by Nalini Singh
When an angel swept down to skim over the vehicles, the distinctive blue of his wings causing motorists to slow down in a wonder that never faded, Janvier raised a hand in casual acknowledgment. Rather than returning the salute, Illium pointed to the curb and Janvier immediately slid the bike out of the flow of traffic and to another illegal parking spot in front of a fire hydrant.
Illium landed on the sidewalk at almost the same instant, folding in his wings in a susurrous whisper of sound. Golden eyed with ink black hair dipped in blue and flawless bone structure, he was one of the most astonishingly beautiful angels Ashwini had ever seen. Yet he did nothing for her, might as well have been a marble sculpture created by a master.
It was only Janvier who'd penetrated the wary steel of her defenses, made himself at home. As he had on her couch two and a half weeks back, his arm wrapped around her while they stretched out to watch an old black-and-white movie. When she'd started to fall asleep, her body not yet at full strength, he'd tucked her in with a kiss on the forehead she could feel even now.
"Ash," Illium said, a distinct glint in the gold. "I thought for certain I'd be organizing Janvier's funeral when he said he was planning to beard you in your den. I even called an undertaker."
She pushed up the visor of her helmet. "Keep the number. It might be useful one of these days."
"How you keep wounding me." Janvier slapped a hand dramatically over his heart before flipping up the visor of his own helmet. "Why did you pull us aside, sweet Bluebell? Can you not see that I'm acting as my Ashblade's chauffeur?"
Illium thrust a hand through his hair, pushing back the overlong strands that had fallen across his face. "Give me one of your blades," he demanded. "I need to cut this before it blinds me."
"You do it here and there'll be a stampede to get the discards," Janvier pointed out. "Not to mention the distress such barbarity will cause in the tender hearts of all those who worship your fine form."
Illium muttered something uncomplimentary about Cajuns who should be dropped off buildings that did nothing to dim Janvier's amusement. His hair brushed his nape, too, but he was comfortable with that length, and Ashwini liked it on him. Too much. Running her fingers through the heavy silk of it was a bone-deep pleasure she'd indulged in only a rare few times, all too aware it could become an addiction.
"There's a situation I need you to handle," Illium said after pushing back his hair again. "Details have been sent to your phone."
Ashwini met the angel's gaze. "Shall I plug my ears?" Hunters had fought alongside immortals in the battle to hold their city, would do so again should the situation call for it, but when it came to everyday existence, getting involved in Tower business could be perilous to a mortal's health. "Or I can jump on the subway," she offered, taking her hand off Janvier's shoulder.
"No," he said, at the same time that Illium spoke the word. "There, cher," Janvier added. "You would not break both our hearts, would you?"
"What's the situation?" she asked Illium, trying to ignore the way Janvier's voice wrapped around her, as sensual and luscious as caramel. Despite the fact that he'd been Made over two centuries before, he'd lost neither his bayou roots nor its music from his speech, though the rhythm of his words had altered over time.
"A vampire's cattle are charging him with ill-treatment."
Ashwini winced at the derogatory term--used to describe humans who volunteered to act as a particular vampire's living food source--but couldn't take Illium to task for using it. These people chose to be "kept" by vampires, chose to be seen as livestock, petted and cosseted though they might be. "I didn't realize cattle had any rights."
Janvier was the one to reply, his eyes on the screen of his phone as he scrolled through the information he'd been forwarded. "Not every vampire enjoys seducing his food anew each night, or relying on blood banks. It is bad for the vampiric population for such arrangements to turn abusive."
Illium folded his arms, the clean line of his jaw set in a hard line. "If word spreads, mortals might become gun-shy."
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Ashwini said, recalling the hundreds of thousands who petitioned to be Made every year, despite witnessing countless examples of the brutality and violence that might be their lot. Because near-immortality came at a price: a hundred years of service to the angels, after which eternity awaited.
If you survived the Contract period with your mind unbroken.
