by Nalini Singh
“You’re a feather.” Illium held Eve’s sturdy little body as if it weighed nothing. “But Elena isn’t yet strong enough to carry another more than a short distance. I, on the other hand, can do this.” With that, he shot up into the sky, Eve’s delighted scream rippling through the air.
Hearing it, Elena shut the door on the questions roiling in her mind, because her first priority had to be the emotional health of her sister, and continued on toward the Enclave. Illium would make sure Eve got home safe, and the excitement of the blue-winged angel’s daredevil tricks would help ameliorate the stress of Eve’s last few hours.
Landing at the house, she tracked Montgomery to the kitchens, where he was discussing the dinner menu with Sivya. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, rubbing a hand over her face. “But Eve will be staying with us tonight, possibly tomorrow, too. Could you have a room made up for her?”
“Of course, Guild Hunter.” The vampire’s eyes searched hers. “Is she well?”
Elena knew the question was meant for her, too, but she wasn’t ready to go there yet, wasn’t ready to think about how she felt. “Cookies or some cake wouldn’t go amiss,” she said instead.
“I’ll make certain Miss Evelyn has everything she needs.”
“Thank you.” Leaving the butler to organize things, she made an important call and returned outside just in time to see Illium land. The sunlight at his back made the blue of his wings glow, his hair wind-wild and his grin as open as the gold of his gaze.
It was a sight gorgeous and infrequent.
As she’d seen so clearly that night at the blood café, behind Illium’s playful personality lay a terrible sadness that cast shadows on his soul. As behind her father’s anger lay a horrific loss.
Had Marguerite known?
Yes. She’d been Jeffrey’s heartbeat, his lover in every way, the trust between them absolute. For Marguerite to then do what she had, to leave him when he had to have been grappling with the nightmare repeat of his childhood . . .
Elena rubbed a fisted hand over her heart, forcing another smile as Eve ran over, cheeks flushed and hair as wild as Illium’s. At eleven years of age, her sister had a child’s spirit, but her face could turn as solemn as an adult’s without warning. As it did now.
“Thanks for coming.” Big gray eyes holding her own. “I knew you would.”
“You need to thank Amy when you see her,” Elena said, bending to hug her close. “She called me.”
“Amy always takes care of me.” Stepping back from the hug after squeezing her tight, Eve said, “This is going to make Mom and Father fight, isn’t it?”
Elena wanted to lie, tell Eve it would be all right, but her sister was too smart and oddly wise for that. “Yes. I think this is going to cause a very big fight.”
“Could you get Amy?” Eve looked at Illium, not Elena. “It wouldn’t be hard for you to carry her. She’s—”
Elena touched Eve’s shoulder to get her attention. “I rang her. Amy wants to stay at home.”
Unhidden distress. “But Father will punish her for calling you.”
“No, I don’t think he will.” Jeffrey’s mind was on the distant blood-soaked past, not the petty infringements of today. “Here.” She handed Eve her phone. “Why don’t you talk to Amy yourself?”
Walking a small distance away, Eve made the call. When Illium went as if to speak, Elena shook her head. She couldn’t talk about what was wrong. Not now. But when he raised an arm, she allowed herself to lean against him, to accept the undemanding warmth of his friendship, his wing heavy against her own.
“Amy’s being dumb,” was Eve’s blunt appraisal when she walked back to them, her face set in pugnacious lines. “She says Father shouldn’t be alone, even after he was so mean to me. I hate him.” Arms folded, jaw set, she glared at the grass.
“I hate you!”
“Don’t say that.” Elena crouched down in front of her sister even as her skull rang with the words she’d spoken the day she walked out of the Big House, never to return. “He might have crossed a line today, but whatever Jeffrey’s done, he’s done it out of love for you.” It was a love twisted by tragedy until it threatened to become a stifling cage, but it was love nonetheless. “I think it’s too late for me and him, but not for you.”
Eve’s glare didn’t fade, but her response held an uncertainty that made her youth and innocence clear. “I thought you hated him, too. Don’t you?”
