by Nalini Singh
Or perhaps, I am simply that to you.
She flinched, snapping out of the fascination. And this time, she knew he hadn’t been messing with her mind—that thought had been her own stupidity at work. “Simply what?” she asked, just to keep him talking.
Beautiful.
She snorted. “Believe me, angel boy, you turn female heads wherever you go.”
Most women see cruelty in me, too much for beauty.
Caught short by that apparently honest assessment, she found herself staring at him with new eyes. Yes, there was cruelty in him. He wasn’t pretty, wasn’t handsome, wasn’t anything so tame. He was dangerous and strong, the epitome of what appealed to her hunter senses. All her life, she’d been too strong, too fast, too unfeminine for human men. They liked her, but after a while, most claimed she made them feel emasculated.
She’d never let on how much that hurt, but it did, it hurt a hell of a lot. Maybe she wasn’t a tiny doll like Beth, but she was very definitely female. And she appreciated the male of the species, most especially this male. “You’re capable of cruelty,” she agreed quietly, “perhaps even horror, but you haven’t crossed over into evil.”
Haven’t I?
Her palm lay sweaty on the gun. “No.”
You sound very certain. And yet you accused me of rape this morning.
Her temper spiked. Ignoring the warning cry of her own common sense, she pulled out and held the gun openly at her side. “This morning, you tried to take by force something I might’ve given you freely had you waited.”
A long pause filled only with the sound of her adrenaline-spiked breaths. She wondered what he heard out there, in the velvet darkness of the night, with the streets so far below.
Such honesty.
“I said ‘might.’ And buddy, your chances went down the drain the instant you pulled that stunt. I won’t be manipulated into sex.” Not even by a sex-god of an archangel.
He seemed to be thinking that over. His eyes met hers through the glass. He shrugged. Sex is fairly pointless anyway.
That made her blink. It didn’t fit at all with the darkly sensual man who’d devoured her like his favorite candy that very morning. “Are you alright?” she asked, wondering if he was on some sort of angelic drug.
His response was to blow out the plate-glass window between them. It happened so fast, she barely had time to throw up her arm to shield her eyes. One second the window was there, the next, it was lying in several neat pieces on her carpet. Not a sliver had touched her. When she dropped her arm, she found herself looking out at a huge square of darkness, the wind sliding into her apartment on smooth, silky wings.
Raphael was nowhere to be seen.
Scared, but not for herself, she looked down at the gun in her hand. With trembling fingers, she clicked on the safety again. She’d fired in instinctive self-defense, aiming not for Raphael’s face, but for his wings as Vivek had advised. An angel without wings . . .
“Oh, God.” Stepping carefully over the large shards of glass—eight perfect triangular pieces—she made her way to the edge and glanced down.
A whisper of wind from behind her. “Definitely no problems with vertigo.”
She might’ve fallen had he not had his hands securely on her hips. “You bastard! You scared me to death!” Twisting, she tried to get away.
He held her still, wrapping both arms around her waist. “Behave, Elena.”
The oddness of his tone clanged a serious alarm bell in her head. She couldn’t help but think of her earlier thoughts—there were a lot of things worse than death. “Are you planning to drop me?”
“You just told yourself that I won’t kill you, that I’m more likely to torture you.”
Something snapped. “Get. Out. Of. My. Head!” Squeezing her eyes shut, she shoved outward with every ounce of will-power she possessed. It was a stupid, human reaction, but she was human in every way that mattered.
Behind her, Raphael sucked in a breath. Startled, she intensified her attempts to block him, even as the spiraling emptiness of a deadly fall spread out in front of her. Elena didn’t look away—she’d rather face death than have her mind invaded, for what was that if not another form of crawling? But she damn well wasn’t going to go without a fight. She switched the way she held the gun. This time, she would purposefully aim for his wings.
“Well, well,” Raphael said against her ear. “It seems the hunter-born have another skill.”
