by Nalini Singh
A twitch of his lips. “Have you tried drinking blood?”
Elena nearly pulled out her crossbow and carried through on her threat—the asshole was powerful, would survive it—then she realized he was serious. “Blood?”
“Archangelic blood in particular. Violent amount of energy in it.”
Finishing off the chocolate bar, Elena considered it. “I’m not a vampire. Would it even work?” Forget about the actual drinking blood part of it; if it would stop the hunger gnawing at her from the inside out, she’d pinch her nose closed and throw it back like medicine.
Dmitri shrugged. “What have you got to lose?”
“I’ll talk to Raphael.” Walking past, she said, “Sometimes, I can almost believe you might once have been human.”
“Clearly, I need to up my game.” A hint of fur and champagne wrapped around her, sensual and caressing and mocking.
“Argh!” Swiveling, she had the crossbow in her hand and was shooting the bolt before she could think about it.
Dmitri moved . . . and the crossbow bolt thudded home in the wall behind him. “Destroying Tower property again.” A headshake followed those censorious words. “‘Don’t get involved with the white-haired accident-on-legs,’ I said to Raphael, but did he listen?”
“Give me back my bolt you scent-infested-excuse-for- a-vampire.”
Grabbing it out of the air when he obliged, she strode off without another word . . . and heard Dmitri laughing behind her, the sound deep and unrestrained. Her own lips were twitching hard, but she managed to keep it together until she was in the elevator and he couldn’t see her. Her laughter was near-hysterical and it was a release.
God, she wanted her archangel home.
She was sane again by the time she tracked Ashwini and Janvier to the sparring ring in a lower level of the Tower. As members of her Guard—which she would never need if Cassandra’s prophecy held true—the couple had to spend a certain amount of time honing their skills with the blade and any other weapons in which they were or could become proficient.
Since the two were in the middle of something, Elena sat down on the bleachers and reviewed all she knew. With Santiago digging up more on Lee and Kumar, Jade remained her best lead. She had to eliminate him from the suspect list, if nothing else. That was, unless he had a connection to Lee, Kumar, Blakely, and Acosta—or had decided to use their deaths to cloak his attempt against Harrison.
She was getting ready to interrupt Ash and Janvier when Dmitri—now dressed in an olive-green T-shirt and camouflage pants suitable for sparring—appeared from a ringside entrance and assumed the role of adversary. Janvier was older than Ashwini, but she was better at taking on Dmitri.
Because Ash saw the future, too.
A cold wind infiltrated Elena’s blood, a wind that tasted of incomprehensible age.
She did interrupt then—she had no time to waste. When she updated them on Nishant Kumar and Terence Lee, Janvier’s bayou-green eyes widened. “There is our connection, cher,” he said to Ashwini.
It turned out the couple had heard the same rumors—of a drug that caused psychotic hallucinations and blackouts in vampires and could be used for sexual assault. Street name: Vamhypnol. “We had no reason to connect it to Blakely or Acosta—or Harrison,” Ashwini said, hands braced on her hips. “But we’ve been gathering intel on it as fast as we can around investigating the murders, because this stuff is bad news.”
Dmitri spoke. “Why is this the first I’m hearing about it?”
“Not enough for a report,” Janvier replied. “We’re waiting to hear back from a woman who might give us more.”
As the couple laid out all they knew, Elena heard two familiar names.
“Wait,” she broke in. “Unless Red Cutie and Monique Darling are common working names among pros, those are the two who spoke to Santiago about how Kumar and his buddy, Lee, raped them under the drug’s influence.”
“Shit, Ellie.” Ashwini played restlessly with a blade star. “Both women are dead.”
Elena’s gut clenched. “Murder?”
“Non.” Janvier’s languid tone had turned grim. “What was the word our doctor friend used, cher?”
“Brain aneurysm,” Ashwini supplied. “Each had a massive one.”
“As effective as decapitation in causing vampiric death.” Dmitri folded his arms. “Cause severe damage to the brain and there’s not enough left for the body to know how to regenerate it.”