"There will always be self-destructive idiots in the world." She squeezed Janvier's shoulder in an unspoken coda. He was a vampire not because of a lust for endless life, but because he'd fallen in love with another vampire as a "callow youth." His own words. She felt for the mortal man he'd been, because she knew in this way, she and Janvier were the same: when they loved, they loved desperately, holding on even when it threatened to destroy them.
"Is it urgent?" Janvier leaned back into her touch. "Ash is headed toward the same general part of the city, so we can deal with her task and go on to this."
"It's a relatively low-level rumor at present," Illium said. "An hour or two won't make any difference." Spreading his wings to their full breadth, to the delight of the teenagers who'd gathered in the portico of the building behind him, he readied himself for flight. "I almost forgot--there's to be a celebration in just over a month."
Ashwini blinked. "Not an angelic ball?" As far as she knew, Elena had an avowed dislike of the "excruciatingly formal" events. She'd been heard to mutter that she'd rather stick a fork in her eye. Ashwini couldn't see her fellow hunter changing her mind in the aftermath of a war. Even if she was hooked up with a scary-ass archangel.
Illium's laughter lit up his eyes and sent a woman on the sidewalk into a swoon broken by the thick arms of a nearby cop. "Ellie has threatened to shoot anyone who even suggests such a travesty."
"Thank God," Ashwini said with a shudder. "I thought for a second that she'd lost her mind and we'd have to stage an intervention."
"This is to be a 'block party,' as Ellie terms it, open to any and all citizens of the city. It's to be held in the streets and on the rooftops around the Tower."
"That's a really great idea." While crowds weren't Ashwini's thing, she wouldn't mind ending up on one of the rooftops with a group of friends. Each and every one of them had mourned in the aftermath of the war, for the fighters, mortal and immortal, who'd lost their lives. Now it was time to lift a drink to their fallen comrades, and to fully reclaim their city from the shadows of war--while giving a giant finger to those who'd sought to cripple it.
Janvier revved the bike at that instant. "I'll report back once I've checked out the abuse report."
"I'll be at the Tower." Illium took off in a powerful beat of wild blue accented with silver.
4
Wondering if the Cajun would catch his dark-eyed hunter this time around, Illium rode the winter winds directly to the balcony outside Dmitri's office. It was swept clear of snow, a task usually assigned to the youngest in the troop ranks, vampire or angel. Right now, with so many of the young injured, it was done by whoever had ten free minutes and didn't mind a little manual labor.
From the damp in Dmitri's hair where he stood behind his desk, his body clad in a simple black T-shirt and black cargo pants, Illium had the feeling Dmitri had cleared this himself. Not many who stood second to an archangel would do such a task, but this was why Dmitri was so trusted by Raphael's men--despite his power, he was, and had always been, one of them.
Glancing up at Illium's entry, his eyes having been on a map that showed the current position of Lijuan's forces in China, Dmitri said, "Did you find it?"
"Trace did." Illium had asked the slender vampire to follow the trail because most vampires outside the Tower had no idea he was Raphael's man. "It's called Umber." He placed a tiny vial of a reddish brown substance on Dmitri's desk, but while the color echoed the pigment for which it was named, the texture was unusual.
The contents glittered like tiny shards of glass--or crushed hard candy.<
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Dmitri picked it up, angled it to the light.
It was, Illium saw, oddly beautiful, despite the fact that light revealed the crystals to have an undertone of sickly yellow.
"Chewed?"
He nodded at Dmitri's question. "That seems to be the preferred method of ingestion with the users Trace was able to pinpoint. The supplier is taking extreme care to keep this underground and available to only a select clientele."
"Exclusivity makes it more valuable." Dmitri put the vial back down. "Effects?"
"Sexual high and addictive with a single hit." Trace had reported seeing the woman from whom he'd seduced the sample quivering in carnal pleasure after she ate a sliver, her hands cupping her breasts and her eyes heavy lidded. "Long-term effects are unknown--Trace was able to confirm the drug only hit the streets two days past. We were lucky to pick up on it."
"No. We weren't lucky; we were prepared." Dmitri had begun to create a network of informants throughout the city during the lead-up to the battle, and it was those informants who had reported a rising excitement in the wealthy vampire populace. All of it related to a mysterious new high.
