“We’ll make a list, start circulating.” He was quiet for a minute. “Cher, something Aaliyah said is gnawing at me.”
“About how the vamp ordered Felicity not to say anything about their being a couple until she had her ‘makeover’?” That had been niggling at her, a sharp barb in her gut.
“Yes, exactly. I don’t believe she was ever part of his official cattle, that he held that out as a lure—if she was good enough, pleased him enough, she’d become one of the chosen.” A punishing edge in every word. “In the interim, he must’ve arranged to meet her outside his usual haunts, where there would be little chance he’d be seen with her.”
The more Ashwini learned about the man who’d tortured and killed Felicity after suffocating her spirit, the more she hated him. “It puts all our suspects back in the pool.” And still there remained the question of how he was causing fatal injuries so eerily similar to the results of Lijuan’s feeding. “But the servant angle is still worth following—one may have noticed signs of a woman he or she never saw.”
Janvier shoved a hand through his hair. “I wish we didn’t have to tiptoe through this investigation. Someone had to have seen her with the bastard, if we could only ask!”
Even as he bit out the words, his eyes lingered on a giggling child who’d just tugged his mother to a window display, then took in a group of women clustered around a nearby café table, heads bent in laughing secrecy. “But to give Felicity justice, we would have to rip open the wounds of a city that has barely stopped bleeding.”
Ashwini had no answers, torn between the same competing forces.
• • •
Eight hours later, keeping the details of Felicity’s death under wraps was no longer an issue.
• • •
Having split from Janvier earlier to follow through with their plan of speaking to those who staffed the homes of the powerful and wealthy and cruel, Ashwini ran into the intensive care section of the hospital to find he’d beaten her there.
“Where is she?” It came out a gasp, her heart pumping; she’d received the call while at Guild HQ, giving Sara a progress report, had decided to leg it rather than try to negotiate the heavy traffic in a cab.
“In a room down the hall.” Janvier’s jacket was open over his black T-shirt, his scarf missing. “This way.”
She fell into step with him. “Have you spoken to her?”
A shake of his head. “The physicians are with her. I think she’ll react better to a woman, in any case.”
Painfully conscious of what Janvier didn’t say—the torture the woman may have suffered at male hands—Ashwini met the gaze of the angel who stood guard beside the closed door at the end of the hall, wings of silver-blue pressed against the wall. “You brought her here?”
“Yes,” Illium said, his golden eyes colder than she’d ever seen them. “She ran out of Central Park, naked and screaming, collapsed on the street.”
“Jesus.” Ashwini thought of the bitter cold, the ice. “Hypothermia?”
“A hint of frostbite—I picked her up almost as soon as she was spotted.”
Which meant she’d been dropped off somewhere nearby, abandoned close enough to traffic to get herself help and attention. Not, Ashwini thought, for her good, but because the sadistic monster behind this wanted it to be front-page news. It was eight now, so the victim had run out during the busy time when people were leaving work or heading out to dinner.
“The tracks circled back to another street entrance,” Janvier said, answering the question she’d been about to ask.
“Of course they did,” she muttered. “Security cameras?”
“I alerted the Tower and Guild teams to go through any feeds they could find,” Janvier said. “So far, nothing.”
Ashwini girded her stomach. “How bad?”
Illium had parted his lips to answer when the door was pulled open from the inside and a tall, thin vampire with sandy brown hair, and aristocratic features in a pale-skinned face stepped out. He was wearing green scrubs, held a chart in one hand. “She’s lost over half the blood in her body,” he said, shoving a hand through his hair, leaving it standing on its ends. “However, that doesn’t explain her appearance. I’ve never seen its like and I’ve been a physician for lifetimes.”
Ashwini could feel the vampire’s age pressing against her skin, knew he had to be at least seven hundred years old. “Is there anything you can tell us?”
“Nothing useful.”