Elena’s own brain snagged on something. As if she had a crucial bit of the puzzle and didn’t know it. But when she tried to follow up on the thought, it vanished without a trace. Frustrated, she said, “When did they die?” Santiago had spoken to them a bare two months ago.
“Been five weeks for Red, four weeks for Monique,” Ashwini said.
The timeline didn’t work to answer the questions of this confusion of a case. “Any hint of other victims?”
Ash nodded. “One other—her friend that told us about her said she’d ask the victim to call.” A frown. “It’d be good if she did that now.”
They all stared at her when her phone rang from where it sat at the side of the sparring circle.
“You are not sending telepathic messages now.” Elena scowled.
A grin. “Just playing with you.” Ashwini grabbed her phone. “She messaged before to say she’d call when she was on break from her shift at the strip club. I got lucky with my timing.”
“Lucky as only your wife gets,” Dmitri murmured to Janvier under the cover of her conversation.
The vampire grinned. “My Ashblade is always lucky—she has me for a husband.”
“You, on the other hand, won’t be getting lucky anytime soon, if you keep that up,” Ashwini threatened after hanging up. “Our third victim didn’t black out, but she did get hazy after drinking a glass of blood offered to her by her date. Her memories of the hour that followed are patchy, but she’s sure she was sexually assaulted.” Voice a blade, she continued. “Date was Simon Blakely.”
Silence as they absorbed that information.
“Accidental lower dose . . . or a purposeful one because Blakely fancied himself a ladies’ man?” Elena thought aloud. “A comatose ‘lover’ wouldn’t feed his ego.” She was starting to feel more and more in harmony with the man who’d amputated Blakely’s genitals. “Maybe Blakely figured a lower dose would mean a compliant, semiconscious woman.”
“We must get this woman medical assistance.” No humor in Janvier’s voice or expression now. “We don’t know when the two dead victims were raped, which means there’s no way to work out the time it takes for the aneurysm to strike.”
“Lower dose, she might survive.” Dmitri’s face was dangerous. “Tell her the Tower will cover her costs.”
Yes, Dmitri could act human at times.
“A rape drug that kills down the road is one hell of a motive.” The only problem was Harrison—either Elena didn’t know him at all and he was hiding an ugly secret, or they were missing a critical piece.
And what was it that she couldn’t remember?
“Is the drug widespread?” Dmitri asked, all deadly power and taut control.
Ashwini shook her head. “Low-level vamps have heard of it, but the only people we know to have had personal contact with it are the three rape victims—and the men who gave it to them.”
Running his hand through the dark chestnut strands of his hair, Janvier picked up the thread. “Our Holly and Venom know a fixer who works in the higher levels of the city, with the richer vampires and angels, and he says none of them are using it. No one wants to risk it after you came down so hard with the umber situation.”
“Blakely, Kumar, and Lee didn’t care about the risk to their victims.” Elena wanted to stab the rapists herself. “It’s possible Acosta didn’t, either.” Though the amputated hand made her think he hadn�
�t been involved in the sexual abuse. “It was about control, about power.” Same as rapists everywhere. “This drug, it only works on vampires?”
“Yes,” Ashwini confirmed. “But two human pros who work the Quarter”—a tap on her neck to indicate they offered honey feeds—“said Kumar picked them up a time or two, and they came out of it without memories. Symptoms fit in with a human rape drug.” Her eyes flashed. “Only reason they kept going back was because he paid them in cocaine.”
“He chose his targets well.” Dmitri’s voice was like ice, so cold it burned. “Your brother-in-law,” he said to Elena, dark eyes flat. “You think he’s capable of this crime?”
“As far as I know, Harrison isn’t into rape or drugs.” She clenched her jaw. “If I find out different, I’ll execute him myself.” It’d break Beth to discover that kind of evil in the man she loved. “He has a wife, a child, both of them innocent of any wrongdoing—we give him the benefit of the doubt until we have proof either way.”
