Archangel's Blade

by Nalini Singh

  "I am now," she whispered, "thoroughly debauched, husband."

  Dmitri's eyes opened to see the wall of his Tower office. He rarely slept--it seemed a waste of time when he needed very little to survive. But after returning from Honor's apartment, he'd sat down at his desk, his mind on the hunter who threatened to make him feel things that had long gathered dust in his soul. Minutes later, he was asleep and dreaming of the only woman who had ever owned his heart.

  Though he had taken her as a man takes a woman on their wedding night, Ingrede had always been his, their families' farms side by side. They'd tumbled in mud together as children, gorged themselves on summer fruit on lazy days gilded by the sun, and taught each other the things one knew and the other did not.

  When she had smiled at him that day over the wildflowers, the emotion that had burst within him had been incandescent. And it had stayed true as the years passed, as they grew. Looking back, he couldn't imagine he'd ever been that innocent boy who'd gotten up before dawn to clamber up a mountainside, except that his love for Ingrede still felt as deep, as true.

  A woman's husky laugh.

  It wasn't Ingrede's.

  Pushing off his desk, he stalked to the plate-glass window that faced out into the hush of a Manhattan caught between night and day, the steel buildings soft gray shadows rather than glittering bulwarks. It was perhaps the only time the city was quiet, a mere two hours between the end of the nightlife and the beginning of the daylight rush.

  He'd lived here for hundreds of years, seen it grow from nothing to a city whose heartbeat spoke to millions far and wide. He'd considered leaving it at times, had done so during his sojourn in Neha's court, young and still filled with an anger that had had no outlet. And then, of course, there had been Favashi. Lovely, gracious Favashi who had been a queen in the making, her home filled with music and art and warmth--the perfect trap for a man who had sought solace for centuries and found none.

  Why have you never asked me more about Favashi? he asked the angel he could see coming toward the Tower, his wingspan distinctive, the gold filaments bright even in the dull light.

  Raphael's reply was brutally honest. It didn't seem a subject you cared to discuss.

  You could at least have called me a fool, he said as Raphael landed on the balcony outside, beaten some sense into me.

  "There was," Raphael said, walking into the room even as he folded his wings to his back, "no need. Favashi was a good choice of mate for someone of your strength."

  Favashi had never wanted a mate. "If I wanted to be turned into her personal menace."

  "You are mine after all." A slight curve of his lips.

  "That's just a bonus." As he spoke, he realized more had changed in Raphael than simply his wings. The archangel had been his friend for centuries, but he'd become a remote, distant being over the past two hundred years.

  Dmitri hadn't really paid attention to the transformation because he'd been on the same path. But now the blue of Raphael's eyes was touched with humor and he spoke to Dmitri as they once had on a field far from civilization, two very different men who'd found common ground. "She came here while you were away," he said, wondering what it said about him that he'd not just noted the difference in Raphael, but responded to it.

  "As she is not injured or dead, I take it you controlled yourself."

  "Without difficulty." The truth was, while his pride had been pricked by the way Favashi had played him, his anger toward her had always been a cold thing. If Honor did anything similar, he realized, told him lies of love with such a sweet face, there would be no cold, only the most deadly of blood fury.

  A rustle of wings. "If we are asking questions," Raphael said, "then I have one of my own. Why have you never blamed me for Isis's interest in you?"

  "Because," Dmitri said, "Isis's madness was her own. And if there was any penance to be paid, you paid it in that room beneath her keep." Chained to the wall opposite Dmitri, Raphael had been forced to watch Dmitri's violent, forced conversion, to witness Isis's other atrocities, to listen to Dmitri's shattering scream as Isis whispered of what she had done to Ingrede and Caterina.

  And he'd been there at the end, a silent guard, when Dmitri had held his son's tiny body in his arms and cried until he had no tears left inside him, his self that of a hollow man. "I thought I died in that room," he said, his hands fisting with the memory of how very fragile Misha's bones had been, how effortless it had been to snap them.

  The archangel said nothing for a long time. When he did speak, it was nothing expected. "I thought you had, too."

