by Nalini Singh
She hissed at him, pulling away her arm to stalk back into the house. Stepping inside, he closed the door at his back. He'd been here many times, knew the layout, but rather than following her to the kitchen where he could hear her washing off the blood on her mouth, he turned off the television and checked to make sure they were alone in the house.
When he did finally enter the kitchen, now lit by a bright bulb, it was to see Holly wiping her face on a dish towel, though she hadn't changed out of the bloodstained shirt. "Death by Dmitri," he said, leaning against the doorjamb with a laziness that would've fooled no one who knew him. "Is that what you were aiming for?"
A glare from eyes that had once been light brown, but were now ringed with a vivid green that was growing ever deeper into the irises. The same gleaming shade as Uram's eyes . . . but not as dark as those of the hunter who'd used a knife on him earlier tonight. Honor's gaze held the mystery of forbidden depths, of haunting secrets whispered deep in the night. Holly's, by contrast, held only clawing anger and an overwhelming self-hatred.
"Isn't that your job?" she asked. "To execute me if I prove a monster?"
"We're all monsters, Holly." Folding his arms, he watched as she began to pace up and down the length of the small kitchen. "It's just a case of how far you push it."
Back and forth. Back and forth. Hands through her hair, jagged shakes. Again. "David left me," she blurted out at last. "Couldn't take the fact that he found me awake and staring at him five nights in a row, my eyes glowing." A giggling laugh that failed to hide a terrible pain that he knew had cracked her heart open. "I wasn't looking at his face."
"Have you been feeding?" Holly had a limited need for blood and Dmitri had made certain she'd been supplied with it.
Her response was to kick the fridge so hard she dented the polished white surface. "Dead blood! Who wants it? I think I'll go for a nice, soft neck as soon as I can escape the fucking minders."
Stepping into the kitchen proper, Dmitri walked around to grip her hands, still her pacing. Then he lifted his wrist to her mouth. "Feed." His blood was potent, would fulfill any need she had.
As he'd known she would, she pulled away and slid down to sit, to hide, in a corner of the kitchen, arms locked around her knees and head lowered as she rocked her body. Because in spite of her words, Holly didn't want to touch a human donor, didn't want to believe she'd changed on such a fundamental level. She wanted to be the girl she'd been before Uram--the one who'd just secured a coveted position at a fashion house, who'd loved fabric and design, and who'd laughed with her girlfriends as they walked to the movies to catch the late show.
None of those friends had made it.
Turning to the fridge, he retrieved one of the bags of blood he had delivered on a regular basis and poured it into a glass before going to crouch down beside her. He pushed back a wing of glossy black hair currently streaked with cotton candy-colored highlights and said, "Drink." Nothing else was necessary--Holly knew he wouldn't leave until the glass was empty.
Strange, hate-filled eyes. "I want to kill you. Every time you walk through that door, I want to pick up a machete and hack your head off." She gulped down the blood and slammed the empty glass on the floor so hard it cracked along one side.
Using a tissue to wipe her mouth, he threw it in the trash before standing up to lean against a cabinet opposite her. "A woman cut my face today," he told her. "Not with a machete but a throwing blade."
Holly's eyes skimmed over his unmarked skin. "Bullshit."
"I'm fairly certain she was going for the jugular but I was too fast." And Honor had moved with far more grace than he'd have believed her capable of before that little demonstration. The woman was trained in some kind of martial art, trained at a level that meant she was no helpless victim. And yet she had been made one.
"Too bad she missed," Holly muttered . . . before asking the question that had lingered in the air since the second he walked into the house. "Why won't you let me die, Dmitri?" Her words were a plea.
He wasn't certain why he hadn't killed her the instant she began to show signs of a lethal change, and so he didn't answer her. Instead, crouching back down, he tipped up her face with his fingers under her chin. "If it comes down to an execution, Holly," he murmured, "you'll never see me coming." Quick and fast, that was how it would be--he would not have her go into the final goodnight drowning in fear.
"She died afraid, Dmitri. If only you'd given me what I asked for, she would still be alive." A sigh, elegant fingers brushing over his cheekbone as he hung broken from iron cuffs that had worn grooves into his skin. "Do you want the same for Misha?"
