Archangel's Blade

4

Arriving back at Guild Academy after midnight, Honor put her laptop bag down on the small table tucked in beside the wardrobe in her quarters. The bed took up most of the remaining space. The room was adequate, and that was it—most hunters only used the quarters when they needed to do a short, intense session of instruction at the Academy. Honor had been here since the day they allowed her out of the hospital.

It wasn’t because she couldn’t afford anything better. Given the fees hunters commanded as a result of the high-risk nature of their work, and the fact that she hadn’t really had much downtime in which to spend that money, she’d built up a considerable nest egg before the abduction. None of it had been touched during her convalescence, as the Guild covered the medical costs of all its hunters. Truth was, she could move into a penthouse if that was what she wanted.

It just hadn’t seemed worth the effort to move out.

Except tonight, the room was suddenly a cage. How could she have been so numb that she hadn’t noticed the claustrophobic confines? The realization of the depth of her apathy was a slap, one that made her head ring—but not enough to settle her sharp response to the walls around her.

Beginning to sweat, she ripped off her sweatshirt and dropped it on the bed, but that did nothing to cool her down.

Water.

A few minutes after that thought passed through her head, she was dressed in a sleek black one-piece swimsuit, a toweling robe around her body. The night owls she ran into on her way to the Academy pool stopped only long enough to say hi before continuing on their way—and she was soon sliding into the pristine blue waters that promised peace.

Stroke, stroke, breathe. Stroke, stroke, breathe.

The rhythm was better than meditating. It took ten lengths, but by the end of it, she was calm. However, the feeling of suffocation struck again the instant she returned to her room—now that she’d noticed its tiny size, she couldn’t get it out of her head. And there was no way she’d be able to sleep even if she forced herself to bed. Her nightmares—malevolent, clawing things—were bad enough without adding claustrophobic panic to the mix.

Having showered at the pool, she pulled on fresh clothes and picked up her laptop.

The library was quiet at this time of night, but not deserted. There were a couple of instructors working on research papers, and a hunter who looked like she’d come in from active duty.

A single glance at that shining dark hair, those worn boots, and her lips curved in joyful surprise. “Ashwini?”

The tall, long-legged hunter put down the book she’d been examining and swiveled on her heel. Face cracking into a smile that turned her from beautiful to breathtaking, she gave a “Whoop!” and vaulted over a library table to grab Honor in a tight hug. No sign remained of the knife fight that had left her seriously injured not long ago.

Laughing, Honor hugged her back—Ash was one of the rare few people she’d never had trouble allowing close, even directly after the assault. Perhaps it was because the other hunter was her best friend . . . and perhaps it was because Ashwini was the one who’d ripped off her blindfold and shot off the chains that had held her trapped and helpless, her body a piece of meat for her captors.

“I’ve got you, Honor—the bastards won’t touch you again.”

“What are you doing here, you lunatic?” she asked, focusing on the fact that her friends had never given up on her, rather than the putrid miasma of a far more vile memory.

A smacking kiss on her cheek before Ashwini drew back. “I came to see you—you weren’t in your quarters so I came here to wait.” Glancing around when one of the instructors said “Shh” in a loud voice, she rolled her eyes. “Funny, Demarco. Didn’t they call noise control on your last party?”

The rangy hunter, his hair the streaky blond of a man who loved the sun, grinned and pointed a finger. “I knew you were there, Ms. Flaming Lying Pants.”

“This is a library, people,” said the last man in the room, scarred boots on a reading table and a leather-bound book open in front of his face.

Ash and Demarco hooted. Because Ransom was the last person you’d expect to find in a library—except word was, he was shacked up with a librarian. That, Honor thought, she’d have to see to believe. Now he put the book down in his lap and leaned back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head. “I’ll have you know I’m teaching an advanced course in how to deal with the Wing Brotherhood when necessary.”

Ashwini sauntered over to play with Ransom’s gorgeous black hair, tugging it out of its usual queue to run it through her fingers. “What conditioner you using, Professor Ransom? I’m thinking of changing brands.”

“Fuck you.” Said without heat as he glanced at Demarco. “I’m hungry.”

The other hunter paused, nodded decisively. “Yeah, me, too.”

That was how Honor found herself sitting in an otherwise deserted dining hall with three other hunters, talking shit. It was something she hadn’t done for months, even pushing Ash away when her best friend tried to draw her out, and now she couldn’t understand why. For the first time since she’d escaped that hellhole where she’d almost died, she felt real, a person, instead of a forgotten shade, a translucent illusion.

Stop lying to yourself, Honor.

She’d felt very much real, very much alive, at the Tower. Chilled by a fear that had left her skin sticky with sweat, and by her deep-rooted compulsion toward a vampire who had looked at her with sex—the dark, screaming kind—in his eyes, but alive nonetheless.

