by Nalini Singh
"I intend to carry the grudge into eternity." Those pale, striking eyes returned to the culvert, to the blood trail, all humor fading. "I'm not a mother, but to do what you say Jiana did . . ."
"Yes."
Elena left soon afterward, her wings a splash of brilliance against the steel of the sky, but Honor didn't return to the city. Instead, she walked to join Jason where he stood in the shadow of an old magnolia tree, its leaves a thick waxy green. "I'd like a look through the house." It was an itch at the back of her neck, a sense that she'd missed something . . . or perhaps seen something she hadn't understood at the time.
The house was as elegant as the last time she'd stepped inside it--except for the evidence of a violent fight.
Holes in the walls, bloody palm prints, broken furniture, and paintings skewed crooked where they hadn't been pulled off and thrown to the ground. "If Amos was sedated," she said, "how did he do all this, manage to beat Jiana?"
Jason, his presence so silent that she was almost startled to hear the rustle of his wings, spoke for the first time. "A slow-acting or mild sedative would have left him with some awareness of what was happening--enough that he tried to fight it."
"Jiana would have known," she murmured, "how to calculate any dose to her son's size and strength. Then all she'd have had to do was taunt him into a rage." She could see the weaving, staggering pattern clearly now. He'd crashed into the wall there, skewed the ornamental mirror, tipped over the wooden table with its delicate legs, then kicked his way free and done something that sprayed blood over the wall.
"A blow to Jiana's mouth," she said, nodding at the spray.
"We'll know for certain soon enough," he said, his wings a whisper of darkness as he walked into a room off the main hall. "Raphael will take the memory from her mind."
Honor shivered at the idea of such a violation. "How do you stand it?" she asked, aware it was an intimate question, but compelled to ask. "Knowing he could do the same to you?"
"Trust." He gave her an unreadable look over his shoulder, his eyes as dark as his wings. "The kind of trust that allows you to take Dmitri to your bed even knowing what he's capable of doing to women who edge his temper."
Startled by the response, and by the fact that he'd picked up that piece of information though it appeared he'd just returned to the city, she looked with more care at that face marked by the swirling lines of a tattoo that should've made him stand out no matter his surroundings. And yet . . . Shadows, she thought, clung to Jason.
"Whatever it is you are to Dmitri, Honor," he said in that voice as deep and quiet as the heart of night, "it's not like Carmen or the others." Lush black lashes came down over near-black eyes, then rose again.
Fascinated by this angel who she knew instinctively rarely spoke to those he didn't know, she touched her hand to a shattered figurine and waited, knowing he had more to say.
"He won't brush you off like an annoyance or let you walk away." Spreading his wings to block the rest of the room from her view, he held her gaze. "It's too late. Do you understand that?"
32
With her gaze Honor traced the lines of the incredible tattoo that covered the left side of his face, the ink ebony against warm brown skin. Hair pulled off his face into a neat queue, he was both sexy and remote. "Are you trying to warn me or protect him?"
"It doesn't have to be one or the other."
"I don't need to be warned off Dmitri, Jason," she said, wondering if this dark angel lowered his guard with anyone. "I see him as he is. As for the other . . . it's not necessary." The truth was, Dmitri owned her heart.
Jason's eyes seemed, like his wings, to reflect nothing though he looked straight at her. "Many would've curled up and died after what you experienced."
An intimate observation, but then, he'd answered her question. "I almost did," she said, wondering why her answer would matter to an angel, yet she knew in her gut it did to Jason. "But turns out, spite is a damn good motivator--I didn't want the bastards to win."
Jason's expression didn't move off her, and she had the powerful sense he wanted to pursue the topic, but his next words were pragmatic. "Things are as expected in this home."
"Yes--no, wait." Turning, she went back to a painting she'd righted on the way in. It was the nude of Jiana in bed, her slumberous eyes looking at the artist as a woman looks at a lover. "This was what I saw," she whispered, tracing the A in the bottom right-hand corner, nausea churning inside her at the implications. "Amos painted this."
"Perhaps."
