Angels' Flight (guild hunter)

by Nalini Singh

  “I don’t need a bodyguard.”

  “If you walk out of here alone, I’ll simply follow you.” Steel in those moss and shadow eyes. “Much easier to take me along.”

  She shrugged. “You want to waste your time, that’s up to you.”

  A pause as he studied her, cool intelligence rising past the hot burn of temper. “You intended to take me along all the time,” he said at last. “Now you try to play me. Shame on you, Ashwini.”

  How the hell did he read her that way? “Guild says this is touchy,” she admitted. “I figured the fact that you know the players would provide a nice noncombative entrée into their world.”

  “So you will use me.” Pulling on a white T-shirt, he covered up that body her fingers wanted to stroke, wanted to know, safe in the knowledge that it would be only Janvier under her fingertips, no ghosts, no echoes, nothing but the beautiful, infuriating vampire himself. “Perhaps I’ll ask you for recompense.”

  “Half my fee.” Fair was fair—it’d be much faster and easier to get to Callan Fox with Janvier by her side.

  “I don’t need money, cher.” Pulling out a duffel, he began to pack with almost military efficiency. “If I do this, you will owe me a favor.”

  “Not to hunt you?” She shook her head. “I can’t promise that. The Guild would have my badge.”

  He waved off her words with that wicked, wicked smile he seemed to save just for her. “Non, this favor will be between Ashwini and Janvier, no one else. It will be personal.”

  The sensible thing would’ve been to walk away… but then, she’d never been big on sensible. “Deal.”

  Nazarach ran Atlanta from a gracious old plantation house that had been converted for angelic inhabitants. “Very Southern,” Ashwini said as the limo glided down the drive. “Must admit, it’s not quite what I expected.”

  Janvier stretched out his long legs as much as he could. “You’re used to Archangel Tower.”

  “Hard not to be. It dominates Manhattan.” Raphael’s Tower, the place from which the archangel effectively ruled North America, had become as much a symbol of New York as the ubiquitous red apple. “Have you ever seen it at night? It’s like a knife of light, cutting through the sky.” Beauty and cruelty intertwined.

  “Once or twice,” Janvier said. “I’ve never been close to Raphael, though. You?”

  She shook her head. “I hear he’s one scary s.o.b.”

  The vampire driving them met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “That’s putting it mildly.”

  Janvier leaned forward, his interest buzzing along her skin. “You’ve met the archangel?”

  “He came to Atlanta for a meeting with my sire six months ago.” Ashwini saw goose bumps rise over the vampire’s skin. “I thought I knew what power felt like. I was wrong.”

  Hearing that from a vampire who was no newborn made Ashwini damn glad she was “only” dealing with a midlevel angel. “Huge windows that open out into nothing,” she said, caught again by the timeless elegance of the plantation house as it came into focus. “Easy to fall out of one.”

  Janvier put his arm around the back of the seat. “Angels can fly.”

  “Janvier.”

  A chuckle, fingers stroking across her hair as he removed his hand. “Would you like to fly?”

  She thought of her dreams, that sensation of falling endlessly, caught in a whirlwind of nightmare. “No. I like my feet set firmly on the ground.”

  “You surprise me, cher. I know how much you like jumping off bridges.”

  “I’m attached to a bungee cord at the time.”

  “Ah, far safer, then.”

  The car came to a stop before she could return the amused volley, and they stepped out into Atlanta’s lush embrace. “Would you?” she asked, glancing at him all loose-limbed and roughly sexy beside her as they walked to the front door. “Like to fly?”

  “I’m bayou-born. One of the first after my people came to Louisiana.” He slid his hands into his pockets, his voice holding the music of his home. “It’s water that’s in my blood, not air.”

  “The hunter-born hate water.” It was no secret—not for a vampire as experienced as Janvier.

  “But you’re not one of the bloodhounds,” Janvier pointed out. “Water doesn’t mask a vampire’s scent for you—you’re a tracker. You rely on your eyes.”

  “Trackers hate water, too.” A snarl directed squarely at him. “It destroys the trail.”

