Archangel's Blade

20

She watched, because Vivek, mood or not, would never waste her time, not when he knew how important this was to her. The clip turned out to be a traffic report from one of the local television stations—and then suddenly, the bubbly blonde reporter was yelling at her cameraman to zoom in.

When he did, the first thing Honor saw was the brilliant near-white hair of the woman racing through the streets, her legs long, her grace extraordinary. An instant later, the reason for her urgency came into focus: a sensually beautiful masculine form giving chase, as fast and ruthless as a panther, his shirt splattered with the viscous red of blood.

Honor had been out of the country at the time of the infamous chase across Manhattan, and while she’d read about it, she’d never seen the actual footage. As she watched, Elena pulled out a gun, turned as if to shoot Dmitri—just as a sleek black motorcycle screeched to a stop at the corner, only a couple of feet away.

Jumping on, the hunter held on tight to the driver as the motorcycle powered away from danger. Dmitri, meanwhile, his chest barely moving in spite of the intensity of the chase, stood at the curb . . . and blew Elena a kiss.

“That,” Vivek said with solemn concern, “is the man you’ve got the hots for. Ellie said she slit his throat and he liked it.”

Goose bumps over her skin, a chill sweat breaking out along her spine. “Sometimes,” she said, thinking of the violence she’d witnessed in Dmitri, the casual cruelty, “logic doesn’t work.”

Vivek parted his lips, then seemed to think better of what he’d been about to say. “Just, be careful. And if you ever need to disappear, all you have to do is ask.” He headed to one of the computers before she could respond. “I’m copying the data over here, too. I’ll run search algorithms through the whole file using key words while you go through the e-mails.”

It was twenty minutes later that Honor saw it. An e-mail string hidden amongst all the other business ones, the subject header an innocuous project name. The only reason she’d even scanned it was because it appeared at the beginning of her period of captivity.

The first message said: Did you get an invitation?

The response was as simple: I’ll call you.

Two days later: I haven’t felt this alive in over a century.

The response: I’d forgotten what it was to hunt down my prey.

Except the cowards had done no hunting. They’d simply taken advantage of a trapped woman laid out for their ugly pleasure. Pulse pounding in her temples, she checked the e-mail address of Tommy’s friend. It didn’t surprise her in the least when it proved to identify the writer. “They never even considered anyone would come looking.” After all, Honor hadn’t been meant to leave that pit. Ever.

“Leon and his friends aren’t as sophisticated as my guests.” A lingering kiss that made her empty stomach revolt. “It’ll be interesting to see what remains after they’ve gorged themselves. But first . . .”

Icy jets of water hitting her, creating bruises upon bruises. The pungent scent of bleach in the room, the spray shifting to the concrete for long minutes. Her mouth being wrenched open.

“Now, let’s clean you up. I wouldn’t want your body to betray me when they find it in the trash.”

It only took Vivek a couple of minutes to match a physical address and bio with the e-mail she’d found. “Jewel Wan,” he said, bringing up a picture of a woman of Chinese ethnicity, the centuries of vampirism having worn away all traces of humanity to leave her a stunning sculpture carved in ice, her eyes gleaming black diamonds that matched the ones she wore around her neck.

“She’s a society fixture,” Vivek continued. “Spends a significant amount of time with humans.”

Glossy, straight hair stroking over her skin as small feminine hands caressed her ribs. “So much muscle even now.” A sweet kind of a voice, intrinsically feminine. “The boys are so rough, aren’t they?” Touching her with a delicacy that sought to lull. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt.”

But it had.

Honor hadn’t known it was possible to fight the pleasure in a vampire’s bite before her abduction, but she’d learned to do it in that torture chamber after the first three times the architect of her capture sent her into an orgasm that had her throwing up afterward, the rape no less painful for having being done through her blood.

Jewel Wan hadn’t been pleased at her defiance.

Laughter, soft and vicious. “I will enjoy breaking you. When I’m done, you’ll call me mistress and beg for my touch.”

A cold, cold thing sliding through her veins, engulfing her chest. “Give me her address.”