“I’m not sure what I feel for Jeffrey. I do know that you love him.”
Scuffing at the ground, Eve bit down on her lower lip. “He’s a good father except about the Guild.”
“Everyone has blind spots.”
“I guess.”
* * *
A half hour later, Elena left Eve in Montgomery’s capable hands, knowing the elegant vampire was lethal, would protect her with his life, as would the rest of the staff. She wouldn’t have made the same decision had Eve appeared the least scared or intimidated, but her youngest sister had settled in without a hitch. Having borrowed Elena’s laptop, she’d set herself up at the kitchen table and logged into her school account to do homework, was chatting to Sivya about her science problems when Elena left after receiving a hunt order from the Guild.
She could’ve asked to be replaced, but she needed some way to release the tension coiled up inside her, get her brain clear again. Checking the hunt details on her phone one more time, she took off at a run over the snow-dusted cliffs, the water glittering under the afternoon sunlight, as if a dip wouldn’t give you hypothermia within seconds. The hunt order was relatively simple: she was to retrieve a thirty-year-old vamp who thought he was too good to bow and scrape to the angel who was his master.
Nothing unusual about that. Seduced by the idea of immortality and the beauty it so often bestowed, people lined up to be Made, but found the reality of a hundred years of service to the angels hard to swallow. What made Sidney Geisman different was that he’d written a booklet denouncing the “slavery” into which he’d been “tricked,” a booklet that had gone viral among other young vampires.
Needless to say, his angel was beyond pissed. Elena knew Sidney’s punishment would be harsh, an example to others who might seek to follow his seditious path, but while she pitied him, it wouldn’t keep her from doing her job as a hunter. Because Sidney hadn’t been tricked, not in any way, shape, or form.
The angels made zero attempt to hide the consequences of being Made, of what was required of those who served them. Even forgetting general public knowledge, all Candidates who passed the first part of the selection process were given the euphemistically termed “Intake and Orientation” file and told they were free to walk out the door should the contents of the file not be to their liking.
As consort, Elena had seen a copy of that file firsthand: it went into extreme detail and included graphic images of the punishments that might be meted out to a vampire should he or she fail to please the angel who held his or her service. Smack bang in the center of the file was a four-page article detailing the vicious public sentence handed to one vampire, whom Raphael had left in Times Square after breaking every bone in his body.
Below the article were the words: Betrayal will not be tolerated.
Sidney Geisman, Elena thought as she landed on the roof of a skyscraper to the south of the Tower, appeared to be suffering from a case of buyer’s remorse. Too bad. You couldn’t return the gift of near-immortality, so you were stuck paying the price for it. Not that she thought Sidney would be rushing to return that particular gift, even if it was possible. Cynical, perhaps, but she bet every hunter in the Guild would say the same. Too many people wanted to do the whole “have your cake and eat it, too” thing.
A single knock on the glass door to the roof atrium and it slid aside to leave her face-to-face with a slim vampire dressed in a brown tunic with a mandarin collar and gold detailing, his pants the same brown shade. “Guild Hunter,” he said, then hesitated. “My humble apologies. I s
hould’ve used ‘Consort.’”
“No, ‘Guild Hunter’ is fine.” All this polite deference made her skin itch, but it was part and parcel of being with Raphael and since she had no plans of ever changing that, she’d have to learn to deal. “Do you have what I need?”
“Yes.” Walking to the table just inside the atrium, he opened a flat black box to retrieve a neatly folded shirt. “Will this do?”
Elena took the item of clothing and tried to hone in on the scents trapped within the fabric.
Raspberry and ginger, with a hint of mint.
A pretty, refreshing scent but it wasn’t from the shirt. “If you’d step back past the doors.”
“Of course.”
Waiting until the wind swept away the raspberry and ginger, she took another deep breath.
An astringent chemical . . . disinfectant, softened by a delicate caress of lilies.
“I need the secondary sample,” she said. “You made sure to take it from a different location?”
