Archangel's Blade

8

The male’s keening turned into wild panic as he recognized Dmitri’s voice. Since he was missing his eyes, his eye sockets huge black holes in his face, sound was the only thing left to him. “I don’t know anything! I would tell you if I did!”

Dmitri believed him—the vampire was weak, would have broken at the first sign of pain. But there was a chance he’d glimpsed something without knowing it. “Tell me everything,” he said, speaking to them both. “From the first instant you were approached. If it proves useful, perhaps I won’t take over your punishment.”

Terror turned them incoherent for several minutes. He simply waited it out. Cold of heart, Favashi had once called him. But since she was a bitch who had wanted only to use him, her words held no power. Still, the accusation was true—his conscience rarely troubled him, and never when it came to retribution for those who had brutalized women or children.

“Enough,” he snapped when they continued to sob and plead.

Silence, as they choked on their very breaths. Almost half a minute later, the one he’d first spoken to opened his mouth. “I was working as a private security guard when I got a call one day. Man on the other end said he’d seen me at a big party, liked the job I’d done, and did I want to earn some money on the side with an off-the-books gig.”

“Which party?”

“He never said, but we mostly worked the premier events—wealthy vamps.”

That didn’t give Dmitri anything new, but he’d put someone on rechecking the guest lists of the parties this male had worked. “And?”

Jerking out a leg when something big and black landed on his exposed flesh, the vampire twitched violently. “It was so much money, I said s-sure.” Swallowing. “Then I asked Reg if he’d like in since the client said he needed two people.”

Reg, a thin blond male, was still crying, but silently. “I wish to fucking hell I’d said no.”

Now he did, Dmitri thought. He’d had no problem with it when he’d torn into Honor’s flesh, when he’d touched her in a way no man had the right to touch a woman without consent. Walking across to the blond, Dmitri backhanded him hard enough that something fractured with an audible crack. “Do you really think I give a shit?” he asked in a quiet, contained voice. “Now answer the question I asked.”

Spitting out a tooth, the vampire blubbered out the next series of words. “Leon had the contact. I just did what he said.”

Leon began to speak before Dmitri could remind the vampire why it wasn’t a good idea to keep him waiting. “Always by phone.” Gasped out. “Never had any face-to-face contact. Money was deposited into my account and I gave Reg his cut.”

Dmitri didn’t say a word.

“The client,” Leon continued, stumbling over his own tongue, “said she was his girlfriend, that it was some stupid sex fantasy of hers to be snatched and . . .” Thudding heartbeat, twitching skin, as if he was chillingly conscious of what Dmitri would like to do to him. “He said it was her fantasy.”

Dmitri heard the quaver beneath the irritating whine. “What was your first clue that it wasn’t?”

Reg was the one who answered. “When she broke Leon’s nose! I told him something was wrong, but he was pissed so he punched her, knocked her out.”

Dmitri spread his hand, his fingers flexing. “You’re older, Reg. Why didn’t you stop him?” he asked in a tone as soft as fresh-fallen snow.

Reg began to retch.

Dmitri said nothing until the spasms passed. Then he walked over to stroke his hand over the vampire’s face. “Answer my question.”

Sweat trickling down his temples, the blond swallowed. “The money. I wanted the money.”

“Good.” He patted the vampire’s cheek, left him quivering as he walked over to Leon.

Who was trying to break his wrists away from the rope in a futile effort to escape, a broken marionette. Reaching into the inside pocket of his coat, Dmitri removed a filleting knife, pressed the cold metal to the new pink skin in front of him. “Tell me the rest.” He cut a deep line down the center of Leon’s chest.

Blood, dark and red, seeped out of the cut as the vampire whimpered. “We weren’t supposed to damage her and I gave her a black eye. So we tied her up and left her where the directions said and got the hell out.”

“You didn’t stay out.” Another cut, this one horizontal, and deep enough that it brushed Leon’s internal organs.

But the other vampire kept talking, because he knew Dmitri could do far worse. “Seven weeks later, client calls me again, gives me an address, says maybe we’d like to join in the festivities.”

Twisting the blade, Dmitri pulled up, collapsing a lung. “Keep talking.” Vampires of Leon’s age didn’t need to breathe . . . much.

“We got there”—harsh, gasping attempts to take in air—“the place was empty except for the hunter, but it was clear more than one vampire had fed from her. Client left us a note to enjoy ourselves. Note’s gone. I threw it away.”

Dmitri removed the knife. “And did you? Enjoy yourself?” They were rhetorical questions—these two had been found with Honor over a week later, their mouths smeared with her blood. “You invited your friends, too, didn’t you?” The two vampires killed during the rescue had worked for the same security company. “Who else?”

“No one,” Leon answered. “I swear. Just the four of us.”

