by Nalini Singh
“You’re saying we’re even?” He folded back his wings.
The sudden space made her realize how close she was to the edge of the roof. Taking a few wary steps forward, she nodded. “You disagree?”
Eyes the color of the deepest oceans gleamed. “Whether I do or not, it’s good you stopped us. We have something to discuss.”
“What?”
“It’ll soon be time to earn your paycheck.”
Fear and exhilaration burst through her veins. “You have a bead on Uram?”
“In a sense.” His face was suddenly very ascetic, all traces of sensuality smoothing away to reveal the bone structure no mortal man would ever possess. “We’ll eat first. Then we will speak of blood.”
“I don’t want to eat.”
“You will.” His tone was absolute. “I won’t be accused of mistreating my hunter.”
“Change that pronoun,” she said. “I’m not yours.”
“Really?” His lips curved slightly and it wasn’t amusement. “Yet you have my mark driven into your skin.”
She brushed at the backs of her hands. The damn glittery stuff stuck. “It’ll wash off.”
“Perhaps.”
“You better hope it does—a glow-in-the-dark hunter won’t exactly blend in.”
A very male appraisal gleamed in those eyes. “I could lick it off you.”
The embers low in her body flamed up, melting her from the inside out. “No, thanks.” Yes, please, her body murmured. “I need to shower anyway.”
The austere expression on his face shifted to pure sensuality between one heartbeat and the next. “I’ll wash your back.”
“An archangel deigning to wash a hunter’s back?” She raised an eyebrow.
“There would be a price, of course.”
“Of course.”
His head tilted up without warning. “It seems we’ll have to postpone that discussion.”
She turned her head in the same direction, but could see nothing except a painfully bright sky. “Who’s up there this time?”
“No one you need to concern yourself about.” The arrogance was back full force. Then he snapped out his wings and the air rushed out of her.
Someone so beautiful shouldn’t exist, she thought. It was impossible.
I’m only beautiful to you, Elena.
She didn’t tell him to get out of her head this time. She kicked him out.
He blinked, his face otherwise expressionless. “I thought I’d imagined that little trick of yours.”
“Guess not.” Her elation had her grinning so hard her face felt like it might crack. Damn, if she could really do this . . . But then logic reasserted itself. Doing this gave her one hell of a headache, so she had to stop being stupid and keep it in reserve for when she really, desperately needed it. “Logic sucks.”
Raphael’s lips curved but this time, the smile held an edge of cruelty, a reminder that the man she’d kissed was also the Archangel of New York, also the man who’d held her over a mortal fall and whispered of death in her ear. “Eat,” he said now. “I’ll return to join you.”
Again, that sense of déjà vu hit her as he simply stepped back off the roof. She stood in place this time, though her stomach went into free fall. But then there he was, winging his way upward, the wind of his flight whipping air across her face. It was tempting to keep watching after him, but she turned away, well aware she was walking a very thin line.
Raphael wanted her, but that was something separate from his duties as the Archangel of New York, a fact she’d do well to remember—even if she survived Uram, she’d still likely be marked for death. The simple fact was that she knew too much. And she wasn’t even close to getting Raphael to swear an oath. Damn. Striding over to the breakfast table, she hesitated. Back to the elevator shaft or to the wide-open sky?
In the end, she chose the elevator shaft. She could probably handle anything that came out of the elevator, but she knew damn well she couldn’t survive an archangel. The first thing she did was grab the knife beside her plate and slide it into her boot. It was only sharp enough to cut bacon but it could do some damage if necessary. Then she ate. Food was fuel and she needed to be fully charged if she was going to go hunting. Adrenaline thumped through her, laced with the icy bite of fear—but that just amped up her excitement.
She was hunter-born—this was what she was made for.
There was a sound at her back, a whisper of awareness along her hunter senses. “Sneaking around, Dmitri?” She’d scented him the instant he stepped out of the elevator.
“Where’s Raphael?”