Another doctor stepped out then, a mortal woman, her hair a silver cap vivid against the deep brown of her skin. “The poor girl.” Pressing the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger, she met each of their intent looks in turn. “One of you can go in, but we had to sedate her to get her to stop screaming, so I’m not sure how much sense you’ll get out of her.”
Janvier and Illium stayed outside while Ashwini went in. Closing the door behind her with a quiet snick and steeling herself for what she might see, she faced the bed. They’d put the victim in a private room with a sprawling view of the field of fallen stars that was the night-draped city. The woman on the bed, however, wasn’t concerned with the scenery.
She lay flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling with dull brown eyes that were sharply slanted. Paired with the knife-edge cheekbones that now pushed painfully against her skin, those eyes would’ve given her a feline kind of beauty once, stunning and sensual. Her only flaw, for those who would see it that way, was the birthmark that covered the left side of her face and part of her neck, the color dark as port wine.
Once again, the killer had chosen a woman who may well have been vulnerable, a target wounded by the world until she’d been willing to overlook the danger signs in hope of love and safety.
Her face had shrunken in on itself, the majority of her skin a papery white that appeared leathery from a distance; Ashwini was certain that was an illusion, that it would prove as thin and brittle as Felicity’s. The woman’s fingernails were cracked and broken, her frame emaciated, and her black hair so thin, it felt as if a touch would turn it to dust.
A bandage covered her throat, the flesh below no doubt torn and ripped.
When Ashwini gently lifted the sheet, she saw bruises and bite marks on every inch of skin exposed by the thin hospital gown. That, however, was where the resemblance to Felicity ended. Where Felicity had been a mummified husk, this woman still had some blood in her body, some flesh on her bones. As if she’d escaped before the process was complete.
Ashwini was certain she’d been released on purpose.
Replacing the sheet, careful not to nudge the IV lines that dripped into the woman, she said, “I’m Ash. My job is to find out who did this to you. Help me.”
No response.
Not about to give up, she grabbed a chair from the corner and took a seat beside the bed. Then she started talking about Felicity, about what they’d found so far. “This,” she said at the end, “what the bastard’s done to you, what he did to Felicity, it isn’t right and it needs to be stopped.”
Nothing.
Ashwini wasn’t even sure the victim had blinked the entire time she’d been talking. Accepting that perhaps the woman simply couldn’t reply, that she’d been broken on too deep a level, Ashwini rose to her feet and put the chair back where it had been. However, when she would’ve left the room, something made her turn back.
No change, not even a whisper, and yet . . .
She returned to the bed, stared at the hand that lay so fragile and emaciated inches from her. It hadn’t been visible when she’d replaced the sheet. “Speak to me,” Ashwini whispered, but the woman continued to stare up at the ceiling.
Yet her hand, it lay in front of Ashwini like an invitation.
Throat working and skin hot, she flexed and unflexed her own hand. Her instincts screamed that she had permission, that the woman trapped
in that shell of a body was crying out to her on a frequency no one else could hear. Still, she hesitated. This wouldn’t be like with old and wise Keir, or with the young and teary-eyed teenager who’d discovered Felicity’s body.
Whoever this woman had once been, she’d carry horror in her veins now.
Ashwini had never told Honor, never would, but after Honor’s abduction, there’d been so many screams in her body that the noise had been deafening, a howling terror that swamped Ashwini. She’d thrown up from the pummeling force of it more than once, but she’d sat with Honor at the hospital night after night regardless, her hand locked tight with her best friend’s.
Honor had survived that vile darkness, had needed Ashwini to be strong enough to fight its echoes, be at her side.
As this woman did now.
“I’m here,” Ashwini said . . . and touched her fingertips to the back of the victim’s hand.
33
The contact was a bruising punch to the stomach delivered by a fist of cold iron, one that knocked the breath right out of her. Then came the nausea, tied to an overwhelming and dread-laced panic that made her want to curl up into a ball in the corner and rock herself to oblivion. Breaking the contact, she braced her hands on the bed and sucked in desperate gulps of air.