“Yes, the shirt was from his washing basket, and this T-shirt is from his gym bag.”
The second test returned the same reading, the disinfectant not a taint but part of Sidney’s scent, as interpreted by her hunting abilities.
“Thank you.” Returning the T-shirt, she walked off the edge of the roof, snapping out her wings before she could even begin to fall. Her next destination was the home of Sidney’s mortal family, the address part of the background report attached to the hunt order. All vampires with living relatives eventually went home, the smart for a clandestine visit, the stupid to stay.
Sidney, it turned out, fell into neither group.
“I haven’t seen him since he took up that filthy habit.” Words spit out by the elderly woman who answered the door, her hazel eyes watery with age but her cheeks hot spots of color. “Drinking blood is the devil’s work.” She slammed the door in Elena’s face.
Not taking the woman at her word, Elena circled the small, neat house without picking up even a sliver of Sidney’s scent. “I guess home isn’t sweet for you, Sid,” she muttered, hauling herself up the fire escape ladder to the second floor. She’d become expert at low-height takeoffs in an effort to balance out her inability to do regular and easy vertical takeoffs; and having done the latter once today already, she wasn’t going to risk another unless it was a life-or-death situation.
Now, she gritted her teeth and got herself airborne before she kissed pavement. Once in the air, she ignored the other addresses in the prehunt report and headed instead to a particular section of Central Park: the Blood Theater.
33
Sidney was a man proud enough of his opus that he’d put his name on it—someone like that wouldn’t be satisfied with disappearing into the mist, bereft of an audience. No, every instinct she had told her he’d have hit the Theater as soon as he could.
“Do you know what it’s like to watch a woman get her head torn off?”
Shutting down the resurgence of memory before it could incapacitate, she winged her way across the green space at the core of Manhattan. About to land in the correct section, her brain suddenly poked at her to consider the situation . . . and maybe part of that poke came from the echo of her father’s words, though she couldn’t think about that now.
As soon as she landed, she would become vulnerable in a way that—ironically—she’d never been as a human. Her wings would make it hard for her to run at speed, dodging between the trees near impossible. A vertical takeoff would also not be a viable option if the hunt went bad, since she couldn’t get aloft fast enough. Added to that, the Theater was in an isolated section of the park and, while night hadn’t yet fallen, winter darkness was starting to edge the light in the sky.
It’d be nice to think no vampire or angel in the territory would dare lay a hand on her, but there were always the outliers—and the mortals. If a group of hopped-up junkies took out her heart or injured her internal organs badly enough, she’d die, her immortality tenuous yet. Then there was the risk Raphael’s enemies had agents in the city just waiting for Elena to make herself a target.
“Yep,” she said to herself. “Landing right now would not be the most intelligent thing you’ve ever done, Elieanora P. Deveraux.”
Holding a hover—she was definitely getting better at that, thanks to the exercises Aodhan had taught her—she considered her options. It’d have to be the Guild, the Tower already stretched. “You have anyone who can back me up?” she asked Sara. “I’m at Central Park.”
“Gimme a sec.” A rustling, the phone going silent, then, “Deacon’s in the area with Slayer, and he has a crossbow. Why take a crossbow on the dog’s walk, I hear you ask? Because my beloved does not know how to leave home without being armed to the teeth.”
Elena laughed, Sara’s affectionate words giving her the respite she needed from the horrific images Jeffrey’s revelation had burned into her brain. “You know I’d never turn down Deacon.” Sara’s husband might no longer be an official member of the Guild, but they all knew he was one of them. “Wait, what about Zoe?”
“With my parents—they’re in town and spoiling her like only they can.” Elena could hear Sara’s smile. “Deacon’s yours long as you need him.”
“Thanks. I’ll call him to arrange a meeting spot.”
Less than two minutes later, she landed beside Deacon’s tall, heavily muscled form a short walk from her target location. “I appreciate this,” she said, after lavishing affection on Slayer, the huge black dog who was Zoe’s adored best friend.