  Dmitri met those eyes of pitiless blue. "Why keep a dead man walking, then?"

  "Perhaps I knew what you would one day become." The cold answer of an archangel. Or perhaps it was because you weren't the only one who made a vow in that place of horror.

  Dmitri shoved a hand through his hair. "You should laugh at me, Raphael. I warned you against becoming involved with a hunter, and yet I find myself in much the same position." Honor was becoming too important, a compulsion that wasn't only sexual, wasn't only physical.

  "It is no hardship," Raphael said. "To have a hunter by your side."

  But she wasn't simply a hunter. She was the woman who awakened memories of a life he'd lost an eon ago. Ingrede's laughter . . . it had been so very, very long since he'd heard it, but when Honor laughed, he felt as if he could almost reach out and touch his wife. A strange madness and one he had no will to fight--his heart ached with a need that had survived immortality, survived his every depravity, survived his own will.

  "Have you had her blood tested?" Raphael's question was pragmatic. "A sample should be simple to acquire, given that the Guild keeps units of stored blood for all its hunters."

  Ignoring the pain in his chest, Dmitri glanced at the archangel. "So certain?"

  Raphael didn't answer, because no answer was needed. They wouldn't be standing here having this conversation if Honor wasn't important. "I would not," he said instead, "have you lose another mortal."

  "Sometimes there are no choices." He thought of Illium, who continued to be drawn to mortals, though he'd lost the human woman he loved, seen her marry another man. The blue-winged angel had watched over her family until she passed, and then he had watched over her children and her children's children . . . until they spread out across the world, and the small mountain village where his love had been born ceased to exist.

  There are always choices.

  "No, Raphael," Dmitri said in response to that ice-cold tone in his mind. "I've stood by you for centuries, but if you touch her, it will cost you my loyalty." And I will do my best to kill you.

  A hint of some unnameable emotion in the inhuman depths of those eyes that had seen a millennium and more pass. "So, she is not only important. She is yours."

  Stalking closer to the glass, he stared out at a city beginning to shine silver bright in the dawn light. "I don't know what she is." But she is compatible. He'd obtained her blood, had the test done days ago, driven by unknowable need. The toxin that turned mortal to immortal would not drive her insane; it would not leave her a broken shell of the fascinating, compelling woman she was today.

  You know you have but to ask. There will be no Contract for your chosen.

  I know. He and Raphael had fought over the centuries, had fallen out, but they were tied by bonds so deep that the bindings had held even as they became ever older, ever more inhuman. The problem is, I think the last thing Honor would ever want to become is a vampire.

  Another silence between two men who had known each other long enough not to fear it. Dmitri was the one who broke it. "What did Naasir say?" The vampire, one of the Seven, was currently posted in the newly risen city of Amanat, once a jewel in the archangel Caliane's crown, now her home.

  "That my mother treats him as a beloved pet." Raphael's tone held a dark amusement threaded through with something more dangerous. "It appears likely she has realized what he is."

  "It's no secret." Though
Naasir's origins and abilities were not widely known beyond a small, tight circle. "At least she's accepted him." Giving them a constant flow of information from Amanat without Raphael having to be there. "And the angel Jason left in his stead?"

  "Caliane ignores Isabel, which is as good an outcome." The archangel's wings glittered in the first rays of the sun. "You've always been my blade, Dmitri. Tell me--should I have killed her?"

  Dmitri met the inhuman blue of those eyes, centuries of friendship and pain between them. "Perhaps," he said, his mind on a woman with a husky laugh and a smile that haunted his memory, "there are second chances."

  Honor sat at her small dining table, the notebook Dr. Reuben had given her now closed, dawn shimmering on the horizon beyond. A few buildings still sparkled with light-filled offices, but the day was coming, the sun a warm glow in the east. The Tower stood outlined against it, appearing somehow softer in this strange, fragile twilight.

  Dmitri, she thought, would never appear soft.