  “Hey, now,” he said, still in that easy, unhurried voice, “I took you through the bayou, sugar. Lots of damp earth—plenty of signs for a tracker to follow.”

  “I had mold growing in my toes by the end of that hunt.”

  “Now I find myself envious of mold—see what you do to me.” Teasing words, a gaze that stroked her with fire.

  “You ever make me hunt you in that kind of damp again,” she said, feeling her stomach give a little twinge as his eyes moved over her, proprietary in a way they had no right to be, “I’ll make you eat the bloody mold.”

  Janvier was still laughing when they walked up the final steps to find the door being held open by a small, wrinkled woman who was unquestionably human. Even if Ashwini hadn’t noticed the myriad other signs that proclaimed her mortality, the simple fact was the angels only accepted Candidates between the ages of twenty-five and forty. And once Made, a vampire was frozen in time—except, of course, for the gradual polish of a beauty no mortal would ever possess.

  But there was another kind of beauty in this woman’s face, marked as it was by the experiences of a life lived to the fullest. A life still being lived that way, Ashwini thought, watching those bright blue eyes take in Janvier with a definite glint of female appreciation—one that didn’t dim as she invited them inside. “The master is waiting for you in the living area.”

  “Will you show us the way, darlin’?”

  The woman dimpled. “Of course. Please follow me.”

  As they walked behind the older woman, Ashwini jabbed Janvier with her elbow. “Do you have no shame?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  An instant later they were being shown through doors large enough to accommodate an angel’s wings. The maid whispered away after letting them in, and while Ashwini’s hunter senses would never let her ignore the woman’s exit, it occupied only a very small part of her mind. Because Nazarach was waiting for them.

  And if he was only a midlevel angel, then she was damn grateful she’d never been, and likely never would be, in the presence of an archangel.

  The Atlantan angel was about Janvier’s height, with gleaming black skin and eyes of such a direct, piercing amber, it was as if they were lit from within. That illusion of light was power, of course, the power of an immortal. The incredible force of it lay like a shimmering film in his eyes, on his skin, and, most magnificently, on his wings.

  “You like my wings,” the angel said, and his voice was deep, holding a thousand voices she tried not to hear, tried not to know.

  “It’d be impossible to do otherwise.” She held those ghostly voices at bay with a will honed by a lifetime of fighting for her sanity. “They’re beyond beauty.” A burnished amber, Nazarach’s wings were not only unique, but so exquisitely formed, each feather so perfect, her mind had trouble accepting they existed. When he flew, she thought, he’d look like a blinding piece of the sun.

  Nazarach gave her a small smile, and perhaps there was warmth in it, but it was nothing human, nothing mortal. “As it is impossible to do anything but appreciate you, Guild Hunter.”

  The tiny hairs at the back of her neck stood up in screaming warning. “I’m here to do a job and I’ll do it well. If you want to play games, I’m not your girl.”

  Janvier stepped forward before Nazarach could reply to what was surely a highly impertinent statement. “Ashblade,” he said, using the nickname he was responsible for coining, “is good at what she does. She’s not so good at playing by the rules.”

  “So”—Nazarach turned his att
ention to Janvier—“you’re not dead yet, Cajun?”

  “Despite Ash’s best attempts.”

  The angel laughed, and the shattering power of it swept around the room, crawled over her skin. Age, death, ecstasy, and agony, it was all in that laugh, in Nazarach’s past. It crushed her, threatened to cut off her breath, leaving her trapped forever in the terror-choked hell that had sought to claim her since childhood.

  3

  It was the fear that saved her. Fueled by the threat of being imprisoned inside her own mind, she wrenched herself out of the endless whirlpool and back into the present. As the rush of air receded from her ears, she heard Nazarach say, “Perhaps I’ll ask you to rejoin my court, Janvier.”

  Janvier gave a perfect bow, and for an instant, she saw him in the clothes of a bygone era, a stranger who knew how to play politics with as much manipulative ease as he played cards. Her hand fisted in instinctive rejection, but the next moment he laughed that lazy, amused laugh, and he was the vampire she knew again. “I never was much good as a courtier if you recall.”