Dmitri gave a curt nod.
“As for suspects—a well-trained human could’ve taken out Nishant Kumar and Terence Lee.” Elena could’ve done it as a young hunter. “Per the police report, they were small, not particularly strong, and had no real combat training. Did admin work during their Contracts.”
“I examined Blakely and Acosta,” Ashwini said, “and they were flabby for vampires. Strong because of the vampirism, but not old enough for that to be a serious advantage against a skilled opponent.”
Elena went to reply when her forearm cramped again, giant screws twisting her muscles tight enough to snap. Raphael! An instinctive call as the pain threatened to bring her to tears, the agony in her arm joined by the throbbing vein on her temple. Archangel, I really need you. It was a desperate mental whisper even though she knew he was too far away to hear her.
30
Elena.
She nearly staggered at the faint echo of water crashing against rock, the sea winds in her mind. Excusing herself from the group with a mumbled statement that probably didn’t make sense, she made her way to the elevator. Raphael? Where are you?
Two hours from home. His voice was stronger now . . . and it held strange echoes.
Swallowing hard, Elena clamped her hand down on her cramping forearm and tried to breathe. You sound like the Legion. Sweat broke out along her forehead, the vein in her temple a hammer ringing down beat by beat. I’m not doing so good.
I am sending Nisia to you. Where are you?
Why hadn’t she gone to the infirmary herself or told the others to call a healer? She didn’t know. Her thoughts weren’t running in straight lines. It was difficult to think past the wall of pain.
ELENA. Where are you?
Corridor outside our suite. Stumbling out of the elevator, she just barely made it inside their suite before collapsing on the plush white carpet. It felt so soft against the side of her cheek, almost like a cocoon.
She curled up on it, a sleeping cat, her eyes fluttering.
Elena!
I’m so tired, Raphael. It took too much effort to speak.
The doors from the balcony shoved open to admit a whip of icy air; the power that swept in with it was violent and familiar. I’m hallucinating you now.
“Guild Hunter.” Raphael’s arms scooping her up, his wings burning white fire, the glow coming off him so blinding that she had to squint her eyes to see through it.
When she put her hand on his chest, his heart pounded in a beat that was far too fast for an archangel of his power. “Your skin burns.” Her brain struggled to comprehend what was happening. “Two hours . . .”
* * *
• • •
Elena went limp in Raphael’s arms on those confused words. But he felt the pulse of life in her veins, the rise and fall of the air in her chest. Taking her through to their bedroom, he put her down on the bed just as Nisia ran inside. The healer was flushed from her headlong flight . . . and came to a jagged halt at spotting Raphael.
Healer instincts kicking in a second later, she went straight to Elena. “Tell me what happened.” Already her hands were on his consort as Raphael explained Elena’s call to him, and the confusion and enervating sense of tiredness that had come with it.
“My apologies for the glow, Nisia,” he said at the end. “I cannot currently restrain it.” His body burned, as if his cells had boiled to an impossible intensity.
“It won’t affect my work, sire.”
Raphael tried to have patience as Nisia worked on the hunter who was his heart, but a kind of quiet fury ravaged his veins.
Raphael? Izak just reported that you dropped out of the sky onto a Tower balcony. I’d think the boy had been in the wine, but he sounded both earnest and astonished.
Glad for the distraction of Dmitri’s voice reaching for his mind, Raphael answered, I am in our suite. Elena is down.
Wounded? She left us with unexpected quickness but appeared fine.
Because his hunter hated showing weakness. I wait to hear from Nisia.
“She is out of energy,” the healer said a minute later, her tone dumbfounded. “There’s barely enough in her cells to keep her breathing.”
Raphael stared at the healer. “Has she not been eating?”
Frown dark, Nisia tugged at something sticking slightly out of one of Elena’s pants pockets. She had to unzip the pocket to get it out. “A chocolate bar wrapper . . . No, there are three.”
Nisia dropped the wrappers on the nightstand. “She’s eating and drinking but even with the potent and double-strength mix I made for her, she isn’t intaking enough energy to fuel the changes in her body.”
