by Nalini Singh
His wings spread out to block her view of the room and it wasn’t until he growled, “Leave us!” that she realized someone else had entered.
“Yes, sire.”
Vampire. Dmitri.
And she’d been so fucking disoriented, so filled with manufactured lust turned into rage, that she hadn’t heard him enter. “I’m going to kill you!” Her sense of violation had her humiliatingly close to tears. She should’ve expected such tactics from Raphael but she hadn’t. Which made her an A-grade moron. “Let me go!”
He looked down at her, the blue of his eyes suddenly dark—as if a storm had rolled in. “No. In this state, you’ll force me to hurt you.”
For a second her heart kicked. He cared. She screamed again. “Get out of my head!”
“I am not in your head, Guild Hunter.”
The use of the formal title was a verbal slap, one that brought her back to her senses. Instead of responding with the blood-fury boiling inside her, she took several deep breaths and tried to go to that calm place in her mind, the same place she went to whenever the memories of Ariel—No, she couldn’t return there. Why wouldn’t the past leave her alone today?
Another deep breath.
The scent of the sea, cool, crisp, powerful.
Raphael.
She opened her eyes. “I’m fine.”
He waited several long seconds before releasing her. “Go. We’ll discuss this later.”
Her hand itched to go for a weapon but she simply turned on her heel and walked out. She had no intention of dying—not until she’d carved out Raphael’s lying eyes and thrown them in the deepest, dirtiest cesspool she could find.
As soon as he heard the elevator doors close, Raphael called down to security. “Don’t lose her. Ensure she stays safe.”
“Yes, sire,” was Dmitri’s response, but Raphael heard the edge of disbelief.
He hung up without responding to the unasked question. Why had he allowed the hunter to live after she attacked him?
Is rape what turns you on?
His mouth tightened, his knuckles whitening as he fisted his hands. He’d done and been accused of many things through the ages. But never had he taken a woman against her will. Never. He hadn’t done so today either.
But something had happened.
It was why he’d allowed her to assault him—she’d needed to vent her rage, and his disgust with himself was such that he’d welcomed the blows. There were some taboos that should never be broken. That he’d crossed a bright line he’d laid down centuries ago made him wonder about his own mental state. He knew his bloodstream was clear—he’d been tested yesterday—so this wasn’t a result of the toxin putrefying his mind, sending his powers out of control.
Which left him with the unknown.
He swore in a low, ancient language long dead. He couldn’t ask Neha, the Queen of Poisons. She’d see a weakness and immediately move to strike. None of the Cadre who might know the answer could be trusted in this except for Lijuan and Elijah. Lijuan had no interest in petty power. She’d gone too far, changed into something not wholly of this world. Elijah, Raphael wasn’t sure about, but the other male was the scholar among them.
The problem was, Lijuan eschewed modern conveniences like the phone. She lived in a mountain compound hidden deep within China. He’d either have to fly to her or . . . His fist tightened even further. He couldn’t leave his city while Uram roamed. Which left only one real choice.
As he turned to stride out, his eye fell on the message tube Elena had left behind. Destiny’s Rose was an ancient treasure, one he’d earned as a young angel in the service of an archangel of ages long past. Legend said that it had been created by the combined power of the first Cadre. Raphael didn’t know the truth of that, but it was undeniably priceless. He’d given it to Elena for reasons he didn’t entirely understand. But she would have it. It bore her name now.
Grabbing the tube, he headed up to the penthouse and, specifically, to the room of pure black in the dead center. The human covens would see that room as evil. They saw darkness as evil. But sometimes, darkness was nothing more than a tool, neither good nor evil.
It was the soul of the man using the tool that changed things. Raphael’s hand clenched on the message tube. For the first time in centuries, he wasn’t sure who he was. Not good. He’d never been that. But neither had he been evil . . . until today.
Poison
They were fools, all of them. They thought he was going to die.
He laughed, despite the pain that sliced through his eyes and into his body, agony that threatened to turn his bowels to water, his bones to so much pulp. He laughed until it was the only sound in the universe, the only truth.
Oh, no, he wasn’t going to die. He was going to survive this trial they called poison. A lie. An effort to consolidate their own power. Not only was he going to survive, he was going to come out of it a god. And when he was done, the Cadre of Ten would tremble and the earth run dark with rivers of blood.
Rich, nourishing, sensual . . . blood.
12
Elena walked out the Tower door and kept going, ignoring the taxi standing by. An incandescent anger, richer, deeper, more deadly than anything she’d ever before felt, fired through her nerve endings, causing pain but also keeping her alive, keeping her going.
The bastard, the goddamn bastard!
Tears pricked. She refused to let them rise. To do that would be to admit that she’d expected something more from Raphael, something human.
Catching a familiar scent, she spun on her heel, knife in hand. “Go home, vamp.” Her voice was molten fury.
Dmitri gave a courtly bow. “Be that I could do as my lady asks. Unfortunately”—he straightened, his shades reflecting her own angry image back at her—“I have other orders.”
“Do you always do as your master commands?”
His lips thinned. “I stay with Raphael out of loyalty.”