  “But you provided the most intelligent conversation in the room.” Settling his wings close to his back, the angel walked to a gleaming mahogany table in one corner. “You aid the Guild Hunter?”

  Ashwini let Janvier speak, using the time to study Nazarach, his power snapping a whip against her senses… a whip laced with broken glass.

  “The idea of a kiss arouses my curiosity.” Janvier paused. “If I may—this situation between Antoine and Callan seems beneath your interest.”

  “Antoine,” Nazarach said, his face turning expressionless in the way of the truly old ones, “has begun to overreach himself. He has come dangerously close to challenging my authority.”

  “He’s changed, then.” Janvier shook his head. “The Antoine I knew was ambitious, but he also had a healthy regard for his own life.”

  “It is the woman—Simone.” The angel passed a photograph to Ashwini, eyes of inhuman amber lingering on her own face a fraction too long. “Barely into her third century and yet she twists Antoine around her finger.”

  “Why isn’t she dead?” Ashwini asked point-blank. Angels were a law unto themselves. There was no court on earth that would hold Nazarach to account if he decided to eliminate one of the Made.

  Vampires chose their masters when they chose immortality.

  The angel flared out his wings slightly, then snapped them shut. “It seems Antoine loves her.”

  Ashwini nodded. “You kill her, he’ll turn against you.” And he’d die. Angels were not known for their benevolence.

  “After being alive for seven hundred years,” Nazarach mused, speaking of centuries as if they were mere decades, “I find I’m loath to lose one of the few men—his recent mistakes aside—I actually respect.”

  Returning the photo of the sultry brunette who was apparently making a very old vampire dance to her tune, Ashwini forced herself to meet Nazarach’s gaze—the amber acted as a lens, focusing the screams to piercing clarity. “How does this tie in with the kidnapping?” she asked, blocking the nightmare with everything she had.

  “Callan Fox,” Nazarach said, “intrigues me. I don’t want him dead yet. And Antoine will kill the young pup to retrieve his granddaughter. Get Monique out and bring her to me.”

  “You’re asking us to hand you a hostage to use against Antoine.” Ashwini shook her head, relief a cool brush down her spine. “The Guild doesn’t get involved in political disputes.”

  “Between angels,” Nazarach corrected. “This is a… problem between an angel and the vampires under his control.”

  “Even so,” she said, unable to stop her eyes from going to those wings of amber and light, unable to understand how such beauty could exist alongside the inhuman darkness that stained Nazarach from within, “if you want Monique, all you have to do is ask. Callan will hand her over.” The leader of the Fox kiss might be willing to take on Antoine Beaumont, but only a very stupid vampire would stand against an angel. And Callan Fox was not stupid. “You don’t need me.”

  Nazarach gave her an inscrutable smile. “You will not mention my name to Callan. As for the rest—the Guild has already agreed to the terms.”

  “No offense,” she said, wondering if he’d look as brutally beautiful while he choked the life out of those who displeased him, “but I need to check that with my boss.”

  “Go ahead, Guild Hunter.” Smooth permission, no mercy in those eyes full of death.

  Stepping back until she was almost in the hallway, she put through the call on her cell phone, aware of Janvier and Nazarach talking in low voices about things long past, shadows of which experiences clung to Nazarach, but not to Janvier.

  Angel and vampire. Both touched by immortality, both compelling, but in vastly different ways. Nazarach was a being honed out of time, perfect, lethal, and utterly, absolutely inhuman. Janvier, in contrast, was earth and blood, deadly and a little rough… and still somehow of this world.

  “Ashwini?” Sara’s familiar tone. “What’s the problem?”

  She laid out Nazarach’s orders. “Has it been cleared?”

  “Yes.” The Guild Director sighed. “I wish to hell we didn’t have to get involved in what promises to turn into a giant clusterfuck, but there’s no way out.”

  “He’s playing games.”