Many of these new informants were human and a number were blood donors, specifically genetically blessed donors who came into contact with older, more powerful vampires on a regular basis. The trick was that none of the informants knew they served the Tower. One set of exclusive donors, for example, reported to the woman who ran the city's top vampire club, in return for the cachet of being in her inner circle.
The idea of the subtle but powerful network had come from Raphael.
"Elena," the archangel had said, "has made me realize we're not fully utilizing all our assets."
They'd been standing on the Tower roof at the time, the wind a savage beast. When Raphael turned to Dmitri, midnight black strands of hair had whipped across his face. "The mortals see things we do not, pay attention to those we might otherwise dismiss." Facing the wind once again, Raphael had continued. "We need that information, but I will not drag Elena's friends too deeply into the immortal world." An instant of piercing eye contact. "Such can end only badly for them."
Dmitri knew Raphael was no longer talking about Elena's friends, but about the horror of Dmitri's own past. "I do not blame you, sire. I never have." He blamed the vicious angel who had tortured them both. "Without you, I would've carved out my heart and been lying dead in a distant grave an eon ago."
"I blame myself, Dmitri, and I would not have Elena feel the same. Set up the network using mortals who have freely chosen to linger on the fringes of the immortal world as the base."
"Raphael." When the archangel turned to look at him with those eyes that burned with power, Dmitri had extended his arm. "The past is past, and if there ever was a debt between us, it was wiped clean the day you Made Honor." Those vampires Made by an archangel were stronger from day one, harder to injure or kill. "You are my liege, but you will always first be my friend."
Raphael's hand had closed over his forearm, his over the archangel's. "I hope to hear the same words a thousand years hence."
"You will." Both Dmitri and Raphael had come close to losing themselves to the insidious cold of eternity, but that was no longer a threat.
Today, it was Illium who concerned Dmitri. The majority of people, mortal and immortal, saw charm and a vivid zest for life when they looked at the blue-winged angel. Dmitri saw increasing power and an increasing darkness. All that held the darkness at bay was Illium's tight-knit connection to Elena and Raphael, and to the Seven. But there would come a time when Illium became too much a power to remain in the city.
Then who would keep him . . . human?
"How long does the Umber high last?" Dmitri asked, making a mental note to speak to Raphael about Illium's slow and near-imperceptible descent into the icy abyss that had nearly consumed the two of them. Unlike the others in the Seven, Illium couldn't be seconded back to the Refuge to assist Galen and Venom; the distance from Elena and Aodhan, in particular, would indisputably hasten the ravages of the kind of power at Illium's command.
"Longer than the high from a honey feed," the blue-winged angel said in response to his question.
Dmitri frowned. A vampire's metabolism differed from a mortal's, meaning normal drugs, no matter how hard, metabolized too quickly to be worth the cost or the bother. A honey feed--drawing blood directly from the vein of a drug-addicted mortal who'd just shot up, snorted, or otherwise ingested their poison of choice, provided a trip that could last for up to ten minutes.
"How much better?"
"An hour per half gram of Umber."
Dmitri went motionless. "An hour." No other known drug on the planet had such an intense effect on the vampire population. "Unsurprising, then, that it's become so coveted so quickly."
"Trace has been able to pinpoint ten users so far, all gilded lilies."
Dmitri knew the type: pretty but useless. Older, wealthy vampires who existed only to discover new indulgences, new sins. Anything to break the ennui. Dmitri had once, during the worst of his pain, joined them--only to discover he couldn't spend his days doing nothing. It was a vapid, empty existence, and even as self-destructive as he'd been, he couldn't sink into it. "They're probably the only ones who can afford the drug."
"It's not all good times." Illium shoved his hair back with an impatient hand. "During the high, a percentage of the junkies are hit by the urge to feed voraciously. At least one of the lilies is currently going through a vicious detox because he refuses to touch the stuff again."
Dmitri raised an eyebrow. "Not much worries them in their pursuit of sensation." Numb inside from centuries of indulging their every whim, the lilies' need to grasp at the new, the bright, held a pitiable desperation.