  Her body continued to smolder from the slow burn of his kiss, his touch. Not even the fact that they'd gone little further after her flashback could mute the impact of it. His sensuality was potent, as raw as it was sophisticated, as dark as it was patient.

  Lulling her. Seducing her.

  Honor knew full well he was managing their encounters, accustoming her to his touch, his kiss, his strength. She had no quarrel with exploring her sensuality with a man who knew more about pleasure than she could imagine; she trusted him in bed. Of course, she thought with a smile as she got up to prepare breakfast, she had no intention of allowing him to continue to lead the dance once they became lovers in truth.

  She'd finished her cereal and was walking to refill her tea when someone knocked on the glass wall that fronted her apartment. Twisting on her heel, she went for the gun tucked into the back of her jeans . . . and saw wings of silver-kissed blue backlit to brilliance by the rising sun. Illium jerked his thumb over his shoulder, toward the Tower.

  Nodding, she watched him drop down, then sweep over the city in a breathtaking show of color even more startling against the dawn sky. When his wings were joined by those of midnight and dawn, she drew in a stunned breath, still utterly fascinated by Elena's transformation. Rather than holding a hover beside Elena, Illium executed a sharp vertical dive that had Honor's heart in her throat, before he turned to rise, then fly back up at the same speed to circle around and beside Elena, a playfulness to his movements that said the two of them were friends.

  That was one wake-up call she'd have to share with Ashwini, she thought with a grin as she headed to change into a less ragged T-shirt, having showered when she woke. But when she stepped into the bedroom, she found herself discarding the T-shirt in favor of a short-sleeved, scoop-necked top that painted itself to her body and was a bright, stop sign red. It wouldn't impede her movements, didn't even show much cleavage, but it was the sexiest thing she'd worn since after the assault. It felt good. Brushing on a bit of makeup, including poppy red lipstick over her mouth, she pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail and strapped on her weapons.

  It was too hot to cover the shoulder holster with a jacket, the temperature having spiked overnight, so she shrugged and left it at that.

  There was a topless red Ferrari idling at the curb when she stepped out of her building. "I didn't realize I rated the pickup service," she said to the vampire in the driver's seat.

  24

  Dressed in a crisp white shirt, open at the collar, and black suit pants, he looked like some high-paid executive on his way to a breakfast meeting, his eyes shaded by mirrored sunglasses she wanted to rip off so she could read his gaze.

  "I haven't gotten what I want out of you yet."

  It could've been a joke. It could also have been the absolute truth.

  "Have you eaten?" he asked, pulling out into the traffic.

  "Yes." Speaking of breakfast--"Who do you feed from?"

  "Careful, Honor." A tenor to the words that rubbed her the wrong way. "I might start to think you were the jealous, possessive type."

  She never had been, but then, he was the only man who'd become an obsession. In the early morning hours today, she'd dreamed not of her faceless dream lover, but of Dmitri, with his experienced hands and sinful touch. "Yes," she said, knowing she was asking for something he might be incapable of giving. "I think I am."

  Swerving to miss a Town Car that was attempting to nose its way out into the manic traffic, he took his time replying.

  "There was a particularly luscious blonde on offer last night. She called me after I left your apartment."

  Honor's hand tightened on the door frame, her arm braced along the edge. She knew he was provoking her on purpose--he was in a mood, that much was clear--and yet she couldn't fight the primal possessiveness of her response. "I'd have thought," she said with manufactured calm, "that you'd have learned your lesson about blondes with Carmen."

  He turned, taking them toward the Lincoln Tunnel rather than the Tower. "Ah, but the sweet, hot taste of blood can mask the most unattractive qualities." Displaying no impatience with the traffic backed up before the tunnel, he pulled off his sunglasses to place them in a compartment below the dash. "Honor."

  Anger a burn in her veins, she turned her head to find herself sucking in a breath at the intoxicating sensuality of him. The dawn sun, the traffic, none of it did anything to mute the intensity of those dark eyes, the harsh planes of that beautiful face.

  "I," he said in a tone that was pure rough silk, "am possessive, too, little rabbit. Lethally so."