They were too terrified to lie, so Dmitri accepted that. “Good.”

The screaming stopped when he removed their voice boxes. But he left them alive. Raphael had told him something once, a long time ago. Something his mother, Caliane, had said.

“Three days in the span of a mortal lifetime can feel like three decades.”

Raphael’s mother might yet turn out to be an insane Ancient, but on this point, Dmitri agreed with her completely. So he would make sure Andreas knew not to let Reg and Leon die. As for the others . . . they would wish for death every single night for the next two centuries once he found them.

Two months, after all, was a lot longer than three days.

Nine at night, and Honor didn’t know what she was doing here. “Sorry about canceling our other appointments. Thanks for coming in so late.”

Anastasia Reuben smiled, her steely gray hair pulled back in a neat bun. “I’ve worked with hunters for two decades, Honor. I know going to see a therapist is worse than getting your teeth pulled.”

She laughed, or tried to, the sound an awkward rasp. “So, how does this work?”

“There’s no pressure, no rules here,” Dr. Reuben said, eyes gentle. “If all you want to do is talk about the latest episode of Hunter’s Prey, then that’s what we’ll do.”

Honor had the feeling that wasn’t a hypothetical example. “I came because . . .” Shaking her head, she jerked to her feet, adrenaline racing through every cell in her body. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

Dr. Reuben rose, too. “I’m glad you came.” Reaching into a cupboard, she pulled out a small book covered in gold and white swirls. “Some hunters never talk, but I’ve found that putting words down on paper can help.”

Honor took the notebook, having no intention of using it. “Thanks.”

“It’s for your eyes alone. Burn it afterward if you want.”

Giving a nod, Honor strode out of the small, discreet office two blocks from Guild HQ.

It wasn’t until she was back in her apartment, laptop open to the tattoo file, that she allowed herself to think about why she’d gone. Perhaps it had been the slowly awakening anger inside of her, a cold, bright thing that was all teeth and gleaming edges. Then again, perhaps it had been the knowledge that, stupid or not, she wanted to taste the dark sin of Dmitri’s lips. Or perhaps it had been the nightmares.

All her life, she’d felt alone, rootless. Even now, when she had friends, loyal and strong, there was a huge hole deep within—as if she’d lost something terrible and precious. As a child, she’d thought she must be a twin, that her mother had kept one and given away the other. However, as an adult, she recognized the sense of loss as something other, outside of herself. That strange, piercing loneliness was never more prevalent than after a nightmare—whether waking or sleeping.

“Enough,” she muttered. “Time to work.”

And work she did, until the city began to pulse with a quieter beat, the sky that impenetrable opaque shade between midnight and dawn. She shouldn’t have given in to sleep but she was tired, her eyes gritty from the parade of sleepless nights, and oblivion hit before she knew it.

It was the sound of a woman’s endless, ragged screams that jerked her awake. Her body was curled up into a tight ball on the sofa, wracked by dry sobs, the lingering echo of the woman’s torment ripping holes in her soul. Unable to bear it, she stumbled to the bathroom and threw ice-cold water on a face ravaged by an anguish so deep, she’d never felt its like. How could that be? She’d been tortured and broken . . . but this desolation, it came from another place, so very, very deep that it had no name.

Swallowing the burn in her throat before the sadness could recapture her in its aching grip, she stripped off her clothes and stepped into the shower. It was barely five a.m. but the three hours of sleep she’d gotten tonight were better than the hour the previous night. Washing off the sweat, she pressed her head against the tile and simply let the water roll over and off her.

She’d always loved water. Part of the reason she’d ended up in Manhattan was because it was surrounded by water. It had been a considered decision to apply to the Academy. She’d wanted to study ancient languages and knew that the Guild would cover her fees if she signed a contract to remain active on the roster for at least four years after graduation.

The four-year mark had come and gone, but she’d never even considered leaving. Not only had the other hunters become her family, but her expertise in ancient cultures and languages was a skill in constant demand, given the fact that theirs was a world ruled by immortals. The thought circled her mind back to the Tower and to the vampire who had always been her darkest, most secret weakness.

Switching off the shower, she stepped out to dry herself off, forcing her brain to focus on the task that had left her with a splitting headache the previous night. Whatever it was that had been tattooed on the vampire’s face—and on the back of his right shoulder, according to the photos she’d received from the pathologist—was so idiosyncratic as to defy logical explanation. And yet she knew there had to be one. Because regardless of how the head had come into Dmitri’s hands, the body had been an unmistakable message.

Dressing in jeans and a plain white tee, she headed out into the kitchen area, which flowed off the lounge, to prepare some tea. The view from the entire front section of the apartment was the same—the Tower. Brilliant with light against the dark early morning skies, it drew the eye like a lodestar.

