by Nalini Singh
"My friend, Marta," she whispered through her dry mouth and cracked lips. "The brunette who brought us here took her."
"We'll find her." Cutting the ropes, he led her to the room with the sliding doors. They proved to be locked by a keyed dead bolt. It took him precious seconds to pick the lock, but when he slid the doors open, he saw his hunch had been right: rusted but with no indications of dangerous wear, there was a large pipe on the outer wall that went all the way to the ground.
It had enough joins to provide a grip.
Shrugging off his leather jacket, he gave it to the woman who'd confirmed her name was Bridget. Her skintight jeans and little boots would protect her legs from the cold, but she wore only a bustier on her top half. "I'm going to help you over the railing to that pipe." Thinking of her hands on the icy metal, he remembered he had Ash's gloves in his jacket pockets, told her to slip them on. "Climb down as silently as you can."
"What about Marta?" she asked, having wiped the backs of her hands across her face. It had further smeared her makeup, but her eyes held more anger than fear.
"I'll get her. It'll go better if I don't have to worry about you as well."
Giving a jerky nod, she pulled on the gloves. "Should I call the cops after I get down?"
"They're already on their way. Can you operate a motorcycle?" At the negative shake of her head, he said, "Go down the street and hide behind the house on the corner." He'd noticed it was empty when he came through. "Our backup should arrive within minutes."
She didn't speak again until he'd helped her out. "Please help my friend."
"I will." Waiting just long enough to see that she was steady on the pipe, he went back out to the corridor and quickly looked in on the rooms he'd already cleared. The final door on the right was a master bedroom, opulently male in design. Janvier smelled the same cologne he'd smelled in Giorgio's home, saw a cravat on the bed, a shirt with a fall of lace at the cuffs on a chair.
Of Giorgio himself, however, there was no sign.
He started down the stairs to the second level.
41
Looking right as she moved down the hallway, Ashwini found a spacious living area. Her eye went immediately to the tumbler of red liquid on the antique sideboard, beside a crystal decanter of the same.
Blood.
Nothing else had that same consistency, a consistency that was obvious to her even from her current position. Stepping inside with care, she scanned the large room. There really was only one place anyone could hide and that was behind the sofa by the windows. Instead of walking over, she dropped to the floor and looked beneath the cream-colored sofa with curved wooden legs. Nothing.
She confirmed that by crossing the room and taking a second look.
Now she had a choice to make. Go through the door from the living room to the room on the other side, or enter the other room from the corridor. Eyes narrowed, she looked around and found an ornate chair that was heavy but that she could carry without dragging it on the floor. She moved it to under the knob of the internal access door, blocking it as an exit route, then returned to the corridor.
Back near the entrance, Penelope was flopping around, hair all over her face as she attempted to move, one bare breast and thigh exposed. Confirming with a glance that the other woman wouldn't be going anywhere, Ashwini opened a door on the left. It proved to be a closet filled with velvet and lace coats, along with what appeared to be a hooded black cape. Closing it, she cleared the two other rooms on the left while keeping an eye on the open doorway that led into the room off the living area.
The first room on the left was some kind of rumpus room with a television and surprisingly laid-back furniture. Either Giorgio hadn't gotten around to updating it or it was for the women. The other room was a toilet covered in fancy tile. So, likely, the remaining room hadn't yet been updated. Dead certain someone was in the room she'd left for last, she made her way to the door.
At the same time, she swapped out her guns for knives. They'd make far less noise and not alert anyone else in the house. Then she drop-rolled into the room--to a rushing attack from a supernaturally pretty vampire with waves of golden hair. But Giorgio wasn't used to fighting for his life. He went for where her body should've been, rather than where she actually was.
She'd come up into a crouch and thrust a knife into his gut before he could stop his headlong rush. His blood stained his white shirt scarlet. Well aware how quickly vamps his age could shrug off a gut wound, she thrust a second knife directly into his heart seconds after the first, then rose to stab a third into his neck from the side.