"Don't call me that." Holly's harsh voice fracturing the crushing memory from the painful dawn of his existence. "Holly died in that warehouse. Something else walked out."
It was an attempt to erase herself, and that he would not allow--but it would do no harm to permit her to establish a line between her past and the present. Perhaps then, she would finally begin to live this new life. "What would you have me call you?"
"How about Uram?" A bitter question. "He doesn't need the name anymore, after all."
"No." He wouldn't let her harm herself in such a way, her name itself a poisonous shroud. "Choose again."
She thumped her fisted hand against his chest, but her anger was permeated with pain and he knew she wouldn't fight him in this. "Sorrow," she whispered after a long silence. "Call me Sorrow."
No joyful name that, no hopeful one, but he would give her this one choice when she'd had so many others stolen from her. "Sorrow, then." Leaning forward he pressed his lips to her forehead, her bangs blades of silk against his lips, her bones fine, fragile, so vulnerable under his hands.
In that instant, he knew why he hadn't killed her yet. Age notwithstanding, she was a child to him. A dangerous child, but a child nonetheless, scared and trying so hard to hide it. And the murder of a child . . . it left a scar on a man's soul that could never, ever be erased.
4
Arriving back at Guild Academy after midnight, Honor put her laptop bag down on the small table tucked in beside the wardrobe in her quarters. The bed took up most of the remaining space. The room was adequate, and that was it--most hunters only used the quarters when they needed to do a short, intense session of instruction at the Academy. Honor had been here since the day they allowed her out of the hospital.
It wasn't because she couldn't afford anything better. Given the fees hunters commanded as a result of the high-risk nature of their work, and the fact that she hadn't really had much downtime in which to spend that money, she'd built up a considerable nest egg before the abduction. None of it had been touched during her convalescence, as the Guild covered the medical costs of all its hunters. Truth was, she could move into a penthouse if that was what she wanted.
It just hadn't seemed worth the effort to move out.
Except tonight, the room was suddenly a cage. How could she have been so numb that she hadn't noticed the claustrophobic confines? The realization of the depth of her apathy was a slap, one that made her head ring--but not enough to settle her sharp response to the walls around her.
Beginning to sweat, she ripped off her sweatshirt and dropped it on the bed, but that did nothing to cool her down.
Water.
A few minutes after that thought passed through her head, she was dressed in a sleek black one-piece swimsuit, a toweling robe around her body. The night owls she ran into on her way to the Academy pool stopped only long enough to say hi before continuing on their way--and she was soon sliding into the pristine blue waters that promised peace.
Stroke, stroke, breathe. Stroke, stroke, breathe.
The rhythm was better than meditating. It took ten lengths, but by the end of it, she was calm. However, the feeling of suffocation struck again the instant she returned to her room--now that she'd noticed its tiny size, she couldn't get it out of her head. And there was no way she'd be able to sleep even if she forced herself to bed. Her nightm
ares--malevolent, clawing things--were bad enough without adding claustrophobic panic to the mix.
Having showered at the pool, she pulled on fresh clothes and picked up her laptop.
The library was quiet at this time of night, but not deserted. There were a couple of instructors working on research papers, and a hunter who looked like she'd come in from active duty.
A single glance at that shining dark hair, those worn boots, and her lips curved in joyful surprise. "Ashwini?"
The tall, long-legged hunter put down the book she'd been examining and swiveled on her heel. Face cracking into a smile that turned her from beautiful to breathtaking, she gave a "Whoop!" and vaulted over a library table to grab Honor in a tight hug. No sign remained of the knife fight that had left her seriously injured not long ago.
Laughing, Honor hugged her back--Ash was one of the rare few people she'd never had trouble allowing close, even directly after the assault. Perhaps it was because the other hunter was her best friend . . . and perhaps it was because Ashwini was the one who'd ripped off her blindfold and shot off the chains that had held her trapped and helpless, her body a piece of meat for her captors.
"I've got you, Honor--the bastards won't touch you again."