Nodding, she glanced up. "You're right. It's not conclusive. Let's keep looking."
The black-winged angel was a silent presence by her side as she explored hallways covered by a rich, cream-colored carpet, thick and lush where it wasn't crushed by broken and overturned furniture or matted with blood. The farther they got into the house, the less aggressive the carnage, until at last they were at the very end of the second floor, where nothing had been disturbed.
It was there they discovered evidence Honor would've been happier never to find. The fine sheets on the large bed were tumbled, a bottle of sensual massage oil on the bedside table. On the floor lay not only a robe of bronze satin and lace that Honor recognized immediately, but a man's jacket and gleaming leather shoes. "Amos wasn't wearing shoes." His bloody footprints had made that clear.
One of Jason's wings brushed her back as he spread them behind her, a warm, startling weight. "Some things should simply not be."
"Yes." Amos, she thought, had never had a chance. Then again, so many in the world had overcome the terrible crimes done against them without needing to torture others. Still, she couldn't help but imagine the man who was her nightmare as a scared, defenseless child. "Do you have any idea of when this may have begun?"
"Amos and Jiana were always close, to a degree that was noticed." A pause. "We did a quiet investigation, found nothing amiss."
"They were clever." Honor thought of Jiana's tears, how very convincing she'd been in her despair. "She was clever." Turning away from the silent accusation of the tumbled sheets, she said, "If this had come to light, would it have led to a severe punishment?" If so, it might well prove to be the strongest motive for Jiana's attempted murder of her son.
"Yes--an endless one. Even amongst the most dissolute immortals," Jason added, a dark heat to his tone she realized was rage, "some things are deeply taboo. To subject a child to such depravity, it's beyond our comprehension."
"So sweet and soft." A tone chilling in its gentleness. "I have heard such blood is a delicacy."
Hot breath on her face. "No! Please!" she screamed, her body pinned, helpless.
Laughter. Followed by a thick, wet sound and then her baby's screams rending the air.
Honor jerked back to the present with a cry of horror locked in her throat. Pushing past Jason's wing, the feel of his feathers liquid silk, she ran through the corridors until she stumbled out into unexpected sunshine, the rain having passed with whispering swiftness. The golden early morning light poured over her, a luminous counterpoint to the terrible sorrow within.
That ugly thought inside the house, that slice of words and sound, hadn't felt like a dream but a memory. Her memory, though she'd never been in such a horrific situation. Her heart ached with such pain she couldn't bear it, the infant girl's frightened screams tearing her soul to pieces.
"Honor."
It took conscious effort to close off the ripping chasm of a memory that reverberated inside her mind and turn to speak to Jason. "There's nothing to find here." Instead of the joy she'd expected to feel at this instant, when the hunt for her abusers was reaching its final stage, there was a hollowness inside her, a sense of loss that erased such petty things as vengeance. "I'm heading to the Guild."
Jason flared out his wings, the midnight shade so absolute, it absorbed the sunlight. "There is a car waiting for you by the gate."
"Dmitri," she murmured, knowing he had to have arranged it.
Jason gave her a p
enetrating look. "He's a vampire of old. It is instinct for him to treat his woman with such care." He was gone in a wash of wind moments later, flying hard and fast up above the cloud layer, until she could no longer see even a glimmer of black.
But he'd left her with a crucial piece of knowledge when it came to dealing with Dmitri in a relationship.
His woman.
She had no doubt that that had been a deliberate word choice on Jason's part, another hint as to how Dmitri's brain worked. As she walked to the gate, she considered the issue with care--because Dmitri was the most important part of her life and she wasn't about to lie to herself about that.
She could reject the car he'd organized and call up a cab, making it clear that she wasn't about to allow him to treat her like a butterfly in a jar. Or she could accept the ride and the fact that her lover was a thousand-year-old vampire, give or take a few years, who came from a time in which his act would've raised no eyebrows.
To be utterly honest, it was nice to feel wanted, to feel cared for after a lifetime spent taking care of herself. While she couldn't define the relationship between her and Dmitri, she knew he would protect her with brutal ferocity until it was over.