Surprised at his curt tone, she watched as he moved around to stand beside the table. Gone were any and all hints of elegant sexuality, everything that normally sugarcoated the truth of what he was. She looked into that handsome face and knew he’d seen kings fall and empires rise. Dmitri had held a sword once upon a time, she thought, certain he had far more in common with some ruthless age of blood and death than the civilization hinted at by his perfect stone gray suit. “He’s in a meeting,” she said, pointing up.
Dmitri didn’t follow her gesture as most humans would have, continuing to stare at her with an intensity that would’ve scared many, that probably should have scared her. “What?” she asked.
“What do you see, Guild Hunter?” His voice was deep, whispering of things better left unwitnessed, horrors caged in the depths of the night.
“You, sword in hand,” she said honestly.
Dmitri’s face remained calm, unrevealing. “I still dance with steel. You’re welcome to watch.”
She paused in the act of taking a small croissant from the bread basket. “Has Raphael rescinded his hands-off policy?” She’d simply assumed not. Stupid, stupid.
“No.” The breeze ruffled his hair but the strands settled back into perfect lines as soon as it had passed. “However, since you’re going to be dead soon, I want to taste you before it’s too late.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She bit into the croissant with a snarl. It was one thing to think that herself, quite another to hear it from someone else’s lips. “But I suggest you stick to your pretty blondes. Hunter blood’s too sharp for your palate.”
“The blondes come too easily to my embrace.”
“Are you using weird vampire powers on women?”
He laughed and it was more echo than sound, holding none of the heat she’d come to associate with him. This one spoke of thousands of yesterdays, an eternity of tomorrows. “If seduction is a power, then yes. I’ve had centuries to perfect what a mortal man must accomplish in a few paltry years.”
She remembered the ecstasy on the blonde’s face, the sensual hunger on Dmitri’s. But he hadn’t been looking at the blonde. “Have you ever loved?”
The air seemed to stop moving as the vampire by the table watched her without blinking. “I see why you intrigue Raphael. You have little sense of your own mortality.” His eyes turned from human to pure obsidian in the blink of an eye. No whites, no irises, nothing but pure, unrelieved black.
She barely stopped herself from reaching for the knife in her boot. He’d likely decapitate her before she so much as touched metal. “Neat trick. Do you juggle as well?”
A pause filled with death, then Dmitri laughed. “Ah, Elena. I do believe I’ll be sorry to see you dead.”
She relaxed, sensing the change in his mood even before his eyes returned to normal. “Nice to know. Maybe you can name one of your kids after me.”
“We can’t have children, you know that.” His tone was matter-of-fact. “Only the just-Made can.”
“My job mostly involves tracking the under-hundred crowd—I don’t come into a lot of contact with that many really old vamps. Not enough to have long conversations with, anyway,” she told him, finishing off her orange juice. “What do you consider just-Made?”
“Two hundred years or so.” He shrugged, the gesture very human. “I’ve heard of no conceptions or impregnations afte
r that point.”
Two hundred years.
Twice her lifetime. And Dmitri spoke of it as if it were nothing. So, how old was he? And how old was the man he called sire? “Does it sadden you? Knowing you’ll never have children?”
A shadow passed over his face. “I didn’t say I’d never been a father.”
Raphael’s return saved her from choking on the foot in her mouth. Somehow she knew to look up, to see the fantasy of his wings backlit to glowing life by the sun. “Beautiful.” A whisper.
“So, he has enthralled you.”
She forced herself to look away and toward Dmitri. “Jealous?”
“No. I have no need for Raphael’s leavings.”
She narrowed her eyes, but he wasn’t done.
“You can hardly sit in judgment on those who prefer vampire lovers now.” A curl of scent snaked around her, insidious in its seduction. “Not when you wear Raphael’s colors in your skin.”