Walking to the glass wall, tea in hand, she watched a solitary angel come in to land. He was only a silhouette from this far out, but even then, his grace was extraordinary. Not one of the “normal” angels, she thought. This was someone akin to the black-winged angel Dmitri had spoken with on the balcony outside his office.

The knock on her door was so unexpected that she didn’t startle, just stared. When it came again, she put down the tea, pulled her gun, and walked on silent feet to the peephole. The vampire on the other side was a sleek predator she should’ve shot at first glance. Instead, she opened the door. “Dmitri.”

Dressed in black jeans, a T-shirt of the same color, and a butter-soft leather coat that reached his ankles, he looked like the most sinful fantasy she’d ever had, the kind that left a woman damp and slick and ready. Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, she caught the tendrils of sumptuous pleasure and blade-sharp sex in his scent.

Not the reason for her response, but the lush addiction of it certainly didn’t help. It was a good thing she wasn’t a true hunter-born—because he was potent. “You usually visit around this time?”

“I was passing.” He leaned against the doorjamb, lifting the large manila envelope in his hand.

The blades in his scent grew razored, cutting across her senses with deadly eroticism. Suddenly all she saw in his eyes was a menace as sensual as a caress in the dark and as lethal as a stiletto. “What have you done?” The question escaped every filter of social nicety and convention.

“Nothing that didn’t need to be done.” Pushing off the doorjamb when she released her death grip on the edge of the door and stepped back, he walked into her apartment.

She tugged the envelope from him the instant the door was closed, sliding away her gun even as she allowed herself to indulge in the wicked, beautiful scent of him. “Further photos of the victim’s tats?”

“No.”

Opening it, she pulled out several sheets of paper, along with a number of blown-up photographs. At first, she didn’t understand what it was she was seeing, and then she did and her blood boiled. “This is my medical report.” Specifically, from the humiliating examination after her rescue. The doctor and nurse had both been gentle, kind, but there in that examination room, there had no longer been any way to pretend that it hadn’t happened, that she hadn’t been turned into—

Choking the river of memory, she focused on the here and now, on the anger so incandescent in her vision. “Where did you get this?” Her hands trembled with the need to hurt him, this vampire who played with her as if she was an amusing toy.

Stalking to the window where she’d stood only moments before, he said, “That’s not really a question.”

No, it wasn’t. “You bastard,” she said, throwing everything onto the coffee table, the edge of pleasure she’d taken in his presence eradicated by the ice of his voice, an unforgiving reminder that he was not human, that he had no conscience as she knew it. “What right do you have to invade my privacy?”

“I wanted the images they took,” he said without turning.

Her stomach roiled. “I knew you liked pain, but I didn’t realize you got off on torture.”

A glance over his shoulder. “Of the bite marks, Honor.” Her name sounded like the most decadent of temptations, touched by a sensuality that was as natural to the male in her apartment as breathing . . . even when he was coated in the ice of what she belatedly recognized was rage, tempered and deadly.

Bite marks.

Her own anger chilled by the cold of his, she picked up the stack of paper and photos, flipped until she came to the pages that listed the bites on her body, with associated images. “There’s nothing you can learn from this.” At the end, they’d torn at her as if she was a hunk of meat, shredding and ripping.

“You’d be surprised.” Shifting on his heel, he shrugged out of the coat, throwing it over the back of one of her sofas to reveal muscled arms free of weapons . . . but for the long, thin blade angled in a sheath across his back. Somehow it didn’t surprise her that he was a blade man, though from the gun she was certain he had in an ankle sheath, she knew he didn’t have a problem with modern weaponry either.

She stood her ground when he came to stand next to her, though the force of her clenched jaw sent pain shooting down the bone. No more fear, she vowed, even knowing it couldn’t be as simple as that, the primal core of her brain scrabbling at her to run—or to fight, shooting and cutting and kicking.

The heat of his body insistent against her skin, Dmitri pointed out a set of three bites that were small and evenly spaced. They’d survived the violence later because of their location—the only mercy was that they had healed without leaving scars, so she wasn’t constantly reminded of how they’d come to be. “Back of my left thigh—”

“—a few inches up from the knee,” Dmitri completed.

Small, fine-boned hands on her body, delicate fangs sinking again and again into that one area. “Blood Ruby,” she whispered. “The vampire always smelled of Blood Ruby.” The fashionable perfume had been an opulent cage around her senses, and it brought up her gorge still—a stranger on the street, in a store, it didn’t matter. She caught a whiff of it and bile coated her throat as a cold sweat broke out over her body. “I used to dream of slitting her throat and watching her flop about at my feet while I drowned her in that stuff.”

Dmitri’s eyes—dark, so, so dark—met hers. “Would you like to pay her a visit?”