It severed his jugular, blood pumping out in hot spurts to splatter the warm yellow walls of what turned out to be the kitchen, but he still kept coming, trying to gurgle something that sounded like "whore."
"Better a whore than a sadistic piece of shit like you," she said and, grabbing the hunting knife from her belt, slammed it into his brain through his left ear, then twisted.
A shocked look on his face, Giorgio collapsed at last.
Ashwini knew he wasn't dead--she'd made certain of it. She wanted Giorgio to suffer immortal justice. It could last years. The blade in his brain should keep him down for a day at least, but she wasn't going to risk it, with all the weirdness in this case. For all she fucking knew, Giorgio was part reborn and would shamble back to life as soon as she turned her back.
Raiding the kitchen in lieu of using up her own knives, she methodically put carbon-steel steak knives through his palms, forearms, and shoulders, careful not to make skin-to-skin contact. After which she brought a meat cleaver down on his thigh, snapping the bone. She did the same to his other femur.
Unlike Giorgio, she took no pleasure in causing the injuries. Her only motive was to keep him in place. Except for the last two knives she'd found--narrow and sharp filleting blades.
"This is for every woman you've ever hurt," she said and pinned the bastard's testicles to the floor, the knives slicing easily through his pants. "I hope that fucking hurts when you wake up."
Judging him contained, she got up and headed out into the hallway again.
The sirens she could already hear told her backup would arrive long before Giorgio had any chance of rising. Taking the stairs to the second floor, she went up on silent feet . . . to see Janvier coming down from the third floor. She jerked up her head. He said, "One girl safe," in a low tone, then zeroed in on the blood on her jacket.
"Giorgio's."
Touching his fingers to her jaw, he looked down the corridor. "Cornelius must be on this floor if he's here."
"He is." The nauseating ugliness she'd sensed even from the outside dominated the air here, acrid and old. Fighting the sick feeling in her gut, she slipped her guns back out. Knives wouldn't do much good against an angel, but a brain full of lead might slow him down enough for Janvier to behead him.
They went down the corridor side by side, clearing two rooms before Ashwini's churning stomach told her they were at the right one. Communicating that to Janvier with a single glance, she didn't argue when he nodded at her to open the door so he could go in first. As a vampire, he had more chance of surviving a pissed-off angel than she did. And she had a better chance of keeping him safe if she went in with guns blazing behind him.
Turning the knob, she shoved it open before swinging around to go in behind Janvier. He went in as low and as quiet as she had in the kitchen and came up ready to defend against an attack . . . except there was no attack.
There was, however, an angel in the room.
Ashwini kept her guns up, her eyes refusing to believe what they saw in front of them. When she chanced a quick look at Janvier, it was to see the same disbelief in his eyes.
Janvier had shown her a photo of Cornelius soon after they'd first found his feathers. The male in the image had had a heavy build, his hair a glossy chestnut so dark it was near black, his eyes a deep greenish hazel, and his skin a sun-stroked brown that--when paired with his sculptured features--spoke
of the Mediterranean or northern Africa. His wings had been spread in the image, warrior strong and ready for flight.
In front of the windows stood . . . she didn't know what to call him. He might've once been an angel but his wings were now two lumps of petrified cartilage and bone, the cream of his feathers visible only in sporadic patches, the red all but gone. When he turned to face them, she saw his cheeks were sunken in, his skin stark white, and that his dusty-brown hair evidenced the same molting as his wings, the skin on the exposed parts of his skull reminiscent of tanned hide.
Ashwini could've circled his upper arm with her forefinger and thumb. It was as if he'd lost all body fat and muscle mass. But even his bones weren't quite right, his jaw sticking out in an odd way and his right leg appearing to have a second knee that pushed at the thin red silk pants that hung over his emaciated form, his upper half bare to reveal a rib cage that was crushed on one side.
His eyes were a filmy blue, his teeth jagged . . . and covered with blood, the same blood that ringed his mouth and dripped down his chest.
Smiling grotesquely at them, he slid to his knees and went as if to feed again from the woman on the floor, her hair a pool of magenta and her skin a pale brown. Ashwini shot him through the head, hoping it wouldn't blow his skull to smithereens. With a normal angel, that wouldn't be a risk, but with this one . . .