She’d forgotten about the damn dust. Raising her hand, she rubbed at her face. Her fingers came back shimmering white gold. The temptation to bring those fingers to her lips and lick was so strong, she had to force her hands down to clutch at her thighs. The dust left streaks against the black material, glittering trails of accusation. Dmitri was right—she’d well and truly fallen.
But that didn’t mean she was going to offer herself up to this vampire, no matter the sex and sin taste of him. “Stop, or I’ll extract your canines while you sleep,” she said under her breath. “I mean it, Dmitri.”
The scent twisted around her body, infiltrating her very veins. “So sensitive, Elena, so exquisitely sensitive. You must’ve been exposed to our beauty very young.” There was anger in his tone then, as if the idea repulsed him. “Who?” He vanished the tendril of scent.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Come here, little hunter. Taste.
Her stomach revolted. She’d forgotten his scent, buried the memory of the shameful rush of heat between her legs, the incomprehension in her child’s mind. “He’s dead,” she whispered, eyes on Raphael as he landed on the edge and began walking toward her.
“Did you kill him?”
“Would you hurt me if I had?”
“No. I may be a monster,” he said, his voice strangely gentle, “but I’m not a monster who preys on children.”
They both went silent as Raphael approached. Terror kicked in her chest as she truly saw him—he was glowing, bathed in that white-hot overflow of energy that promised death. She pushed back her chair, stood.
But she left the knife in her boot. No need to antagonize him if the rage wasn’t directed at her. “Raphael,” she said as he came to stand on the other side of the table.
His eyes were blue flame when he looked at her, but it was Dmitri he focused on. “Where are the bodies?”
“Brooklyn. There were—”
“Seven,” Raphael interrupted. “Michaela received their hearts special-delivery this morning.”
23
“Uram?” Elena asked, trying not to think about the stomach-churning “delivery” Raphael had just described. “Is he—”
“Later.” Raphael cut her off with a slice of his hand. “First we’ll go to the site and see if you can track him.”
“He’s an archangel. I scent vampires,” she pointed out for what felt like the millionth time, but neither archangel nor vampire was listening.
“I’ve organized transport,” Dmitri said and she had the sense that more information was being communicated than the words she could hear.
Raphael shook his head. “I’ll take her. The longer we wait, the more the scent will dissipate.” He held out his hand. “Come, Elena.”
She didn’t argue, her curiosity rabid. “Let’s go.”
And that was how she found herself tucked against Raphael’s chest as he flew her to an abandoned warehouse in an unfamiliar part of Brooklyn. She ended up squeezing her eyes shut for most of the journey because Raphael was doing that invisible thing again, and this time he’d extended it to cover her. It made her nauseated to not be able to see herself.
“Do you sense him?” he asked moments after he landed on a patch of dirt with a few struggling clumps of grass and helped her get to her feet.
She took a deep breath and was hit with an influx of smell. “Too many vamps. It’ll make it harder to separate out the scents.” She couldn’t see a single vampire, couldn’t see any living creature at all, but she knew they were there—though this wasn’t a place anyone would want to end up.
The chain-link fence on either side was ragged with holes, the buildings scrawled over with graffiti, the grass scraggly underfoot. There was a pervading sense of disuse, but overlaying that was the odor of rotting garbage . . . and something even more foul. She swallowed bile. “Alright. Show me.”
He nodded at the warehouse in front of her. “Inside.”
The large warehouse door slid up, though he’d spoken in a low tone. She wondered if he could speak to all his vampires mind-to-mind. But she didn’t ask that, couldn’t. Because the scent of garbage, of disuse, was suddenly wiped out by stomach-churning foulness.
Blood.
Death.
The sickening miasma of bodily fluids left to stew in an airless space.
The urge to gag tore at her throat. “Never thought I’d say this, but I wish Dmitri was here.” She’d welcome his seductive scent at this point. A wash of clean, fresh, rain scent hit her on the heels of that thought. She drew it in, then shook her head. “No. I can’t afford to miss the cues. But thank you.” Then she stopped hesitating and walked into the horror.