Vivek twisted his chair around. “She’s four hundred and fifty years old, Honor.” Unhidden alarm in his voice. “Not powerful for that age, but more than powerful enough to snap your bones regardless of her size.”

Cutting pressure against her side, nails pushing in until they pierced the flesh. Fingers curling around her rib. “Now”—a malicious whisper—“who is your mistress?”

Her rib twinged where Jewel Wan had fractured it. The hole in her side had healed, the scar so tiny she didn’t even notice it usually, but today it pulsed a rigid lump. “I’ll look it up myself.” It wouldn’t be difficult, considering the vampire’s social status.

“No, wait. Here.” Vivek brought up the address. “Please don’t be stupid.”

Her mind was screaming at her to stop, to think, but overwhelming that was the sensory memory of those sharp-nailed hands, that hair of liquid silk. Touching her. Hurting her. Bile rose in her throat but she forced it down, memorized the address, and left. Vivek called out after her, but she wasn’t listening, the roar inside her a violent thunder.

Jewel Wan lived on an estate in the Hudson Valley, which meant Honor would need a car. However, when she went upstairs to requisition one, she was told a freeze had just been placed on her ability to access Guild resources.

Vivek.

Not bothering to argue, she strode out into the heavy but flowing traffic before rush hour. It took only seconds to hail a cab, direct it to the nearest car rental place. She swiped her credit card, filled in the paperwork with impatient hands, and fifteen minutes later she was on her way out of the city in a small, maneuverable SUV.

Be rational, Honor. You go there and she’ll kill you.

The thought was barely complete when another part of her mind said, Not before I put a few holes in her.

What about the others? the tiny, still-coherent part of her asked. The ones you won’t find because you’re dead?

“I’ll fucking well find her!” The voices went silent, overwhelmed by the red haze of a rage so vicious, Honor hadn’t known until that moment that she could hate with that depth of fury.

Two hours and a hundred ignored phone calls later, she looked down the evening-grayed straight of the empty road and saw a helicopter sitting in her path. “No. No!”

Braking to a halt, she shoved open the door and strode out to intercept the man walking toward her. Dressed in black, he appeared a darker piece of the falling night, but his chest felt very much real when she slammed her hands against it. “Get that thing out of my way!”

Dmitri’s eyes were full of a quiet, simmering anger when they met her own. “I thought you had a brain, Honor.”

“Yeah, well, seems I don’t.” Seeing his unyielding expression, she stalked back to the car. There were other ways to get to Jewel Wan’s showcase of a home.

Except Dmitri slammed the car door shut before she could reach it. “Jewel allows trained attack dogs to roam free on her estate and has a standing guard of four who all carry substantial weaponry.”

“Take your hand off the door.” Sliding out her gun, she pushed the barrel into his heart hard enough to bruise. “At this range,” she said, flicking back the safety, “I’ll do enough damage to put you down for hours.”

“Why this one?” A quiet question that cut her like a knife, destroying the ice that had carried her this far. “Valeria you handled with preternatural calm. Jewel drives you to insanity.”

Her muscles spasmed. Wrenching away the gun before she shot him by accident, she flicked on the safety and turned to look at the road she’d driven down only minutes before. When he came to stand at her back, she knew he was blocking the pilot from seeing her. That small act, it shattered her. “She didn’t hurt me.” A rough whisper. “Not until the very end.”

“Yet your hatred for her is so deep it blinds.” He touched his hands to her bare forearms, and she was startled when she didn’t pull away, when she allowed him to align his chest to her back, the masculine heat of him seeping through to her very bones.

It did nothing to wipe away the shame and humiliation that had her stomach in knots, but it melted the final fragments of ice, leaving her acutely exposed, vulnerable. “Except for the leader and his games at the start, the others,” she said, shivering with a cold that had nothing to do with the temperature, “no matter what else they did, only tried to force pleasure on me with their bite.”

Dmitri rubbed his hands down her arms, his breath hot at her temple.

“Everything else,” she continued, sinking into his heat, “was about power, about control.” When that failed to crush her, they’d amused themselves by making her scream instead. “But Jewel, she injected me with something . . . and then she touched me.” So delicate, so gentle, so horrifying.