“Cher.”
She’d sensed Janvier walk inside, didn’t startle at his worried tone. “I don’t know how to do this.” It came out like broken glass, rough and jagged. “I don’t know how to get past her terror.”
Moving in so close that his body heat licked over her skin, Janvier picked up one of her hands and lifted it to his mouth in the way that had so quickly become familiar. The kiss was soft, a lazy seduction, and it had nothing to do with the ugliness that had consumed their victim. The gentle pleasure of it made the nausea retreat, her heart rate calm.
Lifting their clasped hands, she rubbed her cheek against the back of his hand.
“What if I stay?” he asked. “Will the touch anchor you?”
“I don’t know.” This was uncharted territory. “All my life, I’ve tried to minimize this, what I can do. Very rarely, I sense good things, but too many times, it’s cruelty and evil. So I don’t look, don’t want to look.”
“It is nothing to be ashamed of. No one can live life mired in horror.”
How did he do that? See her so easily? “Sometimes I think I became a hunter so that I could ease my shame,” she whispered. “That I choose to face physical danger because I can’t face this.”
“Yet,” Janvier said, “I’ve heard other hunters say you saved their lives by warning them to take extra weapons or backup when the intel suggested no need for either.”
“That’s different. I know things now and then.”
“And there are no nightmares? You pay no price for this knowledge?”
Ashwini couldn’t hold his gaze. Because there had been dreams before each of her warnings to fellow hunters, dreams that had left her soaked in sweat, her heart racing so hard and fast that it had caused physical pain. “Stay,” she said, her trust in him so deep, it was a part of her soul. “If . . . if it looks like I might start screaming, haul me away.” It was her secret horror, that the madness might suck her under before she even knew it was there.
“Have I ever left? Hmm?” A slow smile that made her heart ache. “Even when you wished me to perdition. Or was it to a bog infested with leeches?”
“No, I’m pretty sure it was a pit filled with fresh elephant dung.”
“Ah, we must be clear.” Another kiss to her knuckles.
Centered by the playful interaction, she clenched her fingers on his and then she reached out with her other hand and closed it with infinite care over the exposed part of the victim’s arm.
Again, the impact shoved into her like an ice pick to the brain. Every second of the terror and the pain the victim had endured, all of it concentrated into this agonizing and brutalizing force. Feeling her hand clamp down on Janvier’s while remaining gentle on the victim’s arm, Ashwini tried to see through the shriek of it but it was too viscous, too loud.
A bead of sweat formed on her temple, started to roll down. Her stomach threatened to revolt. Stifling the urge with sheer effort of will, she shuddered and thought of Janvier, of the hunt through the bayou that had left her sticky and bad tempered and bitten by what felt like a thousand mosquitoes, forget about the other bugs.
The visceral memory cleared a pathway through the rage of screaming emotion, a thin ribbon of a road that was a verdant moss green. It didn’t stop the panic, the horror, but the emotions formed a curving wall of terrible ugliness on either side of the road now, ready to smother her again should she falter in her will. Sucking in shallow breaths of air, Ashwini stepped on the road, followed it down . . . and then she was falling in a gut-churning spiral, the evil baying at her, mocking her.
Ashwini slid out one of her knives. No one was ever again going to imprison her. Slicing the howling darkness to shreds, she stepped out and . . . “Oh.”
The woman who lay so motionless on the hospital bed was not as she was now, but as she must’ve been: that stunning face with its unique beauty, of medium height and curvy, with silky black hair down to her waist.
“Hello,” Ashwini said. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“We don’t have much time. I’m going.”
“No.” Ashwini reached out, took her hand. “You’ll make it.”
The woman’s smile was sad and resolute both, her shoulders firm. “No, I don’t want to stay, don’t want that life. I’m not what he made me.”