“Yeah, right. Like a little puppy dog.” She dug in her claws, in the mood to draw blood. “Do you sit up and beg when he asks, too?”
Dmitri was suddenly in front of her, having moved so fast he was gripping her knife hand before she could draw breath. “Don’t push me, hunter. I’m the head of Raphael’s security force. If it were up to me, you’d be strung up in chains, screaming as your flesh was flayed off your bones.”
The erotic scent of him made the image even more barbaric. “Didn’t Raphael tell you to stop the scent games?” She dropped a knife down from her arm sheath and into the palm of her weaker hand. Weaker, not weak. All hunters could fight with both hands.
“That was last night.” He bent closer, the planes of his face exquisitely drawn, the curve of his lips touched with a hint of cruelty. “Today, he’s probably extremely pissed with you. He won’t mind if I take a discreet bite.” A hint of fang as he flashed her on purpose.
“Right here on the street?” she asked, looking up at the line of his throat, vividly conscious of the push of his erection.
He didn’t bother to glance around. “We’re near Archangel Tower. The streets belong to us.”
“But”—she smiled—“I. Fucking. Don’t!” Slashing out with her knife, she carved a line across his throat.
Blood sprayed in an arterial rush but she’d already dodged out of the way. Dmitri grabbed at his neck and fell to his knees, his shades falling away to display eyes blazing fire. She read her death in those eyes.
“Don’t be a baby,” she murmured, wiping the knife on the grass and sliding it back into the sheath. “We both know a vamp your age will recover within the next ten minutes.” A violent wave of vampire scent crashed into her senses. “And here come your flunkies to help you out. Nice talking to you, Dmitri darling.”
“Bitch.” It was a wet gurgle.
“Thanks.”
He actually smiled, hard, lethal, scary as hell. “I like bitches.” The words were already clearer, his healing progressing at a faster pace than she would’ve believed.
But it was the dark hunger in his tone that got to her. Damn kinky vampire had actually liked the knife. Shit. Turning her back to him, she ran. The second he healed, he’d come after her. And right now, she was worried less about being killed than about being seduced out of her fucking mind.
Dmitri might make her ache with need, but she didn’t want him when he wasn’t around to dose her with that scent of his. It was a compulsion, that scent, far stronger than any other she’d ever heard of. But that was hardly surprising given who he called sire.
Raphael had taken her between one breath and the next. She’d thought she’d learned to detect him, to pick up the odd sense of disconnection between mind and self that had accompanied his earlier attempts. But this time, there had been nothing. One second she was worrying about vampire serial killers, the next she was crawling all over him, trying to suck his tongue down her throat. If she hadn’t snapped out of it, she was pretty sure she’d have been sucking other things, too.
Her face flushed.
Not in anger, though that was there. In desire. In heat. She might not want Dmitri when he was out of range, but she wanted the archangel. That made her a candidate for the asylum, but under no circumstances did it excuse what he’d done.
An instant later, she passed out of the restricted Tower zone to hit busy city streets, but instead of slowing down, she pushed herself even harder. Reaching into her pocket as she ran, she pulled out a cell phone and pressed in an emergency code. “I need a retrieval,” she gasped as soon as someone answered. “Sending location.” She pressed a button, activating the special GPS widget—it would transmit her location to the Guild computers until she switched it off. Because she couldn’t stay in one place. The second she did, the game was over.
She kept an eye out for a taxi, but, of course, there were none in sight.
Two minutes later, tendrils of hunger snaked around her, searching, caressing. A sumptuous warmth bloomed in the pit of her stomach. Shoving a fist against that body part, she took in another gasp of air and made a hard left. High-class department stores zipped by, followed by the Zombie Den—the hangout of choice for the vamps and their whores.
Images of the erotic scenes she’d witnessed last night filled her head.
Opulent.
Sensual.
Seductive.
Not whores, addicts. And the worst thing was, she couldn’t blame them. If Raphael ever got her in bed—not a chance since she was going to cut off his balls the first opportunity she got—she’d probably crave him to the end of her days. Infuriated, she pumped up her arms and swerved around a kid on a skateboard.
“Where’s the vamp?” the kid called out, jumping off his board in excitement. “Dude . . .”
Oh, fuck! She glanced over her shoulder and saw Dmitri gaining on her. The blood on his shirt was a scarlet flower but his neck was fine, his pretty face wiped clean. Snapping back her head, she darted into traffic, crossing the road to the blaring of horns, curses, and several excited screams. A tourist started snapping photos. Great. He’d probably get a shot of her being vampire-bit right before Dmitri turned her into a begging, crawling thing concerned with sex alone.
Her gun was suddenly in her hand. Knives were her weapon of choice, but if she was going to stop the son of a bitch before he got to her, she’d have to shoot him in the heart. There was a very slight chance she might actually kill him that way, and if she did, she’d be brought up on charges. Unless, of course, she could prove harmful intent. She could see it now.
“See, Your Honor, he was going to fuck me silly, make me like it.”
Yeah, that would fly. With her luck, she’d end up with some old fogey of a judge who thought like her father—that women were pawns, spreading their legs their only talent. Fury boiled through her in a second violent wave. She was about to turn, her finger already on the trigger, when a motorcycle screeched to a stop in front of her. It was pure black, as were the rider’s clothes and helmet. But there was a discreet gold G on the gas tank.