Raphael could literally see Elena’s bones becoming more prominent against the dark gold of her skin as her body consumed itself from the inside out. “Will my blood make any difference?” Elena wasn’t a vampire, formed to metabolize blood into energy.
“We have to try.” Taut desperation on Nisia’s face.
It thrust a cold dagger into his gut. The practiced healer never panicked.
Lifting his wrist to his mouth, Raphael went to tear open his vein when the taste of a haunting golden richness licked across his tongue, a richness he’d tasted only once before in his immortal existence.
His canines elongated.
Life filled him to overflowing.
He bent, scooped Elena into his arms, and lowered his mouth to her lips. You must live, he said into her mind, as he had once before, when they fell broken and bloodied to a New York that was jagged splinters and shattered buildings below them. She had been a dying mortal then, her body so badly damaged that her soul was barely clinging on. You must live, Elena-mine. I would rather die with you than walk into eternity without you by my side.
A sigh into his mouth before her body began to warm, and she raised a hand to wrap it around his neck, her fingers locking in his hair. Her eyes remained closed, but he saw a glow through her eyelids and it was silver. Like moonlight on water, a gift of light and shadow.
Their kiss went on for always . . . and it wasn’t long enough.
When they parted, his canines were the size they should be and Elena’s cheekbones were no longer threatening to cut through her skin, but when her lashes lifted, he saw the eyes he’d seen the day she first stood her ground against him, on the Tower roof. The ring of silver she’d developed since they’d become one was gone. All he saw was a clear, pristine gray.
Fear was an anvil falling on his heart.
“I know that taste.” She released his hair to brush her fingers over his lips. “We fell on that taste.”
“And we rose together.” He crushed her close. Go, Nisia. I must be with my consort.
The healer slipped away without a word.
Elena kissed him again, warm and languid and deeply alive. “Raphael,” she said against his lips when she broke the kiss thi
s time. “I’m not hungry for the first time in days.” A nuzzle of his throat. “Put me down. My wings feel different.”
He did so with care. “More damage?”
“No.” She flared them out, a wonder of midnight and dawn. “No.” A smile brighter than the dawn. “No damage at all.”
He saw the strength of her, and when she snapped her wings to her back and turned so he could check her wing posture, that posture was precise. “No drag,” he told her. “No weakness.”
Laughing in a relief that gave her voice a sharp edge, she said, “I guess all I needed was the kiss of ambrosia.”
Raphael went to agree when a feather floated to the carpet. Indigo blue.
Then another. Midnight.
And a third. Violet.
Elena followed his gaze. Face stilling, she bent and picked up the three feathers. Neither one of them spoke for long minutes as they waited.
The rest of her feathers remained on her wings.
“Fuck.” Shuddering, Elena dropped the feathers she’d picked up and walked into his arms.
He held her tight to the blaze of his body. When she lifted her face to his, he kissed her with a passion that devoured. Elena’s response held no gentleness, either, only a primal need. He would’ve torn off her knife sheaths if he didn’t know how much she treasured the soft leather.
So he broke the kiss and forced himself to undo the straps that held the sheaths to her forearms.
Elena kissed the side of his jaw, her fingers settling on his face. “I love how you love me,” she whispered, raw need altering into a poignancy that was a knife thrust to the heart.
Kissing her fingertips when they brushed his face, he continued with his task. Both knife sheaths, then the crossbow and quiver, and the hunting blade she wore at one ankle. Her hair was down so he didn’t have to check for blade sticks hidden in her braid. “Any other sharp objects on your person today, hbeebti?”
A grin that seared his heart. “Down my back.”
Raphael couldn’t smile yet, the memory of her collapsed body too fresh, but he reached to her back. Sweeping the tangled near-white of her hair over one shoulder, she bent her head, and he pulled out the long blade she wore in a spine sheath. He placed it on the pile of discarded weapons . . . then slammed his mouth down on hers.