Her hand clenched on the handle of her coffee mug. She’d already eaten a toasted cheese sandwich and a banana, truly hungry for the first time in months—though the Guild nutritionist’s stringent eating plan meant she’d slowly returned to a healthy weight over the past half year. She’d tasted none of those things, complied only because it was easier than arguing.

Dmitri’s gaze had made it clear he appreciated her curves, that he had no problem with the fact that her natural body shape was too much of an hourglass than was currently fashionable. He would, she thought, take exquisite pleasure in stroking his hands over every inch of a woman’s body . . . if he wasn’t in the mood to hurt her a little.

“Any of you met Dmitri?” she found herself asking during a lull in the conversation, disturbed by the fact that even knowing beyond any doubt that he’d be no good for her, she couldn’t stop her mind’s eye from tracing the slightly full curve of his lower lip. A dangerous indulgence, a small madness.

“Yeah.” Ransom swallowed the bite of Pop-Tart in his mouth. “When Elena went missing. Cold son of a bitch. Not someone you’d want to run into in a deserted alley.”

“A challenge. I accept.”

It would’ve been easy to tell herself that he’d been playing with her, amusing himself at her expense . . . except she was fairly certain a man didn’t look at a woman with that kind of slumberous heat in his eyes unless he was planning to have her naked and helpless beneath him, her thighs spread wide.

“Hey.” Ashwini’s voice, pitched low to skate under Demarco and Ransom’s conversation. “I heard you were consulting for the Tower. Dmitri?”

“I cut him,” she whispered, the memory of the actual act still a black nothingness in her mind.

Ashwini’s grin was feral. “Good for you. Bastard probably deserved it.”

Staring at her best friend, Honor started to laugh and it was the first time she’d done so since Ash and Ransom carried her out of that filthy pit, bruised and violated and bleeding from so many bite marks torn into her flesh that the doctors had put her into an antiseptic bath, not wanting to miss one of the wounds.

Uninterested in sleep that night, Dmitri was standing on the railingless balcony outside his Tower suite when the nightshadow of wings swept over him and then down.

The angel who landed at his side was both familiar and unwelcome. “Favashi,” he said, having expected the visit. The archangel’s progress had been tracked since she was spotted an hour out from the Boston coast. “Have you come to lay claim to Raphael’s territory while he is in the Far East?”

Favashi’s serene face betrayed nothing as she folded back wings of a soft, exquisite cream. “We both know he’s stronger than I am, Dmitri. And even were he not, you lead his Seven. I would be a fool to stand against you in battle.”

He snorted, though she was right. His strength as a vampire, coupled with his intelligence and experience when it came to combat situations, made it certain that no city would ever fall under his watch. And this city? He’d watched over it since long before it was a jewel coveted by many, would never let it slip into enemy hands.

“So you are here to stroke my ego?” he purred, his tone as deadly as the edge of a scalpel. “Pity that I prefer the hands stroking me not belong to a cold-blooded bitch.”

Fire in her eyes, a glimpse of the vicious power that lived behind the mask of a lovely Persian princess, elegant and benevolent. “I am still an archangel, Dmitri.” A whip of arrogance in the reminder, but then her lips curved. “I was a fool and this is my reward. Will you never forgive a young woman’s ambition?”

Dmitri stared at her, this archangel who had made him believe, for one shimmering moment, that he might crawl out of the abyss and stand in the light once more. With hair of a luxuriant mink brown and eyes of the same lush shade, her skin the creamy gold of Persia, and her body that of a goddess, Favashi was a queen who looked the part.

Men had fought for her, died for her, worshipped her. Women saw in her a grace that was lacking in Michaela, the most beautiful of all the archangels, and so they served her with willing hands and loyal hearts, never understanding that Favashi was as merciless as her brethren in the Cadre. “Ambition,” he said, “has its price.”

Flaring out her wings, as if to expose them to the night’s languid caress, Favashi turned her face toward the diamondstudded nightscape that was Manhattan. “Such a stunning place, but so hard. My land is gentler.”

“A man could burn to nothing in your deserts without ever being found.” He had no doubts that Favashi had buried many a body beneath those rolling sand dunes. He didn’t have a problem with that—he’d buried a few bodies himself. What he did have a problem with was the fact that she’d not only fooled him into believing in her, but that she’d expected to lead him on a leash, her own personal guard dog cum assassin.

Once, so long ago it was another life, Dmitri had been turned into a thing to be used. Never again. “Why are you here?”

“I came to see you.” A simple answer, but her voice held a soft, exotic music that turned it into an invitation. “Let the past lie where it belongs. I would court you again.”

“No.” He captured her wrist as she raised her hand to touch his face, squeezing so hard he’d have fractured a mortal woman’s bones. “The last time an angel tried to court me,” he whispered, leaning down to speak with his lips brushing her neck, “she ended up in bite-sized pieces I then fed to her hounds.” It was he who had courted Favashi before—or at least she’d allowed him to believe he was the one leading the dance. The one good thing that had come out of the experience was that he’d never again make the mistake of believing a woman’s sweet lies.

