to attend the meeting. Holly had arrived at the same time to return a book she’d borrowed from Laric and somehow ended up chatting with Beth.
Elena’s sister had immediately warmed up to her. Maybe because Holly looked so very young and human, with her playful hair and bright clothes. Beth could have no idea of the murderous alien power that had once run through Holly’s veins.
Holly would never be an ordinary vampire. Her reaction times were dangerously fast, as fast as Venom’s—and he was hundreds of years older. She also had the ability to turn liquid in a way that was difficult to describe, but that meant she could avoid broken bones even if thrown against a wall at great force.
Elena could’ve never predicted that the two women would hit it off so well. Holly was as tough as Beth was soft . . . but Holly did love fashion as much as Beth, and Holly, too, had once been a far softer creature.
However, when Elena walked into the infirmary, it was to find Beth alone. She sat beside Harrison’s bed with a steaming mug in her hands and a fashion magazine on her lap. A small plate of cakes lay on the side table, the plate itself decorated with gold foil and hand-painted feathers.
“I see we’re looking after you.” Elena leaned down to press a kiss to her sister’s hair, her chest squeezing; some part of her would always see in Beth the lost little girl who’d clung to Elena’s hand beside far too many fresh graves.
“The magazine’s Holly’s,” Beth confided. “And she just raided a kitchen somewhere and brought me the tea and cake. She had to leave to do her shift at the sinkhole, but I knew you were in the Tower.”