Her head was starting to ache. But she kept up the pressure, hoping her brain would learn to do this automatically after a while. Of course, that wasn’t going to be an issue if she didn’t get away from Raphael. It was becoming clearer by the second that whatever was wrong with him it was very, very dangerous for her. “Why are you here, doing this? Is it because I cut Dmitri?”
“He was under orders not to touch you.”
Tired of leaning away, she relaxed into him, her head against his chest. He took her weight with ease. “What did you do to him?”
“His jaw will have healed completely by now.”
The night darkness was so close, the lights from the other buildings so bright, it felt as if she was standing on the edge of the world. But it wasn’t the emptiness in front of her that was the real threat. “Does violence excite you?”
“No.”
“Hurting me,” she pushed, “making me bleed, that gets Dmitri off. Same for you?”
“No.”
“Then why the fuck are you holding me here?”
“Because I can.”
And she knew that in this mood, he really might break her.
So she shot him. No warning, no second chances. She simply aimed blindly behind her and shot. The second his arms loosened, she sent herself sideways. She could’ve as easily fallen, but she trusted her reflexes and they didn’t let her down.
She landed on the huge shards of plate glass. They held, but she cut the side of her face and the palms of both hands as she clutched at the glass to keep from sliding off and out into the pitch-black of the night. The instant she had any leverage, she used one of her more acrobatic moves to flip over the glass and to a crouching position on the carpet.
Shoving the hair out of her eyes, she looked toward Raphael. He lay crumpled on the glass, propped up against the table where she’d put her phone what felt like hours ago. He was staring down at his wing, and when she followed his gaze, what she saw made her sick.
The gun had done what Vivek had promised. It had almost destroyed the bottom half of one wing. What Vivek hadn’t told her was that when an angel’s wings got hurt, he bled. And he bled dark red. It dripped onto the glass, sliding across the clean surface to sink into her carpet. Shaking, she got up. “It’ll heal,” she whispered, trying to convince herself. If she’d crippled him—“You’re immortal. It’ll heal.”
He looked up, a dazed incomprehension in those incredible, unreal blue eyes. “Why did you shoot me?”
“You were torturing me with fear—probably would’ve ended up throwing me off the ledge a few times and catching me again, just to hear me scream.”
“What?” He frowned, shook his head as if trying to clear it, then looked at the open space where her window used to be. “Yes, you’re right.”
That wasn’t the answer she’d expected. “You were there—why do you sound like you can’t believe it?”
His eyes met hers again. “In the Quiet, I’m . . . changed.”
“What’s the Quiet?”
He didn’t answer.
“Do you go there a lot?”
His lips tightened. “No.”
“So, are you normal now?” Even as she asked, she was running into the kitchen for towels. When she came out, it was to find him in the same position. “Why won’t it stop bleeding?” Her voice rose as panic took hold.
He watched her try to stem the flow without success. “I don’t know.”
She glanced at the gun she’d left on the other side of the room. Maybe it was stupid to remai
n here, but she knew this Raphael as she hadn’t the other. Whatever the Quiet was, it had turned him into the worst kind of a monster. But was she any better? That gun, the damage it had done . . . Grabbing her phone, she called the Cellars, her fingers slick with Raphael’s blood. In front of her, his blue eyes seemed to dim, his head dropping back. “Come on,” she said, cupping his cheek with fingers stained red. “Stay awake, Archangel. Don’t go into shock.”
“I’m an angel,” he murmured, his voice slurred. “Shock is for mortals.”
Someone picked up the phone. “Vivek?”
“Elena, you’re alive!”
“Damn it, Vivek, what the hell was in those bullets?”
“I told you.”
“Has it been tested?”
“Yeah. It’s been used in the field a few times—gives you maybe twenty minutes to half an hour at most. Angels begin to heal the instant after the bullet hits.”
She glanced down at Raphael’s shattered wing. “It’s not healing. It’s getting worse by the minute.”
“That’s impossible.”