Reaching the car, she slid in. Not only was having a chauffeur in New York nothing to sniff at, but acquiescing to it didn't do her any harm, while it allowed Dmitri to do what he needed to do: take care of her.
A smile bloomed over her face, a silly kind of happiness infusing her blood. She didn't fight it, even as she thought that her capitulation when it came to the car would give her an excellent negotiation tool when a bigger battle loomed.
Strategy, that was the key to dealing with a man as intelligent and as harshly practical as Dmitri.
My Dmitri.
Dmitri glanced at Raphael as they stood along the cliff behind Raphael's home, above the relatively calm waters of the Hudson and across from a Manhattan that had become a shining mirage in the morning sunlight. "Was I wrong?" he asked, knowing Raphael had already spoken to Jiana.
He wanted to be wrong, the need coming from the part of him that believed a mother should always care for her child, the part that knew Ingrede had spent her last breaths trying to save Misha and Caterina.
"Your wife fought to protect your daughter, Dmitri. Such a tiny rag doll of a thing."
Raphael's voice overrode the memory of Isis's cruel whisper, the raw echo of his broken cries. "No, you weren't wrong. Jason's information has also been confirmed."
"And Jiana?"
"I will take care of her." Absolute cold in those words, a reminder that the Archangel of New York had no mercy in him for those who committed such crimes--and that though his consort had awakened a vein of humanity in him, he remained a being of terrible power.
"Jiana was correct--that should be my task." It was a punishment he would have no compunction in delivering personally. Because Amos was what Jiana had made him. And Amos had hurt Honor so badly that Dmitri couldn't think of it without a blood haze across his vision. Honor would never know, he said to Raphael. If I broke Jiana.
The archangel took his time replying. Are you sure you do not want your hunter to know you?
No one, not even Raphael, had truly known Dmitri since Ingrede's death--he'd put away the heart of him the day he'd snapped his son's neck; he'd believed it dead. The fact that it wasn't . . . he wasn't sure how he felt about that. Only one thing was certain--he'd never give Honor up.
"If something ever happens to me, how long will you wait before you marry again?" A laughing question as his wife leaned on his bare chest. "Try and be decent and wait at least a season."
He knew she was teasing him, but he couldn't laugh, not about this. Thrusting his hand into hair he'd already tangled when he loved her, he tugged her down for a kiss that left her mouth kiss-bruised, her eyes wide.
"Dmitri." Fingers touching his lips, her voice a whisper.
"Never," he answered. "I will never again marry."
Her hand on his cheek, soft skin scraping over his morning stubble. "You mustn't say such a thing."
Closing his fingers over her wrist, he brought her palm to his mouth, pressing a gentle kiss to the warmth of her. "Are you planning on leaving me, Ingrede?" She owned him body and soul; she was his reason for being.
"Never." A nuzzle, nose to nose, that was such a silly thing she did, one that made him smile each and every time. "But I wouldn't have you be lonely should we be parted. I couldn't bear you so sad." Before he could speak, she added, "But you can't marry that Tatiana. I don't like the way she looks at you."
He laughed, kissed her again. "Wicked woman." But when the laughter faded, he spoke the indelible truth. "I won't take any other woman into my heart." He pressed a finger to her lips when distress colored her eyes. "I'll wait for you to find me again. So don't take too long."
Now, he was close to breaking his promise. "Am I betraying her?"
"I think," Raphael said, his wings shimmering gold in the sun, "your Ingrede was a woman of generous heart."
Yes, he thought, she had been. Ingrede had never been openly possessive--except when it came to Tatiana, who had indeed looked at Dmitri with an invitation in her eyes that should've been directed at no married man. The memory made him smile. "She was also a jealous thing."
Raphael laughed. "She gave me the most fierce look when she thought I was attempting to seduce you."
And then, Dmitri remembered, when she'd realized the angel was nothing but a friend, she had invited Raphael to dinner. So gentle had been Ingrede, but she'd spoken without fear to an immortal as they all stood in a newly sown field, and that immortal had come to their humble table. "I don't think we've ever again laughed as we did at that table."