"What are you doing here, you lunatic?" she asked, focusing on the fact that her friends had never given up on her, rather than the putrid miasma of a far more vile memory.
A smacking kiss on her cheek before Ashwini drew back. "I came to see you--you weren't in your quarters so I came here to wait." Glancing around when one of the instructors said "Shh" in a loud voice, she rolled her eyes. "Funny, Demarco. Didn't they call noise control on your last party?"
The rangy hunter, his hair the streaky blond of a man who loved the sun, grinned and pointed a finger. "I knew you were there, Ms. Flaming Lying Pants."
"This is a library, people," said the last man in the room, scarred boots on a reading table and a leather-bound book open in front of his face.
Ash and Demarco hooted. Because Ransom was the last person you'd expect to find in a library--except word was, he was shacked up with a librarian. That, Honor thought, she'd have to see to believe. Now he put the book down in his lap and leaned back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head. "I'll have you know I'm teaching an advanced course in how to deal with the Wing Brotherhood when necessary."
Ashwini sauntered over to play with Ransom's gorgeous black hair, tugging it out of its usual queue to run it through her fingers. "What conditioner you using, Professor Ransom? I'm thinking of changing brands."
"Fuck you." Said without heat as he glanced at Demarco. "I'm hungry."
The other hunter paused, nodded decisively. "Yeah, me, too."
That was how Honor found herself sitting in an otherwise deserted dining hall with three other hunters, talking shit. It was something she hadn't done for months, even pushing Ash away when her best friend tried to draw her out, and now she couldn't understand why. For the first time since she'd escaped that hellhole where she'd almost died, she felt real, a person, instead of a forgotten shade, a translucent illusion.
Stop lying to yourself, Honor.
She'd felt very much real, very much alive, at the Tower. Chilled by a fear that had left her skin sticky with sweat, and by her deep-rooted compulsion toward a vampire who had looked at her with sex--the dark, screaming kind--in his eyes, but alive nonetheless.
Her hand clenched on the handle of her coffee mug. She'd already eaten a toasted cheese sandwich and a banana, truly hungry for the first time in months--though the Guild nutritionist's stringent eating plan meant she'd slowly returned to a healthy weight over the past half year. She'd tasted none of those things, complied only because it was easier than arguing.
Dmitri's gaze had made it clear he appreciated her curves, that he had no problem with the fact that her natural body shape was too much of an hourglass than was currently fashionable. He would, she thought, take exquisite pleasure in stroking his hands over every inch of a woman's body . . . if he wasn't in the mood to hurt her a little.
"Any of you met Dmitri?" she found herself asking during a lull in the conversation, disturbed by the fact that even knowing beyond any doubt that he'd be no good for her, she couldn't stop her mind's eye from tracing the slightly full curve of his lower lip. A dangerous indulgence, a small madness.
"Yeah." Ransom swallowed the bite of Pop-Tart in his mouth. "When Elena went missing. Cold son of a bitch. Not someone you'd want to run into in a deserted alley."
"A challenge. I accept."
It would've been easy to tell herself that he'd been playing with her, amusing himself at her expense . . . except she was fairly certain a man didn't look at a woman with that kind of slumberous heat in his eyes unless he was planning to have her naked and helpless beneath him, her thighs spread wide.
"Hey." Ashwini's voice, pitched low to skate under Demarco and Ransom's conversation. "I heard you were consulting for the Tower. Dmitri?"
"I cut him," she whispered, the memory of the actual act still a black nothingness in her mind.
Ashwini's grin was feral. "Good for you. Bastard probably deserved it."
Staring at her best friend, Honor started to laugh and it was the first time she'd done so since Ash and Ransom carried her out of that filthy pit, bruised and violated and bleeding from so many bite marks torn into her flesh that the doctors had put her into an antiseptic bath, not wanting to miss one of the wounds.
Uninterested in sleep that night, Dmitri was standing on the railingless balcony outside his Tower suite when the nightshadow of wings swept over him and then down.
The angel who landed at his side was both familiar and unwelcome. "Favashi," he said, having expected the visit. The archangel's progress had been tracked since she was spotted an hour out from the Boston coast. "Have you come to lay claim to Raphael's territory while he is in the Far East?"