Cornelius fell forward but his head was whole. Good. He, too, needed to face immortal justice.
Janvier pulled the enemy angel's body off the woman, while Ashwini checked her for a pulse. She had to use the wrist--the woman's throat was too bloody a mess.
"Come on," she whispered, seeing only the most minor signs of long-term damage on the victim--her skin was a touch drier than it should be, the sheen of her dyed hair dulled but not absent. It gave Ashwini hope that they weren't too late. "Come on."
Then there it was: a pulse, thready but present.
Hearing boots slamming up the stairs, she ran to the door, saw Trace. "Get the paramedics!"
He nodded and disappeared back down the way he'd come.
The paramedics were in the room a half minute later.
*
Fourteen hours after that, the city dark, Ashwini leaned against the wall of a large windowless room in the center of the Tower. Janvier stood beside her, one booted foot up against the wall, his arms folded. Elena was next to Ashwini, while Dmitri flanked Janvier. Naasir had growled when told of the capture and said he'd get the report from them. The idea of being closed up with "walking rancid meat" hadn't appealed to the vampire.
Ashwini wasn't exactly happy about it, either, but she had to see this through no matter what. Staying strong against the vortex of Raphael's power was actually giving her a counterbalance to the bile-inducing horror of Cornelius's evil . . . and Janvier's shoulder touching her own was a physical anchor.
Raphael stood in the center facing Cornelius--who'd finally healed enough to speak, but not to stand for an extended period. It shouldn't have taken an angel of his age anywhere near that long to shake off a bullet wound, but Cornelius wasn't exactly a normal angel anymore. He sat in a chair that was the only piece of furniture in the room, his face wreathed in a grimace of a smile.
Ashwini ground her teeth against the urge to go for a gun again. Marta, the woman they'd rescued, was alive, but the damage done to her was more than skin-deep. Her bones had aged ten years, with her internal organs showing signs of the same. According to the doctors, she'd be fine with supplements, but her life span had been permanently shortened.
All so a monster could live another day.
"Cornelius," Raphael said, his wings glowing in a way that no one ever wanted to see, because when an archangel glowed, people died. "You are not as you were."
"My goddess gave me a gift."
"She fed from you because you were disposable and strong." A pitiless rejoinder. "My spymaster has confirmed that Xi retreated with the troops, as did Alastair and Philomena. Their injuries and the deaths of Lijuan's other generals came at the hands of my people, not from Lijuan."
Cornelius's smile didn't slip. "I offered myself to enhance her greatness, to become part of her." He broke off into a rattling cough. "Alas, she could not complete the feeding in the midst of the final strike, could not take the fullness of my soul into herself."
That explained Cornelius's half-desiccated state.
"And the women?" Raphael asked in an ice-cold tone that had Ashwini's heart freezing. As long as she lived, she would never understand how Ellie got into bed with him. Even more so now that Ashwini had personally experienced the shattering vulnerability that came with sex.
Janvier shot her a look at that instant, his eyes glittering, and it was as if he'd read her mind. She scowled. He grinned and closed his hand over her own. "I could tear off your head with a single wrench," he said in a low tone that reached only her.
"Stop reading my thoughts." She wasn't worried in the least about his strength. If he'd wanted to hurt her, he'd have done it long ago. Instead, he'd put himself in the path of danger for her more than once.
Frowning, Janvier said, "But you spoke aloud."
She blinked, leaned in to speak against his ear. "No, I didn't."
They stared at each other.
"We'll talk about it later," she finally whispered and they returned their attention to the interrogation.
Cornelius admitted to using the women to maintain his strength as he awaited his "goddess's return," but refused to admit he'd fed on animals before he tracked down Giorgio.
"Saving face," Dmitri murmured. "To feed on animals makes him an animal himself."
"What did animals ever do to you that you'd insult them like that?"
Ashwini's muttered rejoinder made Dmitri's lips curve. "My apologies. You are, of course, correct. He is an unnatural abomination."