Thinking of the shell on the bed, her bones as fragile as a bird’s, her heart a flutter beneath Ashwini’s touch, and her eyes hollow, Ashwini understood that this woman would never again live, even should her body survive. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” The victim’s fingers grew thinner . . . No, they were fading. “Not enough time.”
“Tell me his name.” Ashwini fought to hold on to her for another heartbeat. “The one who hurt you.”
“I don’t remember.” No distress, as if she’d traveled beyond that. “It’s already gone. I know my name. Lilli Ying. I have a mother, a father. Please tell them I didn’t suffer.”
It was a lie, but a lie Ashwini would speak as if it were the truth. “I promise. Can you tell me anything about the person who hurt you?”
“The first monster wanted to cause us pain. It gave him sexual pleasure.” A flicker of fear pierced the peace, was quickly erased. “But then . . . then the other one came, and it was worse.” Her features faded, her voice a faraway whisper. “The other one had wings. And he drank my life from me.”
“Wait, don’t go!” Ashwini felt as if she were attempting to hold on to a wisp of air, a streamer of mist. “I need a trail to follow to find the monsters. Something. Anything!”
The echo of the victim tilted her head, looked at her a little blankly. But then she said, “It smelled like peanuts, where they kept me. Strange. Made me want peanut butter muffins. Peanuts. Such a big place that smelled of peanuts.” The air dissipated, the words less than a memory of thought. “I have to go.”
“Where?” Ashwini asked, the question one that haunted her after all the screams she’d touched in the world, all the pain she’d witnessed. “Is it a good place?”
Her only answer was a piercing beep that shattered the world into a million sharp, glittering shards.
• • •
Janvier easily took Ashwini’s weight when she staggered back from the bed. Alarms sounded from all around them, the heart monitor showing a flat line. But the woman on the bed . . . she had a smile on her face, a final muscle movement made the instant before the alarms shrilled into high-pitched panic.
Holding Ash as the doctors rushed back in, he heard her whisper, “No, let her go,” in a voice so hoarse, he only heard it because her breath k
issed his jaw on the words. “She wants to go.”
Janvier gave the order in a louder voice and, when the doctors hesitated, said, “I’ll take full responsibility. Give her the peace she wants.”
It was the mortal doctor who put her hand on the vampire physician. “He’s right. She suffered too much trauma. We’d only prolong her pain if we managed to resuscitate her.”
Shoulders falling, the vampire physician reached out and pressed several buttons.
The alarms went silent, the only sound Janvier could hear that of Ash’s shallow breathing. Struggling to lift her lashes and failing, his Ashblade parted her lips, spoke again. “She said it smelled of p—” Her body became dead weight, her bruised mind losing the battle with consciousness.
Wrapping one arm around her waist, he held her upright so no one else would realize her condition. In the corridor, he didn’t request that Illium fly her out. The blue-winged angel was a man Janvier would trust at his back anytime, but he was also an angel hundreds of years old, with memories Janvier couldn’t hope to know and that might cause Ash further pain even in her unconscious state.
“Can you make sure the victim’s body undergoes a thorough examination and autopsy?” he asked the other man instead. “Take her to the Guild morgue and to the pathologist who examined Felicity.”
“I’ll make sure it’s done.” Golden eyes took in Ash’s lax body, the shimmer of perspiration on her skin. “Do you need a ride?”
Shaking his head, Janvier said, “Tell Dmitri I’m off the grid until I get back in touch.”
A curt nod.
Thirty seconds later, Janvier had Ash in the elevator. Stabbing the button for the underground garage, he said, “Almost there, cher.” For some unknown reason, he’d taken the car to his interviews when the bike would’ve been easier, the decision one he’d consider later. “Not that I’m complaining about having you pasted to me.”
“Ha-ha.” Her voice sounded weak and drugged, the words slurred. “Your hand . . .”
“You crushed it to pieces,” he said against her temple, maintaining a rigid hold on his emotions. “Now you will have to kiss it better, inch by inch.”
Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter series Book 7) Page 28