Archangel's Blade

19

Raphael’s eyes followed Honor’s progress. “Be careful, Dmitri. She has more spirit than all your other women put together.”

Dmitri watched that strong, lithe body disappear into the trees, the strength of her even more compelling for having been reborn from the ashes of brutality. “Do you think me in danger, Sire?”

“No. But then, I did not think myself in danger either.” Allowing his wings to brush the carpet of fallen leaves, he returned to the matter that had brought him here. “This time, the message was unhidden.”

Dmitri had guessed as much. “Tell me.”

“The male was branded with a glyph. The sun hiding a sickle moon.”

“There now, lover. You will never forget me.”

His chest muscles tightened. “We’ve been unable to confirm the identity of the previous victim,” he said, strangling the memory. “Is this one ours?”

“No.” Dmitri.

I can handle seeing the body. The memory was a vicious one, but it didn’t cripple. “The fangs?”

“Near translucent.”

“A report came in from the lab early this morning,” he said, turning toward the stream. “There was a problem with the first vampire’s blood.” Honor should hear this.

Raphael fell into step with him as they headed toward her. “Tell me about your hunter.”

“I have a feeling you already know.”

A faint smile. “You’re protective of her.”

Dmitri thought back to the last time he’d felt protective of a woman. It had been an eon ago. So long ago that he hadn’t recognized the feeling until Raphael pointed it out. “It seems so.” Such protectiveness wasn’t an emotion he welcomed, speaking as it did of ties beyond the raw physicality of sex.

Sinking into a woman’s hot, wet sheath, playing with his bedmate until she whimpered and begged, it was an amusement. Pleasure and pain, sex or blood, none of it touched the quiet, hidden core of his heart, where he continued to honor his vows to his wife.

“I can take care of this, Dmitri.”

“No.” They might have killed Isis together, but the angel had been Dmitri’s nightmare. “The message was addressed to me. I’ll find its author.”

Honor’s form appeared out of the trees on the heels of his declaration. She was standing with her body angled slightly toward them, as if she’d sensed their approach, her expression one of cool consideration.

“The first vampire’s blood,” he said to her, intrigued by the realization that she was calculating a reprisal aimed at him, “was not what it should’ve been.”

“Vampiric blood is distinctive.” Lines marring her forehead. “What was wrong with his?”

Dmitri couldn’t tell her about the toxin that built up in the bodies of angels, that was used to turn humans into vampires. That was a secret so profound Illium had been stripped of his feathers for speaking it to a mortal, a woman who had long since turned to dust. But he could give Honor the result. “The conversion process was incomplete.”

Hereto hidden strands of mahogany in her hair caught the light as Honor angled her head. “An amateur attempt that went wrong?”

He would fist that hair around his hands when he sank into her. “Yes.” Involving an angel unaware that the toxin in his blood hadn’t yet reached the threshold for a successful Making.

“I can talk to the other hunters, see if they’ve heard of anything similar.” Folding her arms, she looked down at the pebbles, back up. “Thing is, the body drop in Times Square, the butchery, it’s not something you’d do your first time around. There must be evidence of previous practice efforts.”

“We are speaking of immortals,” Raphael pointed out. “His practice could have spanned centuries.”

“Especially,” Dmitri added, “if he was a disciple of Isis.” A disciple Dmitri would not allow to live. The bitch would never come back to life, not even as a remembered goddess.

“Yes, but,” Honor argued, displaying a quiet strength that had begun to fascinate Dmitri, “the fact that he hasn’t mastered the Making process says he’s new at this aspect of things even if he isn’t new at the violence.”

“Yes.” Dmitri frowned, recalling something another member of the Seven had said to him. Sire, are you able to reach Jason?

No, he’s out of range.

Taking out his cell phone, Dmitri glanced at Honor, using his gaze to caress lips he wanted to debauch and corrupt. “Try not to get killed while I’m making this call.”

Her eyes flashed fire, stirring parts of him he’d believed entombed in that field of wildflowers that was a memorial to his Ingrede and their children.

Honor saw the shadow that swept across Dmitri’s face before he stepped away to make his call, wanted to reach out and wipe it away, the need an ache inside of her. However, not only did she not have that right, she was being examined by a male whose face was so flawless, it almost hurt to look at him. “I saw Elena this morning,” she said, wondering how she’d ended up making conversation with an archangel.