She hung up since he clearly knew nothing. “Come on, Raphael! What do I do?”
“Call Dmitri.” His color was fading to gray, a pale death mask that struck terror into her heart.
Guilt and fear for him choking a knot in her throat, she dialed Archangel Tower and was immediately put through to Dmitri. “Get to my apartment,” she ordered.
“That’s not—”
“I’ve done something to Raphael. He’s bleeding and it’s not clotting.”
A blink of silence. “He’s immortal.”
“His blood is red, same as mine.”
“I’ll kill you in tiny, tiny bites if you’ve harmed him.” He hung up.
“Dmitri’s on his way,” she told Raphael, as the cell phone slid out of her bloody hand. “I don’t think he thinks very highly of me.”
“He is loyal.” His hair fell over his forehead, making him look absurdly boyish.
Another spurt of blood hit her leg, hot and rich. “Why the hell aren’t you healing?”
A moment of brightness in those glassy blue eyes. “You’ve made me a little mortal.”
Those were his last words before lapsing into unconsciousness—probably nothing but the shock speaking, she realized. She was still by his side when Dmitri and several other vampires arrived. They simply broke down the door instead of bothering to knock.
“Hold the hunter.” Dmitri ignored her as his lackeys dragged her away from Raphael.
She would’ve struggled but she knew it was pointless. There were too many of them and she had no chip-embedded weapons on her. Bearing unique serial numbers and with each and every use tracked by the VPA and Guild both, the devices were issued only for hunts, or when a hunter’s life was in demonstrable danger from a vampiric threat. The official line was that it was to stop hunters from becoming dangerously overconfident, but they all knew it was because the powerful vamps didn’t like the idea of being vulnerable to any old hunter with a grudge. Right now, she didn’t care. “Help him!”
Dmitri threw her a glance filled with pure malice. “Be quiet. The sole reason you’re not dead is because Raphael will enjoy doing the task himself.” Lifting a hand, he spoke into some kind of a transmitter snapped around his wrist. “Enter.”
Two large angelic males suddenly appeared in the open wall that had been her window, a stretcher held between them. The shock on their faces when they saw Raphael told her this was worse than bad. Her stomach shriveled in on itself, but the angels recovered quickly, following Dmitri’s instructions to put Raphael on the stretcher and fly him to the Tower.
One of the angels—a redhead, balked. “Wouldn’t it be better to take him straight home?”
“The healer and medics are about to reach the Tower,” Dmitri responded.
Nodding, the angel picked up the front of the stretcher as his partner followed suit on the other end. “See you there.”
Elena wasn’t exactly sure about the power dynamics in the room. The hierarchy of the world was supposed to go archangel-angel-vampire-human, in that order. But Dmitri was clearly running the show here—and unlike with the baby angel who’d made the drop at her apartment, these angels were old and powerful.
Now, with Raphael gone, Dmitri’s attention shifted to her. As he walked closer, she cursed the stupid policy on chip-embedded weapons. Without them, she was as vulnerable as a child.
And Dmitri looked ready to tear her apart with his bare hands.
Walking until he stood only inches from her, he gripped her chin, his hands bloody, his gaze black with a heart of flame.
She gasped. “Your eyes—” There was a spiking circle of red where the pupil should’ve been, a spreading stain with bladelike edges. “What the hell?”
His hand tightened. Then he leaned closer. She froze. If he tried to take blood, she knew she wouldn’t be able to remain quiet—instinct would take over and she’d try to go for her weapons. It wasn’t something she could stop. But Dmitri surprised her again. His lips brushed her ear instead of her neck. “I’m going to watch him break you. And then I’ll lick up your blood for dessert.”
Fear—raw and brutal—bloomed in the pit of her stomach, but she faced him with studied nonchalance. “How’s your neck?”
His fingers tightened hard enough that she knew she was going to have bruises. “In my time, women knew their place.”
She didn’t ask, wouldn’t fall for that trick.