  Her anger transformed into something far more visceral. "That doesn't scare me," she said, laying her hand on his thigh, the hard strength of muscle flexing under her palm. "But I've seen how vampires your age operate."

  "How is that?" A low purr of a question that might as well have been a stiletto slicing over her skin.

  "Moody, aren't you?" No answer, as he nudged the car forward. "I know," she continued, "the sexual mores are much more . . . relaxed." She'd once walked in on an orgy in progress during a hunt. Limbs tangled in sexual abandon, necks arched for a bite, and sighs whispering into air perfumed with the musk of sex, it had been erotic as hell, but she'd had not the slightest inclination to join in--even when propositioned by a pair of ripped Scandinavian-blond male twins, something straight out of a naughty fantasy.

  "That's not me," she said, because while such fantasies were fun, in reality she fell very solidly into the fidelity camp. "This, between us, has crossed a line." A line that gave her the right to demand what she was about to demand. "I'll never accept that you might have other lovers--whether for blood or sex--and if you expect it, then we have to stop this right here, right now."

  Walking away from Dmitri would destroy something vital inside her, but worse would be to watch him bend that dark head over the neck of some other woman. "However long we're together"--and she wasn't naive enough to think she could hold a man like Dmitri forever--"it needs to be exclusive."

  When she would've withdrawn her hand from his thigh, he covered it with his own for a second, holding her to him. "Blondes, it seems, have lost their appeal," he said, increasing speed as the snarl eased.

  "Not good enough."

  "No one else for the duration, Honor." An unambiguous promise . . . followed by a warning. "For either of us."

  Her chest hurt and only then did she realize she'd been holding her breath. Releasing it, she said, "I know it's unfair, when I might not be able to allow you to feed from me." A vampire had once told her blood from the vein was as different from stored blood as the most decadent chocolate cake was from a rice cracker.

  But Dmitri shrugged those shoulders she wanted to see naked again. "Blood is easy enough to come by." Clearing the tunnel, he took them out into the suburbs. "It's the sex I might die without."

  She dug her nails into his thigh, choking on her laugh. When his lips curved in a slow smile that made her think dangerous thoughts, she decided to play
him at his own game. Moving her hand, she danced her fingers up the zipper of his sedate black pants. He cursed, but managed not to swerve.

  It did something to her that he'd hardened immediately under her touch, made her even bolder. "Try not to drive beside a semi or a pickup," she said, closing her hand over him and squeezing just enough that his jaw turned to granite, "or they'll get an eyeful."

  "Fuck that." He punched something on the dash and the car's roof unfolded over them with a smooth electronic hum, locking into place in under half a minute. A second press and the windows were up and opaqued.

  Good God. "How much is this car worth?"

  Putting his own hand on hers, he urged her to pick up the pace. "You can't have it. Not for a hand job. Maybe if you use your mouth."

  Her toes curled, desire igniting liquid and hot in her abdomen. "You can't come," she warned, pumping him with her hand. "Or you'll have to drive all the way back to change."

  Clenching his fingers on the steering wheel, he hissed out a breath. "I won't forget this, Honor." It was a threat.

  One that made her nipples go tight, rubbing against the lace of the sexy bra she'd slipped on under the top. However, she didn't even consider stopping this--she wanted to do it, to seize an experience the broken woman she'd been at the start of this hunt would have never contemplated. "There," she said, "it's the entrance to some kind of park." Green grass, a few picnic tables.

  Wrenching the wheel, Dmitri pulled into the small parking lot. This time of day, it was too late for the dog walkers and joggers and too early for anyone else. Unsnapping her safety belt without removing her hand from his lap, she snapped his open and leaned over to nibble at his ear. When he shivered, she knew she'd hit another one of those hot spots on his body. "Don't suppose the windshield turns opaque?"

  Without a word, he reached out to touch something on the dash. The windscreen was a smoky black a second later. "Is that even legal?" Licking at his earlobe, she insinuated her free hand through the open collar of his shirt to play her fingers over the hollow at the base of his throat, felt his muscles lock.