“My consort has a way of finding trouble.” Raphael’s hair, black as the night, gleamed in the forest light. “Dmitri helps you seek vengeance.”

“I think it’s more the fact that these vampires are breaking the rules.” Fooling herself about Dmitri’s motivations would only make the eventual fall harder.

“Perhaps.” He joined her at the water’s edge, his wings bare inches away, the gold filaments glittering under the sunlight. “The Guild is important to the balance of the world. Its hunters must not become prey.”

“If it had been another mortal,” she found herself asking, though it might have been safer to keep her thoughts to herself, “one not associated with the Guild?”

“Mortals have a part to play in the world, too.”

She didn’t know how to read his words, this lethal being who was capable of breaking a man’s every bone and displaying him like a macabre doll. Then she glimpsed Dmitri walking back. Dark and dangerously intelligent, with a body that had been sleeked to gleaming purity in battle, and a moral compass that was undeniably skewed, he was no less inhuman than the man he called Sire.

Perhaps he was even worse.

Where Raphael was remote, removed from humanity, the violence that was so much a part of Dmitri hummed just below the surface of his sophisticated skin. Blood and pain, she thought, that was what drove Dmitri. Why that should cause her heart to clench in unrelenting sorrow was a question to which she had no answer.

The body lay on the concrete floor of the warehouse, the young male’s arms and legs splayed in a way that was nothing natural. Jeans covered his legs but his upper half was unclothed, better to display the brand seared into a chest that bore lines of muscle development as yet incomplete.

Dmitri had repudiated the same mark with blood-soaked violence, using a knife he’d taken from Isis’s home. It was only fitting, he’d thought as he stripped off his rough shirt and pressed his back against one of the beams that had survived the fire that had taken everything from him.

The point of the blade was so sharp, it caused a bloody droplet to appear the instant he put it to his skin.

Gritting his teeth, he began to cut, thrusting deep enough to excise the scar tissue. He was a vampire now. The skin would heal whole and unmarked.

But vampires still felt pain.

Blackness engulfed him when he was less than a quarter of the way around the brand. Picking up the fallen blade with blood-slick hands the instant he awakened, he began again. And again. And again. Until there was no more trace of Isis on his body and his heart had grown so weak, he could feel death whispering in sweet, dark welcome.

A shadow of wings, a glimpse of searing blue. “Dmitri. What have you done?”

“Leave me.” It was the only thing he had the strength to say.

“No.” A wrist being thrust in front of him, his head pushed forward by an unyielding hand. “Drink.”

Dmitri resisted.

Cursing, Raphael used that same blade to slice open his vein, pushing the bleeding flesh to Dmitri’s lips without warning. A single taste and the newly awake predator within him took over.

He fed.

He hadn’t healed that day, or in the days that followed. He’d been too young Made, the same reason why Raphael had been able to overwhelm him. But he did heal. At least on the outside.

“So young,” Honor said, squatting beside the dead male, her sadness a poignant thread in her voice.

Compelled by the sound, he watched her put a gloved hand on the protovampire’s jaw, open his mouth. “We already know of the fangs.”

“No, I’m looking for something else.” Leaning in, one hand continuing to hold the victim’s jaws open, she reached back to pull a slender tube off her belt. “Would you hold the flashlight so I can see into his mouth?”

He came down on his haunches beside her, his focus on her rather than the male on the concrete. The lines of her face were elegant, her eyes not bitter or hard in spite of what she’d suffered. She’d survived with her soul intact, still had the capacity to feel compassion for the loss of a life.

Dmitri couldn’t say the same. The tattered remnants of his soul had burned up in his son’s funeral pyre. Such golden flames around his boy, such a wild blaze for such a small child. It suited him, Dmitri had thought as the final piece of his heart broke, suited his Misha with the deep laugh and the hunger to explore.

“Dmitri.”

Glancing up, he saw too much knowledge in the mysterious green eyes that watched him, too much tenderness. “Don’t you know to keep your distance, Honor?” He was a predator, would strike at her weaknesses, take every advantage.

A slight shake of her head, curls escaping the rough braid she’d done on the flight over. “I think it’s too late for that.” Breaking the eye contact with that quiet statement, she said, “Do you see?”