The warehouse was huge, the only light coming in through narrow windows high up on the walls. Her brain couldn’t understand the piercing clarity of that light until she felt the crunch of glass underfoot. “The windows are all broken.”
Raphael didn’t reply, moving behind her like a midnight shadow.
She crunched her way through the glass and onto a patch of clear concrete. Deciding to focus, she stood in place, widened her senses, searched.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
No, she thought, teeth gritted, this was no time to lose it.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
She shook her head but that sound—the soft, wet splash of blood hitting a hard surface—didn’t disappear. “The dripping,” she said, realizing the sound wasn’t in her head. Horror choked off her breath but she made herself move forward, through the gloom and toward the very end of the cavernous space.
The nightmare came into sight slowly.
At first, Elena couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t figure out what it was that she was seeing. Everything was in the wrong place. It was as if some sculptor had gotten his pieces mixed up, stuck them into place while blindfolded. That leg, the bone, it had been driven through a woman’s sternum, her torso ending in a bloody stump. And that one, she had beautiful blue eyes but they were in the wrong place, staring out at Elena from the gaping maw of her neck.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The blood, it was everywhere. She glanced down in fresh horror, terrified she was standing in it. Her relief was crushing when she saw the rivulets were sluggish, easy to avoid. But the bodies continued to drip, hanging from a tangle of rope like the most macabre of puzzles. Now that she’d looked down, she didn’t want to look back up.
“Elena.” The rustle of Raphael’s wings.
“A minute,” she whispered, her voice raw.
“You don’t need to look,” he told her. “Just follow the scent.”
“I need an example of his scent before I can go anywhere,” she reminded him. “What he gave Michaela—”
“Michaela destroyed the package. She was in hysterics. Do what you can here. We’ll visit her afterward.”
Nodding, she swallowed. “Tell your vampires to vacate the area around the warehouse—at lea
st a hundred yards in every direction.” There was too much sensory input, as if the sheer amount of blood was amplifying everything, even her own hunter abilities.
“It’s being done.”
“If any of them are like Dmitri, they need to get out completely.”
“There are none. Do you wish to scent those who came inside, for elimination purposes?”
It was a good idea but she knew that if she turned her back on this madness, she’d never return. “Did any of them spend a lot of time near the bodies?”
A pause. “Illium took on the task of determining if any had survived.”
“It’s obvious they’re dead.”
“The ones on the floor—their fate wasn’t immediately clear.”
She’d been so horrified by the hanging bodies that she hadn’t paid attention to the pile below. Or perhaps she hadn’t wanted to see, to know. Now she did and wished she hadn’t. Unlike the nightmare above, these bodies looked as if they were sleeping, one on top of another. “Were they arranged like that?”
“Yes.” A new voice.
She didn’t turn, guessing it to be Illium. “Are your wings blue?” she asked, coating her pity and sorrow in a casing of dark humor. These three girls below, they were so young, their bodies smooth, uncharted by age.
“Yes,” Illium said. “But my cock isn’t, in case you were wondering.”
She almost laughed. “Thank you.” That comment had snapped through the nightmare, allowing her to think. “Your scent won’t interfere with my senses.” Her nose was ten times better than that of most humans, but when it came to tracking, she was a bloodhound attuned only to vampire. Or that was her normality. This . . .
The sound of footsteps retreating. She waited until she heard the door close. “You took his feathers and he remains with you?” Her eyes traced the bodies. A symphony of unbroken, tangled limbs and curved spines, unmarked but for the gray chill of death.
“Others would have taken his wings.”
An angel without wings. It made her remember how she’d shot Raphael. “Why are they so washed out?” Their race was immaterial. Chalk white, dull mahogany, it mattered little. All three girls in the pile were pale in a way that screamed—“Vampire. A vampire fed from them. Drained them.” She went to step forward, halted. “The M.E. hasn’t been here. I can’t touch them.”