“No problem.” Quiet green eyes that Elena was certain missed nothing, even though his stance was relaxed, Slayer leaning against his leg. “Where are we headed?”
“Blood Theater.” Nothing special during daylight hours, that particular part of Central Park transformed into a decadent, sex-laced vampire haven at night, one mortals were advised to avoid unless they intended to become well-fucked dinner.
Deacon retrieved the crossbow he’d slung over his back. “Hardware has a good deterrent effect.” The instant the crossbow was in Deacon’s hands, Slayer turned from playful, tail-wagging pet to a silent menace.
“Yep.” Retrieving the longer blades from her thigh sheaths, she made certain the gleaming edges showed beneath her fists. “I don’t want to draw blood, but some of the younger ones are morons.”
A faint smile on Deacon’s lips as they set out along the narrow path to the Theater, the snow packed down as far as Elena could see. Given, however, that it hadn’t snowed since close to dawn, the crushed snow was probably evidence of the previous night’s debauchery, not a more recent event. The Theater was apt to be empty at this time of day and if she was right, and Sidney had made an appearance there, she might be able to pick up a trail.
Despite the high possibility she and Deacon were alone in this part of the park, she didn’t drop her guard, aware of every rustle, every tiny sound, then the distinct lack of it. “No birds,” she murmured sotto voce.
“Yes.” Deacon went back-to-back with her without any further discussion, her wings pressed against the dark green of his trench coat, while Slayer padded silent and dangerous in front of them.
Weapons held with open aggression, they turned right off the main access path and onto another that spilled them into the small clearing with a natural dip that turned it into a miniature amphitheater. Elena’s nape itched with the certainty of the eyes on them, instinct verified by the fresh lines of scent in the air, but no one appeared out of the deep pools of shadow between the trees.
Watery blood. A lot of it.
“Ellie.”
“I smell it.” If someone was dead inside the Theater, he or she hadn’t been dead long enough for the carrion birds to have become aware of the feast, the area devoid of the sounds of their feeding. Either that, or the birds had been held off on purpose, because beneath the snow-diluted blood, she caught the scent of disinfectant softened by lilies.
Shit.
“Deacon?”
/> “I have you covered.”
Shifting position, she made her way into the dip and to the gruesome sight that awaited. Sidney Geisman had lost his head. Literally. It was currently spitted on a crude wooden spear carved from a hacked-off branch, the vampire’s eyes orbs of bulging red and his tongue a grotesquely swollen black where it hung out of his mouth.
It was too cold for flies, the bloody snow below the head pounded into ice. The rest of the vampire’s body lay discarded a short distance away. She could see indications of arterial spray on the nearby trees, the blood having turned a putrid brown that nonetheless stood out to her enhanced vision. What interested her more were the multiple gaps in the pattern, as if this execution had had an audience that would’ve been sprayed with Sidney’s blood.
Breathing through clenched teeth, the cold paradoxically intensifying the miasma of scents for her, she stepped close enough to the head to read the note stabbed into Sidney’s forehead with what appeared to be a metal nail file. Inventive. The note consisted of a single word written in blood: DISEASED.
Oh, fuck. Fuckety fuck fuck!
Continuing to breathe through her mouth, she crossed to the body and began to check Sidney for any visual signs of disease. It didn’t take long to find the sores on his hands. They were small, barely formed, so the infection had only just dug into his cells when he’d been killed. Which meant either there was now another carrier in the city or—best-case scenario—Sidney had been hoarding bottled blood in anticipation of his escape.
Raphael?
When she heard only silence in response, she remembered he’d mentioned he might be leaving the city to meet one of his senior angels. Digging out her phone from the pocket where she’d stuffed it, she called Tower operations, using the direct line that meant she’d get either Aodhan or Illium.
It was Aodhan who answered. Not wanting to say too much over an unsecure line, she simply told him she needed him in the Blood Theater. He didn’t ask any questions, saying that he’d be there within minutes.