Favashi's serene face betrayed nothing as she folded back wings of a soft, exquisite cream. "We both know he's stronger than I am, Dmitri. And even were he not, you lead his Seven. I would be a fool to stand against you in battle."
He snorted, though she was right. His strength as a vampire, coupled with his intelligence and experience when it came to combat situations, made it certain that no city would ever fall under his watch. And this city? He'd watched over it since long before it was a jewel coveted by many, would never let it slip into enemy hands.
"So you are here to stroke my ego?" he purred, his tone as deadly as the edge of a scalpel. "Pity that I prefer the hands stroking me not belong to a cold-blooded bitch."
Fire in her eyes, a glimpse of the vicious power that lived behind the mask of a lovely Persian princess, elegant and benevolent. "I am still an archangel, Dmitri." A whip of arrogance in the reminder, but then her lips curved. "I was a fool and this is my reward. Will you never forgive a young woman's ambition?"
Dmitri stared at her, this archangel who had made him believe, for one shimmering moment, that he might crawl out of the abyss and stand in the light once more. With hair of a luxuriant mink brown and eyes of the same lush shade, her skin the creamy gold of Persia, and her body that of a goddess, Favashi was a queen who looked the part.
Men had fought for her, died for her, worshipped her. Women saw in her a grace that was lacking in Michaela, the most beautiful of all the archangels, and so they served her with willing hands and loyal hearts, never understanding that Favashi was as merciless as her brethren in the Cadre. "Ambition," he said, "has its price."
Flaring out her wings, as if to expose them to the night's languid caress, Favashi turned her face toward the diamondstudded nightscape that was Manhattan. "Such a stunning place, but so hard. My land is gentler."
"A man could burn to nothing in your deserts without ever being found." He had no doubts that Favashi had buried many a body beneath those rolling sand dunes. He didn't have a problem with that--he'd buried a few bodies himself. What he did have a problem with was the fact that she'd no
t only fooled him into believing in her, but that she'd expected to lead him on a leash, her own personal guard dog cum assassin.
Once, so long ago it was another life, Dmitri had been turned into a thing to be used. Never again. "Why are you here?"
"I came to see you." A simple answer, but her voice held a soft, exotic music that turned it into an invitation. "Let the past lie where it belongs. I would court you again."
"No." He captured her wrist as she raised her hand to touch his face, squeezing so hard he'd have fractured a mortal woman's bones. "The last time an angel tried to court me," he whispered, leaning down to speak with his lips brushing her neck, "she ended up in bite-sized pieces I then fed to her hounds." It was he who had courted Favashi before--or at least she'd allowed him to believe he was the one leading the dance. The one good thing that had come out of the experience was that he'd never again make the mistake of believing a woman's sweet lies.
Running his lips along the sensitive edge of her ear, he sucked lightly in the way he knew turned her weak, while rubbing his thumb over the escalating pulse in the wrist he still held. "I watched the dogs feed," he murmured, reaching out to run the fingers of his free hand over the curving arches of her wings in the most intimate of caresses, "and I wished I had taken longer to carve her with the blade."
Favashi ripped away her wrist and stepped back from him. It mattered little--her eyes were dilated, her skin flushed. He smiled, touched his finger very deliberately to the rapid pulse in her neck. "The bed isn't far if you wish to be serviced, my Lady Favashi."
No flinch at the mocking appellation. She was an archangel, after all. But her tone held a concern that might've once fooled him into believing she cared. "You are not who you once were, Dmitri. I would not have a man such as you in my bed."
"Pity. I have so many things I'd enjoy doing to you." None of it would have anything to do with pleasure. "Now," he said, having had enough of games, "tell me the real reason you're here."
A strand of mink-dark hair played across her face before falling as the wind fell. "I spoke the truth." Her face flawless in profile, she watched a group of angels angle in to land on a lower balcony, their wings cupped inward to lessen the speed of their descent. "Raphael and Elijah both have consorts and are stable, unlike the others in the Cadre.