Dmitri followed her gaze. “He doesn’t have his wisdom teeth.” While such a lack wasn’t an absolute indicator of age, when paired with his baby-faced appearance it was another sign these vampires were being Made outside of any accepted structure—the Cadre had long decreed that no mortal who had not lived a quarter of a century could be Made.

“He was vulnerable,” Honor said, reaching out to brush the victim’s hair out of his eyes with quiet care. “A target who could be controlled once he’d been hooked by the idea of immortality.”

Again Dmitri looked at the victim’s face. He wasn’t completely heartless—he mourned for the young—but this man-child was old enough to have made his own decisions. At that age, Dmitri had been working the fields and courting a woman with sunshine in her smile and eyes that told him he was beautiful without her ever saying a word.

“Leave him,” he said, rising to his feet. “There’s nothing you can do to discover his identity.” The Tower’s own technicians would fingerprint and otherwise process the body.

Honor, however, didn’t get up. “Anyone looked at his back?”

“It matters little.” But he bent down to pull the victim’s shoulders off the floor for her.

“Nothing,” she said in open disappointment. “I was hoping for another tattoo. Might’ve given us more clues.”

Standing, Dmitri waited for her to join him. They didn’t speak again until they were outside the gleaming metal of the warehouse, the late afternoon sun a gentle warmth in comparison to the shadows within. “There was no need for any such marking, Honor. The brand is message enough.”

Hearing the brutal cold in Dmitri’s tone, a whip that spoke of a vicious pain that might strike out at anyone in the vicinity, Honor nonetheless said, “Will you tell me about it?” because it was far too late to stand back, be rational.

“No.” A single flat word, a sudden reminder that the stark intimacy of those moments by the quiet music of the stream had been an aberration. “I think it’s time you went home.”

She should’ve let it go, but her response was instinctive, springing from the same wild, dark core as her emotions toward him. “You really think you can just set me aside when I become inconvenient?”

“You’re under contract to the Tower and that was an order.” With that, he turned on his heel and headed back inside.

Furious at the realization that she’d been shut down for the second time that day, she twisted with the intention of confronting him . . . when she remembered the memory card in her pocket. She had no doubts the Tower had the best computer experts at its command—but the Guild had the best of the best, and, unlike with the Tower personnel, neither Vivek’s nor Honor’s attention would be divided by other pieces of evidence.

Vivek was in a foul mood when she arrived. He snapped at her to slot in the card and then said nothing for almost twenty minutes. Then: “I’ve cracked the encryption. Data’s coming up on the screen to your left.”

Swiveling her chair to face it, she began to scroll through the information. Most of it seemed to be business related, so Tommy had, in fact, done some work amid all his depraved play. Not much of it, though. That wasn’t necessarily anything to note. A lot of the older vamps had so much accumulated wealth they spent the majority of their time in indulgent excess. The idea of it made Honor’s skin itch. What was the point of near-immortality if you weren’t going to do something with it?

“It is polite,” Vivek muttered, “to thank someone after they do a task for you.”

Blinking, she looked up to see him staring at what looked like grainy surveillance footage. “What? Oh. I thought I could cook you dinner when this was all over.” When she could lay the nightmare to rest, sleep knowing her tormentors would never hurt her or anyone else again.

Vivek shifted his wheelchair to glare at her. “Feeling sorry for the cripple, I see.”

“Knock it off, V.” In no fine mood herself, she returned the glare. “If we’re comparing the right to indulge in self-pity, I think I’ve got you beat.”

“I was abandoned by my family.”

“At least you had a family for a while. I was abandoned almost the instant I left the womb.”

“I can’t walk.”

“I was tortured for two months and can’t stand for a man to touch me in a sexual way, even a man I find wildly attractive.” Until the erotic, decadent taste of him was in her every breath. “Despite my better judgment.”

“It’s Dmitri, isn’t it?” A whir of sound as Vivek brought his wheelchair closer.

Returning her attention to the data, she let her silence speak for itself.

“First Elena and then you.” A blown-out breath. “I want to show you something.” Not waiting for an answer, he went to another computer and cued up a video clip on the large wall screen in front of the consoles. “Watch.”