It was near impossible to get air into her lungs now, her breath jerky, her blood pumping in erratic bursts. But she said the words, because the shame was too huge a thing to keep inside any longer. “She made me orgasm. Over and over.” Her body’s betrayal had broken something deep within her, taken the last shred of defiant pride.

Dmitri’s hands clenched tight on her arms. “It’s not only men,” he said, his voice rigid with control, “who can be aroused against their will.”

Shuddering, she turned into his embrace, pressing her face against his chest. Except for Ash’s quick hugs, it was the first time she’d allowed anyone to hold her since the abduction, the first time she’d been able to bear it. Maybe it was because her humiliation was so strong she had no room for fear . . . and maybe it was because he understood in a way no one else ever would.

“I hate her, Dmitri.” It was a hard, jagged thing inside of her, this hatred. “More than anyone else.”

Dmitri stroked his hand over her hair, bending his head to whisper a dark promise in her ear. “I can do to her what she did to you.” Black satin around her senses. “It would be nothing to break her until she was a whimpering, crawling shell.”

Her response was immediate—and violent. “No. You don’t touch the bitch.” Then, perhaps because she was half mad, she added, “You do and I swear I’ll shoot off both your hands at the wrists.” He was hers, and she didn’t care if that was the obsession speaking, didn’t care that she’d told herself not to make a claim. Dmitri was hers.

A vibration against her chest. Dmitri’s laughter.

He drove the rest of the way, though the chopper would’ve been faster—they decided the extra time would allow her to calm down. That proved impossible, but she did manage to get a grip on her emotions to the extent that she was no longer blind to the stupidity of rash behavior on her part in the upcoming confrontation.

It was as they were heading down the last stretch of road—one devoid of streetlights—that her phone rang again. This time she picked it up. “Vivek.”

“Honor, are you all right?”

“You ask that after you sicced Dmitri on me?”

A strained laugh. “Not my fault you have friends in scary places.”

“I’m fine.” He’d saved her life, and she wasn’t going to be an ass about it. “Thanks.”

He tried to hide his relief, but she heard it nonetheless. “Yeah, well, now you owe me two dinners.” A beep. “Hold on.” Then, “Jewel Wan is on the move. I hacked into her security company’s system, got access to the cameras on the estate. Looks like she’s packing up and getting out of Dodge.”

“Guards?”

“Two in the front car, two with her, from what I can see. Visuals aren’t that clear, so there could be more.”

Hanging up, she relayed the information to Dmitri. “Is this the only road out of the Wan estate?”

His answer was a chilling smile.

Following his gaze, she saw car headlights flash in the darkness before disappearing as the oncoming vehicle curved around a corner. A second flash came on the heels of the first. She said nothing as Dmitri parked the rental in a way that blocked the road, slid out in silence as he did the same.

They were part of the thick blackness of the trees beside the road when the first car stopped, a gun appearing out the window. Dmitri said, “I wouldn’t,” in a quiet tone that sliced through the night air.

The gun hesitated, but didn’t pull back, though it was clear the vampire didn’t know where to aim.

“I did warn you.” With that, Dmitri was gone, a shadow in the dark.

As she covered him, he smashed the nearest car window to reach in and pull out the vampiric driver, throwing him to the ground with such force that his skull cracked. The man’s partner began shooting. Unfortunately, he was aiming where Dmitri no longer was. It was as she was kicking away the weapon of the unconscious driver that she heard the distinct snap of a neck being broken.

It had all happened so fast that the second car only started reversing in screeching panic after both the front vampires had been disabled. Picking up the machine gun she’d kicked aside, she aimed at the gleaming Town Car, blowing out the tires, then the windshield.

Glass shattered, smoke rose, and the vehicle slammed backward into trees that shook from the force of the impact but didn’t give ground.

Dmitri was already on top of the vehicle, ripping away the roof in a feat of strength that made it patent he wasn’t human. The guards inside, their bodies peppered with bullet wounds, made no attempt to defend their cargo. Dragging a screaming Jewel Wan out of the backseat by her hair, Dmitri dumped her in the patch of road spotlighted by the damaged Town Car’s headlights.