Running his lips along the sensitive edge of her ear, he sucked lightly in the way he knew turned her weak, while rubbing his thumb over the escalating pulse in the wrist he still held. “I watched the dogs feed,” he murmured, reaching out to run the fingers of his free hand over the curving arches of her wings in the most intimate of caresses, “and I wished I had taken longer to carve her with the blade.”

Favashi ripped away her wrist and stepped back from him. It mattered little—her eyes were dilated, her skin flushed. He smiled, touched his finger very deliberately to the rapid pulse in her neck. “The bed isn’t far if you wish to be serviced, my Lady Favashi.”

No flinch at the mocking appellation. She was an archangel, after all. But her tone held a concern that might’ve once fooled him into believing she cared. “You are not who you once were, Dmitri. I would not have a man such as you in my bed.”

“Pity. I have so many things I’d enjoy doing to you.” None of it would have anything to do with pleasure. “Now,” he said, having had enough of games, “tell me the real reason you’re here.”

A strand of mink-dark hair played across her face before falling as the wind fell. “I spoke the truth.” Her face flawless in profile, she watched a group of angels angle in to land on a lower balcony, their wings cupped inward to lessen the speed of their descent. “Raphael and Elijah both have consorts and are stable, unlike the others in the Cadre.

“I have decided it’s time to join them—you were the only one who seemed a suitable choice.” The cool calculation of an immortal. “Whether or not I would ever trust you in my bed, the invitation stands. Consider how much power you would have at your command as my consort.” With that, she flared out wings he’d once caressed as she arched naked above him, and swept off the balcony.

Making a call to ensure she’d be tracked out of the country, Dmitri turned his face into the cool night winds that held strands of the Hudson intertwined with the frenetic beat of this wild, living city of steel and glass and heart. Favashi didn’t understand and likely never would. The fact was, Elena was weak, far too weak to be consort to an archangel, and yet Raphael loved her.

While Dmitri, as the leader of Raphael’s Seven, could not accept such a weakness, the mortal he’d once been, the one who had loved a woman with a wide mouth and eyes of slanted brown . . . that man understood what it was to love so deeply it was a kind of beautiful madness.

Scorching heat.

Charred flesh.

Screams.

Words she should understand but couldn’t.

Pain, searing, blinding . . . but overwhelmed by anguish.

“No, no, no.”

Jerked out of the nightmare by the sound of her own voice, Honor touched her face to find a single tear splashed on her cheek. It startled her. Most of the time when she dreamed of the basement, she woke up rigid with terror, nausea churning in her gut. Sometimes she surfaced enraged, her hand bloodless around a weapon. The one thing she did not do, hadn’t done since the rescue, was cry. Not when awake, not when asleep.

Rubbing her sleeve over the wetness to eradicate the evidence of her loss of control, she took a self-conscious look around the library. It lay deserted, and a glance at her watch showed her why—it was five a.m. Ashwini and Demarco had left her and Ransom here sometime after one, and she remembered muttering “Bye” to the other hunter as he, too, went to bed after about an hour.

Now, packing up her laptop and the photocopies she’d made from a number of texts, she headed back to her room. Her small, stifling cell of a room—exhaustion or not, she knew sleep was going to be an impossibility. Figuring Ashwini would be up, since the other hunter had left after being called in for a local hunt, she picked up her cell phone.

“Honor, what do you need?”

“Can you talk?”

“Yeah, just got home after pulling in the idiot vamp.”

“Already?” That had to be some kind of a record.

“He had the bright idea to—get this—hide at his mom’s. Like that isn’t the first place we’d look.”

It was at times like this that Honor was forcibly reminded that vampires had once been human. The echoes could take decades to fade . . . though she was sure none remained in Dmitri. “You said something about an apartment being free in your building last time you were here,” she said, angry at herself for being unable to stop thinking about the lethal, sensual creature who’d looked at her with eyes full of unhidden intent. “Don’t suppose it still is?”

“Nope. Because I put your name down for it.”

Honor’s butt hit the bed. “You knew.”

“It’s open plan,” Ashwini said, instead of answering the implied question. “Glass everywhere, and while that would be a security hazard lower down, you’ll be on the thirty-first floor. I might’ve sort of picked the lock on your storage unit and moved all your stuff in last week, but if you tell anyone, I’ll say the gremlins did it.”

At any other time, with any other person, Honor would’ve been angry, but this was Ash, who had understood that Honor needed to escape before she had herself. “I owe you one.”

“Want me to come pick you up? I still have the car I signed out for the hunt.”

Honor glanced around her room. “Give me a couple of hours to pack up here.” She didn’t have much, but it was an unspoken rule that the bed was to be stripped, the floor vacuumed, and any trash removed, before departure. “I’ll meet you by the front gate.”

“Honor?”

“Yes?”

“It’s good to have you back.”