"This lily is part of a long-term pair," Illium told him. "He fed on his partner during the high and he wasn't gentle--her neck was raw meat by the end, her spinal cord exposed. A few more minutes and he might've severed that, killed her."
Dmitri understood the depth of the male's horror. Such deeply loyal connections were rare among immortals, much less in the world of the lilies, and to be protected. Dmitri would end himself before laying a finger on Honor in violence. "Drop this downstairs," he said, tapping the vial. "Have it tested for everything."
Illium took the vial.
"Tell Trace he can report directly to me," Dmitri added. "I want you focusing on the men and women the healers have discharged." A significant percentage of the Tower's forces remained down, but enough injured fighters were now walking under their own steam that he needed Illium to take charge of their physical training. It would take skillful work to get them back to full strength in a short time frame.
"Talk to Galen, come up with a workable regimen." The weapons-master couldn't leave the Refuge, especially after the recent tensions there, but that didn't mean he wasn't available to the rest of the Seven. "He's already sent through his first set of orders, has people moving."
Illium bowed deeply, adding an elegant flourish with one hand. "Yes, O Dark Overlord."
Lips twitching, Dmitri hoped with every cell in his body that Illium would find his way through the crushing pressures of immortality and power, that he wouldn't lose the joie de vivre that had been a part of him since he was a fledgling. Dmitri had once witnessed a tiny blue-winged baby angel fall hard to the earth after tangling his wings, his flight path prior to the fall that of a drunken bumblebee. Despite running full-tilt, Dmitri had been too far away to catch him.
When he'd reached the site of the accident, he'd expected to find a sobbing, hurt child. Hurt he had been, one wing crumpled, but Illium was already on his feet, his bruised and scraped arms thrust up and his hands fisted, face aglow. "I flew so far! Did you see?"
Dmitri had never forgotten that first meeting with a boy who'd reminded him of the irrepressible spirit of his own son. Illium's life had not always been painless, and it had left scars, but none of it had been as dangerous as the power now gathering inside him.
However, the issue wasn't critical.
Not quite yet.
"Begone, Bluebell," he said, an image of the tiny boy he'd carried home to his frantic mother that day at the forefront of his mind. "The Dark Overlord needs to talk to a certain spymaster."
Walking backward to the door, Illium said, "Jason's back in the country?"
"He returned from China last night." From the territory of the insane archangel who thought herself a goddess. "Managed to get past the border and all the way to her innermost citadel." Dmitri had no idea how, but that was why Jason was Raphael's spymaster and Dmitri was his blade and his second.
A rustle of wings announced Jason's presence at the balcony door.
It was time to discuss the heart of enemy territory.
*
Ashwini and Janvier reached the veterinary clinic in a comparatively short time thanks to Janvier's skill at weaving through the traffic, the blue of the sky still edged with puffs of orange-pink that bathed everything in a forgiving light. Nothing, however, could soften the impact of seeing the body that awaited them at the run-down but clean clinic in Chinatown.
Sara had been right. This small, helpless animal victim needed a hunter's attention rather than the vet's. Not only was the cocker spaniel shriveled and bloodless, its throat had been ravaged as if by a wild beast. "Setting aside the loss of blood," she said to the vet, "is it possible these wounds could've been made by another, bigger animal?"
The tall, mixed-race woman, her features sharp, striking, pushed her glasses farther up her nose and dragged her eyes off Janvier. "The dirty water in the drain where he was found did a good job of messing with the wound, and I'm pretty sure rats have been at this sweet boy, too." She touched her hand to the dog's emaciated head. "No telling how long he was down there. Could be days, could be weeks. Even if it was a vicious dog . . ."
"Yes, no animal sucked out every drop of blood in his body." A chill in her bones, Ashwini checked the cocker spaniel's teeth, the dog's skin having tightly retracted to expose the gum line; the enamel was stained and cracked. Even if he had bitten his attacker, the evidence was already too contaminated to be of any forensic use. "Who found him?"