  “He’s an angel,” Sara said, and it was an answer. “And technically Monique is in breach of her Contract, so Nazarach has the power to send out anyone and anything to retrieve her—even if he could achieve the same aim with a single phone call.”

  “Damn.” Ashwini liked working on the edges, but when angels got involved, those edges tended to cut bone deep, drawing the dark red of lifeblood. “You got my back?”

  “Always.” An unflinching response. “I’ve put Kenji and Baden on standby—give the signal and we’ll have you out of there in under an hour.”

  “Thanks, Sara.”

  “Hey, I don’t want to lose my main source of live entertainment.” A smile she could almost hear. “No new hunt order has come in for the Cajun. Just thought you’d want to know.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ashwini hung up with a quick good-bye, wondering what Sara would say if she knew exactly who Ashwini was consorting with at the moment.

  Janvier turned right at that instant—as if he’d sensed her attention. Shaking off the thought, she walked back to join vampire and angel. “Do you have any idea where Callan might be holding Monique?”

  The angel’s eyes dipped to her lips, and she had to fight the urge to run. Because while Nazarach might be agonizingly beautiful, she had the gut-wrenching sense that his idea of pleasure would mean only the most excruciating pain for her.

  “No,” he finally said, his gaze moving to her own. “But he’ll be at the Fisherman’s Daughter tomorrow night.” Amber lit with power. “Tonight, you will be my guest.”

  Not even the Atlanta heat could fight the chill that invaded her veins, a cold blade of warning.

  Sleepless, Ashwini sat on the balcony off the guest suite Nazarach had provided. She’d have preferred a tent in the park, a bed in a shelter, anything to the opulence of the angel’s home—all of it stained with a screaming terror that refused to let her sleep. “How many men and women do you think Nazarach’s killed over his lifetime?” Usually, she sensed things only through touch, but like its master, this place was so old, so bloody with memory, that it echoed endlessly in her mind.

  “Thousands,” came the soft answer from the vampire leaning against the wall beside the antique lounger where she sat. “Angels who rule can’t afford to be merciful.”

  She turned her face into the night breeze. “And yet some people see them as messengers of the gods.”

  “They are who they are. As am I.” Turning, he walked over to brace his hands on the gleaming wooden arms of her lounger. “I must feed, cher.”

  Something twisted in her chest, a sharp, unexpected ache, but she held it, held control. “I’m guessing you don’t
have much trouble finding food.”

  “I can give pleasure with my bite. There are those who seek such pleasures.” Lifting a finger, he traced the scar just above the pulse in her neck. “Who marked you?” A quiet question formed of pure ice.

  “My first hunt. I was young, inexperienced. The vamp got close enough to almost rip out my throat.” What she didn’t say was that she’d let the target get that close, let herself feel the kiss of death. Until that moment—when her blood scented the air in an iron-rich perfume—she’d thought she wanted to die, to silence the voices forever. “He taught me to value life.”

  “I will ask Nazarach’s indulgence,” Janvier said after an endless moment, “to use the store of blood kept here for his vampires.”

  Her senses honed in on something she’d barely seen, words unsaid. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “The angel wants me to leave you alone.” Janvier’s breath brushed over her in an intimate caress. “Otherwise that blood would’ve already been provided. He wants me to go out and hunt.”

  Shivers threatened at the idea of what Nazarach wanted from her. “So you’ll anger him.”

  “He likes me too much to kill me for such a small transgression.” Still, he didn’t move. “Why are there so many shadows in your eyes, Ashwini?”

  It startled her each time he used her given name—as if every utterance bound them tighter on a level she couldn’t see. “Why are there so many secrets in yours?”

  “I’ve lived over two hundred years,” he said, his voice as sensual as the magnolia-scented night. “I’ve done many things, not all of which I’m proud of.”

  “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.”

  He didn’t smile, didn’t even breathe, still, so still. “Talk to me, my Blade.”

  “No.” Not yet.

  “I’m very patient.”

  “We’ll see.” Even as she spoke, she knew she was laying down a challenge, one Janvier wouldn’t be able to resist.