But it turned out Dmitri didn’t need her cooperation. “Flat on their back, legs spread.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Raphael hasn’t rescinded his hands-off policy, so I’d watch it if I were you.”
He laughed and the sound was a razor slicing over her skin. His fingers gentled, cupped her cheek, and he came even closer, until she was pressed between muscled vampire flesh. But it was only Dmitri she truly “saw”—his lethal rage, his eyes . . . his scent. It wrapped around her like the most obscenely luscious of coats, tasting of fur and diamonds and sex. “I hope he keeps you alive for a long, long time.” His tongue flicked over the thudding beat of her pulse. “I hope he invites me to play.”
19
An hour later, Elena tugged at the restraints locking her arms to the chair. All she succeeded in doing was tightening the ropes around her ankles. Hog-tied. She was hog-tied! Her arms had been wrenched behind her back and tied, then the rope run down to wrap securely around one ankle, before crossing over to her other ankle. The final touch had been to take the rope back up to her wrists and around her waist to the back. She was effectively chained to a heavy chair that she had no hope of tipping over.
“I can smell blood, Elena,” Dmitri drawled, walking back into the room. “Are you trying to flirt?”
She glared at him, recalling exactly how much fun he’d had divesting her of her weapons. He hadn’t been crass. No, he’d been sensuality personified, that damn drugging scent of his snaking through her body like the most potent aphrodisiac on the planet. She’d still managed to get in some kicks—before being bound, having her cuts disinfected, and parked in what looked like a small sitting room somewhere in the higher levels of the Tower. “How’s Raphael?”
Dmitri came to stand in front of her, having taken off his charcoal suit jacket and dark red tie to reveal a crisp white shirt. The top few buttons were open, exposing a delicious triangle of bronze skin. Not a tan, she thought. He was clearly from somewhere with a hotter sun, somewhere exotic and—“Stop it!” Now that she was concentrating, she could distinguish the faint scent he was stroking over every inch of her skin.
He smiled and there was a promise of pain in that smile. “I wasn’t focusing anything on you.”
“Liar.”
“I confess.” He came even closer, bending down to brace his hands on the arms of the chair. “You’re very sensitive to my scent.” He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath. “Even sweaty and bloody, you have a unique scent of your own. It makes me wan
t to take a big, greedy bite.”
“Not in this lifetime,” she said, voice husky with the strength of will it was taking to resist his slow seduction.
She’d misjudged Dmitri because he didn’t leak power like the other old ones she’d met, which meant he was in a class of his own . . . and probably more than capable of throwing off the effects of a control chip.
That was a secret hunters had died to protect—because sometimes, a vampire’s second-long disorientation, his belief that he’d been tagged and immobilized, was all you had. In that second, you could escape or do actual damage. “Why are you fixated on me?” she asked bluntly, burying her knowledge of the chip’s fatal flaw. As far as she knew, only angels could read minds—and they had no reason to sabotage the effectiveness of a hunter’s most powerful weapon—but she wasn’t taking any chances. “You’re so fucking sexy”—damn it, it was true—“you’ve got to have women throwing themselves at you. Why me?”
“I told you—you make things interesting.” His lips curved but the bloody spikes in his eyes reminded her he wasn’t exactly happy with her right then. “You’ll live, you know.”
“I will?”
“At least until you complete the job.” He stared at her.
She stared back. Dmitri very likely knew every detail of the job, but if he didn’t, she wasn’t going to spill the beans and dig her grave even deeper. “You can’t imagine how much pleasure that gives me.”
“What do you know about pleasure, Guild Hunter?” His tone turned blade sharp, his skin almost glowing from within.
Her throat dried up as she realized she’d been wrong again. Dmitri wasn’t only powerful, he was powerful. So old that now he wasn’t concealing it, the age of him made her bones ache. “I know that what you promise as pleasure will lead inexorably to pain.”
He blinked, his lashes incongruously long. “But with a master of the art, all pain is pleasure.”