Switching direction, she jumped onto the back and held on for dear life.
Dmitri’s hand brushed her shoulder as the motorcycle peeled away. She turned to find him standing at the curb, watching her go. He blew her a kiss.
Raphael closed the door to the black-on-black room. For a second, he stood in the utter lack of light and considered what he was about to do.
Lijuan was totally removed from humanity.
What had happened between him and Elena had been very human, very real.
He set his jaw, knowing he had no other choice. Not with Caliane for a mother. If this was the beginning of some kind of a degeneration . . .
Walking instinctively to the center of the room, he focused his angelic abilities to a shining beam deep within. Like the glamour, this was something only an archangel could do. But unlike the glamour, it demanded a far heavier price. For the twelve hours after he did this, he would be Quiet, ruled by a part of his brain that had never known mercy and never would.
It was why he rarely used this form of communication. In the aftermath, he became something far closer to the monster that lurked in his heart, in the hearts of all archangels. Power was a drug and it didn’t only corrupt, it destroyed. It was during one of these Quiet periods that he’d punished the vampire who had ended up in Times Square.
The punishment had been nonnegotiable. But the Quietness in him had changed the timbre of it to something close to evil. Now, Raphael made sure not to schedule anything that could turn destructive during these periods. The problem was, once he went cold, he saw things in a different light and could very well change his mind.
But this had to be done.
Centered, ready, he spread out his wings to their fullest extent. The tips just barely touched the edges of the room and he could taste the blackness of the walls in his throat. Most humans and vampires believed that angel wings weren’t sensitive except at the arched line above the shoulders. They were wrong. Some quirk of angelic biology meant that an angel was fully conscious of any impact on his wings, whether it be in the center or at the very edge of his primaries.
Now he soaked in the blackness as if it were power. It wasn’t. The power came from within him, but the lack of stimulation—a kind of sensory deprivation—amped up his awareness of that power to excruciating levels. First it was a hum in his blood, then a symphony, then a thundering crescendo that filled every one of his veins, stretching his tendons to breaking point and lighting him up from within. It was at that instant—before an internal implosion that could leave him stunned for hours—that he raised his hands and threw power at the wall in front of him.
It buckled, then liquefied into a churning pool that reflected nothing in its ebony depths. Quickly, before the power could grow restless and seek to shove itself back into his body, he directed it into a searching pattern set to Lijuan. The ability to communicate over vast distances came from the same root as their mental gifts, but unlike those mental gifts, it was so potent it required a vessel to contain it. The walls within this room provided the most efficient of those vessels, but he could use other objects and surfaces if pushed.
If he’d tried this sending—to the other side of the world—using only his mind, he’d probably have shattered parts of his brain and destroyed this building in the process. In front of him, the swirling slowed, then stopped completely. The liquid smoothed over to black glass. Within was a familiar face and only the face. The searching was very specific—it would show him nothing but Lijuan.
“Raphael,” she said, her surprise open. “You chance the use of this much power while Uram is in your state?”
“It was necessary. I’ll be back to full strength by the time he devolves to the next stage.”
A slow nod. “Yes, he hasn’t crossed the final line, has he?”
“We’ll know when he does.” The whole world would know. Everyone would hear the screams. “I need to ask you a question.”
Her eyes were fathomles
s when she looked at him, so pale the iris was almost indistinguishable from the white of the eye. “There is a monster inside us all, Raphael. Some will survive, others will break. You have not yet broken.”
“I lost control of my mind,” he told her, not questioning how she knew what she did. Lijuan was more ghost than human, a shadow who moved seamlessly between worlds the rest of them never glimpsed.
“It is evolution,” she whispered, a smile that was not a smile creasing her face. “Without change, we would turn to dust.”
He didn’t know if she was talking about him or herself. “If I keep losing control, then I’m useless as archangel,” he said. “The toxin—”
“This has nothing to do with the Scourge.” She waved a hand and he saw wrinkles. She was the only angel who showed even such small marks of age and she seemed to revel in them. “What you are experiencing is something else entirely.”
“What?” He wondered if she was lying, drawing out the conversation in order to weaken him. It wouldn’t be the first time two archangels had worked in concert to topple a third. “Or do you know nothing and play at being a goddess?”
Frost in those blind eyes, flickers of emotion so other as to be nothing known. “I am a goddess. I hold life and death in my hand.” Her hair flew back in that ghostly wind she alone could generate. “I can destroy thousands with a thought.”
“Death does not a goddess make or Neha would be beside you at this moment.” The Queen of Snakes, of Poisons, left a trail of bodies in her wake. No one disagreed with Neha. To do so was to die.
Lijuan shrugged, an oddly human gesture. “She is a foolish child. Death is only half the equation. A goddess must not merely take life . . . she must give it.”
He looked at her, felt the insidious beauty of her words, and knew what he’d only before suspected—she’d gained a new power, a power whispered of but never believed. “You can make the dead walk?” Not alive, they would not be alive. But they would walk, they would talk, and they would not rot.