"It is a cherished memory," Raphael said. "One I've never forgotten, one that has never faded."
It helped, he thought, to know that someone else remembered her. Remembered their children. Misha and Caterina had had such fleeting lives, but those lives had burned themselves into Dmitri's soul. And now, another name was starting to make its mark there, that of a hunter who awakened memories of a time long gone even as she began to shadow his wife's smile from his mind. Forgive me, Ingrede.
"Kallistos," Raphael said after long minutes of silence, his eyes on the angels flying across the river to land on the Tower roof.
Dmitri forced his mind off the only two women--one so sweet and of the hearth, the other a hunter but with those same gentle hands--who had laid claim to his heart in his near thousand years of existence. "I've alerted every one of our people in the region." He knew the vampire was close--the taunts had been too personal. At least in Times Square, Kallistos had to have been lingering nearby to witness Dmitri's reaction. "But he's old, and he's intelligent." However, Isis's lover didn't concern him as much as the angel who had been taken. "Will the boy survive the constant use Kallistos is making of him?"
Raphael's expression was grim, his bones sharp lines against his skin. "He's young, still vulnerable. There is no knowing how much damage Kallistos has caused." Do you have a watch on your hunter?
Of course. If Kallistos truly was mad enough to attempt the vengeance he'd threatened, she would be his target--because Honor was mortal, far easier to hurt and kill. As Ingrede had been mortal. "Not this time," he said, the words a vow.
33
Sorrow welcomed Honor with a bright smile when she dropped by the young woman's home a couple of hours after returning from Jiana's estate, and she was delighted when Honor told her it was time for her first self-defense lesson. "I'll go get out of my jeans."
Having stopped by her apartment to change into long black exercise pants paired with a simple deep green tank top, Honor began to warm up on the private lawn behind the house while the other woman ran inside.
The vampire who watched her from his relaxed seat on the back steps wore wraparound shades and a black suit with a crisp white shirt, his hair brushed back into perfect lines. If she didn't know better, she'd have thought he'd stepped o
ut of some Fifth Avenue salon and wouldn't know one end of a blade from the other. Except she did know better. She'd seen the way Venom moved--that kind of grace a man only had if he danced. And she wasn't talking about the ballroom.
"Want a partner?" he asked, taking off his shades to reveal those startling eyes, so very alien. "I promise I'll be gentle."
Honor was almost certain she would now be okay with unfamiliar male contact, especially in a combat situation, but she shook her head. "Sorrow should be out soon."
Venom leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, the sun caressing brown skin that had enough warmth in it that it was extremely strokable. Not as strokable as that of the lethally sexy man Honor had had in her bed not long ago, but she bet Venom didn't have trouble getting dates, even with those eyes.
Now, his lips curved just a fraction. "I always thought Dmitri would choose someone a little more . . . sophisticated."
Taunting her, she thought, the viper-eyed male was taunting her to amuse himself. "You remind me of an eight-year-old foster brother I once had," she said, continuing her stretching routine. "He used to throw mudballs at me after I showered because he thought it was hilarious." There had been no meanness in Jared and she'd actually kept in touch with him for a while until age and time had faded the relationship. "He didn't find it funny after I dropped one down his back."
Venom's expression turned disgruntled. "I'm hardly a child."
Strange--she was decades, centuries younger, and at that moment, she wanted to cross the distance between them, rumple his hair, and kiss him on the cheek in amused affection. Before she could shake off the inexplicable feeling, Sorrow ran down the steps, dressed in pants similar to Honor's and a navy T-shirt bearing the name of a famous Irish bar.
"Are you going to pull out your cock to prove it now?" the girl asked with mock sweetness, having obviously overheard Venom's declaration.
The vampire's eerie pupils contracted to hard pinpoints. "Be careful your claws don't get you eaten, kitty."
Making a hissing sound at him, Sorrow stalked to join Honor on the grass. "Dmitri must really hate me," she muttered. "All the men at his command and he sends me Poison."