"What will Raphael do to him?" she asked.
"He'll ask the surviving victims their will and then he'll make sure it's carried out, on both Cornelius and Giorgio."
"Good." Had it been up to her, Ashwini would've told Raphael to shut the bastards up in a room together, where Cornelius could feed on Giorgio until the vampire died, then starve to death himself. It'd take a long, long time, even given his current state.
Maybe she'd mention the idea to the living victims.
"You are bloodthirsty, my Ashblade."
When she glared at him, Janvier scowled. "You didn't say that aloud, either?"
"No." She pushed off the wall when Raphael turned to leave, indicating the questioning was over.
He left Cornelius in the room and Dmitri locked the door behind them.
"I have spoken to Giorgio," Raphael said, his wing brushing over Elena's.
"Already?" Ashwini said before she realized she was interrupting an archangel. "I didn't think he was powerful enough to heal so fast."
Raphael held her gaze, the blue of his eyes violent. "He isn't."
But Raphael, she understood, keeping a white-knuckled grip on her ability so she wouldn't be sucked into the force of him, was an archangel. No way of knowing how he'd made Giorgio talk, and it was probably better if she didn't; she had enough nightmares inside her skull.
Raphael's eyes didn't move off her, the power in them chilling. "You did an extraordinary job of containing him without causing a deadly injury."
Ashwini decided she wasn't delirious. Raphael definitely sounded amused. "I might have gone a bit overboard," she admitted with a wince. "I just didn't want to risk that he'd crawl away, escape justice to carry on his reign of torture and death."
"A worthy motive," Raphael said, his expression growing chilly again as he added, "He deserves the pain."
"You have to teach me the knife-through-the-brain trick," Elena said, giving Ashwini an excuse to look away from the archangel who had noticed her. No sane person wanted an archangel's notice. Ever.
"There's a twist at the end," she said, curling her fingers surreptitiously around Janvier's. He curled bac
k in turn, warm and strong.
And it became easier to breathe. "That's what you have to be careful about," she told Ellie. "Otherwise, you scramble the brains too badly for the vamp to recover."
The other hunter's eyes gleamed. "We'll talk." She looked up at her consort. "So, what did that slimy coward have to say for himself?"
"That he was no traitor." Cold disgust in Raphael's words. "In truth, he had no true loyalties, did only what was good for Giorgio. Cornelius had known him in the past, and when he saw Giorgio in the Quarter, he tracked him to his home and asked for sanctuary, convincing Giorgio that he'd be rewarded when Lijuan arose anew."
"Sire," Janvier said, "Giorgio wasn't always thus. He was a great physician. Is it the madness of age?"
Raphael's answer was absolute. "No. He simply became bored with eternity and this was his entertainment." The pure male beauty of the archangel's features did nothing to hide the ruthlessness that made him one of the Cadre. "I believe he accepted Cornelius not because of any belief in Lijuan's resurrection, but because he wished for a partner in his perversions."
"Giorgio shouldn't have been able to get away with his misuse of women for as long as he did," Dmitri said, his voice stripped of all traces of civility.
Thinking of Carys's surprise at Ashwini's response to the report of the two missing pros, she said, "You need a better way to stay in touch with the vulnerable."
"Ash is right," Janvier said. "There's a gray world beneath the surface of the city, and it's from this pool that predators like Giorgio pick their prey. I'm also concerned about how many submissive mortals I saw in the Quarter clubs."
Dmitri frowned. "We have a network in place, but its focus is on keeping an eye on the immortals, rather than on mortals who might become prey. It's a gap we need to work out a way to plug."
What the Tower needed, Ashwini thought, was someone like Ransom, someone trusted on the streets and protective of its denizens, but who wasn't mortal. It had to be a vampire, a man or woman who'd already made the choice to live in the immortal world.
"We can discuss this further tomorrow," Raphael said. "For now, the predators are locked up, and you both"--those eyes full of power noticing Ashwini and Janvier again--"have earned the night off. Enjoy the peace while it lasts."